Turning Forty

This is the year I turn forty.

via GIPHY

I don’t feel bad about that, don’t feel like I’m losing my youth or anything (demonstrably I’m a lot less mature than many a forty-year-old anyway). Actually, I’m rather excited, and I have plans that I need your help with. But first, the explanation:

***

On the way home from another woman’s fortieth birthday bash recently, Brice turned to me and asked, “What do you want for your fortieth birthday?”

And I wasn’t sure what to answer.

I can usually buy for myself most of the “stuff” that I want. And the things that I can’t buy—time, patience, sleep, etc.—can be carefully worked in to life but can’t really be given as gifts. (Though Brice is always excellent at working in extra time for naps and alone time around my birthday.)

Parties? Gifts? What did I really want?

***

A couple years back on Twitter (I think) I saw someone make a comment about how women turning forty come into their powers and should celebrate by running wild with the wolves, that sort of thing. And for a while I kind of envisioned doing something immense and wacky for my fortieth. But to be honest, I’m not a run-naked-in-the-moonlight kind of gal (plus, egad, all the prickles here! and the summertime snakes! no running naked in the bush, thankyouverymuch).

I spent a lot of time wondering what I really did want to do. What would make me the happiest? I have lots of swirling thoughts, but I have condensed some of them down to a few actionable items, and I need your help to make them happen.

 

So what do I want?

I want to support my friends in their creative endeavors.

I want to support the creation of things that bring beauty into the world.

I want to support things that bring joy into the world.

I want to be a creator of some of that joy—or at least contribute to its creation.

 

 

Here’s how you can help:

via GIPHY

 

1. Sell me something beautiful. Or charming. Or quirky and fun. Are you a maker of something? Crafts? Art? Photography? ... Something else? (Not books, we’ll get to books in a minute.) I want to know about things that you (or your children or spouse) make. Or I guess I’d also accept things that someone you know makes, if you think they’re wonderful (but I want to stick to people I’m closely connected to; don’t just tell me about a cool creator you ran across on Youtube).

Tell me about the thing you make. Give me a link (if you don’t have an online store, send me a picture!). I can’t buy everything, of course, but I can buy some things. So tell me so I have lots of options to choose from! As a sidenote, I’d especially love to hear about why you create what you do—this isn’t a sales pitch, I am just excited to hear your stories.

2. Author friends: Tell me about your favorite book by a different author friend. I have no doubt your books are amazing (and, given that I buy a LOT more books than I ever manage to read, I probably have already bought one of your books), but I want to hear you brag about books by your friends this time around.

3. Tell me about a mutual friend who could use a gift. In theory, I could be buying several items, and I may not be keeping them all. Who knows? (Not me. I have no idea if this idea is going to really explode or totally tank.) But, as my 13yo decided this year for her birthday, I want to at least sort of celebrate “hobbit style” (by giving gifts to other people). So who needs some extra love via a silly small gift? (Tell me this privately please, via messenger or email or something).

4. Make a video and share your love of simple things! Are you a pet rock enthusiast? Do you love telling people about your favorite dinosaur? Have you just been waiting for someone to ask you about how to ___________? Now’s your chance! Pretend I asked, and send me a short video (1–3 minutes) about something you adore, something that excites you, something you think is just plain wonderful.

It doesn’t have to be professional or fantastically edited or anything nifty. Just something you love. I really, really want to hear about it.

 

So, if you are inclined to help me celebrate my fortieth birthday in the way that would make me ever-so-happy (and will hopefully make you happy too), then help me out! 

via GIPHY

Wisdom from Our Addra

(Essentially I copied this from where I originally posted it on Facebook.)

Okay, this is partially a braggy post about how great my 9yo is. But it’s also partially a really great bit of wisdom (from her). So if you want to skip the braggy bit, just go down and read the last three paragraphs. You’ll be glad you did.

In our church, members of the congregation are asked to speak on various topics (we don’t have paid clergy who preach every week). Our family was asked to speak this week—whoever we wanted from the family. So we went home and discussed it and decided that Brice, the 12yo, and I would speak. The 9yo at that time didn’t feel like she wanted to.

Fast forward to this morning, sitting in church before the meeting started, and the 9yo leaned over and said, “Who’s speaking?”

I told her and then ask, “Did you want to speak?” I fully expected her to say no.

She kind of nodded and said, “Maybe.”

So we figured we could give her the space to do it. She tried her talk on Brice while we were sitting there, and then when the time came, she just went right up and gave that talk. No prompting or help from us, except for one small comment from Brice before she did it. And her talk was beautiful and sweet and just perfect coming from her.

I am in awe of this child sometimes. I don’t understand her half the time; she is a mystery—the way her mind works, the things she thinks about, the way she sees the world. But sometimes she pulls back the curtain a bit, and I get to see the incredible soul that she is inside, and I’m so grateful for that. I’m grateful that our Heavenly Parents entrusted her to our family, because she’s something pretty special.

And now for the talk (this is obviously just my basic summary, not word-for-word). She went up and talked about a time recently when she took a bunch of little scraps of fabric from our fabric bin and she put them together and made them into something that brought her happiness and that she has been able to enjoy and play with. She could have just cut the scrap fabric up, and that would have been fun and she would have been happy, but then a few minutes later it wouldn’t matter at all. She encouraged and invited the congregation to use our scraps of time in doing things that will bring long-term happiness into our lives.

She said that you could just eat a piece of chocolate cake sitting out on the counter and you would be happy about it for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t matter for very long. Or you could spend that time cooking something that you could then share with a neighbor, and it would make you happy and that happiness would last for longer.

So, my friends, use your scraps of time in things that will bring you and those around you some long-lasting happiness. Wisdom brought to you by my daughter, who made this doll with her scraps of fabric. (I'll add a photo when I have it.)

Travel Recap, part 2

Here I am, already way behind on sharing what we've been up to so far! But here's the rest of the travel recap at least.

The next leg was the hard one. We were already totally exhausted, and our flight didn’t depart until 11 p.m., with a 15-hour flight time. Fortunately, though we were last-minute adds to the flight (since we were a full day behind our original itinerary at this point), a very wonderful lady on the flight traded places with us so that we could have two full rows instead of a row, a pair, and a single. People like this make the world go ‘round.

Good thing I didn't need to get up too many times, because this was my life for most of the flight.

Here’s how the flight went: Koa fell asleep in the stroller before we even boarded the plane. (Our stroller! Another blessing! We were going to send it in the car but discovered that wasn’t allowed—so we had it for all these adventures, which was so necessary when Koa started getting sick and tired). Ammon fell asleep in Brice’s arms. Coriel and Addra were dead on their feet. So I sat between Koa and Coriel, and Brice sat with Ammon and Addra. Coriel flopped all around for many hours, sometimes into my lap, sometimes on my shoulder—it was funny and a little sad watching her try to get comfy, but at least she was getting some sleep!). Koa too flopped around a bit. Predictably, he threw up again. I had these fancy, wonderful Medline barf bags that Dawn had given me (bless you!), and... I won’t go into more details here, but let’s say they were wonderful but not quite perfect when you can’t get the kid to hold still. Anyway, we got that taken care of. Ammon slept a bunch, Addra too I think (I was too full of the other kids to notice). Brice and I slept very little.

But we all watched a lot of movies! Eventually it was starting to feel like morning to us, so we got movies galore. (Okay, I think it was only 3-ish, but it felt like more.)

I watched Christopher Robin with Koa. At least until we both fell asleep during it, then I kept waking up and feeling like I hadn’t really missed anything. It was EXACTLY as I would have predicted from the first three minutes or so. So yes it was sweet, but it didn’t do much for me.

Our caravan at the Sydney Airport. The luggage trolley behind Coriel was mine.
(Also, I dumped this pic here because my internet decided to make it annoyingly
difficult to move photos. So this is where I gave up.)

Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse! I watched this one alone. I realize I’m really late to this party, but I really enjoyed it. I had heard good things about it, so I went into it hopeful but uncertain. Well, it was just so much fun to watch. Very different in terms of style, made fun of itself and the genre just a bit, pretty good storyline. Totally worth the watch, in my opinion. Seriously. I really enjoyed it.

I watched How to Train Your Dragons 3 with Coriel. My kids have loved the others, as well as the TV series, so she was very excited to see this. I thought it was fine, a fitting end. But I wasn’t super invested in the franchise, so it didn’t thrill me to pieces. Still, it was fun to watch with the kiddo.

And then, finally! We got off the plane at the end of a very long flight. Oh, it was so good to finally be on land again, not feeling like a sardine. Customs wasn’t terrible, and it was a delight to find that luggage trolleys didn’t require payment for use. Which was great, because we had three luggage trolleys. Brice and I each pushed one (with Ammon in the basket on Brice’s trolley), Coriel pushed one, and Addra pushed Koa in the stroller. We were quite the caravan!

Brice had (brilliantly) booked us at the airport hotel. And when I say “airport hotel,” I mean that it was literally across the street from the airport exit. We even got to keep our luggage trolleys with us. Anyway, we checked in, got our luggage to our room (using the elevator three separate times because we couldn’t fit much on it), crammed in the luggage (seriously, we could barely move around it in the hotel room, but at least we didn’t have to take it off the trolleys again!), and got ready to explore Sydney for the day.

Why didn’t we just go straight from Sydney to Alice? Because there is exactly one flight from Sydney to Alice per day. We couldn’t have made it through customs with all of our luggage, then gotten from the international terminal to the domestic terminal and gotten re-checked in, etc., all in the 1.5-ish hours that we would have had. So a lot of people take the one-day layover in Sydney. I’ll do a different post about our day in Sydney, with pics. Spoilers: It involved a zoo, an aquarium, some pretty tasty food, and some throwing up!

We went to bed soooo early and slept a little too late. Well, we didn’t think it was too late. But it turns out we didn’t account for how long it would take to...

* Get all our luggage downstairs

* Wait for the shuttle bus between the international terminal and the domestic one

* Ride on the shuttle

* Get off the shuttle and find a way to haul all our luggage (no longer on trolleys, alas!) into the airport

* Skip breakfast

* Check in

* Discover that the government travel system hadn’t correctly dealt with all our extra luggage, so we had to figure out exactly how much to pay

* Wait while the very helpful, very stressed-out desk agent had to print and reprint our luggage tags because the printer kept jamming and shutting down

* Run Run RUN! through the airport as they were calling our names for final boarding

So that was exciting. But we did indeed make it to the plane. We were the last ones on, and they were clearly waiting for us, but hey, at least we made it.

This leg of the trip was easy peasy, minus the fact that by this point I was feeling sick to my stomach. Spoiler: There is no throwing up in this section of the story! But I did hold a barf bag in my lap the whole time, in between a little bit of dozing. Actually, now that I think about it, I have no idea whether this leg of the trip was easy. I was too busy either napping off the stomach suffering or deciding if I needed to run to the bathroom or just use the little portable bag. But again, no throwing up in the end, and by the time we landed, I was feeling much better.

We got off the airplane straight onto the tarmac, which was pretty exciting for the kids (oh, who am I kidding? I enjoyed it too). Then we were greeted by three of Brice’s co-workers inside the airport. They were undoubtedly showered (unlike us), awake and perky (unlike us), and full of brain power (unlike us). They were also really nice and helpful, and they picked up our luggage easy peasy and helped us get loaded into a shuttle van.

Then they drove us to our new home!!!! And finally our travels were over and our Alice Springs adventures were beginning. And that will be a new post too.

The Saga of the Washing Machine

The Saga of the Washing Machine

Day 1, Saturday: We arrive in Alice and plan to get some laundry done. This is suddenly bumped up in priority when Koa throws up all over his clothing and socks and our kitchen floor. Brice turns on the faucet to let hot water into our washing machine, and it spray/leaks. So he turns it off. We try the cold water. Nothing. Happily, we also have a laundry room sink, so Brice does a bit of handwashing. Using our mop handle as an agitator. Because barf laundry is gross.

Day 2, Sunday: We take the day off from worrying about laundry.

Day 3, Monday: I call maintenance. They say they’ll send someone on Tuesday.

Day 4, Tuesday: At 5:05 pm, I suddenly realize no one has come. I call, and the office is closed.

Day 5, Wednesday: I call maintenance first thing. The plumber comes a few hours later and fixes the leaky hot water, makes sure the cold is working, and leaves me to start my laundry.

I get two loads of laundry done before I realize something odd: The “warm” load is steaming hot (literally). The “cold” load is steaming hot (still literally). When I turn off the hot faucet to try to force cold, we get no water at all.

Day 6, Thursday: I am now on a first-name basis with Sharon, the maintenance office lady. She’s very nice, by the way, very friendly. I let her know about the “cold” laundry, and she sends out the plumber again. I’m pretty sure they’re thinking, “Stupid Americans can’t turn the faucets the right way.”

The plumber comes. It turns out that, at least in this case, I am not a stupid American. Sure, the cold water hose works, but it still doesn’t come into the washer. The plumber informs me I need the actual machine serviced, not just the plumbing.

Sharon calls to schedule a new machine to be delivered to me on Friday.

Day 7, Friday: The switch-out is incredibly fast. We’re talking less than ten minutes. One machine out, one machine in, done. While the nice service guy is finishing up, Ammon comes to talk to him, informing him that he let a bee in the open door. The man chats with Ammon, pointing out that without bees, we’d have no honey and no flowers. Ammon then tells him that if there was no honey, the bears would start breaking into the human houses to try to get all our stores of honey. This is all very important because Ammon is adorable and distracting.

I start up a load of laundry before he leaves, to make sure it’s working. Hooray! We have cold water! The maintenance guy leaves, and Ammon and I hang out in the living room while the other kids play in the spare room. Ten, maybe twenty minutes pass.

Ammon gets up to walk through the kitchen (which is connected to the laundry room) to join his siblings. There is a strange, sloshing sound.

The whole kitchen and dining room floor is flooded.

I call Sharon. Hysterical laughter.

The maintenance fellow and his partner are back again to help us clean up the mess. (Oh, I’m so glad they came to help clean it up because it would have taken hours with just me and the kids and our towels and wimpy mop.) It turns out that Ammon was so charming with his deep thoughts about bears and honey that the maintenance guy forgot to connect the drainage hose to the sink. He is abjectly apologetic. I can only laugh. These things happen, after all.

Day 7, later. I do several more loads of laundry. Everything works. The dryer is kind of wimpy, but who really cares at this point? We have clean clothing! More than we even have hangers for! We sigh happily.

The End

Week #2 Review

Week #2 Review

Hey, look at that! Two weeks in a row! Again, in no way is this going to continue. Stop your crazy thinking right there.

This week has been a bit more ho-hum overall, but here are a few highlights.

The most fun thing is that Brice attended a pre-release party for the Magic: The Gathering Ixalan set. He got to go at midnight and play cards for four hours-ish and just have fun.

The most exciting and life-changing thing for our family is that all four children love to sleep together—and Ammon slept through the entire night three of the last four nights (the other night, he only woke once, briefly, and once I settled him down, he went back to sleep). This really is life-changing stuff. For a lot of reasons, none of our children have easily slept for long stretches as babies. And that has been fine, up to a point, but we’re so happy to see that he is growing to love sleeping with the siblings.*

We also rearranged a lot of furniture! You know how much I love rearranging furniture! This time it was in the conservatory (which is just our fancy and completely incorrect name for the third bedroom). This is where the kids have taken to sleeping, but it was just jammed with junk and furniture (ever since we had to move everything out of the living room and I discovered how much happier I was with very little stuff in the living room). But now it’s looking much better.

Also, I hung curtain set #3 of 4. And it turns out my DIY skills are even worse than I realized. It was not my favorite experience ever, and it’s possible I cried. But hey, at least I did my math right when deciding spacing of curtain clips. And also, it’s done. Now onto set #4...

We’re doing a 31-day read-aloud challenge where Coriel, Addra, and I each read aloud for ten minutes. It has been good motivation and practice for Addra—I can already see that she is improving in her skills. She’s our little daydreamer, though; she’d definitely prefer to be read to instead of doing the reading. Still, she’s doing great. (Coriel and I don’t actually need the practice, but it’s a good reminder to me to actually spend time reading picture books with the boys instead of just listening to longer books with the kids.)

Brice and I are both learning Italian using Duolingo. He’s way ahead of me. I’m still back here saying things like, “Io scrivo un libro” (at least it’s semi-true?).

We started up co-op again. It was good and fun to be back. There were also martial arts, babysitting, and a branch potluck. Overall, a nice week. I feel so very blessed to have this life that we live. Even when things are rough, we have each other’s love and the love of the Lord, so I’d say the balance is strongly on the side of life being awesome.

P.S. No pics at the moment. Because reasons.

* This whole topic of sleep is maybe something I’ll write about in greater detail at some point, though I’m likely to offend or annoy or cause eye-rolling in probably every single person who reads it, so ... maybe not?

Miracle(s) of the Ceiling Fan

Home ownership. Ah, the joys. Every week there's a new adventure in "this was really not installed correctly the first time." I blame MacGyver. A whole generation of us grew up thinking there was no need for appropriate materials. A wad of chewing gum and a paperclip, and voila! Fixed.

So, for example, our coat closet has been nearly impossible to shut correctly for months, if not years. This week, I finally decided to figure out what was going on. It turns out that the screws that someone had used to replace one of the bottom hinges were completely wrong. They were really long and threaded on the end but not toward the head. The closet door, of course, is mostly hollow with just a half inch or so of solid wood to screw into at the beginning. So the screws went in with grippiness (a technical term) but then had nothing to grip with when it actually mattered. I took those screws out and replaced them with ones that worked.

Sadly, because I didn't have matching screws for the job, my replacements--though they work--are also, essentially a juryrigged job. Thank you, MacGyver.

We also have a pipe that was installed--by a licensed professional, ugh--that is not correct to code. We can't get hold of him to fix it. There's also the fact that nearly every door in our house has had problems, the really cheap matte paint throughout the whole house that looks disgusting at this point (because, hello!, children), the fencing that we had to replace when we moved in and that was not well-done (the gate is impossible to latch anymore; it hangs too low), and the wallpaper in the bathroom that someone just painted over instead of removing.*

But this week, we finally conquered one of the Things That Should Never Have Happened. The outdoor ceiling fan and light fixture.

Here's the thing: When you put up a fan outdoors, you're supposed to use an outdoor fan. Outdoor fans have nice covers that keep out the birds. Outdoor fan blades are not made out of cardboard that wilts and droops. Outdoor fans are meant to be used ... outdoors.

Our old fan/light combo was awful. I mean, the birds liked it (except that dead one last year that I found just hanging from it, upside down, stuck in all the nesting materials that were dangling from the motor housing--but that bird probably just died of old age). At least one new generation of offspring called that place its home. But we never used it, and it looked like the plague was coming for it. So we finally bought a new one, and I began to install it.

Look, I know everyone makes jokes about IKEA instruction manuals, but I think those IKEA manuals are amazing. I have never had a problem with them. The instructions for this Harbor Breeze fan, on the other hand--nope. And it's not the first ceiling fan/light kit I've put up, so I do have some basis for comparison. To be honest, actually, I think the thing could have been constructed to be easier to put together. It was surprisingly difficult, especially compared to the ones I've done in the past.

This is where we finally get to the miracle portion of the story.

In the process of removing the old fan, I was supposed to save the screws that attached to the outlet box so that I could attach the new fan. I knew this. But I was just not thinking very well, and so I allowed them both to drop to the ground (of our deck, which has slats that things can fall between). Then I got down from the ladder and actually threw one of them away in the bag full of garbage (including tons of nesting materials) from the old fan. I could not find the other.

And suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to save them. Argh. I hunted around the ground, tried to sift through the garbage bag, and couldn't find either. I had to give up for a while and figure out what to do (also to feed those pesky children who keep insisting that they need to eat occasionally!).

Fast forward to hours later when I explained the problem to Brice and he suggested we use our uber-strong magnet to try to find them. I found about five or six screws in the nesting junk, and it looked like one of them might be it. But only one. We needed two. So we sifted a little more, sorted again, and suddenly there were two. Seriously, I really don't know how we found the second one, but we did. It was just there. Miracle!

I went through the next several steps of installation, did all the wiring, and got the fan blades ready to attach. The design for this was really bad. It was extremely difficult to attach the fan blades because of the positioning of everything. I tried and tried, and I kept dropping the screws! This time I knew it was bad, so I put a rug under me to catch things, but it was still going badly. I dropped one that rolled off to who-knew-where. I got down to look around a bunch, and again, just when I'd sort of given up, I turned and saw Ammon playing with it. Yay!

Anyway, making a long story short, it was a little thing, but I really believe we were blessed with little miracles to help us finish the project. And now we have a nifty new ceiling fan/light that is meant to be used outdoors. Hooray!

* By the way, despite all the frustrations that sometimes attend home ownership, I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity. Our home has been such a blessing, and I'm grateful that we found it and grateful for our neighbors and friends, etc. But there are the downsides.

Scattered Thoughts

I’ve started avoiding blogging again because I only have little bits and pieces to tell, not any sort of coherent narrative of really anything. But that means stuff is piling up, so we’re doing another random pile o’ junk post. (Also, I started this a week ago, so it’s all old news, but I’m not going to try to fix any weird verb tenses or time references. Ptui.)

Major Minor Miracle. Yes, I know “major minor” doesn’t make sense, but here’s the thing: it was a total miracle to me, and really huge for that particular moment in my life, but it’s also ridiculously small. Yesterday I was so stressed out over preparing for our co-op’s class fair that is happening tomorrow. I had a list of performances on a sheet of paper, and I needed it so I could type up the programs for the fair, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it. I’ve been on high stress about this activity for a while now, and this was the last straw. As I searched, I prayed—please, please help me find it. I looked in every spot I could think of that it could have possibly ended up, and I finally hit the last spot—the car—and it wasn’t there.

I came back inside the house feeling utterly defeated and on the verge of tears. Again I prayed. Please. Then my eyes wandered over to our fireplace mantle, where our family yearbooks are lined up, and there was the paper, sitting with the yearbooks. Exactly where I had put it and completely forgotten it almost a week ago. I was so grateful.

Koa the Earthling. This just barely happened—Koa walked out into the living room with a box on his head. He told Brice he was an earthling.

The Anthology! My latest gigantic and insane project is finally finished and printed and distributed! I’m enormously proud of it. It’s a collection of stories written by the teens in the writing class I’ve been teaching at co-op this last year. I’ll be posting more about it on my other blog soon and I’ll link there if I can remember. But let it just be said that it was a large undertaking and I am so thrilled to be done (but also thrilled to have done it).

Short Fiction. Speaking of writing, I have been returning to short fiction a lot lately and really enjoying it. It’s been so much fun, and I think I’m going to spend more time in short fiction for the next little while. I have several places I’d like to submit things to, so we’ll see.

Mormon Lit Blitz. Also speaking of short fiction, go look here! Pay particular attention to the entry for June 10th.

Mother’s Day. Brice is so wonderful. He made Mother’s Day quite lovely, as he always does. This year he made me a delicious breakfast frittata and said, “Fri-tada!” Complete with a “tada” gesture. It was pretty great, but it doesn’t translate on paper very well. Also, he bought me a lock-picking set! Yay! Now I can start learning a new skill. It comes with a see-through lock, which is pretty cool because then you can actually see the mechanisms, which I’ve never really understood before.

I love this about Brice—he is always supportive of my whims and desires to expand my learning, even when it’s silly.

Compliments. Okay, this is probably weird, but I keep two compliment files—one is informal, in my memory, and the other is actually in a file in my email. The email file is where I put emails or facebook messages or other communications that people sent me that were really touching and made me feel all glowy and happy. I get to go back and refer to it occasionally when I’m feeling particularly crappy. The other file is my internal list of the weirdest/funniest compliments I’ve ever received.

This last week, I got to add two potential compliments to the weird file.

1. As part of our class wrap-up, I was asking the teens what their future plans were with writing. Many mentioned how they felt about the class (overall positive), but this was my favorite: “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

2. Driving home from church on Mother’s Day, Brice and I were talking about how our various parenting abilities had improved since the beginnings. I mentioned that I was much better with small children than I used to be (though still not very good), and he replied that he thought I was “pretty decent.” Which was both honest and amusing, given that he said it on the day we’re supposedly telling all the mothers how incredibly awesome they are. But actually, “pretty decent” felt like a pretty great compliment. It was real and completely believable (not like “you’re the best with babies!” which would just be a lie).

Must update photo! Holy crumbs, I just looked at the photo that’s on our blog header, and we are two babies behind. Yikes. I really need to fix that. Someday...

The end. Oh so many times in the past little while I’ve thought of something to add to a blog post, but I never do remember them long enough to add. So we’ll just end here.

Yesterday and Tomorrow

 Yesterday was the anniversary of my mother's death. Maybe I'll sound callous saying this, but I didn't remember it. I rarely do. The only reason I remembered today was because I was doing a critique for someone who'd written a story about grieving, and part of her story was so much like mine that I suddenly noticed the date.

When my mother died, I was in grad school. It was break, and we were all meeting with our professors and planning our schedules for the summer. I had a lot to do. It's not like we were super close. I hadn't lived with her growing up, and things were complicated. And we all knew her death was coming. So really, I told myself, I should just be carrying on and getting stuff done. I had clients to see, a meeting with my professor, some case notes to type up. After all that, then there would be time to grieve or feel whatever I was supposed to feel.

I remember one of the other students really wanted to be in the practicum class I had been assigned to. She came to talk to me in the computer lab to see if I'd be willing to trade. We talked for several minutes, and I never once mentioned Mom's death. Later on, when she found out, she felt terrible for putting those details on me at such a time. But really, it wasn't her fault. She could not have known. I had given her no clue.

The facts and feelings finally came spilling out when I was meeting with my professor. We were discussing my progress in the program, and he was concerned about some of the things I hadn't gotten done yet. Like the good therapist that he was, he was kind but firm, and there was definitely some reprimanding to be done. I took it all in, silent and perhaps a bit withdrawn. A call in his office took him away for a moment, and while he was gone, I burst into tears. The poor man returned to the room to find me bawling, and at first he thought it was because of his comments. I quickly explained the real reason--funny that I felt the need to reassure and comfort him instead of receive comfort. It was strange that those few minutes alone, in the silence, were what finally brought on the breakdown.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but I suddenly realized that the way I was dealing with things wasn't quite right. I couldn't just pretend everything was the same. I needed to take a break. I needed to get back home to be with my siblings as we planned the funeral and dealt with her possessions. I needed to let people know.

I remember the weird awkwardness of calling all my clients to tell them I was cancelling appointments because of a "family emergency." Some of them asked if everything was okay, and I just told them yes. What else could I say? I was their therapist, not the other way around. So I still wasn't telling it all, but at least I wasn't pretending to myself anymore.

Even now it all seems surreal, this strange detachment, this desire to just keep moving.

And yet.

I fast forward now to the preparations for Mom's funeral. My older sisters and I gathered at the funeral home to put the finishing touches on Mom's body. It sounds morbid and weird--and at first it felt that way too--for us to work over her body, doing her hair, trying to get that ghastly orange makeup to not make her face look too fake. Who knew that a dead body's hairstyle was so hard to get right?

It sounds awful, but it wasn't. It was, for me, the most important step in my grief. I looked down at this body lying before us, and the overwhelming feeling came to me: This is not my mom. This is the house she used to live in. She isn't here anymore, and that's okay. She's just moved out of town. It wasn't so much about being detached finally as it was about realizing that it was okay.

Tomorrow is Easter. It's the day we celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of the one who made it possible for me to say that--she is gone, but I will see her again. There are things for us to sort out, apologies and forgiveness to be had, hugs to be given. Knowing my mom, there's probably some crocheting to do.

I am grateful to know that even when sadness comes--and it does--it doesn't have to last. He is risen, and we will too.

Wolves

A few days ago, I prayed so hard that I would be able to be patient and be kind and see the positive in the kids. I've been really struggling with them lately.

But then Addra wanted a YouTube drawing video. And then she didn't like the one she chose. Then she wanted a new one and wanted to scroll through tons to find it. Then she started getting upset because it was too hard, she said.

All this time I was getting increasingly frustrated at her. Just pick something! Just try again! It's okay if it's not perfect!

She was crying and upset and just curled up in a blanket by the computer, and I just didn't think I could be nice about this. I knew she needed a snuggle and some comforting, but I didn't want to do it. I went to find Brice to get him to help her so that I didn't make it any worse, but he was eating breakfast and I didn't want to stop him in the middle of a bowl of cereal.

So I took a breath and went back. I sat down beside the red blanket lump and pulled her partially into my lap and started rubbing her back. I told her that I loved her, over and over, and listened to her sadness at how hard the video was. At first I had to bite my tongue to keep from getting cranky at her, but slowly the back rub and snuggling soothed me too.

Five minutes later, I asked if she wanted to try again. Brice brought another pencil and paper, and we both watched the video and tried to draw from it. I paused it frequently so she could erase or catch up, and eventually we were both done.

She was totally happy again and was satisfied with her wolf drawing, and we'd had some happy, loving time together. 

Without a doubt I can say that this was a gift from God. Brice being busy so I had to handle it. My recognition and acceptance of what she needed just then--not criticism or pushing her to try harder, just a snuggle. And most of all the inner strength to actually do what was needed when I didn't want to. It turned an ugly interaction--the kind of thing that we've been having far too frequently these days--into a loving one. I'm so grateful for that gift.

Beast Academy

 You know what I love? When we get Coriel's next few math books in the mail and we are both so excited to open them up and start reading.

As in, "Hey, Coriel, are you excited about these?"

And Coriel jumps up and down. "Yes yes yes!"

As an avowed math nerd in yesteryear, this makes my heart happy.

Thanks, Beast Academy.

2015: A Brief Recap

Happy 2016! Our 2015 was pretty great, with the obligatory bad parts too—but overall, really wonderful. We have been very blessed. Highlights?

Our tenth anniversary, which we celebrated by taking all of us on a cruise. It was great fun, and we gained the obligatory several pounds (at least I did), but in the end we decided we’re not really cruise people. We’ll do it occasionally maybe but not really go out of our way for it. I had a giant blog post planned about this vacation, and I was so very funny in it. Just imagine me being hilarious and entertaining. There you go.

Koa developed all sorts of great abilities, and also many more teeth. You know, he learned the whole crawling, walking, running, babbling (though not really officially talking yet), eating all sorts of food, etc. The fun thing about the baby stage is just how many awesome accomplishments they check off in these first couple years. So 2015 was a big year for him.

Our stake was reorganized, so we and a few other families got moved out of the Glen Burnie Ward to the Brooklyn Park Branch. It has been quite an adjustment, but we have faith that this was what God wanted in this little corner of His church.

I, of course, got pregnant. Yay! And in case we didn’t mention it to you yet, we’re having a boy. And please don’t make some comment about, “Oh good, now Koa will have a friend.” Because then I will be tempted to shake my fist at you. Strangely, I have noticed that it’s possible for boys and girls, brothers and sisters, to be friends with each other! Shocking! My very best friend growing up was my older brother. While of course I hope Koa is awesome friends with his little brother, I also hope that all of the siblings will continue to get along in reasonable sibling fashion, regardless of gender. (Yikes, that turned into a soapbox! Whoops!)

I think probably the biggest and most exciting event of last year was Coriel’s baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are so proud of her for making this decision, and I continue to be amazed by what a great person she is. Honestly, I could gush forever. I’m just so happy she’s my kid and that she’s growing up to be such a lovely, wonderful young woman.

That was a very broad recap, and it left out all sorts of wonderful things from the previous year—things like my book club friends, homeschool and co-op, Brice’s runs, Addra’s fabulous fashion, and so many other things. But it’s the best I can do at the moment.

Stay tuned soon for a post in which I link to and recap a few of my favorite and/or important posts from the MMW blog I write at. I’ve been meaning to do that forever, in case you don’t follow me there, and now I’m finally going to get around to it.

In the meantime, much love to you, my biggest fans. AKA, my friends and foo who are too polite to just ignore me. Love you all!