The Hug Factor

In the early months of marriage I came back from grocery shopping and brought all the grocery bags into the kitchen and commenced to put them away in the appropriate cupboards. About 3 bags into this, Lee came in and started helping me. He put the cereal on top of the fridge, put the vanilla in the cup cupboard, cheese in the vegetable drawer, and found a spot between the canned corn and beans for a bag of chocolate chips. I stopped him and showed him how we had a baking cupboard for baking items, a deli drawer for cheese, and a whole cabinet for cereal. He nodded and then commenced to put the mustard on the shelf (not the door) of the fridge and the powdered sugar on top of the fridge where the cereal had been moments earlier. This was my KITCHEN, MY space, with all of MY things and I went just a little psycho wife. I told him to stop helping me, that he was messing it all up and that I would rather do it myself than spend ten minutes trying to find my paprika when I next made deviled eggs. He put up his hands in surrender and said "Fine, I won't help."

At the time I thanked him for this since I didn't want his help. Well, fast forward 17 years and four kids--unloading groceries is MY job. I now get 18 bags minimum when I go grocery shopping. Like many things that started out organized, putting stuff away is now a dash to the finish because I'm usually late for something. A few years ago as I'm 20 minutes into unloading groceries while Lee is on the couch I asked him to help me. He eyed me carefully. "You WANT me to help put away groceries? Are you sure?"

And thus here I am facing another lesson of stating ones opinions too strongly, without having adequate basis for having formed that opinion. Which brings me to hugs.

I will attempt to say the rest of this as non-creepy as possible. It won't be easy.

A couple years ago there was a debate on LDStorymakers about hugs. I don't remember who brought it up or why but I pulled out my soap box and stated my opinion loudly and with fervor. I didn't like hugs. I didn't like feeling obligated to have such a physical exchange. It made me uncomfortable, I worried there was a sexual connotation to it with certain men, and seemed insincere when everyone just hugs everyone for any reason. I waited for people to line up behind me agreeing with my stance "non-huggers unite!" A few people admitted that they could take hugs or leave them, others said some people overdid it, but none of them were as anti-hug as I was. I've no doubt I came across as rather neurotic and it got me wondering about that very thing. What was so difficult about a  hug? Why was it hard for me?

Ah, the romantic notion of going back in time and burning that soap box.

Following this debate some people from LDStorymakers no longer hugged me when we got together--well, except Julie Wright because she didn't buy my defense. There were a few times when every other person is hugging and I'm shaking hands. They weren't being mean, and I knew this, they were simply respecting my loudy-stated wishes. But it felt weird. I hadn't realized certain benefits of hugging until I was getting less and less of it. The most awkward moment was after I'd been with someone, maybe for lunch and we're saying goodbye. It becomes a weight shifting "Well, okay, I'll see you later." That just feels weird. There were times I was REALLY glad to see someone, or REALLY grateful for something hey did and found myself unsure of how to show that. I missed the power of a hug and didn't know how to get it any other way. And it made me look at myself in regard to all kinds of affection which takes us to some deep seated emotional issues I'll keep off the blog :-)

Anyway, I stood by my pronouncement, and I hugged people but didn't seek it out and wondered if I was really screwed up. Then, last fall, Julie Wright and I went on the book tour. Now, if you've spent any time with Julie you know she is a bundle of energy and just makes people feel good. I've had the chance to spend lots of time with Julie over the last several years, but never this much time all at once. From the get-go I was well aware of my hug issues. People go out of their way to come to signings, do I hug them? Have they heard I don't hug? Will they be offended if I don't hug them? If I do hug them will they assume I'm being insincere? There were people I hugged automatically, without thinking about it at all, but someone else would have me wondering what I should do. Julie, of course, had none of these thoughts. She hugged everyone. I had a moment or two in the beginning of thinking, what if people don't like being hugged? She's forcing them to hug against their wishes!

But guess what. I didn't see one person flinch, pull away, or seem the least bit ill at ease. And Julie hugged hundreds people on that tour. Instead of flinching and teeth gritting, I saw people literally melt when Julie embraced them. At least two women literally held on to her and it made me wonder when the last time was that someone had hugged them. After she greeted people this way, things were different. Pretenses dropped, we heard people's stories, they opened up about who they were, what they struggled with, and they bought Julie's books like crazy. To summarize it, I saw all these people connect to her. I hugged too, but it was watching Julie and the people she embraced that changed something in the way I viewed a good ol' hug. There was power in it and because Julie sincerely cared about these people, the hugs weren't weird, no one was uncomfortable and good things happened. Was my problem that I didn't care about people? No. Was I being arrogant or germ-o-phobic? No, I just didn't know how to do it very well. So, I started practicing and hugging in the right situation. Instead of telling myself my personal space was being invaded I just enjoyed the closeness (I know, quickly descending into creepy. I'm done)

At the LDStorymakers conference last week L.T. Elliot came up to me--for the record, she is one of the best huggers around, you know she's absolutely sincere in her regard and I swear she transfers energy through some cosmic force. She said "I know you're not a hugger, but..." And I felt so embarrassed. Not because she'd said it, but because I had told the world that I didn't want or need such basic affection. I made her give me a hug and told her I was converted. She laughed and said she was glad and she went on her way. The thing is, I don't remember telling her I wasn't a hugger. I don't know where she got it. Granted, I might have told her, but what if I didn't and it was just one of those things that spread. It could be a conspiracy that's might be all my fault!

So, now I find myself in a very weird position. I told people I didn't like hugs, I avoided them, and now I find that, like Julie said, people need to be touched in ways like that. People like me need it, even if we felt sure we didn't. And yet, hugging still doesn't come naturally for me. I way overthink it, worry that people won't want me to hug them, worry that they know I've stated my dislike and therefore won't know how to accept it from me. Will they think I'm faking it? Will they they pull away? After people read this I'll worry that they think I hug them so that they'll buy my books.

But either way, here I am, raw with confession, squirmy in my seat for both having stated my original opinions and now going back on them. I don't think I'll ever be Julie, but I'm growing in this one part of my life, I guess. And growth is uncomfortable sometimes.

Another Question: Why do I hate holidays? Alisha

Why is it that you are a scrooge about the holidays? (asked with a smile) I'm trying to remember a holiday that you didn't comment about looking forward to being over. :) 

 There is a short answer and a long answer to this question:

Short: I'm not a fun person.

Long:

Holidays, for the most part, are a bother for me. I like the family part, I like the days off part, and I like the opportunity to reflect on the focus of that holiday. All that's good and if that was all the holidays were, I would be as Bob Cratchit as the rest of all y'all. However, that seems to comprise about, oh, 5% of any given holiday. The rest of it is crap. 

Crap as in:

Decorations: Cost a lot of money, clutter up my house, take up space to store for the other 11 months of the year, break, don't match each other let alone my regular home decor, and are never quite right. They go out of style, they displace other things I would prefer to look at, and, let's face it, most of them are cheesy. I mean, really, how many black cat candle holders do you need? And would any of us CHOOSE to decorate our living room with fat men and snowflakes full time. No. If we WANTED to decorate our house that way, we would do it year round. So why bother with it for one month? And I don't even mind the basic decorating, like a christmas tree. Christmas trees are awesome. Unless they are real. They they are a nasty mess. But you can't JUST do a Christmas tree. You have to have stockings and froo-froo stuff all over the place. My living room ends up looking like a garage sale, and yet many of the things I put up have some sentimental meaning, so then I feel guilty for making squinty eyes at them all the time.

Money: Some of you don't believe me when I say this, but I am cheap. Yes, I will spend money on things, but I prefer to spend as little as possible on things that matter. Every time I go to pick out a gift for someone else I wonder if this will be important to them, or if it will end up at DI next summer. This holds for any holiday, not just Christmas. I work very hard to get the 'perfect' gift, but in all my years I think I've managed to do that, like, twice. So, I always feel like I'm wasting my money. And then, after the holiday passes, I'm certain that I should have gotten them THIS instead of THAT and if I were just a more in tune I'd have gotten it write the first time. There's also money on food, dishes, postage, all those things that add up quickly and manage to suck the fun out of most holidays for me. I have a budget, and it always gets blown when a holiday comes up, and I have to spend the next month recovering, which is why we have cheap dog food. Sorry Tex.

Pictures: I hate taking pictures. I really do. I love having them, but I hate taking them because in order to take the pictures, you have to step out of the moment. Rather than watch my child blow out candles, I'm taking shots, then going through them to delete the ones that don't work. If there are several people we want recorded, I will inevitably leave someone out. Then there's the added frustration of feeling like I'm making myself the center of attention. Everyone notices the person taking pictures, and either tries to look cute, or tries to avoid them. I would like to just enjoy the moment and not worry about preserving it, or worry about what my hair looks like, or how clean my kitchen is. Every holiday, however, it is requisite that the pictures get taken and since no one else thinks of doing it, I either step out of the moment and feel awkward and do it, or I don't do it and then regret having not captured the moment. It's yet one more source of stress.

Distraction: Probably the biggest reason I dislike all of the above entitles aspects of the holidays is that I do not have the attention span to give these things the time they need, and still get the 'point' of the holiday. Halloween should be a fun time with my kids where we read spooky stories, dress up and eat candy. Instead all the decorations, picture taking, and money take away from that for me to the point where I just want it over with. Same with Christmas, Easter, and the 4th of July. They are just too busy and after all the prep and planning are done, I'm burnt out. Again, I still enjoy the family time and I try to let myself remember the point of it all, but more often than not at the end of that day I'm so very glad it's over.

Perfectionism: I like things to be just right, and nothing ever is. For each holiday I tend to build up how I want things to be; the traditions I'd like to start, the closeness I'd like to have, the peace I'd like to feel. But the irony is I'm not very good at being in the moment, I'm usually thinking ahead (or taking pictures) and so I end up regretting how I spent my time, wishing I'd done better. I agree it's dumb and with this amazing insight I have, I should fix it. But I don't know how to do that, so I just keep trying a little at a time.

All that said, I do enjoy the actual holiday itself. I like to give gifts (and getting gifts doesn't suck either), I love seeing the kids light up with all the fun holiday stuff, I like fireworks (kinda), and New Year's kisses. I love the food and playing games. Those things are awesome and I do realize that without all the other crap, I wouldn't get those moments. So, for that reason, I guess it's all worth it, but the annoyances are still there, taunting me every few months. 

Won't I be a fun Grandma?

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It's all about food and hanging out with friends and family. Not much wrangling and decoration expectations. I wish they were all like that.

And, to be just a little more obnoxious, one of my favoritest things about Christmas are the cards. Both giving and receiving them. It makes no sense since they are a lot of work and quite a fair amount of money, but I love em and Lee and I fight about how long I can keep them up on the wall. So far I've got him convinced that taking them down before Valentine's Day is a sin.

So, Alisha, aren't you glad you asked? I bet you can't wait to spend a holiday with me now, can you :-)

  

My Halloween Protest

I wore no make-up

I dressed 'down'

I acted LESS witchy than normal

I did not eat a single piece of candy

So there.

Withdrawl

I can't feel my feet, that's a bad sign, right? And the room is spinning. I'm a little sick to my stomach and no matter how hard I try to tell myself that I'm going to be okay, my mind refuses to believe what must surely be a lie. I am not okay.

There are substitutions available but it seems to make it worse--reminding me how good it once was. The replacement's very incompleteness triggers my anxiety until I fear that I've made a grave, grave mistake. Is imperfection worthy of separation? Am I selfish and arrogant to believe I deserve the best? Why am I so hard to please? So demanding? Is nothing better than almost perfect?

These thoughts have spun around my cortex for the last two days, but I have told myself that I only had to hold out until Friday, then my fears would be laid to rest and this parting would seem a distant, albeit, painful memory. Alas, there is a delay in our reunion and seeing as how it is Friday, that delay will stretch for the rest of today...all day tomorrow...throughout all of Sunday (which, truly seems sacrilegious) and until Monday when I receive the triumphant call that all is well. Only then will I be at peace, comforted by my vice without whom I am simply not myself.

Oh Monday, sweet Monday, I long for the comfort you will bring.

In the meantime, what advice do you have for me? How do you cope when your computer's in the shop?

Why I can't color my hair

Thanks to everyone who gave me their feedback on the Kindle, I had no idea there were other e-readers out there so I need to look into them before I make my final decision. However, I have decided that an e-reader at some point will be mine, oh yes, it shall be mine.

Now onto other things:

So, when we got back from Snowbird last week, my van--which had not gone with us--had a flat tire. Really flat. Dear hubby pumped it up and life went on.

Yesterday, I went to work and at some point looked out the window to see that the tire was flat again. Really flat. Aggravating.

I left work, pumped up the tire and drove to Brigham City and my favorite tire store, Les Schwab (they came to my rescue when I had a bulging tire and the people that sold me that tire said they couldn't do anything to help--sorry). We're close enough that I just call him Les. Worried that the tire wouldn't hold air the whole 20 miles, I adjusted my side mirror so I could watch the tire throughout the drive. I'm very detail oriented like that. Lucky for me, it looked great. Phew.

I arrived as Les Schwab, pointed out the injured tire and wrote 900 words on my WIP while I waited. Strangely enough, Les couldn't find anything wrong with the tire. I was shocked, but maybe it was one of those self-healing tire things. It happens. They didn't charge me, which was sweet since it wasn't their tire giving me trouble, I went home and forgot all about it.

Until I went to work today and looked out the window. The tire was flat. Really flat. How is that possible? Les didn't find anything wrong with the tire, and yet it was flat? What about my self-healing tire theory? I liked that theory.

My co-worker came in a little later and said "Whoa, your tire is flat--really flat." I said I knew that and explained the whole story.

"They should have put it in water, if they had they'd have found the hole--tires don't get THAT flat in 24 hours unless there is one heck of a leak."

I told him they DID put it in water, I knew this because the tire was all clean and shiny when I drove away from Les the day before. And as I described this to him, I looked back out the window. Wait a minute.

The tire that was flat now, isn't the tire that was flat yesturday...or at least, it's not on the same side of the car. That's when I realized that tires don't really heal themselves. Instead, the tire I pointed out to Les wasn't actually the tire that was flat. That means that the tire I watched through the side mirror all the way to Brigham City, wasn't the one that had been flat either. Huh, how about that?

Good thing I'm not a brunette, then I'd really have some explaining to do. As it is, everyone just smiles at me sympathetically when this kind of thing happens. . . and then they sell me four new tires.

So . . . um . . . yeah

I was once told there are two kinds of women in the world--one that sees their hair as an accessory; a mode of expression that can be done and undone and redone at any time. These women often change their color, length and style on a regular basis. They see every change as temporary. Often, they act somewhat impulsively and follow current trends.

The other kind of woman sees her hair as an extension of herself, something connected and ingrained as a part of her. The kind of woman often keeps one basic style for long periods of time. She might make changes, but they typically enhance her current style rather than create a new one. She will usually contemplate changes for a long time before proceeding and has a high dissatisfaction rating because, even when she makes a change, she often pines for the security of past styles and wonders things like "What the hell was I thinking?" When people tell her they like it, she assumes they are lying--if they tell her they don't like it, she cries. And even if there are things she DOES like about it, her insecurity about the drastic decision she's made is very hard for her to overcome, which then makes her feel like a vain prima-donna. She looks forward to next week when she's gotten used to it and swears she will never cut her hair again.

Take a guess which one I am?

CUT!

I posted an update to my status on facebook that I'd managed to farm out three of my four children (and the one that stayed home is pretty danged independent) and so I had 3 days to write and clean. My super-cool facebook friends all told me forget the cleaning and go write!

But I didn't want to write, and you wanna know why?

Cause I just cut 12,349 words! That's why.

Seeing as how I'm an accountant these days I thought I'd run the numbers--35.4% of what I had written to date is now in my cuts folder. That leaves me with 22, 543 which is only 25% of my goal of 90,000 words.

See, the heartache comes from the fact that I knew what I'd written wasn't really working, which is one reason why I'd been avoiding the writing. But when I'm down 3 kids and a husband, and before the husband leaves I ask that husband for a blessing so I can use my time well; I have to write. And unfortunately for me, HAVING to write, means I HAD to cut. And it hurts, damnit.

I was supposed to have this book done by August 1st. It's very hard to adjust that deadline in my mind without feeling as though I'm failing my publisher and my readers and myself. But it was my own deadline and, ironically, I know that not cutting it means I can't move forward, because I try too hard to make what doesn't work, work and that is almost equally discouraging. Ya know?

Kinda like yesturday. The kids are gone, and I know it's the Sabbath and all, but I started to clean my daughter's room. I really only wanted to confirmation that yes, the closet was still there. Within 2 hours I had 2 full size garbage sacks (full of polly pocket clothes and barbie shoes I feel no guilt over discarding) in my garbage can, a bag of clothes for her cousin and 2 boxes and 2 bags of stuff for DI. She has a month to remember specific items in the DI stuff that I will then return to her, but after a month, if she can't remember it, it's gone. It was extreme, yes, and I should have waited until today, but it was also impossible for me to clean without CUTTING. Otherwise the room would never have been clean--there was too much stuff.

And cutting the 12,349 had to be done as well. I know it did, but it's still hard to see my page count dwindle.

I'm getting my hair cut on Thursday. It's time. I love it long, but then there are times I just don't. My ends are thin, it sticks to me when I'm working outside and I just need a little style--so I'm going under the knife. It won't be fun, and I might just cry, and yet I know it's a good thing and feel a glimmer of excitement at the idea of change!

I need to feel that same glimmer of excitement about cutting my story--because I cut it, that means I can have a healthier head of words, right? And it means that I won't have junk spilling through the doorway, right? And this sick feeling in my stomach will go away, right?

Oh, I really, really hope so.

To Pee or Not to Pee

I am the worst potty-trainer in the world. It’s true. I no longer deny it and in some ways I embrace it. I must have been on a chocolate hunt the day they gave out the patience and skill for this important part of motherhood, ‘cause it missed me completely.

I was raised in a home where cloth diapers were the norm. There were nine kids, I was the third, so there were six cloth-diapered bottoms behind me. Potty training was an event much celebrated by all of us. There was no motivation like a week’s worth of soiled diapers needing to be rinsed before going into the washer. And perhaps my disparaging failure would have been avoided if I too had used cloth—perhaps the mess and smell would have given me the commitment my mother had. But I was a modern woman. ‘Pampers’ was one of my favorite words.

Now don’t get me wrong. I, like most young mothers, got caught up in the rapture of diaper-less-baby-bums and expected success like anyone else. When my first child was a year and a half, I made my first attempt. All the other kids in the play group were potty-trained, so I was feeling the peer pressure to keep up. The mothers of these pantied-children posed and bragged until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I found a book called How to Potty Train in One Day. The plan was elaborate, but I pressed on. It required all kinds of charts and graphs to track progress. But it seemed very scientific and I was impressed. I bought special training pants, salty chips, and lots of fun drinks to increase the urge. And of course we had to have the dolly that wets. My husband questioned me, first about the week preparation I put into this, and then about the increasing costs, but I convinced him that it would all pay off in the end. He smiled and dropped it like any good husband should.

The big day arrived and we had scrambled eggs for breakfast, with salt and a big glass of apple juice. This was followed by potty reminders every ten minutes, salty pretzels and more drinks. Half an hour after breakfast, she wet her pants. I had known we would have a couple setbacks and was not deterred. We tried again. Half an hour later she wet her pants again. Part of the program is making a list of people that will be so proud of my little girl. So I discussed how proud her daddy would be, Grandma, Mr. Bills across the street, Mr. Bills’ dog, and of course, Barney. She didn’t seem to care at all, but I kept pushing the Pringles and juice boxes.

By one o’clock she’d cleaned me out of snacks and juice boxes with seven accidents to show for it. I’d followed the graphs, I’d gone over her “Proud People” chart and she wasn’t getting it. I called my husband in frustration. He said she might be too young, that maybe she wasn’t ready.

What did he know?

We kept trying. By three o’clock she was in wet pants crying in the corner, again. I was on the phone to my husband, crying about what a horrible mother I was. We stopped for the day. I daren’t tell the other play group moms about my failure. I simply smiled when the subject came up and acted like I knew exactly what I was doing. I like to think they thought I’d found some secret knowledge about potty-training that gave me no reason to worry.

Six months later I tried the exact same thing again, with the exact result, except that I didn’t cry to my husband until he came home. I had failed. I was also seven months’ pregnant. This had been my last chance to have an entire month of no diapers for the next few years and I had blown it.

Two years later, I’m the mother of two girls. My oldest was now four and still in diapers. One day she brought me a pair of those ill-fated training pants I’d bought years earlier and asked if she could wear them. I cringed, but said she could. That afternoon she had an accident—I felt sure we were doomed and told her we needed to go back to diapers. She insisted on wearing another pair and promised she wouldn’t wet them. I wavered, but finally gave in. She never wet her pants again, but she was four years old and had done it herself, so there was no pride in my achievement.

No less than two months later, I began regarding my second daughter with new eyes. This little girl was two and had the verbal skills of her older sister, with more comprehension. We had complete conversations on a regular basis. It was weird, but I knew in my heart that this child was a prodigy. I was still suffering from my failures with child one and in child two I saw redemption. If I could have her potty trained at twenty-two months, surely that could prove that I was not completely worthless.

I sat my little girl down and we had a very deep discussion about going potty in the toilet. We talked about how much cleaner it was to use the toilet and how yucky diapers were. She was mesmerized by this information and promised me right then and there that she would never use a diaper again. I gloated to my husband about it—for about three hours.

Although she took to heart every word I said, she was very petite. Most people thought she was almost a year younger than she really was until she opened her mouth. She was so small that she couldn’t get on the toilet herself and she refused to use the child potty, which she had deemed only for babies. When she had those first few accidents, she howled as if she’d just inadvertently killed a small animal. She was so disappointed in herself. So she started to hold it. And hold it and hold it and hold it. She would hold it even if I put her on the potty and begged her to go. She would hold it until she began shrieking in pain, then, unable to run to the bathroom with her legs so tightly pressed together, I had to run to her and try and get her to the toilet in time. If I didn’t get her there, she bawled for the next half an hour.

After a week of this, I knew it couldn’t be good for her emotional development to have this kind of trauma, and explained that maybe we should just go back to diapers. She refused. I had convinced her they were dirty, I had told her only babies wore them, and she’d believed me. She wouldn’t even wear Pull-Ups because she knew they were really just diapers trying to look like panties.

For the next year (yes, really) I had to grab her when she reached the shrieking stage and run her to the bathroom. I tried everything to get her to stop holding it. I put her on the toilet hourly, I got a step-stool—and nothing worked. I had created this trauma for her and we went through it four times a day. She was expert at holding it through the night, but on the rare occasion when she drank too much too close to bedtime, I was running down the hall in my underwear, knowing that if I didn’t get to her in time I would have a hysterical child on my hands. She could work herself up to such a pitch that she sometimes threw up—then I had pee and vomit to clean up at one o’clock in the morning. It was honestly the longest year of my life.

At three and a half, she finally went one whole week without the shrieking. I know how old she was ‘cause I wrote it in my journal. She’d stopped holding it quite so much and we all breathed a sigh of relief. By the time she was four, she was doing pretty well. But my potty-training-trauma was not over. I’d had another baby during this year of jump and run—a boy. And we all know what that means.

From the day of the tell-all sonogram, I’d heard how hard boys were to potty-train. I couldn’t imagine it being worse than my girls and I dreaded it. At two and a half, he looked four and people started asking THE question. I hadn’t even considered starting the melee and blew off the judgments of everyone around me. Because he was so big, his diapers, and what went into them, were…well, big. They were awful, in fact, but I wasn’t really tempted. When he was three and a half, I decided to give it a shot and put him in training pants for a day. He had an accident and it was all I needed to convince myself that he wasn’t ready. At four, he started wanting Batman underpants like his friends, and I wanted preschool. So we gave it another try. He did okay for a few hours, enough to send him to preschool. But within minutes of getting home, he’d have an accident and I’d diaper him. Nighttime wasn’t even a question. Pull-Ups—no questions asked. His birthday was in December, so he turned five a good nine months before kindergarten. At this point he was in big-boy-pants all day and averaged an accident every other day. I can’t tell you when he started going all day without and accident because I have a mental block about it, but it was sometime during the summer before Kindergarten. He turned six a couple months ago and he remained in Pull-Ups at night until he was eight. I really didn’t care if he was in Pull-Ups forever—have you seen how many sizes they come in these days?

And so I’m left with one last child. Some would say that after my wealth of experience I should know just what to do and what not to do. Whatever. I have only one philosophy left and that is not to even consider potty-training until she begs me for it. Her cousin of the same age was potty-trained at two. I call that abusive—and why not? There is nothing wrong with babies having extra padding to protect their little bottoms when puddle jumping or going down the slide. There is no shame in keeping a diaper in your purse or taking extra precautions at the community pool. You can hardly see them in her dance outfit and let’s face it, at least I know her bum is clean at least three time a day. Now and then she asks me, but I tell her she’s not ready. Not until she begs me on her hands and knees will I even consider scratching diapers off my grocery list. Not until she can count to twenty and knows her grandparents’ first names. It’s just not going to happen. Quite frankly, I just don’t have it in me.

It’s her body, and to pee or not to pee is a question only she can answer. When she’s ready, and she wants it—I mean really wants it, I have faith that it will happen. But I will not decide this for her. Not this time, not again.

*I wrote this a few years ago, so as an update--KB potty-trained at 3 1/2 much like her oldest sister--I put Dora underpants in her drawer and threw them away if she wet them, which she found devastating enough that by the time we'd worked through four of the six-pack of panties, she had it all figured out. Even at night--Go me!

Do I have to do EVERYTHING?

So, Lou-lou (12 year old daughter) is having girl drama. Really lame girl drama (is there non-lame girl drama?) It involves her 'former' best friend and a boy they both liked--guess which one of them got him? Not Lou-lou. (which her mother is very grateful for, but which Lou-lou feels is likely the end of the world)

It's been two weeks and on Tuesday morning Lou-lou had a melt down. She missed the bus and we sat on the couch and talked about what it was that caused her to fall apart. It was obviously not the regular stuff--I knew some new level had been reached. I was right (of course I was right) and after some tears and some "I'll love you no matter what"s she finally admitted that last week she had called the former best freind a name--not to her face, but she'd said it to a freind and then the girl found out (of course she found out). Now Lou-lou feels horrible and the former freind was very hurt.

So I asked Lou-lou, "What did you call her?"

Lou-lou folds into herself and shakes her head as new tears fall. "I can't tell you."

Oh boy. I know a lot of dirty words and bad names and they all start rushing through my head. "You can tell me," I assure her. "I promise I won't get mad, but I need to know what the name was so that I know what kind of fall-out to expect." (No, she doesn't know what fall-out means, but I like to use phrases like that so that the kids remember I'm smarter than they are)

She shakes her head. "I can't say it," she says. "I'm not even sure what it means."

Wow. Now I'm really worried. "Was it a swear word?"

She shakes her head and I'm perpelexed. After a moment, however, I realize that there are far worse words she could have used than a simple swear word (which is ironic, but true). And my stomach falls a little bit as I imagine what word she could have picked up somewhere and then recycled for this event.

"Well," I say all calm and collected. "I'm sure I know what it means, so tell me what you said and we'll go from there. You're not going to shock me with it."

She peers over her knees. "You know what it means," she said. "You've said it before."

Yikes. As I said, I know a lot of bad-mean-dirty words, but I don't make a habit of saying many of them--unless I'm talking about dental insurance or computer ink and I'm careful not to bring up those topics in front of my children. She does not continue. "When did I say it?" I ask, certain I'd remember when I used this horrible word.

"When The Bad Girl's Club came on TV."

I'm compltely confused. I have no idea what the Bad Girl's club is. "Well, you're gunna have to tell me what it was cause I'm stumped. What did you call her?"

"Slut."

Oh, is that all? I mean, not that it's a good word--certainly not for a very non-slutty 12 year old girl--but it could have been so much worse. So I told her what it meant, which made her cry even harder, and then I told the story of the girl who has to let all the feathers go and then is told to pick them all up. I think she got it. She stayed home for an hour to get herself together and then I took her to school where she met with her councilor about what to do from here.

On the way out of the parking lot I glared at the building disappearing in my rear view mirror. My daughter is in the 7th grade, she's been in public schools most of her life and yet she learned the word slut from me?

If that's not evidence of the failure of a decent public education, I don't know what is.

My Issues

First--thank you to everyone that came out or offered 'wish I were there' vibes for the signing last night. I appreciate it. I loved visiting with everyone that came--it really is a fun moment to have your friends around you and saying how cute the cover is and how excited they are to read it. I have the best support!

Now, back to my issues.

Because so many of my books deal with contemporary issues, people sometimes think that I have dealt with some of those particular challenges in my own life. Thankfully, no. That's not to say that I don't love a couple addicts, that there isn't mental illness in my family tree, or that I'm always nice to my husband--but overall, no, I've never been sexually abused, addicted to pain pills, married for convenience, had my identity stolen or my daughter kidnapped. I've never been divorced, or held at gun point or so sick with my pregnancy that I might die. But that's not to say I don't have issues.

One of them has reared it's ugly head today and I am trying very hard to stay calm, filling myself with positive affirmations, and keeping things in perspective.

Alas, I might lose the battle.

So, here's the thing. A couple weeks ago, Northern Utah (where I live) got drenched with rain. We already had a bunch of snow on the ground and then it rained for almost 3 full days, turning us into a cold soggy mess. But, a mess that stayed outside so it was okay. A week later I went into our spare bedroom downstairs and found the carpet was wet. Apparently, the rain gutter had been draining into the window well of that room during all that rain, and the water had come through the window, drenching the floor. We called a disaster clean up place who sucked out the water, pulled back the carpet, and put blowers on it all to dry it out. That's all good--well, okay, it's not GOOD as in wonderful, but I can handle minor household disasters like that from time to time. It's good for my blood pressure to spike under the "This is so not fair!" dramas of such things. I can handle it and move on. The plan was to dry it all out, replace the sheet rock affected, and then re-stretch the carpet.

And then Lee says "Maybe we should just replace the carpet."
"In the whole basement?" I ask, wondering where he came up with five thousand dollars.
"No, just that room."
My mouth goes dry and I clench my teeth. "We can't do that," I say.
"Sure we can, that carpet is crap anyway."
"Yes, and if you put good carpet in one room, the rest of the basement will look even crappier."
"No, it won't."
"Yes, it will! You know how I feel about floor covering, Lee, don't push me."

See, I believe all floor coverings should be the same. Since carpet is impractical in kitchens and bathrooms, I've accepted that it's usually necessary to have two types of floor covering in a house--but they should all match and all the carpet should be the same and all the tile or linoleum or hard wood should be the same--and only one of those options! Yes, the basement carpet is really lousy--but it matches! It's hard enough for me to accept that upstairs and downstairs doesn't have the same carpet, that we have TWO types of tile, and that we, gulp, re-carpeted the living room a few years ago because off white right off the kitchen is just no good. Luckily, the new carpet only touches tile, but just because it's not as bad as it could be doesn't make it right!



Do you see it? Three types of floor covering in four square feet. I know, it's horrible, isn't it?




Here is the current carpet in the basement--it's a commercial grade, very tight Berber.



The seams are coming apart, there are a few spots that are totally unraveling but I prefer it to the nauseating aspect of carpet clash--you know, where two different types of carpet touch each other. Shudder. I just hate that. I mean, I really, really hate it.

And yet, I might not have any choice--Lee's afraid the carpet won't be salvageable after we finish the repairs. So I must pull on the fortitude inspired in me through my faithful ancestors, I must absorb into my soul that life will go on. I'm sure I'll grow from the suffering, but that doesn't mean I'll like it.

And so, you can see why, when it comes to fiction, I choose those things that are detached from my personal pain. Sadly, there are some things, such as carpet clashes, that I hit a little too close to home to write a story about. Every author has to draw the line somewhere.

Mom Jeans

I have clothing issues every day of my life. Things are constantly too tight or too loose or too short or too long or too plain or too busy or too complicated or too low or or too whatever. This is why you can usually find me in my scrub bottoms that I've owned for over 15 years and a sweatshirt. I swore when I got married that I would not turn into the sweat-pants-mom, and I suppose I haven't, I'm just the scrubs-and-a-sweatshirt mom. It really annoys me because I want to be the cute mom but results show that I go for comfy more than cute.

My current dilemma is Jeans. Back in the good old days, Jeans came to my actual waist, I didn't have an extra ten pounds on my derriere (that's french for butt) and I had no problem feeling both cute and comfy in a pair of jeans.

That, however, has faded. Now a days I feel neither cute or comfy and I am tired--tired of constantly pulling my shirts down, tired of not being able to bend over, tired of sitting on the floor only to realize I'm preaching my religion by showing off my garments to the whole world. And, for short waisted people like myself, low-rise jeans hit at the wrong spot--they are too high to rest on my hips which leaves a gap in the waistband, and when you sit they catch on those hips they can't rest on and puuuuuuull. I actually went almost a year without wearing jeans at all because I had . . . issues which I truly believe were brought on by the crotch on these dang-fungled jeans. In addition, my thirties has brought with it what I affectionately call my 'gob' which is a roll of 'love' located below my belly botton, but inevitably ABOVE the waistband of my pants, often catching the shirt I've chosen to wear that is long enough to overlap the pants so long as I don't sit, bend, or reach.

I've been watching too much What Not to Wear and they constantly point out that a wider leg jean slims the leg and hip whereas 'shaped' jeans make the hip and thigh area look bigger . I now see this every time I look in the mirror--they DO make my hips and thighs look wider in addition to the Gob squeezed over the top, and the gap in the waistband, and then there's the line where my garmets disect the gob etc. I need wide leg jeans that come to my waist and fit there. Problem--where the heck to do you find these magical jeans?

Last saturday as a salve to yet another blonde issue (posted later this week) I went to Kohl's. They were having a one day sale and I decided I deserved a new pair of jeans. I really do not like to shop, but I spent forty-five minutes trying on about 30 pair of jeans. Mind you, these were twenty pair of 'women's' jeans. I'd already determined that Misses jeans were not going to work because they are all hippy-low-rise-flair jeans. I instead tried on Gloria Vandervilt, Lee, Levi, and all the other jeans in the Women's section--which did have a benifit in that I wear a smaller size in Womens jeans than in Misses jeans. Out of those thirty pair I found one that was acceptable. It has a hiiiiiigh waist--remember I'm short waisted so while it would hit most women at their waist, for me it comes up to my rib cage, but it held in my gob and I could wear it with more modesty than most of the other pants I own. I liked the leg which is a boot cut--loose with a slight flair, but not super-shaped, and they were comfortable. I could actually imagine wearing them and NOT taking them off as soon as I got home (I rarely wear other jeans at home--only when I'm going out and have to look presentable)

So, yesturday I took Lou-lou to the mall. She suggested that I ought to buy a pair of Jeans, since she was getting a pair. I smiled smugly and said, "No, I just bought these."

She takes a long look at me and her eyes narrow. "Are those Mom Jeans?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, feigning that I don't know what she means.

"Oh my gosh," she says as only a 12 year old. "You did, you're actually wearing mom jeans--those pants that go aaaaaaall the way up and look weird." She shakes her head sadly and let's herself out of the car, leaving me to scrape what's left of my dignity and cuteness into my poor little hands.

So, help me out here, ladies, have you found the solution? If so, share it.

If you wear Mom Jeans and you are offended by this post, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intent.

Blonde Moment # 10,569

Wednesday I had a GREAT writing day. GREAT writing days have been rather hard for me to come by lately. I'm on my very first deadline and finding it to not be nearly as cool as I thought it would be. I've been writing like mad and cranking out the words--but it hasn't been fun, I've constantly questioned what I'm writing, and though I like what I'd created I knew it wasn't fabulous. So basically I was spending all my time working on something I wasn't liking very much. I've been writing on a timer--which means I make myself write for 30 minutes, then go do something fun--like clean a toilet, mop the floor, sort socks. What, those don't sound fun? EXACTLY my point. When things like that become the reward for writing, it says a lot about how much I've been enjoying the writing, doesn't it?

But Wednesday was a GREAT writing day. Tuesday had also been good, which made Wednesday even better. I wrote for almost four hours--didn't even think about laundry or flossing or anything like that. My wonderful, fabulous, cheerleading friend Julie had put me on a 1,300/day diet back in December so I could finish this book. I'd been following her plan, but calling every few days to whine about it (keep in mind Julie has two full time jobs on top of her own writing--and I'm complaining to her because I only have 6 hours a day to myself. Yes, I have fabo friends that put up with me).

I felt like I'd finally broken that barrier and I had to call her and tell her about it--knowing she would scream and squeal on the other end of the line and drop everything to tell me how happy she was for me.

So I dialed her number, waited three rings and heard, "Hello."

(Imagine this next part being said at 100 miles an hour in my high-pitched excited voice) Hi, it's me, I just had to call you because I knew you'd be so happy for me, I'm writing, and I love it and I resolved all those stupid plot holes and I'm so dang excited and I actually like this and it's finally just coming to me, ya know, and I feel like I could write for hours--I'm like some kind of super hero--and . . . hello? . . . hello?"

She'd hung up on me!

Well, that was rather anti-clamatic. So I hit redial and just happen to glance at the number before putting it to my ear. Was that a 9 instead of a 6? It's supposed to be a 6. Did I dial the wrong number?

Sure did.

Some lady with a prefix of 849 was just reminded that she needed to talk to her kids about the dangers of drug use again.

Leaving, on a Jet Plane

So, my husband is on his way to Costa Rica on business today. We had tried to figure out how I could go so that we could find a hammock somewhere and have an entire conversation, but with $600/airline ticket and four kids, we had to give up the dream. His flight left at 8:00 and we live an hour from the airport, so last night I set the alarm for 5:05, giving him 40 minutes to get ready and then he'd arrive within an hour and a half of his flight. It's all good, right?

Well, it only works if you turn the alarm ON.

At 6:30 I wake up and I slug Lee in the shoulder. "It's 6:30!" I say as I scramble out of bed and then just stand there. How am I supposed to help him?

"It is not," he says, jumping out of bed, looking at the clock. "Crap, it's 6:30!"

He runs into the bathroom to stick his head under the tap and throw on the clothes he'd set out. I stand in the middle of the room for a minute, then go into the kitchen, then come back into the bedroom and then inspect the alarm clock. "I didn't turn it on," I say, finally awake enough to figure it out.

Proof that I married an amazing man="It's okay," he says after rinsing with some mouth wash cause he doesn't have time to brush his teeth. You have to understand that my husband is a little obsessive about his morning routine--he always showers, even if he's going to do yard work and knows he'll shower when he finishes, and he always brushes his teeth for a full 2 minutes (which is why he's had 2 cavities in his life--I've had dozens). If he'd done this to me I'd be totally ticked and making snide comments that could sound like I wasn't mad, but really left little room for any doubt.

He double checks his bags and puts on his shoes while I go back to standing in the middle of the room. I did pick up his lap top bag and hold it for him. He finishes up, kisses me, takes the laptop and disappears into the morning.

At 8:09 I receive this e-mail from his blackberry

I think i made it to the parking lot in about 45 minutes(i was flying and no traffic.) Bus was fast at parknjet. Check in was fast but they said we board in 2 minutes! I ran to security and the line was huge! I finally got through that and got to the gate just as my group was called. Thanks for your help. I will chat with u later...miss u already

Did I totally luck out in the husband department, or what?

All this reminded me of an essay contest I entered last year--it's very fitting right about now. And Even though I've gotten used to Lee being out of town, and he's going to be back on Tuesday, for some reason it's different when he's going that far away. So, although some of you read this when I won the contest, I'm gunna post it again because I miss my sweetie.

My Ideal Day
By Josi S. Kilpack

Seawater clings to my skin and the tropical flora seem intent to convince me nothing in the world exists but this—right here, right now. Somewhere up the beach fish is grilling while beans boil in a covered pot. Mangos are in season and their ripening scent competes with that of the flowers all around me.

Can you smell it?

The call of a thousand sea birds fills the sky and my hammock creaks amid it’s swaying. The Ocean breeze creates a whispered symphony as it travels through the palm leaves above, behind, beside me. His footsteps approach while the waves crash and crash and crash upon the shore. They keep rhythm with my breathing until he whispers in my ear and breath deserts me entirely.

Can you hear it?

The air is thick and salty, each wave sending a tribute of itself toward the heavens when it breaks upon the beach. The sand is soft and supple on my feet and the world is moving back and forth as the hammock sways. Back and forth, back and forth. His hand lingers on my cheek, my neck, my shoulder and we try and see if it's a hammock built for two.

Can you feel it?

Sky as big as it’s ever been, the flat and flawless countenance broken only by the constant motion of the sea. His eyes are as blue as the ocean surrounding us and the grasses and ferns are so green it's as if the color was invented just for them. The sun is made brighter by the reflection of whitened sand as his footprints are sucked back into the sea with every wave that rolls upon the beach.

Can you see it?

I am late for nothing and no one depends on me to be fed, or cleaned, or delivered. I have no deadlines, no appointments, no bills to pay, or calls to make. There are no excuses to fill my mind. There is no distraction from our course. And he is here too, as free as me. We have nothing to do but find us again; the us that sometimes gets lost in the laundry and board meetings, the carpools and lawn mowing.

With a little luck, the journey back to us will take all day.

And in case you haven't had enough of me today--I was a featured Molly on Modern Molly Mormon today :-)

Proof I'm a Terrible Person.

Our house is officially listed (click HERE if you know someone intersted in horse property and a custom home in Northern Utah to see the listing)and we had our first walk through last weekend. The feedback we got was that they hated the basement carpet (I don't blame them, so do I) and that they smelled the cats.

I was truly shocked, and embarrassed, by this. My husband, however, was vindicated. He's been telling me for years that I've lost my ability to really smell them and at least twice a week he goes down stairs and says he can smell them. I've truly felt he was being over reactive and since I know he's never wanted the cats in the house, I haven't given his opinion much weight.

I stated a couple weeks ago that I'm tired of the cats, that the kids aren't taking care of them and I've hit my limit. One had peed in my room in the middle of the night, the other one has shredded the carpet on the stair landing. I vowed that I was done doing anything other than buying cat food, that if the kids wanted cats, they would have to step up. Since then the kids have been trying to do better--but they pretty much suck at it. They'll feed the cats without complaint, but the litter box is ignored until mom throws the cats out and says they can't come in until the litter box is changed. Before the walk through we cleaned like crazy, I cleaned all around the litter box, we put it outside, we sprayed air neutralizer and yet it STILL smelled like cats.

Husband and I decided the cats were outside from now on but the kids simply could not keep from letting the cats in. The cats would go into their window wells and meow until the kids broke. They still aren't emptying the litter box.

We want to sell the house and we can't have it smelling like cats.

We discussed options but decided, in the end, to take them to the shelter. One cat is a Siamese fixed, declawed female that is a really pretty and really good cat. We feel like she'll be easily adopted. The other is a fixed male. I worry about him, but he's pretty too. We decided we had to do what was ultimatly in the best interest of our family--and it's in our best interest to sell this house and to do that it needs to be in top shape.

It all made sense until I went to gather them up this morning. By the time Lee drove off I was a mess. He didn't know what do to make me feel better about it, and I don't know either. I beleive this is the best solution, but I feel like I've just given away part of my children's childhood. Lots of people have cats and manage to take care of them. Why is it so hard for us to do it? We sold our puppy two months ago because we were over our heads trying to train her and take care of her properly. We kept Tex, but we're struggling with that too. The kids are put out to have to feed him and play with him every day, we can't let him in the house because he's not house trained and he likes to get skunks mad at him. It seems like a miserable existance for the poor thing--so do we get rid of him too? Are we just total snobs?

To make it worse, the kids have no idea we were planning this. It seemed like the best way when we came up with it, but now I'm not so sure. They're going to ask, and since Lee's going out of town I get to deal with it by myself again--like I did with the puppy. I feel like I've failed them--the kids and the pets.

So please, I beg of you, if I ever talk about getting another animal (other than chickens) please tell me to come back and read this post. I'm not cut out to properly care for them and then it breaks my heart when I finally act on that truth.

It might be a very long day today.

Surviving a Crash

I know, I know, you're all sick and tired of hearing my whine about my crash--I get it, I'm tired of whining about it. However, this post isn't about my whining (well, maybe a little bit) it's mostly about pointing out the things I've learned since this happened to me. So, here goes. Take it for what it's worth. As my friend Eric says "There are two kinds of computer users in the world, those that have lost a hard drive and those that will" I just hope it never happens to me again, or that I'm more prepared for it if it does.

1) Make a bootable back up. Many of us have a back up of some kind. The difference between a regular back up and a bootable back up is that you can actually run your computer off a bootable back up. If you lost your hard drive, you can then plug in your bootable back up and run everything just as you had it the last time you backed up to it. I'm now using a free-ware program called Super Duper (It's specifically for Macs) on my external hard drive (which was on my shelves, unused, for a year before I crashed. In 30 minutes I could have had a completely bootable back up system but it was too haaaaard, so I didn't use it. I'm using it now). This option stores data AND programs.

2) Have secondary back up. This can be a jump drive, or CD's or online storage of some kind. I'm now doing CD's once a month. If for some reason I crashed again and couldn't use my bootable back up, I could back up with CD's. This isn't a perfect form, as it won't retain program information and has a high failure incidence, but it will hold things like documents, pictures, movies, music, and other data that you will want to use.

3) Know how to use your back up options. I had subscribed to .mac for back up. I had problems figuring it out and so I settled for only backing up my documents. I'm very glad I did, but the way it worked was that it made a master back up and then saved anything that was changed every day. This is great, in that the back ups were fast (after the first one) and I didn't worry about it, but in order to restore my back ups I had 200 incremental backups I had to restore one at a time. I learned the hard way that the restore feature is very complicated, especially if you had to get a new hard drive and reroute the restore because the original location is not there. It took me hours and hours and hours, and I am still missing about 20% of my documents. I decided to recover those most valuble to me, but I know I will kick myself for many months as I remember another project I didn't restore. The problem is that there is no way for me to find a specific document other than opeing each of those 200 restores--which takes about 5 minutes to do. So, know how your back up works, practice restoring something so that you know how to use it. The mac back up program was very disappointing for me and yet I put my faith in it anyway. It also didn't back up my web builder pages because I assumed they were stored through the server that hosted them--not so. My website will stay as it is right now, but I have to completely rebuild my website before the next time I update it--which will take me several hours and I don't have the photos I used on there originally.

4) Subscribe to an online photo hosting program. Whether you use wal-mart, walgreens, shutterfly, or some other thing, having a seperate server to store your photos is a really good idea. I did a digital scrapbook last year, and thank goodness I did. It has a year's worth of family photos I'd have lost otherwise. I was waiting to do my 2008 photos until after the end of the year and lost all of them. I'm currenly working on downloading the 2007 photos back to my computer.

5) If you're crashed, don't keep pushing on the gas. When your car dies and you keep pushing the gas as you try to start it, you flood the engine. When your computer crashes and you keep trying to bring it back up over and over again, you burn up your head or risk jamming your spindles. My computer crashed on a Sunday, I googled a dozen ways to bring it back by myself and spent several hours trying over and over and over to bring it up. Whether or not this is why my hard drive is now inaccessible for basic data recovery is unknown, but it certainly doesn't help. I had no idea this was an issue until I got the estimate of $1600 to retreave the information because the head was bad on my hard drive. They tech reccomended that next time I even suspect I've had a hard drive crash, to leave the computer alone until someone can look at it. There's a chance that had I done this and my hard drive wasn't so burnt up by the time I took it in that I could have recovered my data for about $80.

6) Use Data Recovery experts. If you need your data recovered, don't waste time and money on a regular computer fix-it shop. Find an actual data recovery specialist. This might present itself a little more expensive, but they can more correctly identify what went wrong and reccomend the best way to proceed.

Anyway, there it is. I hope you and me both learn from my mistakes this time around.

Complicated, complicated

Anyone that knows me knows how much I LOVE complications. It just gives me the chance to shrug my shoulders and say, "Hey, it's a new adventure."

Whatever.

I hate complications. I hate it when things don't work. I take little satisfaction in fixing things that should not go wrong in the first place. I can't stand it when things go wrong, especially when it's my fault. With that, here is my day:

7:45--get up, eat, get kids syked for the race we're running in Tremonton today.
8:15--Wake up husband, make him eat breakfast, run around the house trying to find shoes while grumbling "Why can't you guys just put your shoes away when you take them off, then you'd know right where they are!" In my 15 years of motherhood I've said this about ninety-seven thousand times. You'd think they would figure it out!
8:45--Print of flier from internet about the race, quickly review the time and place. Herd kids to car.
9:20--Arrive in Tremonton (30 miles away) and decide RIGHT THEN (not half an hour ago) to read the details of the race. Notice it says November 10--not November 8. Shake my head and talk about how important it is to proofread. Idiots.
9:21--Pull up to the Senior Center where the race is supposed to begin only to find it surrounded by red ski netting and the whole building a pile of debris.
9:22--make husband drive to city park because of course that's where they moved the race to since the senior center is being demolished. Ignore questions on why they would put the senior center on the flier if they knew it was going to be demolished.
9:23--Go into the library to look for a notice about the race change of location. Their community bullitin board sucks and has no information.
9:25--Pull into a gasstation, buy a local paper, give have to the husband who finds out the race is on the 15th--next weekend. Look at my flier and realize it's from LAST YEAR!!
9:27--Head back toward home, trying to blame the city for keeping an old notice on their website. Explain to boy-child that he now has to go to dance practice.
9:37--Grind teeth as boy-child cries and tells us how much he hates dance.
9:40--Get boy-child to shut up by promising him a Slurpee.
9:42--Get youngest child to shut up by promising her a slurpee too.
9:50--Pull up to high school where dance rehearsal is supposed to take place.
9:52--Take boy child inside only to have him tell me that practice is at the dance studio today, they told him last week and he forgot to tell me alllll week as well as the last 15 minutes we've been discussing it in the car.
9:58--Drop still sulking boy-child off at dance studio.
10:05--Stop at 7-11 for water and potty break. We decided to go run at the high-school track rather than drive home while son goes to last hour of practice.
10:07--Wait behind an overweight family of 9 filling up on $30 worth of nachos, slurpees, donuts, pop, and hot dogs. They paid for it with food stamps. I had to scrounge up quarters to buy water bottles.
10:15--Get on track, stretch out, get ready to go only to have youngest child tell us she needs to go Pee. We JUST left 7-11. Husband and I exchange those looks that say "Why did we have children?"
10:20--I told husband to run, I'll take youngest child to a bathroom.
10:25--Sneek youngest child into high school swimming pool bathroom.
10:30--Return to track, run 1.75 miles while stewing in my own negativity.
10:50--Leave track to pick up boy child
11:00--pick up boy--I'm so ready to go home--and get reminded that we owe him a Slurpee which means we have to go BACK into Brigham City before going home.

Luckily--it got better once we got home and now I get to do yard work. Let's hope next week it goes a bit smoother.

My New Brain

So, after my computer crash, I got a new hard drive. Fresh and clean as a newborn baby--and empty of a great deal of information. I found an excel document where I had backed up my address list last February. It took a great deal of hard work on my part to get it into an importable format, but I did it (just don't ask me how because I won't remember). I imported it back into my e-mail program but lost all my group configurations. Today, I am spamming everyone in my address book to see if they want to be re-added to my mailing list. This is also allowing me to get rid of defunct addresses--hey, I'm looking for positives!

However, because this list was only up until last February, if you and I started communicated via e-mail since that time, you no longer exist in my new brain (much like the last 2 years of family pictures I also lost). If you would be so kind, would you e-mail me at kilpack@gmail.com. You don't have to pat me on the head or tell me dirty jokes to make me smile (name that song!) just an e-mail so I can add you to my address book which will now be backed up regularly along with the five family pictures I have off of my digital camera that I hadn't downloaded yet.

If you were on or would like to be on my mailing list, let me know in the e-mail and I'll add you to that group as well.

Thanks much,

CRASH

On Sunday my hard drive crashed. I have a Mac that I fairly worship (as anyone who has heard me pontificate can attest) It's not supposed to crash. It's supposed to be celestial, alas--it is not. I had subscribed to a backup program several months ago, but cheaped out on the storage space and decided I only wanted to back up my documents.

NOT my photos
NOT my financial systems
NOT my e-mails
NOT my address book

Who needs family photos organized into months just waiting to be put into an online 2008 digital scrapbook, right? Who needs the 200 ward photos collected over the last year so that I can put together the ward DVD? Who needs to know what's been paid to whom for the coming tax season? Who needs the fan mail, registration reminders, passwords, recipes, etc that were saved in my numerous e-mail folders? Who needs the 300 email addresses I've spent six years compiling for my newsletter lists?

Apparently, I didn't value these things enough to take care of them. I had made no CD back ups, I had deleted all photos from my digital camera, I had not saved my address book as a document. They are gone unless by some miracle the tech at the store is able to salvage anything for the $80/hour data retrieval I'm taking my hold hard drive into for today. He told me not to hold my breath. I've spent the last 2 days trying to figure out the back up program and have managed to restore my documents. I'm very happy about that, but it doesn't take the pain of losing everything else away.

If it was only my computer that crashed, I'd be okay. I could just pick up and move forward--like I usually do. Mourn a little, rant about my ignorance, and work on getting over it. But someone I love very much emotionally crashed as well. I absolutely hate the feeling of helplessness and I'm being told that I have no responsibility in the personal issues that are pressing against me. I'm told that it's her problem. Well, if I have no responsibility then I'm helpless to help her. Kind of like my computer. I know I was ignorant and lazy in my backup practices--and now I'm paying for that. I'm learning to be more prepared. I can fix it in the future because I know I was irresponsible and I can fix that. However, if this problem she's dealing with isn't because of anything I've done or not done, then how can I do anything about it? I'm either responsible or I'm helpless--give me one of them so I know where I stand! As it is I feel impotent on every front, dependant on other people to help both sides of my melt down while I flutter around in the middle.

I wish I could sleep for the next two years, except that I'm getting old enough to know that though time heals all wounds, it continually brings new ones with it. I'd wake up just as battered.

However, I've learned a few things over the last few days:

1--Even when I yell at God he doesn't yell back, but most everyone else does
2--Having faith in inadequacy results in failure
3--Eye make-up is not for the emotionally unstable
4--Talking about things doesn't always help
5--Talking to therapists sometimes does
6--Home is only a happy place when the people in it are smiling
7--I can pretend to be fine even when I'm screaming inside
8--Alone in the car is the best place to cry
9--There are far worse things than computer crashes
10--Without the gospel none of it would be worth it--and sometimes it's hard to remember that the gospel helps that much. That's where testimony comes in handy--I know I know it even when I don't feel it.

The purpose of this post is to, well, throw a little self-pity and rediculous emotion into the universe I guess. The world always needs a little more of that, right?

HELP ME, the google reader idiot

So I've heard people talking about google reader and I want to love it. I really, really, really want to love it. But so far I don't. I've been working on it all dang day and it's got to be easier than I'm making it to be. I added my blogs to my blogger dashboard but now I can't figure out how to import them into the reader thing. I mean, I know there are horrible things like a crumbling economy and world hunger going on, but I am dang annoyed I can't figure this out. I want to read all my blogs in one place like everyone else and it's making me swear.

So, someone much smarter than me (uh, that would be everyone) help me out here. Is there no easier way of doing it other than typing in the url on the reader page? I'm a horrible speller and I keep going to blogs and exiting before I note how they are spelled. And can I put it as a feed in my toolbar like I have some of my other favoritist blogs. I want to! And if I can't, I'm gunna be even madder!

Here's what I need to know:
*Can I put it in my toolbar like an RSS feed. If so, how, if not, why the $%#@!! not, this is America!
*Can I reply on the actual reader page or do I have to go to the blog every time?
*Can I import my 'blogs I'm following' or do I seriously have to type them all out?
*Is this really worth it?

Thanks in advance, and my apologies for my unnecessary emotional state about this. I can't explain my state of mind in a way that will make sense so I'll stop here.

If you're not happy and you know it. . .

I'm not happy.

I'm very very very very not happy. And I have lots of reasons:

1) Today is the second day of my isagenix cleanse. My intake consists of 2 oz. of the Isogenix supreme guck that tastes like Blackberry Brandy mixed with BBQ sauce. Nasty. Then, four times a day I chug 4 oz. of this cleanse juice muck that tastes like fermented snow cone syrup without the sugar. I'm allowed a few 'cheats' so yesterday I combined them at dinner and had a salad made of spring greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and a hard boiled egg with lemon juice as dressing. It was the best and worst salad I've ever had in my life. I bought these special Isadelight things which are chocolates you can have to help when you feel like you're starving to death. I was very much looking forward to them and was disappointed--Annette Lyon would be appalled that they are called chocolate at all. They are really hard, bitter, dark chocolate that only makes me feel more sorry for myself. The good news, I can have 6 of those tasty morsels every day! Tomorrow I go back to shakes and I can't wait. Right now I feel sick to my stomach and tired since I didn't sleep very well all night and I honestly kept dreaming about food. The energy/mood enhancement I felt before has flushed itself along with the 70 oz of water I'm drinking every day. The ONLY reason I'm still doing this is because I did my weigh and measuring thing before I started the cleanse, and in the 5 days on the program I lost almost 7 inches (2.5 around my waist) and nearly 5 pounds (I know, I hardly believe it myself). The cleanse supposedly increases all that so I'm sticking with it but I am really not happy--did I mention that?

2) A year ago I purchased a set of digital scrapbooks--biting off way more than I could chew as usual. I finished one book--a wedding album I have wanted since the wedding and never did. I am currently working on a 2007 family album. I had some stress because I'd bought a bunch of different 'books' and you only have a year to work on them. No way was I going to use them in time. And yet I was being charged extra for the extra pages I was putting in my 2007 book. Last week my consultant went to bat for me and I will be able to use the 'credits' of the projects I won't be using toward the extra pages--all good news. So today, I woke up early and came to my husband's office where the internet is faster than home. At home it takes me FOREVER to do this digital scrapbooking, often my pages time out before they load everything up. I have to get this book done before we go on our family vacation in 2 weeks and figured I could get most of what's left finished this morning. So I get up early, chug my morning muck, and get down here to find that I need to pay for my studio things (the digital version of paper, stickers, lettering etc)--but it won't take either credit card and customer service doesn't open until 9:00. A lovely waste of my time.

3) I'm doing a yard sale with a friend tomorrow. I have cleared out a lot of closets and basement and am gearing up for the event, but I really hate yard sales. No, I don't want this stuff anymore, but do we really need to ague about the price of quilt batting? I have a fabulous memory when it comes to prices and I know I paid $8 for that batting and yet I know someone will say "Fifty cents? I'll give you a quarter". Yard sell buyers are merciless and it really ticks me off. I did promise my husband that whatever doesn't sell will go to DI--but I just wish it was over already. I haven't done one for about 10 years and the stress of all this has reminded me why that is.

4) I dropped a dog house on my toe on Saturday. It was an awful messy ordeal and I limped all weekend. I haven't gone running all week because it's still be sore. Today I put on my running shoes, although the idea of going for a run makes me dizzy in my current physical state, but I was hoping they wouldn't hurt my feet so that I could 'think' about running next week. But they hurt--they hurt bad and because I'm in the mood to whine and feel sorry for myself it's just one more thing.

Anyway--there were some questions about how long I'm doing this Isagenix thing. They have a variety of programs. What I'm doing right now is the 30 day Health and Wellness (the two shakes a day plus supplements) it's their weight loss program and some people stay on it for several months, I'm just using it as a jump start and next month I will go on their 30 day maintenance program which is one shake a day plus supplements. But in addition to the 30 day program I'm on, I chose to do a 9 day cleanse in the middle, to get even faster results. I'm glad to be losing the inches and the weight, but since I did this mostly for emotional wellness, and I'm feeling so cruddy right now, I'm not sure I should have done the 9 day cleanse. However, I'm nothing if not masochistic so I'll finish it off. After the two days I'm doing right now, I'll do 5 shake days (like I did before the cleanse) and then do two more days of this cleanse crap. I'm really looking forward to all that, as I've made abundantly clear.

Did you know you can't put a ! in the labels field on blogger--that's just lame!