Foggy morning

I got up this morning at 6:30, approximately 4 hours too early for my NyQuilled and still-recovering self, to drive through the fog with rush hour traffic to take Josh to the airport. I felt just one step better than death warmed over. After dropping Josh off I found a McDonalds and got both breakfast and a coke, hoping that one or the other would help me feel better and make it home safely. Then I headed up to Marine Dr because the traffic was terrible on 84.

The fog hadn't been too bad through Portland or at the airport but it was thick and dense up by the river, and me without my GPS.

Nothing that i could see looked familiar, perhaps because i couldn't actually see anything. I circled around the port of Portland several times before I got ahold of Russ so that he could "blonde star" me back to somewhere familiar.

When I came through the pass and over the top of the hill looking towards Beaverton and Hillsboro the sun was shining, the sky was almost blue and I could see a white blanket of fog sitting on top of everything.

By the time I got to Hillsboro I was back in it... Amazing how that can happen so quickly.

I went by Intel to pick up my van and leave Russ's car. I hasn't wanted to take my van to the airport since it'd had a flat tire (#3 in as many months, and no this is not my happy voice!!) yesterday afternoon and still had the temporary tire on. I took it straight to Costco and sat down to read the only thing I had found in the van--wired magazine. After a few minutes the tire tech called to tell me that actually I didn't need my tire fixed, I needed both of my front tires (less than 2 years old) replaced. He asked me to walk back around the building so that he could show me what he was talking about, but I declined. He could tell how upset I was, and ended up charging me the warranty price instead of the full price for new tires. Good business on his part.

I didn't get back home till after noon. Still feeling crappy, totally exhausted. I'm going to take a nap now. A very, very long one.

Change

I’m not good at change.

(Is anyone?  Is everyone but me??)

I know that change is supposed to be good for you.  That you’re supposed to embrace it instead of fighting it and that it can bring good and all sorts of other cliches. 

I’ve been through a lot of change in the last 3 years.  People and places and opportunities that I thought would be part of my life forever aren’t anymore.  I’ve had to learn a new place and figure out how to survive in an endless gray winter and I am still finding my place in this new world. 

Just when it started to feel as though we were on the downhill side of all of this change, Rachel started saying (very strongly) that she wanted to go full time to public school for high school next year. This is what I looked like when I heard that:

Once Rachel started saying that Jared said that he, too, wanted to go to regular high school.  This was definitely not my plan for them—I like homeschooling, it gives us great opportunities, and I’ve felt like there are some specific reasons that homeschooling through high school with a few classes every year at the high school was the best option for them.  At the same time I didn’t want to just ignore their feelings, so I told them I would pray about it.  Because I was certain that my feelings about homeschooling were the right feelings, you know. 

One of the ways I know when I’m getting inspiration is when I have a thought/feeling/idea that is not what I wanted or would have thought of.  And that’s definitely what happened in this case, much to my sorrow.  As soon as I prayed about it, and every time I prayed about it, a gentle thought came into my mind that this would not be a bad thing. 

Sigh…it feels like a Very. Bad. Thing. to me.

Especially because once I had acknowledged in my heart that I was going to need to send my kids off to full time high school, I realized that we needed to ease into this experience rather than just drop them into high school.  Right now they take two classes at the middle school, but those two classes are electives and not academic.  Before they start high school they need some practice at formal academic skills—lecture listening, note taking, and test taking. 

And that is why I found myself meeting with both the middle school principal and counselor on Friday.  Crying in both offices, to my great dismay.  There were other sad things going on in my heart that day, but I also realized at this point how much grief I really feel at the idea of not homeschooling my kids anymore.  Homeschooling isn’t easy, and I haven’t always done a great job at it, but I have loved it.  And just like that, it’s almost over.  One more ginormous change, one more heartbreaking loss.

 

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail” Tom Hanks’ character says that the movie “The Godfather” has the right quote for every occasion.  Ironically, quotes from “You’ve Got Mail” are right for many occasions in my life, including this one.

Towards the end of the movie Kathleen has come to Birdie’s house to tell her that she has decided to close the bookstore.  Birdie tells her that she is making the brave decision, but Kathleen doesn’t think that closing the bookstore is brave.  Birdie tells her that it is brave because she is daring to imagine that she can have a different life.

I guess that I’m getting the chance to work on being brave like that…

No bath for me, thank you very much!

I like baths.  I know that some people are only shower people, but I love a bath for many reasons.  When we bought our 2nd house in North Carolina it had a tiny “garden tub” in it and Russ took one look at it and said well that will have to go, won’t it!  (We put in the best tub ever several years later.)

Our house here has a decent sized tub.  It’s not quite as long as I would like, but on the plus size it seems to be cast iron which means that it really keeps the water hot longer.  That is great.  It also has jets.  I’m not really a jetted tub person, so that’s not so great for me.  I understand the theory behind the idea, but in my experience in the small space of a bathtub the jetted water is usually more abrasive than comfortable so I rarely use them.

A few nights ago I was getting ready for bed and noticed a good sized spider in the bathtub.  I asked Russ to come in and get it for me (longer arms, braver spirit) and he did and that was that.

This morning as I was getting ready for the day I was trying to open a bottle of nose drops and I couldn’t get the tight plastic wrapping off.  I grabbed a new pair of hair cutting scissors to help me and jabbed at the plastic with one tip.  Clearly that was a bad decision, because almost immediately the tip slipped from the plastic and right onto my finger, slicing the side of my middle finger from the 1st joint almost to the top.  Boy did that hurt.

A little while ago I decided that I really needed to wash my hair.  I didn’t want to shower because of my cut finger, so I decided I would take a bath instead.  I reasoned that it would be much easier to get my hair wet without wetting my cut finger, and that I’d just wash my hair with one hand.  Plus it was still chilly in the house and I thought it was definitely a good moment for the first bath of the season.  The bathtub was dusty after not being used during the summer and had a dead fly in it and some other bits & pieces of who knows what.  I got a cleaning wipe and cleaned it all out, then rinsed it out as well.  Then I started running hot water into it.

I wasn’t watching while the water ran, and after a few minutes I came back over to turn on some cold water and to see how much more it needed.  I was surprised when I looked at the water intake for the jets.  (the cream colored thing in the picture below.) 

Just above the top of the water intake there was a small spider.  I was grabbing a tissue to kill the spider and get on with the important business of bathing when this little thought occurred inside my head.

You know how there was that bigger spider in the bathtub earlier this week?  And now there’s this little spider?  What if there are BABY SPIDERS IN THERE???

That thought filled me with alarm, because I can think of few things worse than laying naked in a bathtub filled with both water and spiders.  I grabbed a glass from the counter and figured I’d pour a few cupfulls through and make sure there were no more spiders. 

I scooped up a cup, then poured it over the water intake.

And then SCREAMED!

Because a BIG spider, with a fat body and thick legs, positively JUMPED out of the top of the water intake!

Now you could be tempted to think that I was exaggerating, but don’t.  Russ will back me up on this.  Because after Jared told him that mom was screaming in the bathroom and he finally came to see what was wrong, he saw the spider (all shriveled up) floating around in the tub.  He picked up the glass to scoop the spider out and flush it down the toilet, but as he scooped the spider once again JUMPED and jumped out of the water and back onto the top of the water intake.  I will confess to screaming again, just a little startled scream.

He poured water on the spider again to subdue it, and then successfully scooped it out and flushed it down the toilet. 

And me?  Well you could not have paid me to have a bath at that point.  I poured more water (over and over) into the water intake, put more cold water in the tub till there was enough to run the jets, and turned them on.  I figured if there was ANYTHING in that system I wanted it flushed out.  BEFORE the start of bathtub season.

Today, I think I will have a shower. 

One possible downside of the pacific northwest…

Look what I found in the sink the other morning…

An existential crisis & tender mercies

In the last few months I’ve had a lot of great travel adventures and spent a lot of time with wonderful people that I love.  It has been terrific.  These trips had a primary objective of spending time with the people I love and a secondary objective of helping me prevent/deal with seasonal depression and they were entirely successful.

But there was one unexpected consequence.

The combination of spending this time with these awesome people and the fatigue caused by traveling caused (let?) my tired brain to start thinking about all of the wonderful qualities I’d just witnessed and from there to begin to feel that because I didn’t _____ like this friend, ______ like that sister, and was sure I would never ______ like another friend, I was never really going to be any good.

On the one hand, the rational logical hand, I knew it was ridiculous.  But when you’ve been traveling and are super jetlagged it’s sometimes hard to make your brain let go of the ridiculous because it makes So Much Sense in that tired unhappy brain.  So I went through my first few days home with a cloud of “I’m just not much good” hanging above my head. 

By the beginning of this week I was starting to emerge from the jet-lagged fog.  My rational mind was working hard to ignore the tired pity-fest that had been going on and I was making some headway. 

And then, like a one-two punch, out of the blue I received two messages from two lovely people.  Both of those messages commented specifically and lovingly on things that they had observed as strengths in my life.  It was like a slap in the face, only the good kind.  These messages stopped me in my mental tracks, said look here, you are not anyone else, you are you, and you have some wonderful strengths.  It was like balm to my inadequate feeling soul and I instantly felt a course correction inside of me.  Isn’t it amazing when someone says something that may feel totally random to them and it is exactly what your soul is needing?  I am very amazed, and very grateful.

So thank you my kind friends for your words that meant more than you could know.  I can only hope that someday I am able to help to someone like that…

Sick Day

Frequently (I’d probably be embarrassed to know just how often) when I am involved in the crush of day to day activities and to-do lists a thought inches forward from the back corner of my mind,

It sure would be nice to have a sick day…

And then I tell myself not to be stupid and how glad I am that I am almost never sick and to get back to work.

Last night we finished dinner and sat down on the couch and I thought “I am exhausted.  Wiped out.”  I could tell it wasn’t a normal night when I decided that I was really going to go to bed before 9.  By then I could also tell I was aching more than my usual amount, and that my normally helpful stretches weren’t making any difference.  Typically the medicine I take before bed (that helps with muscle pain) is plenty to help me sleep well, but last night just to be sure I took 1/2 of a sleeping pill as well.  Turns out my fears were well-founded—I spent the night shifting restlessly and finally gave up and slept the last half of the night in my comfy recliner.  By the time morning came I was sure of it:

I was sick.

I am reminded again today of the things I always remember when I’m sick:

• this is no fun
• this is no vacation
• this is uncomfortable
• I’d rather be healthy and working.

I don’t feel too bad right now, but that’s after 3 ibuprofen (an unheard of number for me) and a long hot bath.  I have hardly done a thing all day and already I’m restless and bored and wanting my regular life back.

I figured at the least I could sit here with the computer and work on some easy tasks.  Maybe the words will even start flowing and I’ll get a little batch blogging done, who knows.  But one thing is for sure—I’m hoping that tomorrow morning the regular me is back!

Catastrophic Hiking (or how I got a concussion of my own)

So.

The hike you’ve been waiting to hear about. 

The hike I’m still frustrated about.

Here goes…

 

Last fall the kids & I went on several hikes.  On one hike we could tell we were near a waterfall, but we couldn’t see it no matter where we went on the trail.  Later I read the reason.  Oneata Gorge is possibly the closest thing the Colombia River Gorge has to a slot canyon.  Oneata Falls is only visable to the few, the daring, the hikers who are adventurous/energetic/crazy enough to undertake the short but extreme hike into the canyon.

It sounded like the perfect adventure to have with Jason—don’t you think?

I did a lot of reading about the Oneata Gorge hike so that we’d be very prepared.  We knew where to park, we knew that we’d have to climb over a big log jam, (a crowded mass of logs across a creek), wade in the creek, and eventually have to swim through the creek in the narrowest part of the gorge.  I had waited for this adventure until the end of August so that the water level would be at the lowest possible.  We packed dry clothes (for the other hike we were going to do later), snacks, and lunches, and we were ready.

(picture taken the next month.)

From the beginning it was exciting.  We walked down the stairs, into the narrow canyon and had to wade through a creek right away. 

The first real obstacle was the log jam.  First we had to scramble up and over an enormous rock, and then we had to cross over many piled logs. 

The piles of logs was bigger than anything I had imagined.

The kids thought it was great fun.

From the top of the log jam we could see the next part of the hike—the narrowing canyon walls and the next part of the creek that we would have to wade through.

And that was the end of our hike.  Because on the next to last log I slipped as I put my foot down, falling 5+ feet and hitting my head pretty hard on the log.  I guess I made enough noise that Jason heard me fall and climbed back up to me.  He said that I was unconscious and that it was scary.  He tried to rouse me but I didn’t respond at all.  Finally after 4 minutes he thought to give me a priesthood blessing.  After he gave me a blessing I regained consciousness.

I think if it hadn’t been so stressful the next part would have been pretty funny.  From what they’ve told me I was very shocked when I regained consciousness and Jason was there.  Remember, he had only been home from Chile for 12 days, and at first I had no memory of him coming home.  In fact the girls said that the most recent thing I remembered at first was Kate being born in the spring.  (Now I remember everything just fine right up until slipping.  That I don’t remember at all.)

Another hiker stopped when they saw that I’d hurt myself and called 911.  Jason sat with me on the log (which I have a super hazy almost non-existent memory of) and waited for help to come.  After 20 minutes some first responders from a nearby town came.  They had also been hiking in the Gorge so they hadn’t been too far away.  It was 20 more minutes before the ambulance came.

Even though I was sitting up just fine when the EMS people arrived, they still had to put a neck brace on me and strap me into a basket thing to extricate me from the canyon.  Jason tells me that I was coherent enough at this point to suggest to him that he take the purse cam and take some pictures.  So we have some pictures, though they do make me a little sick to my stomach to look at still.  (I have a slightly less fuzzy but very short memory of this part of the experience.)

We had already experienced a terrific camaraderie with the other hikers the day before when we (and they) were lost on our hike.  On this day I think that many hikers helped out.  Several hikers sat and chatted with the girls to keep them from being freaked out.  Clearly some hikers helped the emergency workers get me over the log jam.  It was definitely a good day to be grateful for the kindness of strangers.

 

Once I was off in the ambulance for my 40 minute ride to the hospital in Portland (I remember only about a minute’s worth of this—I can’t even remember if they had the siren on) one of the first responders walked with Rachel to the van to get my cell phone with Russ’s phone number on it.  Then the first responder called Russ at work to let him know that I’d been hurt and was on my way to the hospital.  I do not think it was a very good moment for Russ. 

 

Because we had been through Josh’s bike accident & ER visit earlier in the month I wasn’t too surprised when the ER staff cut my clothes off of me.  I was really sad to lose my pants though—they may have been 10 years old, but they were the best hiking pants.  I was able to persuade them not to cut my new ankle brace off, but everything else went and they just piled me high with warmed blankets. 

I do have some memories of the Emergency Room, but they’re fuzzy and very compressed.  I remember that Russ arrived and at first they wouldn’t let him come be with me because they needed to send me for CT scans.   Then they had to wait longer than expected and so they let him come in with me.  I remembered this week that there was some, shall we say, discomfort involving a fast flowing IV line and a bed pan, but Russ said it would probably be better if I didn’t try to remember anything more about that.  He also said that I was very annoying in my repeated insistence that I was just fine and should be allowed to get up and use the bathroom even though I was still in the neck brace and hadn’t had the CT scan yet.  Conveniently I don’t remember any of that!

The CT scans & xray found that my head, face, and neck were just fine, but that I did have a broken rib.  They also found a couple of cysts on my uterus and kidney when I’ve gotten to have more testing for this last month.  Thankfully one had disappeared and the other is something benign. 

They kept me for observation in the hospital the next day, mostly because they had a hard time finding a narcotic I could take for my rib pain (and it hurt!) that didn’t make me throw up and they wanted to be sure I could eat.  In what was one of the more random discoveries, they ran some blood work and found that my potassium levels were low.  They decided that since I was throwing up so much they would give me IV potassium, but very slowly because it is uncomfortable in an IV.  After lunchtime they started running the potassium IV and within a minute I thought I was going to die.  It was truly like having acid running through my veins, and I called the nurse and told her she had to take it out and that I would go home and eat lots of bananas.  Wow did that hurt.

When it was time for me to go home the next day I realized that unless they would let me go in the hospital gown I was wearing, I had a serious problem.  Russ had offered to go home and get me some clothes, but the hospital was almost an hour away from our house and I didn’t want him leaving me for that long.  The nurse found me a pair of scrub pants and the social worker had a turtle neck for some odd reason, and so I wore those home.  It was a pretty bizarre experience.

 

So there you have it.  In a totally unbelievable twist of fate, we had 3 ER visits, 2 concussions, and 1 urgent care visit all within 16 days.  After almost no medical treatment in the previous 7 months, we maxed out our deductible in about 10 minutes.  My hiking ER visit alone was about 8 times our very high deductible.

Recovering from the concussion has been interesting.  The most difficult result for me was that for the first several weeks I had a lot of ringing or echoing in my right ear.  That made life pretty difficult in general, especially when the kids got loud.  I’m still having problems finding the right words from time to time, but I think that’s normal.  I thought my equilibrium was back to normal but found out when I was on a boat in Portland last week that I was not as steady as I had expected.  I finally went back to Curves—two times last week, and one very gentle time the week before.  I’ll have to just keep laughing about how hard everything is for me to do, because otherwise it would be depressing to think about how much strength and stamina I’ve lost in the last 2 months.

 

I’ve been overwhelmed whenever I’ve thought about these accidents (mine and Josh’s biking accident in Moab) with a realization of how bad things could have been, and with gratitude for the protection we received.  Who knows how long I would have been unconscious if Jason hadn’t been there to give me a blessing—I’m glad I don’t have to know.  Both of us could have been hurt in ways that would have changed our lives forever and I’m tremendously grateful that we weren’t.  I’m glad that we’re both recovering well and hope that we never experience a month with that many medical disasters in it again! 

Alisyn sent me what is quite possibly the best “get well soon” card ever.  I’ve kept it in the kitchen so that I can look at it and laugh about it often—I decided to put a picture of it here as well.

A series of unfortunate events and the tender mercies that saved the day.

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  Fun days in Utah with cousins, a weekend with grandparents, reuniting with our NC friends, and 5 days in Moab.  Hopefully I’ll get to some of that later.  But right now I am going to write about the coming home part of our trip, part terrible and part miraculous. 

On Saturday morning last week we got up and hiked in very early to Delicate Arch.  After our hike half of our group was ready to be done for the day and half of our group wanted to go see a few more arches.  We gave Josh the keys to the van and sent with one group back to the condos and we went further into the park.  It was several hours before we were completely exhausted and headed back to our condo in Moab.

Ken needed to stop at the grocery store on our way back and Russ & I stayed in the car to wait for him.  As we were sitting there I noticed that a voicemail had popped up on my cell phone once we were out of the “no cell phone service” area of Arches, but I didn’t recognize the number.  I hit the button and sat and listened to the voicemail, never expecting to hear what I heard.  It went something like this:

Hello, this is _____, a nurse at the hospital here in Moab.  Your son Josh has had a biking accident and is in the emergency room now.  We need you to come to the hospital…

I’m sure she said something else but I honestly have no clue what, because at that point my brain shut down.  Josh has been bmx biking for about a year now, and it had never occurred to me at any point that he could be hurt—but listening to this message opened up a whole world of new possibilities, none of them good.  I called Ken who quickly came back out to the car and took us over to the ER.  This is what we saw.

(just so you know—I didn’t take a picture of Josh until I knew that he was going to be ok.)

This is all we know about what happened.  After Josh got back to the condo he was bored, so he decided to go ride his bmx bike at the course there in Moab.  He’d ridden there every day that we’d been in Moab and had been having a great time.  He left the condo about 9:30.

  (They went by on their way out of town to take some pictures of the bmx course.)

At some point he had an accident, and around 10:30 some local kids found him there off of his bike.  We’re not sure if he was unconscious when they found him, but they called 911 and by the time the police came he was able to tell them his name and identify his car.  The EMS people came and transported him (on a backboard because he said his neck was really hurting) to the hospital.  (Which ironically was across the street.)  At the hospital they did a CT scan of his head, his face, and his neck.  His head and neck were fine, but he had 3 fractures of the bone around his eye on his left side.  (Also some abrasions on his neck on that side.)  Fortunately the fractures didn’t displace at all so they should heal without a problem.  He also has a severe concussion.  The doctors warned us that he would be confused and forget everything and ask the same questions over and over again, and he did.

Although I felt terrible that it had taken us so long to get the cell phone message, the nurse assured us that it was actually better for us to have arrived after they knew what was going on rather than to have had to wait to find out how he was.  This way they could tell us that his neck was ok, that there was no bleeding in his brain, and that he was going to be ok.  The doctor also emphasized that this really was the best case scenario, and that most of the bike accident victims that they saw weren’t able to walk out of the ER like Josh did later that day.  We are enormously grateful for this blessing, even more so after I got a text from the EMS guy the next day saying that that day they had picked up one biker with a broken jaw and another with a broken neck.

Josh walked out of the ER wearing two hospital gowns because they cut his clothes off of him when they brought him into the ER.  We dropped the gowns off the next morning on our way out of town and asked them for some of the disposable bags used for vomiting, since they had warned us that he had thrown up a number of times after getting to the ER and was likely to become nauseated again.  They handed me a big stack which I was sure was overkill but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have them. 

The doctor said that Josh would need to see a doctor as soon as we got back to Oregon.  Because of the new information on long-term problems with concussions they are now monitored carefully, and the patient is gradually released to do different activities.  As the doctor was explaining this and asking when we would be home again I told him we were driving the next day (Sunday) up to the Salt Lake area and then driving the day after that (Monday) back to Oregon because Josh’s older brother was getting home from his mission on Wednesday.  “I guess Josh isn’t going to be able to help me drive, is he?” I asked the doctor.  He told me it was going to be a while before Josh could drive again.

I wasn’t too worried about the driving part because a couple of months ago Alisyn and I had decided that she along with Elise and Connor would drive home to Oregon with us so that they could see Jason when he got home from his mission and before Elise left on her mission.  I figured that I could drive most of the way home and Alisyn could drive for a while so I could get a nap.

 

We drove back up to Bountiful on Sunday, dropped Russ off at the airport, returned Abigail and Benjamin to their parents, had dinner with Laila’s family, and went to sleep up at Russ’s parent’s house.  Monday morning we got up at early (not Delicate Arch early, but still very early for me) and we were at the airport to pick up Alisyn, Elise, and Connor by 7:15AM.  We loaded their bags and were on our way Oregon bound within just a few minutes. 

Before we had been driving for an hour my stomach started hurting.  I was really annoyed because I’d had a couple of really great stomach days and had been optimistic that the regimen of prilosec that I’d been on was finally working.  I took some tums and ate some saltines but it didn’t help—the pain kept increasing.  Finally I pulled off at a gas station and told Alisyn that I needed her to drive because my stomach was hurting so much.  She hadn’t been driving too long before I realized that not only was my stomach hurting, but I was also feeling terribly nauseated.  I fished around in all of the stuff around my seat in the van and found the unused bags from the hospital, pulled one off the stack, and found that yes indeed, they worked very well for vomiting. 

I don’t remember much of that drive. Josh slept in the back, I felt sick in the front, and Alisyn and Elise took turns driving and got us to Boise by early afternoon.  By that point I was sure that I couldn’t go any farther so I texted my friend Megan and told her what was going on and asked if we could come to her house while we figured out what to do next.  I laid down at her house for about an hour while Megan and Alisyn found some hotel rooms.  At that point I realized that I was feeling worse instead of better, and I asked Alisyn to take me to urgent care. 

Because this experience felt so similar to my episode of pain/vomiting that landed me in the hospital in the fall I had figured that it would be resolved quickly.  Unfortunately it didn’t work that way.  In the urgent care they couldn’t give as strong of pain medicine as they could in the ER last fall, and because it turned out that I actually had a virus (norovirus) they couldn’t make my body stop throwing up, just slow it down some.  They did give me 2 bags of IV fluids because I was so dehydrated, and when that was done they sent me on my way with Alisyn. 

Alisyn said that she thought about taking a picture of me with the purse cam, but I looked so awful that she didn’t.  All I know is that I was miserable and I had crazy chills the whole time I was there.  I was huddled on the exam room table with Megan’s blanket (which I will disinfect before I send back!!) and two blankets from the clinic and I was still cold a lot of the time. 

While I was getting treated at the clinic Alisyn had gone back to Megan’s for dinner (can’t you just tell what a wonderful person Megan is?!?) and then taken the kids to the hotel so that they could swim.  Then she came back and picked me up and took me to the hotel.  When I got to the hotel they said that Josh has only been in the pool for a little while before deciding he was too tired to swim and that he had gone to bed.  I climbed into the other bed and settled down for a night of restless sleep interrupted regularly by vomiting. 

Around 2 or 3 in the morning I could tell that the shot of anti-nausea medicine had worn off because it wasn’t making me sleep anymore.  I was even more miserable then—my body felt all tense and exhausted at the same time, it hurt every time I breathed, and I still needed to throw up every half hour or so.  I finally decided that I was going to try taking a bath to see if it would help.  I threw up one more time, then climbed into the bathtub.  It was a small-ish bathtub, but just the right size so that I could stretch out in it and lean my head on the side of the tub.  I did that, and much to my surprise I fell asleep.  I woke up a little while later, put in a little more warm water, leaned my head the other way, and fell asleep again.  By the time I woke up the next time the water was not very warm and I felt much better.  I dressed and climbed back in the bed and slept until at least 9 the next morning, with no more nausea.

We weren’t in too much of a hurry to leave the hotel because we didn’t want to hit Portland during rush hour, but we finally got all loaded up and ready to go.  I felt so incredibly better than the day before, which is always such an amazing feeling.  It was only when we loaded the car that I realized that now Elise wasn’t feeling well, which meant that Elise wasn’t going to be doing any driving.  Alisyn drove for a while, then I drove for a while, then she drove while I tried to nap, and I drove the last two hours so that she didn’t have to deal with Portland traffic and crazy roads.    We got home around 6:30 and I’m not sure I have ever been so relieved to have made it home, only about 18 hours before Jason was supposed to return.

 

I’m not sure at what point I realized the miracle of the whole situation.  Last week when I’d looked forward to driving home I’d assumed that we would have 4 drivers.  Then when Josh was out of commission because of his concussion I thought it would be ok because we had 3 drivers and I’d driven the whole way by myself before.  I never ever expected that I would be completely unable to drive that first day and that Alisyn and Elise would have to do all of the driving themselves.   I remember trying to figure out as we drove north from Ogden where I could go to be sick because I was feeling so terrible.  I think if Alisyn and Elise had not been with us I would have had to go to my dad’s house because I just wasn’t able to go any farther on my own.  Which would have meant that Jason would have gotten to the airport and only Russ would have been there to see him—and that would have been sad.  I’m not sure when I would have felt strong enough to make the drive home, even taking two days to do it.  I’ve felt absolutely hammered today, just from doing a couple of hours of driving yesterday.  And what are the odds that I would have a car full of throw up bags?  (Sorry—I have no clue what they’re actually called.) 

Every now and then when I see something like this in my life, when I absolutely know that the Lord has set something in motion long before my need arises, and I am beyond amazed at His care and concern for me. 

Today when I hugged Jason in the airport and he said “Mom, it’s so good to see you,” all I could think was how close he came to not seeing me today.  And how grateful I was that we were all there…

If the Lord loves a cheerful giver I’m in serious trouble.

I have referred from time to time to my gig as elementary school choir accompanist.  My girls joined the 5/6th grade choir at the beginning of the school year and I was thrilled about it.  The things they came home singing were exactly the kind of music I wanted them to experience.  It was great. 

Then in November an emergency email came from the choir teacher.  (Who is the music teacher at this elementary school and two other schools nearby.)  Her regular choir accompanist, an 85 year old woman, was having emergency surgery and would surely not be back for any of the Christmas performances.  Was there anyone available who could play the piano for the choirs???

I thought about it.  I can play the piano, some.  I’m not particularly good and I have bad stage fright, but I decided that because I was so happy for my girls to have this opportunity I could offer my services in case no one else with better qualifications showed up.  I was fairly certain I would not need to make good on my offer.

I was wrong.

And so I started my new career as a volunteer at the elementary school, a thing I have not done in almost 19 years.  For the two months that were left of fall semester I went to the school three times a week—for an hour after school on Monday, and for a half hour during lunch on Wednesday and Thursday.  I joked with the women in the office each day as I signed in that for a homeschooler, I was spending an awfully lot of time at the public school.

The first performance was grueling.  I’d only had the music for a week and a half at that point, I found out when I arrived that I would be playing a rickety keyboard, and I thought I would die of fear.  Afterwards I wanted to walk into the small audience and assure everyone that I did indeed know how terribly I’d played—it was just short of humiliating.

They had several more Christmas-time performances, and each time I did a little better.  Except perhaps for the performance at the zoo when it was 32 degrees—I played with fingerless gloves and still had a hard time playing the fast parts because I was so cold.

 

When the new semester started I was thrilled to find out that because of a schedule change at one of the other schools, there was no more Monday afternoon choir and my girls’ choir was now meeting at lunch on Wednesdays.  This means that since January I’ve spent an hour every Wednesday and 1/2 hour every Thursday at the school. 

Two days a week is so much better than three, but I have to tell you it’s still killing me.  I’m not equally effective at all points throughout my day, and my prime time (and therefore best homeschool time) is between 9 or 10 and lunchtime.  That’s normally plenty of time for us to do the things we do together.  But on Wednesday and Thursday I have to leave a few minutes after 11.  This means that if we don’t get started until 10, we have just an hour to get through all of our stuff or something remains undone.  Now I am a really flexible relaxed homeschooler.  So not getting through everything every once in a while isn’t that big of a deal.  But losing this time out of my day twice a week has made things significantly more difficult, and that has been frustrating to me.

Over & over I have told myself to have a better attitude about it but it’s been hard.

Complicating the situation is the choir teacher herself.  This woman is really amazing.  She is super energetic, a bit bigger than life, and goes way above and beyond.  The choirs for the elementary schools are all voluntary—she does them during her lunch hour.  This semester she also staged a play with kids in the 6th grade (maybe I’ll blog more about that later) which was a huge undertaking.  But.  She really wastes a lot of time.  And I get it—this is her program, and it’s her time to waste.  Except that she’s wasting my time too, and as a homeschooling mother my time is really precious to me.

Yesterday morning was certainly the worst yet.  I was already in a cranky mood, I’m not even sure why.  (No protein maybe?) The weather was bad and the kids were all fractious and she spent a great deal of time fussing and even occasionally yelling at them.  We have a performance tonight and both groups had songs that were really not ready to perform, and I certainly (CERTAINLY) needed practice going through the songs with the kids singing.  The choirs practice for only 20-25 minutes each, so in my mind every minute is precious.  But both times she spent almost half of her time talking to the kids, and them crammed the practicing into the little bit of time that was left.  When they were done singing I couldn’t get out of the room or the school fast enough. 

 

I hate feeling this way.  This is not who I want to be.  In my mind I practice being gracious and giving and patient.  But in my head & life I can’t reconcile all of it and I just end up cranky and frustrated.

I keep telling myself that it will all be over soon.  After tonight’s concert the 3rd and 4th grade choirs will be done and it will just be one practice a week for the next few weeks until the big choir trip to an amusement park in Washington.  (Something else I’m not looking forward to but that my girls are excited about.)  And then I’ll be done, and hopefully I’ll be able to look back and appreciate the good parts.  That I got to experience this with my girls.  That my piano playing improved.  That occasionally I had less stage fright. 

And maybe next time around I’ll do better at the cheerful part.

Valentines Schmalentines

It’s been a crazy week.  They’re all crazier than I’d like, (more on that later) but this one has been particularly busy.  In addition to the wonderful moments I detailed in my post on Wednesday, my week has included a dress rehearsal, a very long (and wonderful concert), and a court of honor.  Several days have been nap-less and several nights have been super-late.  So yes…I didn’t come into Valentine’s day at my best.

It was a busy day.  Regular school, choir, a bunch of cleaning, short nap, dinner making, etc.  Russ came home a little late because he had to pick up his prescription and some last minute dinner ingredients, and he brought with him some lovely flowers and candy. 

[I should stop and interject that our “new” valentine’s tradition, at least with the kids, is to buy candy the day after so that they get more bang for our buck.  So nothing that happened can be ascribed to any kind of sugar high.  No, that was tonight.]

I was finishing up dinner (delicious muchachas) and trying at the same time to get our one big valentine’s tradition ready—our super-sized sugar cookies.  The kids were already a little crazy before we sat down to eat dinner, and by the time we were eating, oh my.  By the end of the meal Josh was standing on his chair, bouncing up and down while screeching.  The other kids, taking their cue from him, were either manic or whiny.  I was not sure if I was going to be able to get away from the table with my sanity intact.

When we were done eating we tied Josh to a chair and gagged him told Josh he needed to calm down and sent the other kids to bed.  They were a bit offended at being sent off so early, but since they’d been up till 9:30 Wednesday night and were going to be getting up at 6:30 on Friday, I felt ok about doing that.  In fact, I felt great about it.

I helped get things cleaned up and then sat down on the couch thinking that I would get something done, but before too long I could tell that I was a lost cause. 

I went to bed at 8:51.

Today everyone seems to have settled back to their normal-ish selves.  I am reminded again of how awesome these kids usually are, and I am grateful that last night was an anomaly and not a regular occurrence.  Cause I’m not sure how many of those I have in me…

(This picture doesn’t have anything to do with what I just wrote about—it’s from Friday which was pink day at school.  I love seeing the fashion ideas my cute girls come up with.)

Oh. My. Heck.

My day started unexpectedly when the phone rang at 7:00 AM.  I struggled out of bed and ran into the kitchen (will we ever find any more phones???) thinking that surely if the phone was ringing so early it must be one of the kids saying they had forgotten something necessary for band.  Instead it was a Vonage service person, calling to talk to Russ about some question he had.  I refrained from telling him what I thought of anyone calling at 7AM, and gave him Russ’s number.

I drank my coconut water (if it’s cold I’m starting not to mind it as much) and had my piece of peanut butter toast, something I had never eaten before in my life before I had stomach problems, but have eaten every morning since.  (The one morning I had jelly toast instead my stomach hurt terribly.)  After eating I made myself get into my exercise clothes and made my way to Curves.  Where, when I was done exercising, the mother of a (part-time) schoolmate of Rachel made some comments to me about how unfair and hurtful Rachel has been towards her daughter, and how upset both she and her daughter (who has been very ugly towards Rachel, bless her heart) are.

It was late enough when I left curves that I only had time to pick the kids up from school (they had just finished their PE & music classes) and run Rachel and Jared over to the dentist to get their teeth cleaned, still in my workout clothes.  There was a receptionist there that I hadn’t met before, and she asked where my cell phone phone number was from.  When I said North Carolina, she asked me what North Carolina was like.  On this grey and dreary day, that question was almost more than I could handle.  I’m sure she had no idea how close to tears her many kind questions had me.

After a few minutes of talking about North Carolina I ran next door to our credit union where I opened 8 new savings accounts.  Hooray for being able to handle our finances better!

I finished at the credit union just as the kids were done at the dentist.  We just barely had time to run and get them burgers and then rush back to the house (me still in workout clothes) to drop off Jared and pick up Jenna for choir.  The girl’s choir has moved to Wednesday during early lunch for this semester, followed by the 4th grade choir during the later lunch period.  The previous choir accompanist (who was 85) has not returned since her emergency surgery in the winter so I have continued to play the piano for the 3 elementary school choirs.

The girls went into choir practice but I told them that I was going to be a few minutes late, and went in search of one of the 6th grade teachers to talk about Rachel’s problem with the school friend.  The teacher was kind and said that she would handle the problem between the girls, and I went off to choir happy.

Except that when I got into the music room all of the kids were like “there you are, we’ve been waiting for you!!!”  It turns out that the music teacher was absent today and the substitute had no musical background at all.  So one of the 6th graders who plays the piano had been trying to help the choir practice.  When I arrived they all looked at me as if of course I would teach them the music as well as play it.  After 10 minutes with them I had 20 minutes with the 4th graders as well.  By the time I was done my throat hurt and I was feeling deeply grateful to all of the wonderful primary accompanists I had over the years, because it turns out that it’s not so much fun to try to teach the music and accompany yourself at the same time.  Kind of exhausting too.  Maybe I should have gotten paid for subbing??

I left the school and went home, worn out by my day.  And when I got home I had to laugh.  It was only 12:27… But believe me, I was done.  For. the. day.

Verbal Vomit, Revisited

After the last few days I am beginning to wonder if the possibility of experiencing verbal vomit also increases if I haven’t been processing enough of my thoughts/feelings through writing.  It’s been a dry two weeks—between the gingerbread contest and the general chaos of life, there’s never been a conjunction of available time and enough brain power to transfer thoughts into lucid words on the screen.  At first my only concern was that the things of my life were going unrecorded, but now I am suspecting that this lack of writing has contributed to the leakiness of thoughts & emotions I’ve had over the last few days.

It has not been comfortable.  Not for me, and probably not for the people that I have leaked all over.

I think I’d better figure out a way to make time for some therapeutic writing…

I had a really lousy birthday

You know, I can’t remember the last time I really didn’t have a good day on my birthday.  But in the interest of keeping it real, I’m going to say that my birthday last week was not a good day.  It’s not like anything big & bad happened, I just felt lousy for a lot of the day.

Russ & Jared were on a campout and Rachel was so cute—days before she told me that she wanted to make me breakfast in bed.  Now I don’t actually like breakfast in my bed, but I told her that I would love breakfast in my bedroom.  She made my normal morning toast and scrambled me an egg, and you guessed it, it made my stomach hurt.  Then it was our morning to go and clean the church.  I could have gotten out of it because it was my birthday, but I figured I was only postponing the inevitable so I might as well go.  Later in the day I was really tired (from staying up too late because Russ was gone) and I laid down for a wonderful birthday nap, but there was just so much going on in the house that I couldn’t sleep well and instead of waking up feeling refreshed I just felt groggy and cranky.  My day ended with stomach pain as well. 

I should note that there were more than a few nice moments on my birthday: my sweet girls made me breakfast, my sister in law called that morning to chat, cute cards from friends, Russ made steak, twice baked potatoes, and broccoli for my birthday dinner, and one of my friends sent a fun edible bouquet.  As I write these things down I realize that usually this would be more than enough things to make my birthday happy, but this year between the stomach pain and the tiredness they just didn’t.  Thank goodness there are 364 other days in the year, right?

Some days are like that, even in Australia…

 

Have you ever had a day where the deck seems stacked against you from the moment you get out of bed?  Welcome to my day today…

I realized last night as I was getting ready to go to bed that my #1 priority for the day had to be getting my Oregon driver’s license.  I should have done it weeks ago, but it seems like every week (and sometimes every day) has had a different priority and I let the drivers license slide.  But no more—I have to deal with the speeding ticket (that finally showed up in the mail about 4 weeks after I went through the speed trap while lost in Portland) tomorrow, and I figure that means I need an Oregon driver’s license so I don’t get arrested twice—once for speeding and once for living in Oregon for 6 months without getting a license.  (You legally have 30 days to get a new license.  I know, because I’ve been studying.)  Anyway, I got back out of bed and came out here to take a bunch of practice tests online to improve my chances of passing the test this morning.

When I woke up this morning I realized that one thing I hadn’t factored into my decision to get to the DMV as early as possible was that in order to get a new drivers license I would need to get my picture taken, and this meant I couldn’t just roll out of bed and go.  I got up, showered, took the time to fix my hair and makeup, and then just as I was getting ready to leave my visiting teacher dropped by to chat for a few minutes.  It was fun talking to her because she’s getting ready to go to Hawaii for a week (and in my imagination I’m always getting ready to go to Hawaii for a week) but by the time she left I was no longer going to be early to the DMV.

As I got to the DMV (which shares a parking lot with the Dollar Tree and Winco) it occurred to me that in focusing all of my attention on trying to cram as much test information into my head as possible, I had quite forgotten to check and see if I needed to bring anything with me besides my money and my NC license.  I hoped that the fact that the van was already registered in both of our names with the DMV would mean they had enough information.

Nope.

Fifteen minutes later I was back out in the parking lot, after waiting in line to get a number, only to be told that I needed to have my passport or birth certificate, and a utility bill as proof of residency. 

I drove back home, where the kids excitedly asked me if I’d passed the test already.  Ha.

Fortunately I was able to find my passport quickly.  The utility bill was a little more difficult, because we didn’t have one sitting around, but Russ finally logged me onto the natural gas company website so I could print one out from there.  I grabbed a cheese stick and was back out the door as soon as possible.

This time I had to wait five minutes in the line to get a number, listening to some poor guy argue with the DMV worker about whether or not he should have to pay a fee again after a postal error.  Neither was willing to back down, and eventually the worker went to look for his supervisor.  When he came back I handed over my documents.  He looked at the utility bill, looked at me, and asked, “Where’s Russell?” 

Now I should explain that most of our credit cards are in my name.  And in our last house, all of the utility bills were in my name as well, because I dealt with all of the changeovers.  But here Russ has taken care of things like bills and utilities while I’ve focused on things like driving across the United States as many times as possible.  So the utility bills are in his name.

I looked at the DMV guy and I said, “He’s at work.”

Whereupon he said, “This isn’t good enough.  It has to have your name on it too.”

I was kind of upset, but figured after the previous customer that working at the DMV has to be a hard job and I didn’t want to make it too much harder.  So I swallowed my disgruntlement, and turned and walked (past the 10 people who were now waiting in line to get a number behind me) out the door.

By this time it was 11:15, and I knew that I’d never get back home, find something with my name on it, and get back in time to do anything but stand in line before the DMV took a lunch break.  So I went over to Winco and bought a few things that we needed, then went home.

When I got home I was already mentally & physically exhausted—both from my late  night test-taking, and from my frustrating morning.  I ate lunch and then went and took a nap for an hour, hoping that it would rejuvenate me enough to get through the rest of the day.  (Which was looking pretty long at that point.)

I woke up at 2 and got to work finishing up Jason’s Christmas box which needed to be mailed by today.  I’d decided to mix up a couple of cookie mixes to put in the box too, and that took a little while.  Then I packed everything in, got it taped & addressed and finally took it to the post office. I had hoped that just after 3 wouldn’t be a crowded time at the post office, but my hope was in vain.  Not only was the line long, but it was long and slow.  By the time I got to the front of the line I was really missing my post office out in the country! 

When I was done at the post office it was about fifteen minutes before four.  I knew that something at the DMV had to be done before four in order to take the drivers test, but I wasn’t sure if you just had to get a number before four, or if your number had to be called before four.  Josh had just texted me that he had an urgent need for index cards and I hadn’t been able to find them at home, so I needed to go to the Dollar Tree anyway.  I figured I might as well go into the DMV and see if I was too late.

And yep, at 3:55 I was officially too late.  So off I went to get the index cards.

After I left the Dollar Tree I remembered that I also needed to go by Goodwill to get some new black pants for my evening activity.  It was at this point that the tender mercy of the day happened.  I picked 5 pairs of pants off of the rack, and 4 of them fit.  I kept the ones I liked best and went to the register where it became clear that the tender mercy moment was over.  After the cashier rang up my pants I swiped my card.  Nothing.  She got ready to call for help and I told her no problem, I’d write a check.  So I did.  Which her system also wouldn’t accept.  When she realized that her computer was having a problem, she handed me off to the next gal.  Her system wouldn’t accept my check either.  I eventually tore up the check and swiped my card and it finally worked…

By the time I got home it was 5:45, I’d prepared nothing for dinner, I was exhausted again, and my day was still not over.  I chatted Russ and asked him to bring home pizza.  Turns out he was presenting in a meeting, so everyone got to see my chat.  Cool.  Good thing I was so tired that all I said was “hey, are you there, I need you to bring home pizza” instead of starting with something like “hey, sexy man.”

About a week and a half ago the girls’ choir director at the elementary school sent out an emergency email to all of the choir parents..  Her 85 year old volunteer accompanist had hurt her back and was having surgery and was going to be out of commission for at least the Christmas season.  Was there anyone who could fill in?

My girls are enjoying this choir experience so much.  It’s exactly what I’d hoped for for them.  And I do play the piano, a little.  I sent her an email and explained that I was a medium pianist with significant performance anxiety, but that if she didn’t get any better offers (which I sincerely hoped she would) I was willing to give it a try.  Of course she didn’t, and so after two horrid (on my part) rehearsals and almost no time to practice, tonight was our first performance.  At the school board meeting at 7pm.

For the first time all day I sat down and relaxed for a while—read my email, played my games of words with friends, ate some string cheese, and then went and practiced the music for a while.  I’ve ended up copying all of the songs and taping the pages together so that I don’t need to turn pages, which I am incapable of doing while playing the piano.  Then I went and changed into black clothes and gathered up the girls and a neighbor to go.

When we got to the school district building and went into the room where the school board meets, I was confused.  There was no piano.  Then I noticed a keyboard in pieces on one table.  Not good.

Eventually the child who’d supplied the keyboard came over and helped me set it up.  As we assembled the stand he chattered (with his cute Indian accent) that this was his keyboard because of course when you start playing the piano you have a keyboard, but of course he has a grand piano now.

Of course.

The stand was kind of rickety, and the keyboard just sat on top of it without hooking in in any way.  I was a little worried every time I touched it that it was going to fall over in one direction or another.

And then there was the problem of the music holder.  I had three and four pieces of paper taped together for each song, and that was never going to stay up so that I could see it on that tiny holder.  I finally put a clip board on one side of it and put all of the pieces of music up at the same time so that the sheer bulk of papers would also provide some support.

The kids were very cute as they sang.  The spastic accompanist survived.  With lots of minor mishaps and one major mistake that involved getting completely lost after a first ending.  I wanted to go around and tell each person in the audience that yes, I already know I’m a lousy pianist, but that I’m (for the most part) better than no pianist at all, which was the other option. 

But I restrained myself.

When we were finally home at 8pm it felt like it really should be midnight.

Which means that now, 10:15, feels like 2 in the morning.  That sounds about right.

 

So now I’m going to go put my poor tired self into bed, then tomorrow I’m going to get up early, and after I go to Curves I’m going to come home and fix my hair & put on makeup again, and then I’m going to go back to the DMV.  With my passport and several different proofs of address. 

Let’s just hope that after all of this I pass the test!!!

Verbal Vomit

 

I went visiting teaching with my companion Sunday morning.  Together we visited with two different women in our ward.  Lots of fun and interesting conversation.  But when I left the second house and drove back home I found myself restless and uncomfortable.  After looking at the feeling for a few minutes I realized what my problem was.

Verbal Vomit.  You know, (or you may not, if you’re lucky) the feeling where you have just been talking out of control, telling anything and everything that has been on your mind?  One of my sisters and I have talked about this before—the feeling of watching yourself talk and wanting to stop but not being able to.  The ability to carry on an interesting conversation is a gift, but when that gift spins out of control it’s not very comfortable.

And that is what happened to me Sunday morning.

 

As I thought about it later I realized that I probably knew why it happened.  Last week was busy.  I realized that I probably hadn’t talked on the phone all week.  Usually I talk every week at least once with my sisters and my friend, but not last week.  (Oregon’s hands free cell phone law is killing me—I can’t find my headset again!)

So now I know that those phone calls are even more important than I knew.  They’re not just about my sanity and ability to feel connected to the people I love, they’re also to protect the people I’m around!

-------

 

Interestingly enough, for over a year now I’ve thought about writing a blog post about telephone calls.  (Instead I’ve blogged about job loss, house-fixing, moving, and learning to love a new place.)  About 18 months ago the New York Times ran a piece called Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You.  It broke my heart to read it.  The article told that telephone use among adults is decreasing sharply, and the expectation is that texting will surpass phone use by adults within three years.  (And since this was a year and a half ago, you’d better get your phone calls now while you can!)  Here is an excerpt from the article

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”

 

Am I the only one saddened by this??

I’ll be the first to admit that my phone usage has morphed over the years.  As a young mother living in a new state, I had a long distance phone budget of $100/month, and it was never enough.  (Can you believe that?  And now that it costs nothing, no one wants to talk.)  I was so lonely and depended on regular phone calls with my mom and sisters to keep me sane.  I needed parenting advice and occasionally marriage advice and at that point the phone or a face-to-face conversation was the only way to get it.  When we moved to North Carolina once again I was in a new place and lonely.  But it wasn’t just that—the telephone was the way I connected with friends and the way I entertained myself as I went through the many mundane drudgeries of my day.  After the triplets were born I would have gone crazy without the telephone.  It was overwhelming for me to try to get out of the house very often, and I depended on conversations with friends to keep me sane.  I will never be able to thank Mindy enough for all of the phone calls when chaos was breaking loose in the background and yet she was still willing to keep talking.  (And for coming up to hang out so often.)  I depended on all of those phone calls. 

The telephone is a little more complicated for me now.  First of all, I find myself in a different time zone from almost everyone in the world I’d like to talk to, which complicates things more than I expected it would.  (Why don’t you want to chat during your dinner?  Or at midnight???)  Second, my life is filled with homeschooling pre-teens who need my attention a lot of the time, which makes it hard to talk on the phone.  And last, my brain just isn’t as young as it used to be and any multi-tasking is difficult.  I used to be the champ of “talking on the phone and almost anything else,” but now I’m only able to do things like make the bed.  Which definitely cuts down on the time I have available to chat.

I’m also much more a fan of texting than I expected to be.  It’s so convenient and so unobtrusive.  I love texting to ask a quick question, to arrange a play date, to touch base easily.  But for the most part, there’s a difference between a conversation and a text.  Sure, let’s conduct as much of our business by text as much as possible.  Let’s touch base via text, send funny thoughts or say I’m thinking of you.  But relationships deserve something better—something more than the 160 characters allowed in a text.

 

I don’t have all of the answers, though I do have plenty of opinions.  (In fact after having moved across the country I have even fewer answers than before.)  But what I do know is, it’s obvious (for the protection of those around me, if nothing else) that I need to stay connected.  And what’s more, I want to stay connected.  So I’m going to disregard the NYT’s research, and stay with my personal slogan of “You call me, and I’ll call you.”  And if we get stuck in an endless game of phone tag, we’d better keep trying.  Cause I’d hate for Sunday to happen again…

A moment in my life…

I was thinking about my kids as I started working on a blurb book again last night.

[Note to self:  It would be better not to start a blurb book again without figuring out the font first, since fonts change everything.  It would be better not to start a blurb book and get 90+ pages done and then put the project down for 3-4 months.  (Though driving across the entire United States and then back and then moving is a good excuse if there ever was one.)  And lastly, it would be better if you could just relax and go with the font flow, whichever font that means, just a little better.]

Anyway, back to what I was thinking about.  I was thinking that as my kids read these books (and Cindy Lynn’s blurb books too) they’re getting reminders of the things that have happened in their lives, but they’re also getting little windows of insight into my life (and Cindy Lynn’s) that they might not have gotten otherwise.

It made me think again about the kinds of things I blog about, and why I blog, and all sorts of questions like that.

And in that spirit, here I go.  So my children get a peek into a few different moments of my life that happened today.

Today was the primary program.  It made me emotional, which I didn’t expect.  I think it was the combined effect of my own children having aged out of primary (couldn’t they have waited until after the program to do that??) and a feeling of sadness about not being involved in primary music anymore.  (Because I can still love primary music passionately, even if it’s not my calling right now.)  The program went well.  My favorite parts; the 5 year old who throughout the program became enamored with her own voice, singing increasingly louder with each verse of each song, and holding out her ending notes much longer than everyone else,  (I’m certain I heard laughter from the congregation) and the little Sunbeam who said “Heavenly Father lub us.”  (Beyond precious.)

I went then to class with my co-teacher, an awesome woman who’s just returned from a mission with her husband and has been a little overwhelmed by the antics of our 9 year old primary students.  I had reassured her that since her last frustrating lesson I had read them the reverence riot act and that I would be there to help remind them what behavior was acceptable.  She was teaching a great lesson on prayer, the kids were super involved, and wham.

In less than 30 seconds I went from “fine” to “my stomach hurts so bad I think I might die.”  I’m not sure if I’ve ever had something like that happen to me before, but since I was fortunate enough to have a set of keys with me (unusual for a Sunday) and we are fortunate enough to live only 90 seconds from the church I drove myself home and spent the rest of church time alternating between laying in fetal position on the bathroom floor and throwing up. 

It was not my finest moment. (Or couple of hours.)

Eventually the acute pain eased up a little bit and I moved myself in onto my bed, got a heating pad for my stomach (it just seemed like that would feel good), and laid under my favorite blanket for a couple more hours.  Russ went to 7-11 and bought me a coke and the girls brought me crackers. 

So there you have it.  It’s been a day.  And I’m glad they’re not all like this…

I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten a worm in the last week

It’s those darned wild blackberries.  They’re everywhere.  In my fridge, just calling to me as I walk by.  Growing along the street where I walk.  I can’t ever resist grabbing a few…or twenty.  After all, I tell myself, lots of antioxidants.  Lots of vitamins.

Yesterday I pulled the container of blackberries out of the fridge and washed a few to put in my greek yogurt.  I rinsed them off, picked off the bits of stems & leaves, and dropped them in the colander to dry a little.  When I looked back to see if they were ready to go in my yogurt, I thought that I had missed a bit of stem.  I picked it off.

Except it wasn’t a bit of stem.

It was a tiny worm.

 

EEEWWW!

 

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY OF THESE BERRIES I HAVE EATEN, UNWASHED AND UNEXAMINED, IN THE LAST WEEK???

That is so nasty.

 

But it’s not like I can stop eating them, you know?

It’s probably a good thing the season is over soon….and for now I’ll just keep repeating in my head my new mantra

"what I don’t know I’ve eaten can’t hurt me…"

Anatomy of a Bad Night

• 10:00 pm—finally decide that I am done painting for the day.
• 10:15 pm—Russ “calls” and we skype for an hour.
• 12:00 midnight—turn off the lamp and get into bed, exhausted.
• 12:15 am—hear something odd near my head.  Could it be a bug?  Move computer from bedside table to another place just in case it is making noises.
• 12:20 am—no, there’s still a whirring noise there.  Turn on the light.  Something sort of like a firefly (minus fire) is on alarm clock.  Fortunately it doesn’t run away when I grab it with some toilet paper and flush it down the toilet.
• 12:30 am—what was THAT noise?  It sounded like someone trying to get into the front door!  Complete and total freakout!  I jump out of bed and run down the stairs where I think I catch a glimpse of Rachel on the front porch through the leaded glass.  Oh that’s right, the girls aren’t upstairs in bed, they’re spending the night at a friend’s house so it could be her.  Not brave enough to open the door to see, though, and I can’t see anything through the leaded glass.
• 12:32 am—I hear garage door start to open.  Minor freakout.  Reassure myself that it must be Rachel (or the handyman come to fix something else) because you can’t get in the garage without the code. 
• 12:33 am—Rachel comes in the back door looking pale and sleepy.  She couldn’t sleep, she says, her tummy hurts really bad.  I hand her two tums (our first line of defense against tummy trouble) and she is off to bed.
• 3:00 am—Rachel comes in my room and wakes me up, says her tummy is still hurting really bad.  I wonder if watching the episode of survivor yesterday where the annoying guy gets appendicitis can rub off on one of my children.  I tell her there’s pepto-bismal in my closet (the location of many misplaced things right now) and it’s a sign of how bad she feels that she gets it and takes it and doesn’t say anything about how nasty it is.  Or maybe she does say something but I’m already asleep again and don’t hear it.
• 5:00 am—Rachel comes in to tell me she has thrown up.  She says that it got on everything, which is bad, but not on the floor, which is good.  I go into her room, still half asleep.  There is vomit, and there is really gross vomit.  This is the latter.  Good thing I am really still asleep, it lessens the need for me to vomit while I get everything and put it in the washer.  I pray that it will actually come clean.  Then I tell her to get in Jenna’s bed and go back to sleep.
• 8:15 am—(you know I would have been up the crack of dawn if I hadn’t had such a bad night…as it was, I was hoping to sleep until noon.) Someone from the realtor’s office calls.  It’s not too early to call is it? they ask.  I reassure them (hoping that they can’t tell they just woke me) that it’s not.  They tell me that someone is coming to see the house today at 3:30.  Hooray…at least it’s still mostly clean from yesterday…

How soon can I have a nap???

• 9:00 am—I am sitting on the floor of my bedroom dividing up the “Easter” candy, which I will distribute today for consumption during conference.  (We never combine “Easter” candy with Easter Sunday, and this seemed a reasonable time to do it.)  Josh comes in and tells me that the realtor is here already.  I panic.

     Best. April Fools. Ever.

An Argument for Kindness, Compassion, & Consideration

I stood at the register at Monkey Joe’s, a kids play place in northern Raleigh.  The seven children with me had already been wristbanded and had run off to bounce on the toys, play tag, and hide-n-seek.  I was ready to sit down on the comfy parent chairs and relax.

Or so I thought.

Right up until the girl at the register said, “We have a problem.  Your groupons are for the Cary location and not this one.” 

I was incredulous.  “What do you mean?” I asked.  “I specifically bought groupons for Monkey Joes in RALEIGH.”  I’d been trying to figure out something fun to do on Leap Day, some way to celebrate the day that comes only once every 4 years.  When I’d seen the Monkey Joes groupon it had seemed an easy answer—take the kids to a place where they could do a lot of leaping around.  And so I clicked and bought.

I opened my computer and showed the employee that indeed,  my groupon had said “Monkey Joes—Raleigh” at the top.  She agreed that that was frustrating, but was firm that they could not accept them at the Raleigh location, and that I could either pay for entry or take the kids to the Cary location. 

I appreciated this woman’s courtesy in a difficult moment.

She could not have known the stress I am under.
She could never know how hard I’ve been working every day, how late I’ve been staying up every night, or how early I’ve been waking to start working again.
She had no idea that I’d already driven an hour just to get to her location in northern Raleigh.
She had no way of knowing that I am living most moments on the verge of tears.

 

A couple of months ago I needed to get some blood drawn.  When I called a local lab to see if they could draw it and ask a couple of questions the technician was curt, unhelpful, and by the end of the phone call downright rude.  She may not have said the words ‘You are stupid,’ but she certainly communicated that feeling as she asked me impatiently at the end of the phone call “why on earth I had called her.”  I got off the phone in tears, feeling humiliated.

The next week I had a very different experience at another local lab.  I arrived with an appointment already made to have the blood drawn.  For some reason they had lost all of the paperwork, and there were a couple of reasons that they didn’t think they were going to be able to draw my blood.  Their new computer systems weren’t letting them access any information very quickly, and for 45 minutes I stood there and waited while they tried to figure things out.  In the end they decided that they really couldn’t draw my blood, and once again I went away disappointed.  But in every other way the experience was different.  The man and women I spoke with in that lab that day were kind and courteous.  They were frustrated that they couldn’t figure things out quickly, but they never expressed any of that frustration towards me.  In the end they apologized genuinely for my inconvenience and I left feeling fine, despite my lack of success.

 

I’ve thought about those different experiences in the months since they happened, and they came into my mind again today as I drove away from Monkey Joes in Raleigh hoping that I could find the one in Cary.  (Which I did, thanks to my wonderful husband and a service that he provides that we call ‘Blonde-Star.’) I thought about how one rude or annoyed or even patronizing word from the Monkey Joe’s employee would certainly have been the straw that broke the Leap Year camel’s back.

I am grateful for her patience and sensitivity.

 

I’ve always liked the saying

(also often attributed to Marjorie Hinckley)

but never more than today.  Today, when I was dressed neatly, with my hair fixed and makeup on.  Today when a normal exterior camaflauged a volcano of tears hidden just underneath. Today when I for a moment doubted my ability to survive my hard battle.

Today I was the recipient of kindness in a stressful moment, and I hope that I never forget what it felt like…