Shall I regale you with the story of tonight? My friend, Abi and I were downtown. We parked in a spot that said 2 hour parking and we walked off. Fast forward about a half hour. We returned just in time to see a meter man walking away from my van--which was sporting a shiny white ticket under the wiper blade. We were so confused. Both of us are college educated women and we've both been reading for several decades. We approached the vehicle and stared at the parking sign. It said two hour parking. It did state, toward the bottom, that Saturdays were free but that was it. Not being a frequent visitor of downtown Salt Lake, I, apparently, do not know how these things work.
I've seen many a movie where the ingenue gets pulled over but talks her way out of the ticket. Since there was truly no ill intent and I was honestly confused, I decided to try my hand at getting out of the ticket. I chased the meter man down the road. "Excuse me, sir! Sir! Excuse me. Excuse me, sir, I have a question."
I was ready. I was ready to turn on any charm I might have. I was ready to explain my utter confusion and, thus, my innocence. I was ready to put the ole theatre degree to work if need be. "Sir!" The meter man turned toward me, clearly annoyed.
It was at that moment, after howling the word SIR several times, that I realized my big mistake. It was most assuredly a meter MAID (or a female parking enforcement officer if we're being PC). And she was not happy that I'd just called her a dude multiple times. She stared at me.
"Oh! I'm so sorry! I only saw your hat!" And any hopes I had of getting out of that ticket were scattered on the cold sidewalk. No amount of charm would get me out of this one. I still sort of feebly tried but to zero avail.
And listen, I know she was ticked because I'd questioned her femininity but she was wearing her standard uniform plus a gray beanie. She had NO hair whatsoever poking out in any direction. Sure, women have short hair. That's cool. But maybe a pink hat or a purple one? Something that would otherwise identify her as woman so that the poor unsuspecting ingenue of the story didn't accidentally and completely insult her.
So the moral of this story is Salt Lake City needs to be infinitely clearer with its parking signs and, also, that one should correctly identify the gender of the parking enforcement officer BEFORE screaming sir.
As a result of my failure to sweet talk my way out of it tonight, I am now raising money to help pay for my parking ticket. If you found any humor in this post, please send me a quarter via Paypal or Venmo.
JUST KIDDING, of course. About the Paypal/Venmo thing. Everything else is, sadly, quite true.
It's been twelve days since I've been flipped off by an angry driver. This is noteworthy because, in 21 years of driving, I had previously been flipped off exactly twice. Once was at a gas station. I was a teenager and I still don't know what I could have possibly done, AT A GAS STATION, to warrant such behavior from a middle aged woman. It bothered me for far too long.
I don't recall the details of the second event but I was in my twenties and I probably accidentally cut the guy off. Or something. I don't know. It also bothered me for far too long so the fact that I cannot remember the details is actually a blessing for this obsessive individual.
Twelve days ago, I got the bird. But the weird thing is, just four days prior, I'd also been flipped off. After two middle fingers in 21 years of having a license, I got two more. IN FOUR DAYS. And the real kicker is that I have ABSOLUTELY no idea WHATSOEVER why either man felt the need to display his longest finger angrily in my direction.
The first situation occurred on a Wednesday. I was driving my oldest and his best friend from one extracurricular activity to another. They were in the back of the van laughing and talking and were oblivious to the whole ordeal. It was dark. I changed lanes (to a slower lane) to get onto a different freeway. The ONLY thing I can think of is that, perhaps, I was going slower than the car coming up behind me and this sent him into a state of anger reserved for only the greatest of all atrocities. I used my blinker. I checked my blind spot. I changed lanes safely. I was driving the speed limit, if not slightly faster. As I drove on in this particular lane, a truck pulled up beside me and laid on the horn for far too long. It startled me and I jumped. I thought the guy was honking at someone else (because, again with the, NO IDEA WHAT I COULD HAVE DONE thing) but he stared me down when I glanced at him so I quickly deduced that he was honking at me. He went on his merry angry way and I kept driving.
I took my exit onto the other freeway and continued to drive. About three minutes later, I began to pull up on the left hand side of a truck that was slowing down to exit. I'd moved on and didn't even realize this was Honky Truck. That is, until the driver leaned his entire upper body out of his window and began slamming the outside of his car door with his fist. He screamed at me. His face was, perhaps, the angriest face I've ever seen. Finally, after several fist punches to his car door, he jerked his hand up and stood his middle finger straight into the air. As though that wasn't enough, he reached his arm as far out of his window as he could as I passed by.
I couldn't imagine what I had done to warrant such behavior.
The following Sunday, after Troy discussed the above mentioned situation in a sermon (although he very politely omitted the flipping off portion of the event), I was driving home from church. It was broad daylight. I was not on a freeway. I was driving along minding my own business. My boys were in the back. I was in the faster of the two lanes and changed into the right lane a good and safe distance ahead of a truck pulling a horse trailer. I continued driving the speed limit, if not slightly faster. A minute or so later, we came up to a light. Behind me, I noticed that the truck and trailer moved into the left lane. We continued on. The truck changed lanes ahead of me, back into the right lane. Just ahead, he slowed to turn right. As he pulled into a turn lane, I passed by. Just as I passed, he stuck his left hand out his window and flipped me off.
"What is happening?" I yelled out to no one in particular.
"What happened?" Garrett asked.
"That guy just flipped me off," I told him.
"What? Why?" Matthew asked.
"I DON'T KNOW!"
When we got home, I had the boys run inside to get Troy--who had gotten home ahead of us with Will. He came out.
"Can you walk around the car and make sure there's nothing written on the back that says, 'Flip me off!'" There wasn't, of course, and I haven't been flipped the bird since. My name is Lori and I have been bird free for twelve days. (Hi, Lori.)
I have thought extensively about both middle finger experiences and I have no clue what I could have possibly done--in either situation--to warrant such angry expression of hostility. In my 21 years of driving, I have never once flipped off another vehicle. How mad does someone have to be? And if I've made someone that upset, shouldn't I have the slightest clue as to why?
As we approach this Christmas season, may we remember to take deep breaths, be kind, and reserve our middle fingers for people who talk loudly during theatrical productions. I'm just kidding. Keep your middle fingers down in all circumstances. Remember that Jesus came as a little tiny baby in a feeding trough so that He could one day die for our anger and our middle fingers. Treat one another with compassion and love.
When I was in the second grade, I had a teacher that darn near ruined school for me. Often, she was incredibly unkind. If her hair was curled, we were going to be alright but if it was straight, everyone knew to steer clear. As an adult I realize that, maybe, on the days her hair was curled, she'd gotten up, had her morning coffee and then spent some quality time with the curling iron. The days when it was straight, well, maybe she'd rolled out of bed and we were seeing her in some kind of decaffeinated state. I don't know. She insisted that we call her Mizz Boyle. Not Miss Boyle. Mizz. She scared me. The rough terrain of second grade didn't stop with her incredible mood swings. The woman barely taught math. She focused so greatly on language arts and reading that one of my most vivid memories from all of grade school involves me sobbing at the kitchen table while I wrote a lengthy (way too long for a seven-year-old) research paper on Mary Cassatt. That class entered the third grade above average in all things to do with literature and well below average in our math skills.
It haunted me throughout school, always trying to play catch up in math and build on skills that weren't taught at the crucial age of seven. However, for all that I blame her for with my subpar mathematics skills, I do credit the woman for being the base for which my love for literature and language arts was launched and, in fairness, she's the sole reason I have any idea who Mary Cassatt was.
My foundational love for English took me into honors courses, on to Advanced Placement my senior year, and eventually landed me in a great many writing and literature classes in college where I graduated three courses short of a second degree in English Education. I say all of that to hopefully give some credit to what I'm about to say. (It was a long introduction. What can I say, I'm not short and to the point like Hemingway.)
In high school, as part of our honors program, I was forced to endure a few AWFUL books for summer reading. Terrible books. Books that made me question whether I should even bother with advanced classes. But here's the thing. I reread some of them in college and had a profound awakening to them. It was then I realized that some of what we'd been forced to read in high school was way over our heads. Listen, I was not in over my head in advanced classes. I never got a grade lower than A in English until college. So I can only assume that no one was understanding or connecting to much of our summer reading lists. When in college a few years later, my perspective had changed. I'd lived a little more life. The themes and concepts of some of the books we'd had to read in high school suddenly made sense. I firmly believe that we were introduced to some of that material well before we could even begin to chew it up and make sense of it.
I'm not blaming the teachers. Not a bit. I adored my high school English teachers. They were teaching what they needed to and in the end, we all survived. During school we were able to dissect books with our faithful leaders standing by, guiding and helping. It was those hot summers with long passages that made no sense that really got to me.
The summer before my freshman year, when I was a mere 13 years old, I powered, somehow, through Travels with Charley. I declared then and there that I detested John Steinbeck with the burning fire of 10,000 suns. It was so so very terrible. It was boring. It was dated. Still, for some strange reason, I held onto that paperback novel all these years. My mother, year after year would ask me why I saved it, as awful as it was. Then, later, my husband would ask the same question. I had no explanation. Perhaps I kept it in my bookshelf as some sort of badge of honor.
I have nearly tripled my age since I first experienced that novel. Suddenly, I had the overwhelming urge to read it. O, world, is it ever beautiful. Still, I look at its pages and I think, "There is no way a 13 year old could have possibly grasped this." Now though, I am helped by the fact that I have fallen in love with Steinbeck. Travels with Charley In Search of America was my maiden voyage nearly a quarter of a century ago. It is not the place to begin. One must first know Steinbeck. I believe, even, that The Pearl and Of Mice and Men (books which also came with my high school education) are not, on their own, up to the task. Perhaps, if one has held tight to the pages of East of Eden, it will have been enough. To embrace Charley, one must feel as though Steinbeck is an old friend and one must believe that America is meant to be discovered again and again. We must understand that she is always in a process of metamorphosis so intricate that one man's experience will never be the next man's. One must possess within her that restlessness, that wanderlust that so many of us, inherent in our Americanness, feel in the marrow of our bones. What 13 year old grasps these things? Nay, what 36 year old can do much more than open her mouth and hope to drink the entire ocean?
I was driving myself, pounding out the miles because I was no longer hearing or seeing. I had passed my limit of taking in or, like a man who goes on stuffing food after he is filled, I felt helpless to assimilate what was fed in through my eyes. Each hill looked like the one just passed. I have felt this way in the Prado in Madrid after looking at a hundred paintings--the stuffed and helpless inability to see more.
A few pages later...
Charley licked the syrup from his whiskers. "What makes you so moony?" "It's because I've stopped seeing. When that happens you think you'll never see again."
What 13 year old is worried about absorbing that much, being saturated to the point of rejecting what is seen, heard, and experienced? Ahhh, but what 36 year old, in a moment of respite, enveloped by warm water and bubbles while her love plays with her three smaller loves, has not experienced the gripping reality that sometimes we lose sight of everything important?
There are moments when I wish I could visit myself. I would absorb wisdom from the soul of older versions. I would implore younger versions to listen, to give it all the time that it needs, to soak in as much as possible.
"Yes, younger me, the only part of Travels with Charley In Search of America that you will grasp and appreciate will be the parts about California. You have been there. You have experienced the land and everything he says about it is still true. One day, you will have seen more of it. You will have met more of its people. You will understand what John was looking for. One day, the book will move you. One day, you will wish that he invited you into Rocinante, poured you a glass of whatever he was serving, and asked who you were. Or not. Perhaps you would only discuss the weather. One day, you would consider paying top dollar to scratch Charley's head. That time has not yet come."
Recently, my son was asking me how insurance works. Specifically, he wanted to know exactly how big our life insurance policies are. So, I mean, I guess if we turn up dead in the near future, interrogate him for a hot minute. I explained life insurance and car insurance, homeowner's and renter's insurance. I even talked about how there are things like earthquake insurance if you live in, well, California. I don't know if that's a thing anywhere else.You know what I didn't educate my 5th grade son about? Domino's carryout insurance.
When I first saw the commercial a month or so ago, I was absolutely dumbfounded. Was this a problem people were having? It's not outside the realm of my imagination that a pizza would be dropped here or there, but enough to offer actual insurance on pies?
Even more odd, to me, is the fact that it's only being offered for a limited time. I mean, if we all agree that pizza misfortune is a common problem (we don't, by the way, we don't agree to this at all) then why the limited time?
Life insurance! Get it while you can! It's only good for a limited time. Car insurance for 2018 only. After that you're up a creek. Can you imagine? This is the most bizarre idea I've ever heard of, maybe.
"I'm not sure why sales are down,J. Patrick Doyle. I know we need a new gimmick to compete with all the other pizza takeout places. HOW ABOUT PIZZA INSURANCE? I mean, it works for Californians with their earthquakes. And, I mean, what if an ACTUAL EARTHQUAKE damaged a pizza? We should definitely reimburse them. For a limited time only, of course," Bob the Delivery Boy said.
"Great idea, Bob the Delivery Boy," J. Patrick Doyle responded. "Let's work up some commercials that won't make people laugh hysterically but will make them pause with confusion."
I can't see how this is going to increase traffic to Domino's. If I was deciding between two places, I'd go with proximity to my home and cost of the pizza. I wouldn't drive to Domino's because they offer crazy insurance. I do feel, however, that now that I've written about it and thoroughly expressed the fact that it is not needed, I'll drop my next pizza right on its face. And it won't be from Domino's.
So. Usually I watch some TV on New Year's Eve. At least enough to see the ball drop. I've only thought minimally about my bucket list. Write a book. Visit every state. Go to Italy. Visit the Florida Keys. Spend New Year's Eve in Times Square. Basically, my bucket list is traveling.
I can't say why, exactly, I want to spend New Year's in Time Square. It looks miserable and freezing cold. I do not enjoy being miserable or freezing cold. I want to spend New Year's in Time Square the way people want to climb Everest. To say I did it. Not because I actually think the experience would be even slightly enjoyable. And Times Square seems a lot less strenuous than actually climbing Everest. And so, I turn the TV on and I watch the ball drop, thinking of a day when I can cross this particular challenge off my list.
This year, though, I never even turned the TV on. My middle son started vomiting again. He, at nearly nine, has never been known to throw up into a toilet. Or a trash can. Or, even, a bathtub. No. He just hurls his guts wherever he happens to be. It is as though he has no physical warning whatsoever. My oldest has been effectively throwing up into a toilet since he was three. Not Matthew though. He prefers the car. Or the staircase. Or, most recently, ALL OVER THE PANTRY. Let me explain that there is a trash can less than two feet away from the pantry. Still, my son decided to hurl all over two shelves and the floor of the place we keep our food. This resulted in Troy and me scrubbing our pantry on New Year's Eve. Meanwhile, Matthew threw up again. This time he got it into a bowl. But then he spilled the bowl all over the floor. You can't make this stuff up.
We cleaned barf. We cleaned the child. He was so very sad at the early end to his New Year's Eve when, at 10:00, we set up a bed for him in the bathroom, with a toilet directly to the right and a bowl directly to the left. I spent a little time with my sister-in-law, niece and nephew, who are visiting and then went to check on Matthew. He was fine but couldn't sleep because he was lonely and his New Year's Eve was cut tragically and unfairly short. The world was a mess, the year, a total loss. I told him I'd stay with him.
Eventually, he fell asleep and I went down to pour cider and holler, "Happy New Year!" And the whole entire point of this mess of vomit and Times Square drivel is that I completely missed the whole Mariah Carey Situation.
I did, however, catch up the next morning. Let me just say that the thing about Mariah Carey is you're never sure if she's trying to be funny and not quite getting there or if she's really and truly one of the biggest divas on the planet.
"They told me there would be tea. Oh. It's a disaster. Ok. Well, we'll just have to rough it. Imma be like everybody else with no hot tea."
There are so many gems there that I just want to thank Mariah Carey for giving me such amazing catch phrases as we move into 2018. I can hear the conversations now.
Troy: We're out of cereal.
Me: Oh. It's a disaster. Ok. Well, we'll just have to rough it.
Me: Can you change Will?
Troy: No hot tea.
I mean, I wonder where she thought this tea would be. She turns around to look for it behind her. This leads me to believe that it would have had to have been there BEFORE her first song. It was 8 degrees outside and it was reported that it felt like -6 with the wind chill. She sang for four minutes. #coldtea. Also, she is wearing only slightly more than nothing. She really looks like she's roughing it out there on the frontier, the way our ancestors did. It is as though, for a split second, she realized that she was a person just like everyone else who was standing on the streets of New York. An actual human, she is. Forced to sing another song and get paid a ridiculous amount of money before she could procure some tea for herself. Oh the great tragedy of it all.
Or, maybe she was just trying to be funny. I have no idea. I don't understand the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
I did, however, discover that Mariah Carey took the stage at roughly the same time Matthew spewed his guts all over my pantry. Twenty minutes later, when he was sitting on my bathroom floor, covered in his spilled bowl vomit, I went to him. His face was dripping with regurgitation. In my mind, though I never would have said anything like this to my sick child, I've rewritten the conversation between us.
Matthew: My life is over. The world is a terrible place. I am sick on New Year's Eve. I CAN'T EVEN at the injustice of it all.
Me: I'm sorry that you have to stay up here on the bathroom floor while the rest of us eat brownies and ice cream and watch movies and enjoy New Year's Eve. It's really a shame that you're throwing up again!
Matthew: (blinks) They told me there would be tea.
I was just organizing our office--the place every bit of clutter, old floppy disk, and hippo pencil sharpener from when I was a child goes to die--in the hopes that I could clear just a wee bit of space to organize myself for the upcoming nightmare I've gotten myself in to.
"Do you want to teach drama?" they asked.
And I eagerly jumped because I love drama.
It's that love that has kept me taking one step at a time during these last few months as more and more and more and more commitment and responsibility have been revealed to me. Deep breaths. It'll all be okay.
I hope.
As I was going through boxes rarely opened, I discovered my old yearbook from the time I was teaching high school drama. I reread some of the hilarious things that my students wrote to me. Apparently, I was very concerned with them not getting tattoos as it would ruin their clean theatrical bodies. Or something. I have no idea really, but several of them promised me that they wouldn't get tattoos. Those students are all well into their adult years but I remember them as these eager theatre kids--just waiting to fly.
I miss them.
I found my faculty picture. I was 25. I look like a baby.
As I uncovered old Bible studies, notes from speaking sessions at conferences, and a coffee table book dedicated to the life and times of the sitcom FRIENDS, a loose square of paper fell out. I glanced at, remembering the desk top calendar I had as a very young teenager. It was full of little heartwarming stories or funny jokes.
Two Nickels and Five Pennies
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost must less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" "Fifty cents," replied the waitress.
The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he inquired.
Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she said brusquely.
The little boy again counted the coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said.
The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table, and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and departed. When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies--her tip.
I have held on to this scrap of paper for--I don't know--close to 23 years. I cannot read it without getting choked up. Every. Single. Time. I don't know why. I'm not usually sappy or overly emotional. I don't even know if it's a true story. But I want to be like that little boy. I wants to raise boys like that little boy. Maybe that's why it grabs hold of me the way it does.
The moral of the story: Teach your children to be kind and also, if they want to go into the theatre, apparently, teach them not to get tattoos.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in psychics. I mean, I guess I do in the sense that I believe we can screw around with demons and stuff and get really messed up in all kinds of evil. But I don't believe in them in the traditional way that people do. I definitely don't believe in my own ability to have psychic premonitions.
Yesterday I had a psychic premonition. Except I did not because, as stated before, I don't believe in that. I do believe in the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Maybe, even, on really silly stuff. Like checking the outside freezer.
We're leaving for Tahoe tomorrow. I'm really glad that I had this strange premonition yesterday and not a week from now. I was backing up my car so that I could get to a cooler to take with us when I had the sudden and overwhelming thought that I needed to check my freezer. This was followed by the thought, "Well. If it isn't working, it's going straight back to Costco because we have not had it for very long!" I walked toward it and opened it. Cold air blasted me and I thought, "Oh good." This was immediately followed by my wondering aloud why the bottom of the freezer was red. And wet.
I don't know how long it wasn't working but it couldn't have been terribly long because the ice cream still had a partially frozen blob in the center. I was incredibly thankful that I had some ice frozen in there which had served, for a time, as a cooling device. The popsicles were everywhere. And no longer chilling in their popsicle formation.
I hauled everything out of there. I threw things away. I mopped up sticky juice. I cleaned everything up. Not once did I lose my cool even though I had 99 better things to do. And even though it was approximately 2,000 degrees in my garage. I was so happy for my strange idea that I needed to look inside the freezer. Praise God! At some point in all of this, I'd needed the scissors for something. I can't remember what.
I continued on with my day.
Later, I decided to get my spare key. It wasn't hanging where it usually does (correction: it WAS hanging where it usually does but I failed to see it there) so I started looking in places we've hid it before. That led me to a water toy that I thought would be fun to turn on for the boys. I needed scissors to free it from it's cardboard prison. "Where are the scissors?" I wondered aloud before remembering that they were in the garage. As I walked past the laundry room on my way to the garage, I saw it.
My entire laundry room and bathroom floor were covered in standing water. It was seeping into the carpet. I threw open the lid to the washing machine and the basin was full to the brim with soapy water. And that is the moment that I chose to start crying dramatically.
It was ridiculous. It was a cross between actual crying because I was upset and frustrated and theatrical crying because I did not feel like cleaning it up and if I cried loud enough then maybe the universe would hear me and come do it for me. This crying is reserved for things like minor floods and head lice. My boys stared at me.
"What should I do?" Garrett asked? I had no idea what to tell him because I had no idea where to start. He called Troy who did not answer. This is really quite common, When my husband DOES answer, I am genuinely surprised. I'm not sure why we pay for his phone. I didn't know what to even do but I wanted someone to feel sorry for me so I called my parents.
Meanwhile, I'd sent Garrett for towels. He returned with ONE dishcloth. To clean an entire floor of standing water. Good luck, kid. My dad told me to see if I could manually get the washer to engage in a spin cycle. I could. Praise God! Because I did not want to bail an entire basin full of soapy water. Within a few minutes, Troy came home.
Y'all, I was GEARED up. I am not typically a crier, as has been largely documented here. But I am dramatic. I will immediately think that my cough is lung cancer or my flooded washing machine is THE END OF THE WORLD. (Especially when I have somewhere to go. And where I needed to go was Vacation Bible School in two hours to do a skit which I did not have memorized yet. I also needed to go on actual vacation.) Troy came in and I was all high pitched and incoherent. He just looked at that DISASTER and calmly said, "Oh wow." Then he set to cleaning it up.
I decided to run a load and watch every step so that I could tell a repair man exactly where it went wrong. Strangely, the cycle went perfectly. More strangely, we have since done three loads of laundry without a problem. PRAISE GOD! I'm not assuming it's cured. I'm just thankful for the temporary calm before the storm of needing to shell out big bucks for a new one.
Guess who slept through the freezer fiasco? Guess who slept through half of the laundry room fiasco? That's right, the inquisitive man cub who would have found both messes to be thoroughly enjoyable adventures. PRAISE GOD! Because I would not have found it enjoyable when he went running through the neighborhood with all the temporarily relocated freezer food. And I would not have found it enjoyable when he began swimming lessons on my bathroom floor.
The point of this tale is not that I cleaned up two giant messes when I needed to be packing. The point is that while my reaction was to CRY on the phone with my MOMMY and my DADDY, my husband's reaction was basically a quiet, "Good times."
WHAT IF I HAD MARRIED MYSELF? (I mean, someone like myself.) That would have been the greatest disaster of all. Both of us standing, immobilized, in the bathroom, crying. Both of us calling our daddies? Thank goodness God brought that calming presence into my overdramatic life.
I have a new appreciation for learning disabilities. It started out like any normal baseball game. The weather was warm, the kids were in good moods, and Troy and I were chatting as we watched Garrett's team swinging their bats. I started to misspeak.
You know what I'm talking about, when a word just comes out wrong for whatever reason. My mom tells a funny story about her and a friend. One of them simply could not say "white bread" and repeatedly said, "bread white." Even after pausing and collecting herself, she focused all her attention on the phrase at hand and blurted out, "BREAD WHITE!" It happens. But I said a lot of wrong words in a short amount of time. I finally widened my eyes and said, "What is happening? It's like I'm having a hembolism." I am not even 100% sure that embolisms occur in the head but that's neither here not there. What is here and there is that there is no such thing as a hembolism.
Troy thought it might be the heat or a lack of water. I was skeptical because it was not that hot and I'd been drinking water all day. I stopped talking and suddenly became verbally disoriented. I was not confused about where I was or what was happening. I knew we were watching our kid play baseball. I could think conceptually. I just could not, for the life of me, string my words together to properly form a sentence. My friend asked me a question and I had to concentrate so hard on how to say a three word answer that my head actually started hurting. I also felt very foggy, as though I was having an out of body experience. Within minutes, my head was pounding.
Garrett took his turn at the plate. As he stood there holding his bat, I realized that I knew his name. I knew he was my child. But I could not say his name (first, middle, last) in the right order. That's when I really began to get worried. When the game ended, Troy told me to go to the car and sit for awhile before Matthew's game started. I walked just fine to the car and climbed in. Terrified of what was happening to me, I finally decided to sing a song that I should definitely know. I chose the ABC's. I think I sang it correctly. I took myself through several more brain exercises and felt like I was starting to return to normal. That's when I took out my phone to scroll through Facebook.
And every single one of my friends had posted status updates that were something like this:
Greatest the husband birthday to the world in happy.
Or
Make dinner should I what tonight for?
I blinked. I knew that all my friends had not simultaneously gone crazy. The same thing that was happening to my speech and my memory was also happening to my ability to read. I could see the words, they just weren't in the correct order. Also, my right eye seemed blurry.
I had become foggy, verbally dyslexic and somehow lost the ability to remember things like the correct order of my child's name. I started sobbing. I was terrified that I would never have a coherent thought again. Except that I was somehow having a coherent thought about not being able to have coherent thoughts. It was all very...incoherent.
Just then, Garrett came to the car to tell me that Matthew was about to bat. He saw me crying and asked what was wrong. I told him I didn't feel very well. My words came out okay. Together, we walked back to the fields. He took Will for us while Troy and I talked and tried to figure out what was wrong with me.
I asked him to throw a baseball back and forth with me. I wasn't sure that I didn't also have physical limitations. We tossed a ball no problem. I even alternated closing one eye and still managed to catch it most of the time. We sat down and I asked him to quiz me on various things.
"When was Garrett born?" he asked.
"July 20, 2006," I answered. But it took me a second to pull the year from the vault of my strangely clouded mind.
"What are our kids' full names?" he asked.
I rattled off Garrett's and Matthew's. For some reason, it took me a second to remember Will's middle name.
He continued asking questions and I answered, becoming more confident with each question until he said, "What is Moses's mother's name?" My mind was blank.
He kept asking me Bible questions. If it was a well known person or story I could easily recall it. If it was more obscure, it was as if I'd never known the answer before in my life. He then asked me about characters on shows we watch together. I could picture them, but I could not tell him the character name or the actor who played them.
At one point, frustrated, I stared long at a water bottle sitting on the bench in front of me. I could read it. And, as Matthew's game went on, I found that I also began to remember names of people on TV shows and Bible trivia.
From saying words like hembolism to my memory fully returning to me it was about an hour and a half. The part where I could not speak correctly or read lasted between 30-45 minutes.
I saw this clip from SNL this weekend and told Troy that this is what it sounded like in my head. I was so embarrassed to even try to talk because I was terrified that it would come out sounding like this...
On Friday, I called my doctor to see if I could get in to see them just to make sure everything was fine. When I explained what had happened, they put me on hold. Within a minute, the doctor got on the phone. And, I mean, that's really never good. When I WANT to talk to my doctor, it's impossible. She told me that she wanted me to go directly to the ER. Y'all, I did not want to go to the ER. We pay roughly $1,000 in monthly premiums and on top of that an ER visit costs me $400 just to walk in. Then I have to pay for whatever they do to me until I hit my deductible. None of this was my idea of a good time.
I asked if I could wait until I got off of work.
"In my medical opinion," she said, "you need to go now."
I checked in within the hour. Ten minutes after I got there, they put me in a room. Seven very boring hours later I was finally free to go home. You know what is not fun? Sitting in the Emergency Room when you feel JUST FINE waiting for them to tell you if you are JUST FINE or SERIOUSLY NOT FINE. My EKG was fantastic. My blood pressure was terrific. I'm notorious for giving too much information, for telling in twenty minutes what could have been told in two. But I didn't know what was important to the story and what wasn't. So I told it all. The doctor called me a good historian. I felt like I'd been too verbose.
But when he consulted with the neurologist who ordered an MRI, he came back and told me that giving him all the information had helped them decide to run the MRI. Apparently, the same part of the brain controls speaking, reading, and right eye visibility. At that point, they were thinking that perhaps part of a blood vessel in my head had detached. He said it sounded worse than it actually was. That was reassuring because it sounded AWFUL.
My MRI was totally clear. No one knows what the heck happened to make me LOSE MY MIND FOR AN HOUR. It could have been a migraine. It could have been a partial seizure. It could have been a transient blocked vessel. It could have been a dozen other things.
But it wasn't a mini stroke which is what I was afraid of.
"I believe you," the doctor told me. "I don't think you're making it up. I just don't have an answer for you."
"I don't care if you believe me," I told him, laughing. "If it didn't happen, I just need the name of a really good psychiatrist."
"No, no," he said, "It happened."
I'm following up with a neurologist next month.
Until then, I live my life with the peaceful knowledge that the images of my brain were clear and with the unsettling horror that it might happen again at any time. Although, if it does happen again, I am supposed to go directly to the Emergency Room. Given that I will not be able to speak and, presumably, will be unable to write, I will just pull up this video of Vanessa Bayer and gesture wildly until they figure out that I've lost my mind. Again.
There are just certain people I grow attached to in my life. My gynecologist, for one. Who wants to go shopping for a new one of those every year? The dentist. As long as you'll keep telling me I don't have any cavities, you can have my business forever. My hair stylist. When we moved to Utah, I didn't get a new stylist for several years. I just kept getting my hair cut in California when I'd go home to visit. Who says long distance relationships can't work? Eventually, I grew weary of the airfare involved in getting my hair cut, my kid got too old to fly for free, I had to stop going to CA quite as frequently, and the time came to find a new stylist.
It was a fiasco.
I had my hair done by someone nearby. I liked it fine. The shop closed. I went somewhere else and liked it fine. I scheduled another appointment and, when I showed up for it, the shop was closed. I texted her and she didn't seem to know anything about me or why I would have had an appointment scheduled with her. I swear she was on drugs. It was the most bizarre conversation. I ended up getting my hair cut at Great Clips. Not long after that, I found my stylist, followed her through moves to two different shops, had my hair done by her as she grieved the loss of her granddaughter, had my hair done by her as I grieved the loss of my daughter, had my hair done by her as we welcomed Will, and, in December, found out that she was going to quit cutting hair.
She cut my hair before Christmas and that was the end of that.
I silently mourned. I'm not ready to repeat the stress of finding a new person.
I have kept telling myself for the past two months that I really need to figure out a new solution. I need to get back out there and find a new stylist. But I kept putting it off until, on Tuesday, I snapped. I'm very level headed. I'm loyal and I'm trustworthy but sometimes, sometimes, I'm compulsive. I have an activator personality. It's an asset. Although, my husband does not always think so. And he has good reason.
On Tuesday I just had to have my hair cut. As the day wore on, the itch became so severe I could no longer satisfy it. I very nearly went back over to Great Clips but the baby fell asleep and it was going to be too late. I was working on Wednesday and if my hair wasn't cut before that I WOULD SIMPLY DIE A SLOW AND AGONIZING DEATH OF UNFULFILLED DREAMS.
I decided to watch a YouTube video and take matters into my own hands.
I have NEVER taken HAIR MATTERS into my own hands. My hands lack any and all artistic ability. But multiple videos seemed to support the idea that a simple trim was VERY EASY. So I followed the video. I took off just about an inch and let my hair down. It looked good. It looked healthier. It looked JUST fine. So I decided to take a little more off. My niece is constantly cutting her own hair and the girl looks good.
My niece, however, can play instruments and paint and CUT HER OWN HAIR. She has talented hands. I have uncoordinated stubs that are good for typing and scrambling eggs and that's about it.
I followed the same procedure that WORKED FINE THE FIRST TIME. I let my hair back down. There was no difference in length in the back. Instead, there were now long bangs and hideous layers. My hair was now two lengths. Long and statically luxurious in the back (darn these dry Utah winters) and dog chewed layers in the front.
I laughed.
"Oh, what have you done? What? I...oh no. This is irreparable. I...What? Um...oh no." All I could think was that I had to work the next day and there was no time to fix this and even if there was, what was I going to say?
Please fix this. The last girl who touched my head really butchered it?
I decided to cut more off just the back to try to blend it with what was happening in the front. Did I mention I was using household scissors? I don't think I did. I was using household scissors. The kind my children use to cut construction paper and, occasionally, twigs.
Just then my husband came home. "OH! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!"
"What have you done?" he asked. "Why did you do this?" I think he was imagining the time I cut down a dead tree in our yard and then stuck the entire tree in the trash can, assuming the trash men would take it like that. He had to come home and cut the tree apart. I'd wanted the dead tree out of the yard. Once that goal was accomplished, my work was done. It's really a very charming trait of mine, no?
"I think I just need help with the front. The back is ok, right?"
"Uhhhhh...if that's what you're going for." He took a picture for me. Not having eyes in the back of my head, I couldn't really see the damage. I mean, I'd tried to look at it with a mirror but obviously the mirror faked me out because I thought it looked okay and, in actuality, it looked like this...
Suffice it to say, that is not what I was going for. Painstakingly, over the next hour, Troy, who is largely (i.e. completely) untrained in the area of hair cutting, turned the above disaster into this. I'm not going to say it's perfect but, considering what he was working with, and his lack of training, and his terrible scissors, I think he did a pretty good job.
I was pretty certain the front was NEVER GOING TO LOOK GOOD AGAIN. Or, at least, not for three months until it grew out and a professional fixed it for me. But Troy did his very best. He molded and shaped and snipped and chopped. Then I blew it dry and styled it and yesterday, before work, it looked like this...
Generally, I do not think of myself as a pinhead. However, this angle of selfie certainly makes it looks like my tiny head should not be sitting atop my very large body.
Guys, I don't even hate it. And, yesterday, at work, I received MANY compliments about how cute my hair is.
So I've added "hair cutting" to Troy's list of things he can do. He's pretty much amazing. And he didn't even get irritated with me the way he did with the dead tree situation. He just patiently set to fixing it. AND IT DIDN'T COST ME A PENNY!
This however, is not a long term solution. I'm going to need the name of a good stylist before I get the next hankering to chop my hair.
The caller ID simply said Salt Lake City. I thought, maybe, it was someone from church who needed information about tonight's Chili Cook Off and Game Night, so I took the call.
Me: Hello? Her: Troy Bassham, please.
Me: He's not available.
Her: I need to speak to him immediately. This is Commander Pam Lofgreen with the Salt Lake Sheriff's Department.
Me: (Assuming someone was in jail and wanted to see a pastor. It happens.) What is this concerning?
Her: When do you think you'll be able to reach him?
Me: Within a few hours. (He was home but I didn't want to tell her that.)
Her: Ma'am, this cannot wait that long. Does he have a cell phone you could reach him on?
Me: What is this concerning?
Her: There is a pressing matter that needs his immediate attention.
Me: What is going on?
At this point, I really was starting to get worried that something horrible had happened to someone in our church and so my adrenaline started pumping.
Her: I cannot tell you. I need to speak with Troy.
Me: I need to know what is going on.
Her: Are you his spouse?
Me: Yes. I am.
Her: Ma'am, your husband needs to come down here. He failed to appear in court and there is a warrant for his arrest.
Me: What? Failed to appear in court for what? Her: For jury duty.
It's important for you to know that the adrenaline--from thinking something awful happened to someone in our church--was still flowing all willy-nilly through my body so I was even more confused when she dropped that last bit.
Me: MY HUSBAND LOVES JURY DUTY! He would never not appear.
Her: Is this the first time you're hearing about this?
Me: Yes!
Her: Okay, ma'am, he just needs to come down and sign some paperwork. I just need to speak with him immediately. You need to understand how serious this is. There is an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Me: Ok.
Her: He needs to call me back right away.
Me: Ok. What is the address?
And then she supplied me with the correct address of the Salt Lake City Sheriff's Office. I looked it up and there is a Commander Lofgreen. But the whole thing seemed ridiculous and so we called the number and spoke to an officer.
Officer: It's probably a scam. We're closed today. You can call back tomorrow.
We didn't get his name though so we called back--just in case. A different officer answer the phone and Troy only started to explain the situation.
Different Officer: Yeah, that's a scam. Please tell me you didn't give them any money.
No. No we did not. THEN I looked up jury duty scam online and oh boy. Apparently she was hoping I would eventually hand out his social security number so she could steal his identity.
I thought it would be fun to call back. She didn't answer. It just went straight to "Commander Lofgreen's" voice mail. I tried again later and she DID answer. "Who am I speaking to," I asked. And then she did not respond.
So, thank you, crazy woman posing as Commander Lofgreen for making me think something awful happened to someone I care about OR that my husband was needed to pray with a delinquent or something. You certainly made it a fun afternoon. And, man, you're acting was good. You had me believing I was talking to a scary cop. The theatre major in me commends you.
I don't want to talk politics. I really don't. During this past year, I had people say to me or, at least, very near me, that people were horrible, awful, terrible people if they voted...
Clinton
Trump
Third Party
Not third party
"Anyone who votes for Clinton is a horrible person."
"If you vote for Trump, you're a racist."
"Vote third party. It's the only option in this election and you're part of the problem if you don't."
"If you vote third party, you're wasting your vote and giving it to ___________."
Here's what I think though. I think, on a sweepingly large scale, our country has lost the ability to empathize, to understand why someone votes a certain way. Obviously, I've been thinking about this for awhile. Well, for two months anyway.
I maintain that I'm still really angry about the options the Republican Party and the Democratic Party gave me. I was politically kicking and screaming for the better part of a year. But it was what it was. And it is what it is.
In the aftermath, I still want to be a person of integrity. I still want to love others. In many ways, I consider myself an artist--even though I never really did much with my art beyond college. The reason I love the theatre so much is because it conveys the human experience, one moment at a time. One person at a time. One idea at a time. It helps us understand people who think differently than we do.
Do I understand why people are afraid of Trump? Yes. I do.
Do I understand why people were afraid of Clinton? Yes. I do.
I know amazing people who passionately or grudgingly voted for Clinton and my life is richer for having them in it. I know incredible people who passionately or grudgingly voted for Trump and my life is better because they are in it. I know great individuals who voted third party and my life is sweeter because they are my friends.
We need to be able to look past our own fear and into the lives and hearts of people who don't vote the way we do. We need to realize that, generally speaking, roughly half the country is always sad or angry or appalled with the outcome of an election. I have voted in five elections. More often than not, the candidate I've selected is not the candidate who ends up sitting in the oval office. It's neither here nor there how I've felt about Bush, Obama, and Trump. What is here and there is how I love people.
Ultimately, my one vote makes very little difference. Especially since I reside in a state that is always, decidedly, red. And at the end of the day, at the end of my life, I don't think it'll much matter who I voted for. What will matter is how I loved people. Sometimes, how we love people is seen most evidently in the way we care about those who are different.
Regardless of how you voted (and how you feel about the electoral college), these are the numbers I found--
Clinton--65,844,954
Trump--62,979,879
That is a lot of people with very different opinions. They ALL have a story. From the blue collar farmer in Iowa to the Wall Street stock trader. From the black man to the white one. From the single mom to the Texas house wife. From the immigrant to the Native American. Our stories are different so we vote differently. But empathy SHOULD remain.
On Sunday night, at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep used her speech time, essentially, to talk politics. I respect her right to use the time however she'd like. I respect her freedom of speech. But, personally, I almost never want to hear actors getting political. However, she did say something at the end of her speech that I want to quote.
"...we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy." It is a privilege and it is a responsibility. The world is not black and white. We must have empathy for all: for minorities and majorities, for the disabled, for those with different religious beliefs, for those on the other side of the vote. For all.
And one last thing because it is my blog and I can say what I want. President-elect Trump, you are free to disagree with Ms. Streep. You are free to defend yourself however you'd like on Twitter or in any other forum (although I truly wish you'd stop). You are welcome to your opinions on policy and business and, even, acting. But I am free to my opinion that you are wrong. Regardless of whether Ms. Streep shares your politics or mine, she is not overrated. She is the greatest female actor of our time. And, in the words of Miranda Priestly, "That's all."
I watched this phenomenon happen with so many of my favorite blogs. Writers would blog the heck out of the first handful of years of their kids lives and then close up shop. I was always angry at them because I felt so invested in those kids and I wanted to know what happened to them beyond age seven or eight.
I totally get it now.
They get older. Their issues become much bigger than poop and spit up. In fact, they start taking care of their own poop altogether and they stop spitting up. When they throw up, they're mostly self sufficient. We don't blog their issues because it wouldn't be fair to them.
This year I have blogged far less than any other year. I felt like I was keeping the biggest whopper of secrets for the first five months of the year and anything I wanted to say was filtered through the fact that I wasn't sharing Will's existence with more than a handful of people. I was treasuring him up in my heart and nothing felt blog worthy. I thought for sure I would pick back up with intense writing once he was born because I would want to share every little coo and every little smile. Turns out, we have Instagram for that. It is much quicker and less labor intensive than writing A WHOLE ENTIRE BLOG.
He babbles and smiles but I'm usually busy running to soccer or Kids' Club or cub scouts and I can't sit down and write about it. Maybe when he turns two and starts saying hilarious stuff?
For now, he just practices being the happiest baby on the planet. And I go weeks without blogging. It is what it is.
Once upon a time, two weeks ago to be precise, our ten-year-old used his birthday money to purchase a hamster. He'd been begging us for well over a year and the answer was always no. A resounding no. For starters, we have a cat. Hamsters escape. I didn't want the bloodied carcass of Garrett's beloved pet strewn about the room. But he begged and begged and it was his money and I caved. Then, I caved Troy.
We brought Frisby home.
And Garrett became the cutest hamster owner there ever was. He doesn't complain about cleaning her cage (yet). He gets her out in the morning and he gets her out after school. He remembers to put her in the ball to run around. He invites his friends over to play with her. He calls himself her dad.
Yesterday, he had her on the bathroom counter while he was getting ready. As she has demonstrated, in her short time with us, a keen ability not to care if she falls from certain heights, we asked him to never put her on the counter again. We just weren't sure that she wouldn't jump to her suicidal death.
This morning, Matthew brought her into the bathroom and put her on the floor. It was his fault but it wasn't intentional. He didn't know there was an inch gap between a board on the floor and the cabinets. He didn't know that this gap led to a dark space under the cabinets. He didn't know that at the back of this dark space was a hole that led straight into the secret passages of the skeleton of our home.
The hamster disappeared.
Garrett came and reported her whereabouts. At that point, none of us knew the hole existed. I thought she'd eventually come out for food and was relatively unconcerned. He was asking us to take a sledgehammer to the wood. We were refusing. He started sobbing and begging to be allowed to stay home from school. Eventually, we were on the ground with flashlights and tools, trying to find her. It was then that we discovered the hole. I took the boys to school.
When I got home, Troy heard her scratching under our bathtub. It was then that we knew she had escaped the small cabinet space and was now free to roam about the edifice. We spent some time trying to figure out what to do. I decided, because I lean toward the dramatic, that she would die in the walls. My son would be distraught as we all had to smell her decomposing body for weeks. I tend to be every bit the unfeeling robot and, when Garrett asked if we could sledgehammer the wood, I'd replied, "For a 15 dollar hamster?" But, once I thought Troy had left for work, I sat in the middle of the floor and cried. He hadn't quite left and, when he found me, he asked, "Are you okay?"
"I like her!" I wailed. I didn't want her. I had hamsters as a kid. They were cute and fun AND SMELLY AND POOPY AND I DIDN'T WANT ANOTHER ONE! But this is a sweet lil hammy. And I expected her to live longer than two weeks. AND I hate when my babies are heartbroken. Girls, this is your warning. Hurt my baby and I will straight up cut you. (Or something more godly and less violent.)
Before we'd seen the hole, we had used this tool to try to locate/poke her. There's a tiny claw on the end, once we knew she was maybe lost forever, I decided to put some food in it and leave it suspended between bathroom and deep, dark, no man's land under the sink--in the event that she came back.
I continued to hear her pattering around under our tub. As the day progressed, I became convinced that she'd somehow gotten down and couldn't get up. She was stuck. She'd die there, just beneath our showering feet.
I called my dad who gave me some ideas of how we might get to her. I called Troy and relayed the ideas. He had been thinking up some of his own and promised me he'd come home from work early to try to rescue her. I called my mom and whined about our terrible predicament. I prayed.
I kept checking to see if I could still hear her in the tub. At one point, I pulled a broken piece of grout out of a crack next to the tub. Sticking a screw driver in, I pried. I was hoping to create a hole big enough to send food and water in. As soon as I started messing around at the corner, she ran to that place and furiously started scratching. She was just a few inches away, trying to get to me and there was nothing I could do for her.
"Frisby," I said. "Please, I know you're in there. People are asking where you've been. They say have courage and I'm trying to. I'm right out here for you. Just let me in." No. I didn't. I did not start singing Frozen songs to her. Although, in hindsight it seems as good an idea as any. I did say, "I know you're there. I'm trying to figure out how to get to you." And then I recorded her frantic scratching.
And then, the tub went silent.
I couldn't hear her anymore.
When Troy got home, I wasn't 100% convinced that she was still in there. So, with my head nestled up against the toilet, I pressed my ear to the side of the tub and listened long. Maybe I hear something? And then I heard it loud and clear, her desperate, familiar clawing. Troy had removed a light fixture from the room below, hoping to be able to find a way to her that didn't involve sawing a hole into our tub or moving a panel out of shower and going through the drywall. Apparently, his messing around beneath her sent her into a frenzy. He decided that approach wasn't going to work.
He removed the piece that I have come to know is referred to as a bathtub trip lever (a.k.a. the drain lever). That didn't pan out either. He decided to cut a small hole in the drywall in the hopes that she would see the light and come out. It would seem that his stud finder is still single for a reason because, despite using it ahead of time, he was met with a beam. Unless the hamster planned to chew her way through a thick piece of wood, that option was no longer viable. We now had a hole in the wall and a hamster on the loose. He put the trip lever back together.
He asked me what I thought was better, a hole in the side of the tub that we would have to plug up or removing a bunch of the shower wall and cutting through drywall. Oh gee, um, lemme think. NEITHER. "You have to make that call," I told him. At some point during the fiasco, I'd gone to retrieve the boys from school and we were now working on homework. "I'll just keep practicing spelling and you can decide what you think is best."
When we got to a stopping point, I went upstairs to see what he'd decided. He wasn't in our bathroom. "Troy? Where are you?" I called out. The boys' bathroom door slowly opened. He had a finger pressed to his lips. "She's in there," he whispered.
Do you remember how I'd left a piece of food in the claw of the metal tool? Troy happened to walk past the boys' bathroom on his way to get his drill to demolish our tub when what should he see but that tool moving (seemingly) ALL BY ITSELF. We think his messing with the lever and cutting a hole in the wall freaked her out and she somehow managed to decide that she wasn't stuck after all and she was going to hightail it outta there right quick.
This is one of those things that I like to call a modern day miracle. Troy was on his way to destroy our bathtub. He JUST SO HAPPENED to walk past the bathroom at the precise moment that she JUST SO HAPPENED to eat the pumpkin seed that I had stuck on his tool hours before. THANK YOU, LORD!
I laid on the floor and stuck two of my fingers over the lip. She instantly nibbled first my middle finger and then my pointer. I grabbed a piece of food and held it up. Her tiny face emerged. Never have I been so thrilled to see the face of a tiny rodent staring at me. I held the food out and she tried to take it. I slowly pulled back. She placed one paw over the lip. I continued to pull slowly. Another paw. It was a tight squeeze for her and she flattened her body in pursuit of the food. Finally, she was top heavy enough to fall over the lip and onto the floor. I immediately scooped her up.
"Garrett," Troy called. "Can you come help me with something up here?"
He bounded up the stairs and, when he reached the bathroom, I held my hand out and gave him his hamster back.
We've only had her for two weeks and already the antics are outrageous. Tonight, Frisby, who Garrett sometimes affectionately refers to as Hammy Lammy Ding Dong, is happily trying to get out of her cage. Because, it would seem, she learned nothing from her day at large.
In life--and in ministry--I strive to be real, to be relatable, to be authentic. I think it's the driving force behind why I love the theatre and literature so very much. Because these mediums of art expression take a slice out of someone's life or experience and present it, no apologies, no excuses. We don't have to agree with the playwright's world view. We don't have to burn the book because it doesn't represent the little corner of the world from whence we came. Instead, we can walk boldly into that stage world or that novel and see life from another perspective. But, let that perspective be authentic. Let it not be a sham.
I have spoken about and written on the subject of perfection--and how it's utterly unattainable. Maybe I gravitated toward the topic because I'm such a hot mess. But there it is. I'm tired of trying to live up to some standard dictated by someone else, somewhere else, who probably has a whole lot of money and a team of people who make her look beautiful. I'm tired of the pristine home in Good Housekeeping that looks like only one old person without cats lives there but they're saying it's the humble abode of a family of six that includes at least two elementary aged boys. I'm fed up with pictures of flawless children happily eating organic edamame. I'm sick of images of clean kids on the beach because that is a lie. No kid is clean on a beach. I'm over everyone pretending.
The truth is, I don't have time to read parenting advice from someone who lives in the Hamptons and acts like she doesn't have a nanny. That's not my reality. We don't wake up in a bed of 5,000 thread count Egyptian cotton white sheets with our breath smelling minty fresh and our hair smooth. I'll be honest, some days even the Listerine can't help our situation and most mornings I straight up look like Princess Anna on Coronation Day, drooling and all bird nesty up on top. I'm not saying that isn't someone's reality. Of course it is.
Some people don't drool. Some people have beautiful homes. Some people are amazing stylists or decorators. Some people just happen to have perfect hair that is never out of place. Maybe we all have that one thing that makes us seem perfect. And if that's the thing we photograph, we might come across seeming, well, perfect. If I took 11,249 selfies, chances are, I'd look pretty good in one of them. But those other 11,248 are where the real life is happening.
Real life is that zit on the side of my face that I can hide if I turn my head just a bit and snap the shot.
Real life is not editing the picture of my black child who looks gray because I straight up forgot to put lotion on him that day.
Real life is mismatched clothes and exercise pants even though I probably didn't exercise.
I feel like we're so busy wishing our real life into something Better Homes and Gardens worthy that we forget to be thankful for our Passable Rentals and Spotty Green Lawns. We want to be Beverly Hillsy. We want to live on a beach in Florida. We forget to be thankful that we're not living in a hut and walking three miles to find clean water.
Let's be real. If your reality actually is a clean kid on a beach, embrace it, girlfriend. (But, maybe, also show us a picture of your messy house--everyone has at least one flaw, no?) If your reality is a kid who's filthy head to toe despite the fact that it's only 9:00 am and there's no beach in sight, embrace it. That's what the bathtub is for!
I haven't got a single thing figured out. JUST SO YOU KNOW. I can't tell you how to keep a toddler happy on a plane or how to get them to eat their vegetables. Seriously. My advice on the latter is to just smush their lips shut until they swallow or die from starvation three weeks later. But, that maybe isn't the best way to avoid a visit from Child Protective Services. I know nothing. I just never want it said of me that I faked it all and acted like something other than what I truly was.
In short, I just want to keep it real. Ever. Always.
To that end, here are some things...
1. I thought I was a Baby Whisperer when it came to sleeping the through night and was totally planning to write a book on exactly how to do it. Then we had Will. He might go on his honeymoon never having reached this goal.
2. Not long ago at all, I cried in a bathroom stall because I miss Kate so much. I'm well aware of all the people who think that's just ridiculous and I legit DO NOT CARE.
3. I just ate way too many chips. They were Mesquite BBQ flavored. So, basically, tomorrow morning I'm waking up with BBQ breath in my 10 thread count Walmart cotton sheets.
I'm lauching a new Instagram account. (always_authentic_and_real) It'll be real. Unedited and unposed. Tag #alwaysauthenticandreal for a chance to be featured. Send me really dirty kids on the beach, pictures where your stylist didn't work on you for two hours before you were Instaready, blooper shots. Anything that's real and authentic and unstaged. They can be breathtakingly beautiful shots of nature that turned out great the first time. They can be an amazing picture of your beautiful baby. Just don't stage them. It's about to get REAL. #alwaysauthenticandreal
I didn't die. For the loyal few who still stop by my little neck of the Internet, you may have decided that I was deceased given the lack of posting for a whole forever. I'm alive and well and raising a newborn, a seven-year-old and a ten-year-old. We're in San Diego, having baby showers and enjoying family and soaking up what's left of a ridiculously short summer created by my children being in school through the entire month of June. But not next year. I'm already counting down the days until my children enjoy summer the way it's meant to be experienced. Long and leisure like. Not short and crammed with everything we could dream of in seven weeks.
The reason we're here this particular week though is because my oldest niece is getting married. When I joined this crazy family with the extra "S" in its last name that is both superfluous and also helpful with telemarketers, I inherited three nieces and a nephew. Since that time, we've added another niece, three nephews and three of our own kids.
So when I said, "I do," I had three little flower girls. Two of my nieces and my cousin. The tallest flower girl was nine. Now she's getting married.
Yesterday she told me that her grandpa, my father in law, put new tires on their car as a wedding gift. She laughed about how fantastic it is as an adult to just have someone take care of something important instead of getting you something shiny in a gift bag.
"I remember when Grandpa stood up at your reception and said that their gift to you was a month's free rent," she told me. (We were renting a home from my in laws when we first got married.) "I thought that was the worst gift ever. I looked at you and you were smiling and I just couldn't imagine why that was exciting for you. Now I totally get it."
Perspective. One day you're nine and you're wearing a flower girl dress and thinking free rent is the worst gift ever. The next day you're 22 and getting married and rejoicing over your new tires.
I'm absolutely, down right, humiliated that it took me this long to figure out how to respond to blog comments. I used to have Disqus and then it went crazy and I couldn't figure out how to fix it because I am a computer moron. So I got rid of it. But then I couldn't respond to comments so people stopped commenting at all. Ever. Sometimes I would comment just beneath a comment but I knew they probably never, ever saw it. Tonight, I investigated and I figured it out and THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING IN MY OWN HEAD!
But back to me being a moron about computers.
I have grown up with computers. Think, Oregon Trail in 3rd grade with the tiny little green ox and the square that he pulled and everyone died of dysentery before we even made it to Independence Rock. And, okay, any time I had diarrhea as kid, I totally thought I was about to die of dysentery. But here's a thought: Can you even imagine having and/or dying of dysentery on THE OREGON TRAIL? It's not like having dysentery in the privacy of your own bathroom or, even, a hospital room. No. This was straight up, lay in the middle of your wagon with all the other wagons in your train only ten feet away, while you moan and groan and DIE OF DYSENTERY. So, in other words, THE STUFF NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF.
We got a computer when I was in middle school which was 100 years ago. Except actually, 21. Despite living most of my life with technology, I'm relatively device illiterate. When I'm teaching kindergarten and they ask if they can use the iPad, I secretly do a happy dance that they're usually password protected. Because it is embarrassing that five-year-olds know more about using an iPad than I do. Not that an iPad is actually a computer. (I just had to Google it because I typed that and thought, wait, maybe? But no. It's a tablet. Which I knew. I just didn't know if a tablet was considered a computer. Answer: no. At least according to Google. And Google knows everything.)
I spent time in 3rd grade last week and the lesson plans told me to pull in an alphasmarts cart and do keyboarding. This sounded technological and I was afraid. Not that I wouldn't be able to figure it out because I am not a complete moron (and, truth be told, it was ridiculously self explanatory) but because, more than kindergartners, 3rd graders would sense my weakness and prey on it like jungle cats in their prime.
This is why I am legitimately and irrationally terrified of 6th graders. And math beyond the 3rd grade.
Because while I have a college degree, the amount of math that I actually retained is limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division easy fractions and, occasionally, percentages. This is why I hang out mostly with kindergartners. Well, that and the fact that they're still stinkin' adorable and they don't usually say bad words or need deodorant.
All of this to say that today's youth should have been the ones to come over and take a look at my blogger page and teach me how to turn the reply to comments feature on. I'd have been able to say, "Hey! Thanks for your comment!" a long time ago. So, to all of you who have been leaving comments, THANK YOU! And to those who stopped because it seemed like I was ignoring them. I'M SORRY! I always replied to you in my head. I just couldn't seem to get the thoughts from my head into this new fangled notebook I do my writing on.
Yes, parents, I am responsible for shaping today's youth. But only every once in a while when their teachers are blowing their noses or attending training sessions or, heaven forbid, traveling the Oregon trail in a wagon and trying to avoid dysentery.
I've noticed a correlation between my children's ages and the decline of blog posts. The older they get, the less I post. There are book reports and baseball games and track practice. Life is on the go and the posting is sporadic.
But there's another thing. I'd been working on a series which, maybe some day I will post. I was hoping to get to post it soon but life happened. It's no longer relevant. So, for now, the series will remain in draft form, dear to my heart but not available to my seven loyal readers--and the one lurker who thinks she knows the details of Matthew's adoption and leaves hateful comments even though she doesn't have a clue.
Sometimes we're faced with a choice. It's a life altering, really enormous, gigantic choice. And we're standing at a crossroads looking down each way, unsure of what to do. One way is straight and we can see the end and it looks fine. It's comfortable. It's what we've always known. The other way is the path less taken and we cannot see the end but there's a promise that it's great. There are risks, to be sure, but we are continuously told that it will all turn out wonderfully in the end. We trust the people on the hill because they tell us they've been there before and everything looks great up ahead. There is an emotional toll. There may even be a financial toll. Still, we choose that path. We take the step. We walk boldly in the direction we chose. Because we have to know what's up there...
Sometimes, that path was a dead end. Someone had removed the sign long ago and we thought we were headed somewhere amazing. When we get to the dead end, we're pretty livid at all the walking we did, pretty annoyed that we climbed a hill to nowhere only to discover that there isn't even a view from here, pretty devastated, wishing we hadn't paid such high tolls. We examine ourselves. We ask why we went that way when the other option would have been infinitely better. But we remind ourselves that we never had a map. It was anyone's best guess. And we know that if we had gone the other way, we would never have known what was up that windy, steep hill and we always would have wondered.
And so we are angry. And we are sad. Because life didn't work out the way we thought it would. But at least we weren't left wondering.
Some day I may talk more about this winding path. Until then, wait on me. There's no need to ask others as this was, more or less, a personal and secret journey and others do not know.
I had this dream that my family lived in New York City. We never left the apartment. Well, that's not entirely true. We left as long as wherever we needed to go was within walking distance. We lived like hermits. This was because I had an irrational fear that Matthew would make it onto the subway but the rest of us would not. My precious seven-year-old baby would be doomed to ride the subway alone for the rest of his life and we would never be reunited.
Never mind taxis. They never came in to play in this nighttime reverie. It was as though they'd never been invented. Or, at least, it was as though I couldn't afford to ride in one. Fact. And truth.
In this dream, I finally decided (after briefing the kids on exactly what to do if we got separated) to take them for an excursion. This was because I really wanted to walk around The Village and I really wanted a Magnolia cupcake.
Fact. And truth. I always want a Magnolia cupcake. I live my life with the constant underlying craving for them. Not to make light of actual addiction but I feel like this is what recovering addicts must feel like. I mean, they have it much, much worse, to be sure. But I am living with the constant notion that I just really need a Magnolia cupcake.
Anyway, the day was beautiful and Troy was at work (I don't know what kind of work he was doing in NYC but he was off doing it) and I took the boys to wander around Greenwich Village and eat cupcakes. I woke up nostalgic for the city and, also, craving a cupcake even more than normal.
This led me to wonder how many moms have this fear of losing their children in New York. How many of them lie awake at night worried that the next morning will be the day that little Brooklyn or Bronx or Hudson or Chelsea will get on the subway without her. Or, the reverse horror, that she will get on the subway and aforementioned New York theme named child will stand on the platform, blinking, as mommy rides away.
And then I remembered that I thought I lost Troy in a foreign country.
There we were, exhausted from flying from Salt Lake City to Tel Aviv. I had thrown up all day (or night) on the plane (it's hard to know when you're over international waters and the sun is up but it's midnight where you're from). I was at the very beginning of what would turn into the worst sinus infection I've ever had. We were taking a train and then a taxi to our hotel just off the crystal waters of the Mediterranean.
Troy was carrying 17 tons of canned chicken in an army bag.
Our tour guide had asked us to bring over a bunch of chicken for our group's lunches on account of chicken being $6000 dollars a can cheaper than it is in Israel. So, along with his luggage, Troy was toting an enormous amount of chicken on his back.
As the train pulled up, the kids and I hopped on. Troy began to toss luggage in to us. People piled in and suddenly, he was out of view. The doors closed and the train pulled away. My senses were overloaded. I still felt like vomit--both as something I needed to do as well as a general description of my countenance. I was so tired I felt like I'd been inserted into a cartoon where everything around me was happening in real time but I was, somehow, in slow motion. I had both children, one of which was only four, a heap of luggage (but, thankfully, not the 17 tons of chicken), and no husband.
Also, I don't speak Hebrew or Arabic.
Thankfully, most of them do speak English.
I had no idea if Troy had gotten on the train. I had no idea how long it would be before another train came along. I had no idea how I was getting both boys and all of our luggage off the train by myself at the appropriate stop before the doors closed and the train took off again.
I tried to logically form a plan. But I was exhausted. And also afraid that I was going to throw up on a whole bunch of people in a foreign country. Do I throw the kids off first or the luggage?
"Where's daddy?" the oldest asked.
I didn't have an answer.
When the train came to a stop, the doors opened and Troy stood waiting for me. He'd hopped into another car, hopped out with his chicken bag when the train stopped, and was standing there, my night in shining armor, telling me to hand him the luggage. I handed him bags and kids and we were all safely reunited. We worked together like a well oiled machine. Even if one of the major machine parts was disheveled and probably smelled like barf.
And so, perhaps my fear of losing Matthew on a subway isn't completely irrational. Although, likely, I would never be in New York City heaving around 17 tons of chicken.
