spring is in the air

Janna got a new table so her old one is on loan at my house. Anika likes to hide out underneath it. Sometimes I even get her a pillow.


What have you people been up to this last week?

We've been on a few hikes while trying to make use of this gorgeous weather. When I see the first shoots of green grass int he desert, it always shocks me. I'm talking shock. It's like I know it's coming but still... spring is always a miracle. It's like what? It's happening again? It's really happening! New life. I like it.

Slow Stabbing

My CTR class had 11 kids in it today instead of the usual 3 or 4.
It could only be described as a slow stabbing.

Alana Without Doxylamine Succinate

When I'm trying to kick the Unisom habit, the thinking habit returns. What a pest! Let me rest!

Tonight I've been thinking about a lot of things.

You all know that I am a 'hit and miss' gift-giver. If I'm feeling it, I'll gift. I thought about purchasing this book for Nicole last year. I hadn't read it for years but picked it up again one evening and it left me pondering like it always had. (Also desperately trying not to infer sacrilege.) In the shower. Or when I was supposed to be fully immersed in a floor puzzle with Anika. Or when I should have been sleeping.

When I decided to go buy the book for Nicole at Little Professor, I knew it would be tricky getting a parking spot. The entire way over there I planted the seed-thought that the spot right in front would be available. I pulled right in. I pushed open the glass doors and in one fell swoop my eyes darted to the very back of the store. Before even stepping inside, I could see the familiar feather cover (just one copy) perched on the top shelf. It was illuminated and waiting for me thirty feet away. No looking. No searching.

I hadn't thought about that in a while. It makes me giggle.

Morning is going to hurt like it always does. Even more than thinking about the Adam of my soul. Or the seven depths of depth. What is it about my body and/or brain that makes it think it's nocturnal? What caused the hidden treasure to desire to be known?

It takes just half of a tiny blue tablet to knock my whirling dervish down.
But it's too late now.

I'm going to go to bed now to stare at the inside of my eyelids until Brandon's alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. Goodnight.

F is for FO SHIZZLE.
D is for DUUUUUDE!
V is for VENDETTA.

Sensational.

Jake took these photos while skiing with Ian after the big storm last week. They ski while Andrea is working and even have family ski days when she's not. That sun is setting over the ocean. It's way out there but if it was clear, you could see it. When it's clear you can see the ocean from the rim in Lake Arrowhead and when it's really, really clear you can even see Catalina Island! Home will always be home. There's just something about it. I love this second photo and the lift chair up in the corner. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Sensational. Wish I was there.

Starting very tiny, I had ski lessons once a week at Snow Valley during the wintertime. They were after school, night skiing. It didn't take me long to realize I could ditch class and my Mom would think I was in class. I remember convincing my friend, Ashley, to ditch with me once but otherwise, it was just me.

I couldn't stand my instructor that year. I thought I was really cool because I had some tight, black, stretchy ski pants. One week my instructor brought me her daughter's old, puffy, pink, traditional snow pants with suspenders. Apparently, she thought I just didn't have the right equipment when, in reality, I thought I was the cat's meow for wearing what the other girls were not. This offended me. I was eight, full of guile and skiing alone.

I remember one evening with Janna. We thought we were so cool because we could do the Bubblegum Trail. Janna crashed and her skis went off the side of a huge drop-off. It was getting dark and there were no night lights back there. Janna had to hike down to get her skis. I was inordinately terrified because I was raised on the following story and it's punchline: a book of matches would have saved his life. My parents were both ski instructors and my Dad was on Ski Patrol. The Patrol had to search the back side of Snow Valley for a missing man one day. My dad found him. Frozen. That has a way of sticking with a small child.

Comparable would be when my Mom found it appropriate to tell me, "If you wander off from me in the mall, someone might kidnap you, take you to the bathroom and cut your tongue out so you can't tell people who you are." I was frozen. In fear.

I have brought that up to her and she says she truly wasn't trying to be sensational, but saw it on the news. She was just doing her duty by giving me the facts. My Mom, always the realist. So, so, so terribly honest. If I ever got really sick as a kid and asked her, "Mom, am I going to die?" she would reply, "Well, I don't know, honey, but I don't think so." She turns 70 this March and she still ain't sugar coatin' nothin'! I still rely on her to give me the cold facts.

Happy Winter.

My Dream Bedroom

Snow Valley

Check out my sporty sister, Andrea at snow-valley.com
I'm so jealous of her job. She agrees, it's anything but work.
What a babe.

Did you guys see this on Saturday? I was laughing so hard. I had to rewind the DVR and watch it twice. SNL still gets me rolling now and again. It's worth sitting through the commercial. I really feel that excited sometimes; that's what makes it double funny.

El Raton

Do you remember when My Mom, Janna and I put the gist of our worldly possessions in the back of the orange Ford truck and headed for the tip of Baja? And ended up living with Cara and her roommate, Heather, in Newport for over two months?

One day, all five of us were piled in Cara's car, headed somewhere.
My Mom was driving. She saw one of these
and said, matter-of-fact, "Did you know your Father had a Woody when I met him?"

The side-splitting laughter was instant. The tears started rolling.
My Mom didn't get what was so funny and kept saying, "What? He did! I swear it!"

Still, we couldn't get it together. It was too hilarious to hear her repeating herself:

"What? What's so funny? He did! He named it El Raton! It means The Rat!"

That might have been the single funniest moment of my life.
When we told her that Woody nowadays does not mean a car,
she was the one laughing until she cried.

Satan Claus

Long ago, my brother had a girlfriend who was from Paraguay. Her English was not perfect, nor her written English. We spent Christmas 2003 at their house. It was there I spied, underneath the tree, a small package wrapped neatly in colorful paper and tied with a gift tag that read:

To: Alex

From: Satan


This little memory is my go-to for a quick belly laugh. Never fails. Am smiling as we speak.

Do you guys have anything that you remember when you need to illicit a laugh from yourself?

^Andrea and Ian's awesome new house! That is her awesome new boyfriend, a fellow ski instructor. I hope when I visit, I get snowed-in underneath five feet for a week. I really get homesick for Lake Arrowhead this time of year.

^This is the view from her back porch.
I can't wait to cozy up to that fire.

The Eternal Question

I often find myself pondering... Bear Grylls? Or Les Stroud?

Man Vs. Wild stands alone in its ability to trigger my gag reflex as much as... anything else. I especially tune in when he is going somewhere cold because there is a high likelihood of Bear getting wet and taking his clothes off all the way down to his cute little British boxer briefs. Who can refute the hotness:

Faults? A little too hyper. And perhaps a little too hairless. You just know the second the cameras are off he sets down that elephant dung and dines on whatever is flown in for him. Whatever. He was a member of the British Special Forces. Me likey.

But what if you were forced to choose? Would you take the hyper, hairless Brit? Tempting. But I think I prefer my men a little less fancy. Enter Les Stroud:

Hairier than myself. The smallest bit of flab on the midsection. Hmmm. Yes, I like this. His show Survivorman isn't as spastic. He has no crew. He films himself. He is calming. Soothing. Less fancy-pants with less fancy pants. Probably wears faded, threadbare underwear.

So girls. You have to survive in the wilderness with one of these men. I'm sorry but you cannot have both. Who is it going to be? Are you going to let Bear boil you some crawdads in a hole in a rock, holding out hope for the British Skivvies? Or will you let Les shoot you a grouse, taking comfort in his calming presence?

Me? The winner is going to be Les.
A bit more man.
A little less spastic.

My Life In Pictures

Yet another award-winning photojournalism essay by yours truly.


^This is what morning looks like. Anika likes to get in bed with me and watch cartoons (since I'm already watching them).

^This is what hair looks like when you are two, terrified of the unfamiliar Thanksgiving guests and have had your head buried in the couch for an hour like an ostrich. If I can't see them, they can't see me.

^This is what the clean laundry looks like when you are married to Brandon. Happily knee-deep in black marabou jigs since 2003!

^And when two readers fall in love, they make baby readers. This photo was not staged. And that's a toy catalog, by the way.

^ Whilst not propagating my own species, I propagated leaf cuttings of my upstairs ZZ plant to this new pot downstairs. And I finally dusted all the filthy blinds.

Isn't it all so exciting?

But sometimes it really is. The sisters came from CA for the holiday. Also Jake and Ian. We had so much fun it hurt. It went down the only way we know how... Order hot wings at seven. Have second Thanksgizzle dinner at the stroke of midnight. Then heated political and religious debate until two (that's AM). All the while hysterically laughing, crying, testifying.

Now there's Christmas to look forward to and after that- well- dark and cold January. I'm going to try and go to Lake Arrowhead and Newport the end of January to give me something to get through that eventless month. Is eventless a word? I think we'll cut a Christmas tree down this Saturday, maybe the next, and that's about that.

Sometimes exciting.
Mostly mundane.
(marabou-jig mundane)
But I am deeply satisfied.
And happy.

Would Give a Kidney

This is one of my favorite design blogs, if not the favorite. She just opened up a store of refurbished/re-purposed items. I am in love with everything in it and would give a kidney to go to it. It's like she got inside my brain and created everything I love. I want absolutely everything for my house. I love everything so much that I actually dreamed last night that I boarded a plane to NC. (where she lives and has her store.) I was flying out to go on splits with the sister missionaries (that came from the talks in sacrament yesterday) but made time to visit the store. I bought everything, nearly missed my flight home and had a deep conversation with Al Gore in a parking lot of a sports arena (don't know where that came from) . I can hardly look at the things in this store. It's so much my dream stuff that one of the pillows I spy- the green and white in the dresser drawer- is the exact fabric I bought last week to sew new pillows and then returned. I hope I dream about all these pretty things tonight. It makes me want to gut my house and start over.

Cabin

Halloween

To the Mercy Killers (re-post)

Today's TravelinOma prompt:
~Have you ever been sick on a trip? Write a paragraph about it. Prompt: "I thought I was going to die. I was in______"

Well, I just had to cheat again and turn in old homework. When I read sick on a trip, I knew I already had written about just such an experience. So I will re-post:

To the Mercy Killers

It has been a poetry-post overload. I have been spending too much time reading my old book of poems, but I am enjoying it. Some poems, some phrases, some lines, are on microfilm stored inside my granite skull. Earthquakes rattle them up, and the words reverberate on my bones, but they are safe and constant inside my head. They are retrievable.

December, last year, I retrieved this:

If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, and aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lung and pump the heart- even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
-Dudley Randall

It was mid-December. The Lake House was cold. Anika was sleeping in an unfamiliar crib at the foot of my unfamiliar, squeaky brass bed. Her crib, or maybe the floor, was slanted and she kept rolling into the side and waking up crying. I wondered if she, too, was starting to feel sick like I was.

During her short periods of sleep I would peek out the sheer curtains to the moonlit lake and crusty snow. I was keenly aware of the index card and pen I had placed on the nightstand. My thoughts were racing and I couldn't bring myself to jot anything down. Alex's memorial was in the morning and I was going to speak.

The cold was pouring through the single-paned window.
And I was getting sicker.

Brandon lay awake, motionless beside me. He had been helping with Anika and was aware of my impending doom. He knew, as I did, that I would soon be in the throes of food poisoning, yet he was typically unaware of the storm blowing up inside of my soul.

I soon got violently ill. I went down the hall and vomited in the toilet. "This is the first time", I thought, "I have ever tried to vomit quietly." I was in the top of an old A-frame home and was worried about my family scattered throughout. It didn't end with vomiting. This was the kind of sick you remember forever. The kind, like childbirth, you remember but can never recall the severity of.

I collapsed on the linoleum and curled up next to a heater vent that was underneath the cabinets. My chilled and shivering body lay there awaiting the next wave of vomiting. I remembered how Alex used to call this the "fetus position" instead of the "fetal position".

"It's between the In N Out Burger or that italian sausage.", I thought. Something hadn't agreed with me. I was suspicious it was grief.

My thoughts took me to the last time I was this sick .... It was December, four years ago. It was another A-frame Lake Arrowhead house, cold enough that I saw my breath in it once... Alex's house. It was the Christmas of the epic storm and we were trapped on the mountain. One of my tacos from our favorite eatery tasted funky but I ate it anyway. This was also to be the remember-forever type of sick. I was on my way back from the bathroom, almost to my bed, and I blacked out. I was alert for the first half of the collapse, trying to steer my heavy body away from the nightstand I saw coming towards my head. Blackness. My head hit the hardwood floor instead.

Alex must have heard the thump because when I woke up he was there. He frantically asked me what happened and if I was okay. (Have you ever stubbed your toe, been solicited for feelings, and snapped at someone?) I must have snapped something at him in my agony because he turned and left the room. I clearly had hurt his sensitive feelings.

So many small regrets.
So many big regrets.
Total loss.

"It could..." I thought... "It could be the grief."

There on the linoleum in the fetus position, I prayed. The only thing that came out was "Make it stop. Dear God, make it stop."

I don't remember getting sleepy. I had fallen asleep there on the bare floor. It was still dark out and I didn't know how long I had been there. I nervously remembered what had happened and quickly took inventory. "Do I need to throw up?" - "Can I roll over?" It had miraculously passed. Never in my life has food poisoning lasted less than 24 hours. I couldn't believe it. I felt okay. I felt comforted.

I nibbled on cookies all day and eagerly spoke at Alex's memorial.
It was a miracle.

Mortality.
Our corruption.
My grief.
My sick body.
This mouldering pain inside my flesh.
A clot. And aching clench.
A stub.
A stump.
A butt.
A scab.
A knob.
A screaming pain.
A putrefying stench.
Even though I seem not human....
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Dear God, do not put out my life.
Let me still glow.

___________________________________________________________


The Lake House.... mere hours before sickness ensued.

Class Clown/ The Fainter

Today's TravelinOma.


~Write about a time you made a presentation of some kind. Were you nervous? Excited? Prompt: "After I was introduced, I stood up and said_____"
___________________________


I was slightly nervous. I was only ten and this would be my first public speaking experience. It was Mrs. Kolmel's fifth grade class and I was to give an oral book report.

After I was introduced, I stood up and... fainted. It wasn't a nice, respectable, solid timber. Rather a stumble, wobble, stumble backwards and awkwardly slump straight down like a slinky in recoil. My back scraped the chalk ledge on the way down, leaving a scab the length of my spine. It went black for awhile and when I came to people were trying to assist me. (Please, please, please to all that is holy, please tell me Andy Wilson didn't see that!) I shrugged them off saying, "I'm fine, I'm fine." I made it all the way to my feet before it went black again. The next thing I remember was the school nurse picking me up and helping me walk down the hall.

I love a good public speaking assignment. Really. Even then, I don't remember being particularly nervous. I remember it was cold outside and I had felt weak all day. The perfect storm.

Whatever the cause, I had been having many health issues around then, fainting in particular. My doctor finally ordered an EEG. And eventually a sleep-deprived EEG. I got to stay up all night once, playing Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and then got more electrodes glued to my scalp.

Diagnosis? None. I'm perfectly healthy. Just a little different. I remember talking to the doctor as she asked me questions during my EEG. She was impressed that my favorite subject was math. I actually told her I could hear a creaking noise inside my head as I solved a math problem. I just laughed hysterically remembering that! Because it's true. I can still hear that creaking in my head. But what a strange, screwy little girl.

I was in GATE. (Gifted and Talented Education.) Mr. Westcott laughed me to scorn when I showed up for GATE art class with a mechanical pencil. And I laughed myself to scorn when my little houses in my Starry Night kept getting bigger and bigger because I wanted to paint the lines perfectly straight.

This same age- ten- Johns Hopkins University enrolled me in a study because my standard test scores were abnormally high. They had me take the SAT with the eigth graders. All of this just seemed like more work. I was more concerned with playing pranks and goofing off. I once colored my lips blue with a marker, rounded up my trusty audience of classmates and went up to the teacher acting like I was choking. So not funny.

Smart.
Class Clown.
A little screwy.

I picture my little, pale, ten-year-old self blacked out on that berber carpet. Or with electrodes on my scalp. Or playing Mario Brothers the entirety of Christmas Vacation, showering ten days into the marathon after realizing I had developed my first B.O. You see, I had a picky attention-span. Not a non-existent one. And I laugh! What a strange little girl.

Now you see, I try very hard not to project anything onto my daughter. I'm open to anything and consciously try to not imagine things about her. I want her to show me who she is. But when I see her eating three corners and one side of each tortilla chip, retiring the rest of the chip to the straight line of identical chips, I just can't help but think...

Smart.
Goofy.
A little screwy.

Uncommon. (thank heavens!)
But pale. (See here.)

Practice Makes Perfect

Check out today's Travelin'Oma prompts.
_______________________________


Don't do anything for your kids that they could do themselves.

This brought an instant smile to my face. And lots of memories. I would not doubt if the mother who first said this was my own.

The first memorable incident was when my Mom decided I was old enough to order for myself at restaurants. We were at a McDonalds and I was horrified. I remember staring at the girl behind the counter (Staring up. I must have been 4 or 5.) and then back at my Mom who was saying, "Well honey, if you'd like to eat something, you'd better order." I didn't order. I just couldn't. So I didn't eat. This happened at a few more family outings before I realized my Mom meant business. No one meant more business than my Mom. She was calm and kind but nothing was more final than her words. If she said I had to order my own food if I wanted any, she sure as hell meant it. She never gave in to anything and I'm so grateful for it.

After a few eating-out meals spent hungry, I started ordering my own food. It made me so proud. Isn't that the idea? Instilling self reliance and CONFIDENCE in our children?

The next really memorable item was nail clipping. I can remember the exact moment. And the words spoken... "It's time you learn to do this yourself, Alana. I know it's hard to use your left hand. But practice makes perfect. You'll see." I was mad. I was seven. If my Mom loved me she would help me clip and paint my right hand. If I had a nickel for every time in my life my Mom said to me Practice Makes Perfect. I am forever capitalizing that phrase.

As I grew into an adult I realized just how much confidence my Mother gave me. I grew into someone who feels self-assured in all situations. I can hold my own ground in any battle. I feel like I could do anything in the world if I wanted. All thanks to my Mom.

As I grew into a Mother I realized just what a pain in the ass all this teaching can be. It really is easier to do everything for them. (Would it not have been easier to just yell happymeal for me? Certainly easier than watching me squirm, then starve?) But doing everything for them is selfish. It's so funny to watch a toddler try to put on their clothes or take them off. The moment they don't know how to pull down their own pants is the moment you realize holy guacamole! somebody taught me how to pull down my own pants! AND climb up on the potty and go all by myself! All thanks to my Mom. (I can't tell her how many times that potty thing has come in handy.)

I love nothing more than watching my little girl gain confidence in herself. Seeing her accomplish things all on her own helps me gain confidence in myself -my parenting, and we both beam with pride.

You can imagine my delight when my now- 69- year-old mother came to me a few weeks ago and asked me to paint her toenails. I gave her the whole speech, memorized from a lifetime of listening to it... "Mom, I know you can't see your toes very well without your glasses but if you start relying on others to do these things for you now, you're going to slip into old age... Practice Makes Perfect."