My grandma's hands

When I was born my maternal grandmother and both my paternal grandparents were still alive. My Grandpa Thompson died when I was seven, and I honestly don't remember any meaningful interaction with him. I don't remember ever sitting on his knee; I don't remember even any conversations we ever had. I'm sure we must have, our regular Sunday drive destination with Dad was his parents' house. I remember the way he looked, but mostly I remember running downstairs to explore their basement while the grown ups stayed upstairs to talk.

I remember a lot more of my Grandma Thompson. She lived the longest of all my grandparents, and we continued driving to visit her on Sundays (or she'd come to us, for dinner) for years and years. My dad is her eldest son and the only one of her kids who lived in the state, so we saw her a lot. She ate very slowly—we'd sometimes linger at the table for up to 30 minutes after we were all finished eating dinner, while she ate and talked. And she loved the attention that being sick got her. As my own father said, "She'd rather go to the hospital than out to dinner." She was the landing place for all my out-of-state cousins, so I spent many a happy day there at her house playing and chasing, running up and down the sidewalk and out in the back yard. My dad's youngest sister Aunt Kathy lived on the east coast the whole time I was growing up, and so she'd come for a month at a time in the summer to visit. And I'd spend days and night at grandma's playing with my east coast cousin Leslie, having the grandest time. Grandma Thompson had trees that every year bore the most delicious bing cherries, bushels and bushels of them. "Don't eat too many, you'll get diarrhea," my mom always warned. I ate all I could hold and did fine digestively. ;) Grandma always gave me one dollar for every birthday and every Christmas, clear up until I got married. After I married birthdays were just a card, and Christmas was some dishtowels. She died while I was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, the day after I found out I was pregnant with Ethan. I missed her funeral.

I know it is bad form for a parent to admit to a favorite child, and I'm sure the same applies to grandparents with their grandchildren. But I have no problem with reverse favoritism. My mom's mom, Grandma Harrison, was hands down my favorite grandparent. She died when I was 18, and I miss her. On my wedding day, on the days my babies were born, I wish she was there to be a part of it, to be a part of my children's lives. Every Christmas when I pull out the decorations I still look at and hold the little hand-sewn stockings and wrappings she made for my Christmas presents.

For many years when I was really small, Grandma Harrison lived right next-door to us. I could see her garden through the backyard fence, and I only had to walk up a small alley to get to her house. I spent so much time there with her! She was my mom's #1 babysitter for me. Whenever one of my older sisters had a baby and mom was gone for a few days, I went to grandma's. How much easier could it be? I still walked to and from school, I could even still play with all my neighborhood friends. When Mom and Dad went to Peru to pick up my brother Mike at the end of his LDS mission, I stayed with grandma. Whenever she was baking bread I was right nearby so I could have a slice while it was still hot, and whenever I asked her she made my two favorite foods for me. My mouth still waters for creamed tuna.

Grandma Harrison was old already by the time I was born. She was born on 30 or 31 October 1894-6 (one of those three years, he parents didn't keep a good record) so by the time I was old enough to know her she was already >75 years old. She lived to be >90. She was never spry. She wasn't the sort who'd sit on the floor with me and play dolls, or who even walked outside with me to watch me ride my bike. We mostly played quiet games of checkers or paper dolls, or read quietly side by side, or she puttered around while I played in her toy room. We watched Lawrence Welk, and she never missed As The World Turns. We hung her nylon stockings to dry, and I colored pictures. She put my just-washed hair up into pin curls. We tied quilts. But I knew she loved me. I think that's what made all the difference. She wasn't a playmate, but she loved me—loved me as much as my mother did.

She later moved to an apartment in The Belvedere downtown, and that was pretty exciting too. My mom would drop me off to stay with her for a couple of nights, and the two of us would toddle next door to Hansen Planetarium to look at all the displays (though she didn't really like the star shows) or right across the street to the ZCMI Center mall, where we'd get lunch in a sit-down restaurant and then browse the old lady stores. Then we'd go back to her apartment for As The World Turns and reruns of Lawrence Welk and I'd look at her silver plated hairbrush and drink white tea (which was just milk, sugar, and hot water) out of her china cups. She'd sometimes send a little something home with me from one of her shelves—I have a beautiful antique glass apothecary jar filled with rose petals from a dozen roses her husband gave her. She disbursed all her meaningful possessions years before she died, right into the hands of her loved ones.

Later yet she moved to a little house one of my mom's sisters owned. I was a teen by then, and would still stay with her for a night or two, and she'd always make me white tea and creamed tuna (usually both nights). I always tried her sugar-free diabetic cookies or candy and wish she had real ones. And we'd play checkers or watch TV or read, and I knew she loved me. She let me have two of her china cups that I always drank white tea out of.

Grandma Harrison had beautiful white, curly hair. I suspect she even cut it in her own bathroom sometimes, and yet she never had to do anything more than wet it to look like she'd just had it done professionally. And I loved her hands. I thought they were so beautiful. Her nails were always long and usually painted, and he hands were just so delicate. She crocheted, she knitted, she sewed, everything without a pattern and very lopsided. I have a hand-sewed asymmetrical cloth doll she made me, wearing a dress of the same fabric as Grandma's muu muu. (The doll's name is Big Mukahamas. One day my sister Joan and I were playing indians with our cloth dolls, and the name stuck.) I just loved looking at her hands. The knuckles were knobbly from arthritis and the veins were prominent through the paper-thin skin, but I thought she should be a hand model.

I was thinking of her hands last night while I painted my nails. Sometimes I still dream of her, dream that she just walks into the room looking a little younger and healthier than when I knew her and we catch up where we left off. I bring in my children and she already knows them all, and she loves them as much as I do. I almost always wake up crying, because I do miss her. And I miss holding her hands.

Starved For Celebrity: 10 Celebs With Bad Body Habits

We’ve compiled a list of other celebrity women who admitted that the fame game has had a negative impact on their health and body image. Take a lesson from them—thin is not as important as healthy.
Starved For Celebrity: 10 Celebs With Bad Body Habits | The Frisky

"As long as I'm in this business, I'm going to be hungry."
"It’s like they pay me not to eat. It’s a living hell.”
When I read quotes like this, I realize why I am not and never will be celebrity-thin. It isn't worth it to me, in the least, to "always be hungry".

I'm so sorry that it is worth it to them.

Conversation with my cute brother

My brother Mike sends out links and articles to all of us, all day long. Most of them are political; I read some of these, and some I file away in case I feel like reading them later. But he sends out some other stuff too, and today it was an article about Halloween. Here's an excerpt:

Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties. That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. As a panel of "experts" on the "Today" show warned viewers recently: Don't let your children trick-or-treat without you "any earlier than age 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things." Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, "There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation." In fact, she says, "We almost called this paper, 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day."

I remember the big thing I was warned against as a child was apples. Oh yes, scary apples, because the neighbors were almost certainly inserting razor blades into them, so that when I bit in I would cut up my gums. Packaged chocolate was infinitely preferable to apples. Talk about wacky ideas!

Mike is 14 years older than I am. He was already gadding about hither and yon in his teens when I was tiny. This is what he said to me about his growing up years, when I responded about the Halloween article:

In the background there’s a general theme that I have often thought about. Maybe you have too (but I don’t know what life’s like in Fairview). The general theme is: When did my childhood become today’s childhood? I am not being critical of my mother. Heavens, I loved my childhood. I would throw my baseball glove over the handlebars, leave the house after breakfast, not return until lunch, and literally not see an adult in between. The same for the afternoon’s activities. We played baseball for hours anywhere we could. We were sandlot types. I remember many hours on the (summer, meaning no school in session) playground at Rosecrest. But we played a significant share of ball in the street, on pavement. I guess that means we “saw” adults, because we would have to stand aside while cars passed through our game. Of course baseball wasn’t the only thing we played. I would also ride my bicycle to Evergreen Park and we would spend hours playing in the creek, actually outside the fenced area of the park. To the best of my memory, I never even asked permission, other than to “go out and play.” And, of course, we were at the pool just about every single day. The pool rules were (if I remember) that a 12 year old (sibling) could supervise any number of under-12s that a parent was comfortable with. We rarely had an adult with us once Sherri turned 12. Hours and hours of unstructured time, with almost zero adult supervision (although you would feel safe to go to any adult, anywhere if you had trouble).

Our own mother, of 7 children, as said to me that she doesn’t know how parents today do it. For a while I was puzzled, but came to understand that she was commenting on the scenario above. She did not feel like she had to organize playtime and be with her kids every second of the day.

He's right, I've spent a lot of time pondering this very thing. My childhood sounds much like Mike's, although I don't think our mother would have let me ride my bike to Evergreen Park because I'd have to cross two very busy streets. So she was a bit more afraid of traffic those 14 years later. Also, the unsupervised pool age was 14 in my time, but as long as there was someone (anyone!) 14+ years old my mom let me stay and swim. And since I went up by my lonesome to check and see if there was anyone 14+, I did sometimes fudge that rule. I spent all day every day at the pool, never even going home for lunch, arriving at 9 or 10 in the morning and not leaving until 4 or 5, never had to check in, had no cell phone for her to check on me. She just assumed all day long I hadn't drowned and I'd toddle home eventually.

I never remember worrying about lunch at all when I was a kid; Mom wasn't worried either. If I was hungry, I guess I went home or ate a snack with friends. But once I left the house I just stayed gone until I was done with whatever I was doing, sometimes 8 hours later. I know that was all 30+ years ago, but find it hard to believe that in just 30 short years it could go from what I experienced to the overprotective helicopter parenting of today.

Fairview is very small town, very safe; what's more, I have a big acre of grass, lots of trees to climb, during the summer we have a pool, and my very own yard is filled with wonder. So my kids are pretty unscheduled and unsupervised. And my peers/friends always look me askance, because my kids don't go from city league soccer to baseball to football to basketball and back to soccer. And because we don't have a Wii (though we actually are pondering getting one). I make my kids ride their bikes around and rollerblade and sometimes take their younger siblings down to the creek by the horse field. And I am definitely my mom's daughter; I never go with them. Sometimes it's because I'm lazy or don't want to go out in the 90º+ heat, sometimes it's because a little quiet "me" time is precious, sometimes it's because I figure they can do it on their own. (So far, I'm right.)

Safest day of the year. Interesting.

And you have to test them, right? To be sure they're on grade level?

This is the question I get most, hands down, when uninitiated people are asking me about homeschool.

Answer: no. In Utah, there is no oversight, no regulation of homeschool. I can take my kids to the schools when they are doing standardized testing, or I can use any measures I myself deem reliable to check their progression. No one is going to come check up on me at all, so I even can just stay in bed all day, and let them build Legos and watch movies and never crack a book. I can do that.

But why on earth would I? Why would I sabotage my kids like that? I keep them home because I believe I'm educating them better than the public schools do, not because I want to go easy on them. I want them to have a broader and deeper knowledge base, not be doing first grade work at the age of ten. I want them to be productive, contributing members of society, capable of supporting themselves and their families. I do not wish them to be eternal infants forever dependent upon me.

And it always freaks me right the heck out when I find out about families who do just that. They withdraw all their kids from school and keep them home, and then never crack a book. Can't be bothered to work up a curriculum. Spend their day in bed.

I mean, I have sympathy for health problems, or depression. Sure, there are some things that keep you in bed all day, legitimately. But in those cases, public service announcement, PUT THE KIDS IN SCHOOL. They may struggle socially. They may be behind their grade level. They may have to start with short vowel sounds and three-letter words. But Concerned Parent, is that not better than sitting around all day, not learning to read or write or do math at all? Isn't it? A little?

I cannot even wrap my mind around a parent who would find the public school system so risky (?) that they would rather have their kid at home doing literally nothing educational than be in school and learn something.

(Yes, I know a family doing precisely this. My fifth grader is by far more accomplished in every subject than their 18YO eldest, who has "graduated". Which, when there's no oversight or regulation other than a mom's say-so, is without actual meaning under certain circumstances.)

Little Frankenstein

Wednesday was a weird, wacky day. The kids were rolling and stomping and steamrolling through the house, and I could. not. get. them. to. settle. down. At all. Lots of yelling, lots of noise. Occasional crying when someone [usually Kyrie] got hurt. I'd say, "Calm down, guys. Stop now. Someone's going to get hurt even worse."

At about 3:45 pm it finally happened. Kyrie screaming like crazy, so naturally I assumed it was she who was hurt. But no. "Mom! He's bleeding! He's going to need stitches. MOM!"

Well I don't automatically assume stitches are needed on the advice of my six-year-old. I gathered Macklin onto my lap and applied pressure for a long time, going through lots of tissue. About 20 minutes later he was really quite calmed and the bleeding had stopped. Now, remember: I get nauseated when I even think my kids are hurt. I just can't stand for them to be in pain. I lifted the tissue, and Mack's forehead was gaping wide open. I quickly put the tissue back and loaded him into the Suburban, and called the clinic on the way: "I have a kid who needs stitches, I'll be there in 10 minutes, I hope you can work me in."

They did, bless them, saving me $50 over the cost of an ER visit. Our good friend and neighbor Dr. Allan Day did the stitches, it required two deep stitches and four on the surface.





Though he'd just had stitches in his toe about six weeks ago, I still thought he was pretty brave. He definitely remembered the numbing shots and dreaded them the worst; and though he did scream his little lungs out, he was perfectly still and didn't thrash around for that part. Then while Dr. Day was doing the stitches Macklin was telling him all the subtleties of just who is an Autobot and who is a Decepticon in Transformers 2, and spoiling the ending of Iron Man 2.

I bought him a doughnut for his bravery. (Last time he got a tiny little ice cream cone.) On the way home he said, "I don't want stitches ever again. Those shots hurt! And I don't want more shots. But next time I get stitches, let's get a snowcone."

Unfortunately (?) the stitches will be out next Monday, so we can't even work this into a nifty Halloween costume.

Life just keeps coming at me, and I love it.

Here's a sampling:

We started putting a window into Emma's room this past weekend, after thinking, pondering, planning, and wondering about it for at least six years. It's going well so far, though we aren't done. The interior still has quite a bit to be done, the exterior a little. Click on the photo if you want to see more photos of the process.

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Emma got her driver's license on Monday! She celebrated by taking Kyrie a few blocks away and buying twinner pink flower rings at a little toy store in town. Cute. I can now hardly wait for school to start, because I don't have to drive! We also did come up with rules, which I'm recording here mainly for posterity. Above all we want her to be safe, and we think attention and awareness are the keys so we're trying to build those.

1. She and all passengers absolutely must wear seatbelts.
   
2. No iPod listening for the first three months, or until we as her parents have confidence in her. Music can be distracting.
   
3. No answering or making calls on her cell phones while driving. Her passenger may answer her phone for her (since Christian will almost always be in the car with her), or she may pull over to make or answer a call.
   
4. No cruise control for a couple, maybe three, months. She knows how to use it and it was a good tool at first to make it so she didn't have to worry about speed amongst all the other things. But now B wants her to drive intentionally and learn to be aware.
   
5. If she gets a moving violation, she has to pay the ticket herself, and no driving until she has.
   
6. If she gets into an accident, she has to pay the insurance deductible herself for the repairs, and no driving until she has.

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Yesterday was B's birthday, his big 40. He'd forgotten that it was even a landmark day until his mom reminded him. (Of course I already had four and zero candles for his cake and a 40 banner, but he didn't know that.) Went to Cabella's (which is kind of like an adventure park for the shooting crowd, lots for the kids to see and do for an hour or two) and then out for maybe our most expensive dinner ever. In addition to our family of nine we invited B's mom, his two siblings who are still at home, and his visiting sister and her baby. Had a marvelous time, and I hope he did too. His younger brother Adam has arranged for him to go skydiving for his mid-life crisis, and I think it sounds like a kick in the pants. :)

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The rest of the neighborhood started school yesterday, but for us the Hogwarts Express leaves on 7 September. We'll take Emma and Christian over to the Academy on the 6th—which just happens to be Christian's 15th birthday—for orientation and meeting teachers and assignment of lockers, etc. Then they go off alone on the morning of the 7th and we'll get started here. Exciting stuff. I should really check and see if I need any school books and maybe order them.

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So another week and a half of summertime for us! Swimming pool, green grass, playing, climbing trees. Plums are ripening on the tree out front, we ought to go pick those. I love the lazy last days of summer.

A few of my favorite things

I love my house. I don't think I've ever told the long story of how we got here. We lived in Provo, a college town (home of Brigham Young University, and neighboring Orem—it's pointless for the two cities to be two cities because they seamlessly blend into one—is home to Utah Valley University) for most of our married life. I went to BYU, Blaine went to UVU (which was a community college then, UVCC) and worked as a designer at the [Stephen R.] Covey Leadership Center. Briefly just after Christian was born we lived in SLC in my parents' basement when we were flirting with architecture rather than graphic design as his career path, but that lasted only a year. Covey Leadership let him telecommute the whole time, and it was a piece of cake to move back to Provo when he decided architecture wasn't his cup of tea. We bought our first tiny little house in Provo when I was pregnant with Libby.

But we wanted space, a soccer field of grass and trees to climb. When Covey Leadership Center merged with Franklin Day Planners and became Franklin Covey, they moved to SLC and we didn't want to relocate. Blaine became a contract designer for them, self-employed for the first time, and we had a lot more freedom to choose where we'd live. We took little day trips to small towns all over Utah. And when we came to Fairview, we knew we'd found the place. The first thing we did was buy an acre of pastureland between two houses. It seemed perfect! And then we alienated all our future neighbors by planning to build a geodesic dome. The guy who sold us the land was always friendly and nice to us, but the rest of the immediate vicinity was pretty hostile. We scaled back and decided to build a regular house, but we kept getting blocked here with our soil perc test or there with our building permit. It was like the hardest thing ever for us to build on that lot.

So one day I thought, okay, I'm going to drive around and see what's available. I loaded the four kids in the minivan, infant Jackson promptly fell asleep, and we drove up and down the streets. We pulled up in front of this house, for sale by owner, and I thought it was adorable from the outside.

When we got back to the rental where we were living at the time (long before I had a cell phone you see, but if I'd only known the owners were just across the street) we made an appointment for the evening to come look at it when Blaine was done with work. Every wall was a dingy gray-white, the walls were heavily textured with plaster, the carpets were all in colors I hated and some, upstairs, were so shaggy and long they needed to be mowed rather than vacuumed. The bathrooms were awkward in layout, and the kitchen was big but dark, dark, dark. I was just completely overwhelmed, thinking there was way too much to do to make it livable. I crossed it off my mental list.

And then I looked over at Blaine and he mouthed, "I LOVE THIS HOUSE." And wee Emma and Christian, who were then only about 6 and 4 years old, came in and said, "MOMMY MOMMY WE CLIMBED THE TREE OUTSIDE ALL BY OURSELVES IT IS JUST RIGHT FOR US! AND DID YOU SEE ALL THAT GRASS!"

So I had to walk through the house again with different eyes, eyes of a mom of a future big brood (I knew I wasn't done and that I wanted more kids). And it changed everything I saw and everything I thought. We made an offer the next day, and put our impossible acre of pastureland up for sale. It sold quickly, and here we are.

The hideous window treatments came down the day we moved in, but we lived for many years with the dingy gray-white walls and horrid carpets. In fact upstairs is still all shag, and still needs a good mowing. But I don't even see it anymore. Piece by piece we're remaking this house and the parts we've done look amazing to me. I have overwhelming happiness when I walk into one of my bathrooms and know that I did all that tape and mud, I sanded and painted those walls, I laid that tile. I'm still tickled every shade of pink about the kitchen facelift, every time I walk in there. I have lots left to do before the entire house is done to my specifications, but I'm enjoying the ride.

I love my yard. It took me a long time to get aboard that train. Watering the lawn is a huge deal, and I remember many an early morning with a hugely pregnant belly dragging the hoses around and shedding tears, thinking to myself, "Wasn't this B's job? Didn't I tell him, when we moved here, he was in charge of watering?" And I did only a halfway job and the lawn was tan with tinges of green. And at his busiest he didn't have time to mow and none of the kids were heavy enough to weigh down the seat on the riding mower so I had to do it, wah. Hours and hours on that mower to mow my green-tinged tan lawn. But a few years have changed everything. Kids are big and doing outside chores like champs. I've got watering down to a science, Christian can also do it, and I'm teaching all the kids how to help with it, it isn't such a chore anymore. And the lawn is so pretty! There are strips that are still sort of rough and ripped up from the sewer hook up four years ago. That's a scar that's taking a while to heal. But mostly the grass has filled back in and it's green and beautiful and Christian mowed it yesterday and as I was setting up my sprinklers this morning at 6:30 I actually, weirdly, thought there was nothing I'd rather be doing. The sky was so pale blue right then, pre-sunrise, and the air was just barely cool, and it smelled a bit like rain. And mostly I was struck with wonder and glee that this piece of land, this little bit of house, is mine, inside and out. I've earned it. I adore it.

I wrote a while back (maybe mostly on Facebook?) that I was redoing the laundry room. I still need pulls for the cupboard doors, but I'll show you what it was then, and what it is now.
BEFORE


AFTER

And that is why I love my little corner of the earth.

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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound

My little cup of joy runneth over.

Things have changed since I was 16! When I was getting my driver's license I had to (1) take driver's ed, both a classroom and a driving portion; (2) go to the DLD and take a written test and eye exam; (3) do a driving exam with someone at the DLD.

So I assumed things were the same!

Emma finished her driving portion of driver's ed last week YAY, and I just got the email notification that her final test and essay assignment were approved in the classroom portion (which we did through Utah Online High School, and I shall never do that again because it took her too long when left to her own little timeframe).

I just called the DLD (because they're in the local office on every Monday and select Thursdays so it seemed a very fortuitous time to contact them) to schedule a driving test. They said, "Didn't she already take it with her instructor? We have a pass in the system."

So you don't have to take a road test anymore, the one she took on her last day with the driving instructor counted! She doesn't even have to take another written exam, the classroom portion counts for that! All we have to do is take a new pic, pay $30, show her ID, and she is a licensed driver.

That can all happen next Monday.

She will drive to school on the first day! After two years of having my morning schedule hinge around getting her to school, I don't ever have to drive her any more!

I am so happy! :D :D :D

Now hub and I just need to talk about rules. I'm thinking she only gets one fender bender or speeding ticket for free; infraction number two comes with some amount of time off driving (during which my schedule goes kaput again, sigh) and infraction number three might mean she has to fund her own driving. But that's all serious stuff, and it's harshing my excitement about having Emma be almost a licensed driver. So I won't think about that for another week. :)

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Listening to: R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People

Independent Macklin

It's only a half hour before lunch, but Mack decided he needed a snack. He:

1. got leftover ramen soup out of the fridge,
2. took off the lid of the container and turned it upside down (what I do, so the soup won't bubble and splat the inside of the microwave),
3. got out the step stool,
4. climbed up and put the container of ramen in the microwave,
5. called me in to push buttons,
6. got out a clean bowl and spoon while it was heating (I had gone back out of the room),
7. took his ramen out of the microwave,
8. poured it in his bowl,
9. and is now sitting eating it.

He got his own clean cup and filled it with water, too. This is definitely the 4YO who would be okay if his parents left him alone in the house and went to Las Vegas for the weekend. We won't. But we could.

And he's impertinent to boot! I just told him to give me "one smackeroo on my cheek" and he said, "Okay," puckered up, and then slapped me. Well, it was a slap as gentle as a pat, so it didn't hurt or anything, and just I laughed and hugged the little stinker. :)

My gorgeous anniversary weekend.

B and I have gone on very few overnighters during our married life, mostly because we were too poor and we had kids too small to leave. So it was a wonderful treat to get away alone together overnight for our 18th wedding anniversary Friday.

I chose to stay at the Holiday Inn Express based on (1) its continental breakfast cinnamon rolls (best I've ever had, and that includes Cinnabon and every other specialty cinnamon roll store) and (2) its proximity to a quilt store.

I'd heard of a store that would make up its beds piece by piece so a customer can see with their eyeballs how the bed will look with all the components. I have always wanted a lovely, put-together bed. I did have something sort of nice back when we had a queen, but since we upgraded to a king size bed (and that was 9 years ago!) I've just had a queen comforter draped on it, tugged to one side to pretend it fit and barely reaching the edge of the mattress top on the other side. I tossed an old twin quilt over top just to give it a little color and interest. Bleh.

B designed and built the bed frame for me from scratch. Our other bedroom furniture is pine and I love the whole thing. The new bedding is our anniversary gift to each other—but mostly B's gift to me, because he doesn't care about bedding at all. And I couldn't be happier. I think it turned out gorgeous.

Here's a little close up, to show the colors and quilting patterns. Holy cow. So pretty. At least I think it is!

Next task is to paint the bedroom! It's on my to-do list for the summer, absolutely.

I have such a clear image in my head

I was born when my mom was 36 and my dad was 37. (Huh. Until I did the math this very second, I thought my mom was 37, like I was 37 when I had Mack. Huh.) I spent every summer while growing up driving (and later flying) back and forth between SLC and Lake Powell in southern Utah. We probably got in 12-15 trips between April and October. I don't feel like I saw much of my dad during the school year. He didn't come to my school programs or events, I don't remember eating dinner as a family except on Sundays, and when he got home from work in the evenings he just sat in his recliner and read his newspapers and magazines. But during the summer he was mine all mine, as we boated up and down the arms of the lake and took long hikes hither and yon. He knew as much about that lake and the land surrounding it as anyone. He ran the Colorado River often before it was dammed, and he boated it faithfully when it became Lake Powell.

So, I have really really clear memories of him from the ages of, let's say, 42-55. These were the years he belonged to me, or at least Lake Powell belonged to him and I belonged to Lake Powell. I realize now he didn't do those trips for my enjoyment, but for his; but that doesn't minimize even one little bit how much I adored those trips and that lake. It feels like home to me. I yearn for it. I miss it. It almost isn't even fair that I don't have a boat and money and resources so I can still be on that lake half the summer.

I remember sometimes a wind would come up and he'd have to jog after a blowing towel, or he'd have to run after a rope that was going out too fast, or have to dash to catch the boat before it rammed the dock. And his run looked like this funny, choppy thing, sort of a half-gait, all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Like his hips and knees didn't quite work on demand.

Which is me now.

I didn't understand it then; I was single or barely double digits in age, and my body did anything I wanted it to do the second I asked for it. I was lithe and limber and never stiff.

But today, when Jackson and Christian and I were setting up sprinklers and I would stand there adjusting the spray pattern, and then try to run out of the way before I got wet, I could feel that I was all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Damn! Do I really have to get old? I'm even a jogger. But without my warm up, my hips and knees don't just get up and go anymore.

So now I know where I am in my kids' lives, and the strange and funny images they'll carry away of me, trying to dodge the sprinkler spray. Until they hit their 40s, and then they'll understand.

Memories of 23 years ago

Just after graduating from high school I left with a "delegation" of about 40 high school student "ambassadors" from Utah to visit the Soviet Union. It is one of my most precious memories, an experience I'll never be able to duplicate. I was there within just a couple of years of communism falling.

We flew from the U.S. to Finland and spent about 48 hours in Helsinki. It was mid-June and gorgeous—working up to summer solstice and therefore never getting dark at night...one of the best parts. The food was an experience, but Helsinki itself was everything I expected a European city to be. It was large, fast, clean, beautiful. It was like a dream.

Culture shock began the moment we boarded the rickety museum piece of a train that would take us from Finland into the USSR. We went first to Leningrad. It was lovely in an exotic, ancient sort of way, but it was so different from Finland. For all its being a world superpower, the USSR was not a first-world country. That gobsmacked me. Propaganda was still everywhere—six stories high, painted on buildings in primary colors—statues of Lenin everywhere, but the people lived in run-down little apartments with no appliances or just a tiny (dormitory-sized) fridge and a single hotplate. No washers and dryers, no dishwashers. Phones in the hallways outside the apartments, the whole floor shared. Laundry always hanging out on balconies. Everything—streets, building facades—was filthy. There was not hot water all day even in the hotels; at check in we were handed a schedule of when there would be hot water. In one hotel, they turned off the electricity at 9:00 pm. Water was not safe to drink—it was cloudy yellow. I brushed my teeth with Pepsi for three weeks.

For the first few days I was in sort of a daze: we fear these poor creatures? These are the archenemies of the United States of America? These people who have only one brand of car to buy, whose trains are falling apart, who still fly from city to city in WWII propeller planes? The second night in Leningrad we decided sleep was for sissies and we were only going to be in the USSR once. We hailed a cab and see the city. Our cab driver was an M.D., a surgeon, who had to moonlight driving a cab because being a doctor didn't pay the bills. That was the biggest eye opener of all about what it was like to live under communism.

We visited Yalta, Simferopl, Moscow. I swam in the Black Sea and laid on the black beaches. I ate lots of amazing ice cream, because I was such a picky eater I struggled with the borscht and other strange foods. I did eventually acclimate to dark rye bread, and I gave up the Pepsi at mealtime for tea because I got so sick of the sweet. The weather was so hot during the day; but when the sun began to go down it was like a dream, to prowl the streets of the USSR with 39 other kids my age, like we owned the joint. We saw Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's tomb and waxy Lenin himself. He just looked like a Madame Tussaud wax figure, but everyone swore it was the real corpse. Of course. Perfectly preserved after 53 years. (It was like a refrigerator in there, that's for sure; it was the only time during the whole trip that I was even remotely cool, and I was freezing.)

We saw the Moscow folk ballet perform. I cried through the entire thing—the folk music, the dance—it was just so gorgeous. We saw the Bolshoi Ballet perform Giselle. (Wish I'd understood the story ahead of time, I was so not following along.) And one night we went to the Moscow circus. This is probably my favorite story of my entire life to tell. I was exhausted—we all were, burning the candle at both ends by being tourists all day long with our officially assigned tour guides and Utah chaperones, and then catching cabs and buses all night long on our own. I did doze off during the circus, at least I assume I did. When I woke up I was in the middle of the ring, holding up a constrictor snake that was way too heavy for me. As soon as I came to, my arms fell to my sides with the heavy. (Circus people were on either side of me to catch the snake.) I had been hypnotized in Russian! I have no memory of the hypnosis, only of waking up; but I have 70 American witnesses that told me what happened. I still geek out about it.

Adventures in camping...

...preparation! Have a big extended family camp planned for this weekend, have been looking forward to it since last September or so. We haven't even gone camping yet, and we've had a day.

1. Emma's ankle (lightly sprained yesterday) is quite swollen today and she can't walk well. Hard, because this is a *hiking* camping trip. So one of us will need to stay back at camp with her during all activities, she obviously can't hike.
2. Washing machine was making a bad noise this morning. Called repairman. He fit us in today.
3. Went grocery shopping.
4. Took Suburban in for oil change. Cars were parked trickily in driveway. Though I was backing out carefully and slowly, I nudged B's little Mazda w/ Suburban. Suburban is strong. B's Mazda rear passenger door is dented all to hell.
5. Steady streams of water down into our basement, and we knew not why. Repairman warned us we'd leak a little when he took apart the washer. Cleaning up basement with every towel we have.
6. Leaks didn't stop though washer was put back together. Blaine (thankfully working at home today!) sees that as quick as we're wiping the floor, something is puddling up.
7. Repairman returns. Diagnoses a broken drain hose. (No prior leak or evidence of leak, the very act of fixing the washer broke the washer.) Repairman doesn't have a hose. He orders one.
   
8. Every towel in my house is soaking/dirty, and I cannot wash them or even spin them out.
9. One of B's two jobs wants to talk today about how things are going, and whether he'd consider dumping the other job and working full time there. Good day for "quick" negotiations before we leave. The other job has just these "few quick things" that must be done before we can go.
   

T minus two hours to departure, and I've gotten no camping prep done today because I've had a few other things going on. Neither Blaine nor I have even showered yet.

by Ethan

The Story of When I Fell Out of the Tree

Well, when I fell at first I was spinning head over feet. Then I closed my eyes; and when I opened my eyes, all I could see was a cloud of dust. It hurt as soon as I feel out of the tree. It hurt way before I opened my eyes. I landed on my butt, sitting down. I got a bloody nose.

Ethan fell out of the highest part of the tree today. Scared me so bad I got nauseated. He wanted to tell me the whole story of it. His butt is sore, but all else is well. Emma also got a minor ankle sprain at school. Two kids today who didn't quite have to go to the hospital, still a pretty good day.

Baked tofu!

A few weeks ago someone (I seriously cannot remember who, because I am senile) linked me to a recipe for baked tofu. I got right out of my chair, baked up some tofu, and it was gone in about 3 minutes because all the kids snarfed it. We've baked tofu pretty much every day since, and everyone loves it.

It's so easy!

• Press water out of a block of tofu, the firmer the better. After I do the first pressing between two plates with extra weight on top, I add a couple of paper towels to the bottom plate beneath the tofu and press again.
  
• Slice the block into slices about 1/4 inch thick, or into quarter inchish cubes.
  
• Marinate. We do just plain soy sauce most often, and we marinate right on the baking tray. Soy sauce plus sesame sauce is outragously delicious, but here are lots and lots of other ideas.
  
• Spray baking pan with whatever you use for oil/nonstick. Lay out slices/cubes with space between them.
  
• Bake in 400º oven for about 20 minutes. (Can be done in toaster oven! For a shorter amount of time.) If you have slices rather than cubes, you may want to flip them over and crispy up the other side for an additional 5 minutes.
  
• You can serve it warm, or you can put them in the fridge and eat them chilled.
  
• YUMMY.

If you kids already like tofu, this will become a staple. I'm using it as a snack, but also I'm finding that I'm baking up my tofu before putting it in recipes, like sesame tofu or mabodofu. That little bit of crispy makes all my tofu recipes exquisite.

Early morning crazies

Sometimes when we drag the kids out of bed at 6:30 for scripture study, their brains/mouths just aren't functional yet. This morning most of us had made it from bed to bathroom to sofa, but we were still waiting for a couple of stragglers. Ethan mentioned that he was "sweepy", mispronouncing it intentionally. He was bushy-tailed and mischievous. It led to a discussion about needing a broom, and then Blaine said he was sweet pea.

Libby was still only working on halfsies, but Ethan was all there. She was trying to add on about sweet pea when he hijacked her comment without a beat, and gave us our first belly laugh of the day.

Libby: "Actually, sweet pea and violet is..."
Ethan: "...the Roman name for Libby!" Kid had perfect comedic timing on this one, with a little sing-song tune and swinging dancey arms. I'm still cracking up about it.

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Now playing: Rene Gruss - The Red Light

Children's Day

Children's Day (こどもの日, Kodomo no hi) is a Japanese national holiday which takes place annually on May 5, the fifth day of the fifth month, and is part of the Golden Week. It is a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness.
Children's Day (Japan) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I never even think of today as Cinco de Mayo, because the Japanese version is so much fun. If you haven't ever read about Children's Day* then you could read about it over at Wikipedia if you were inclined. :)

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*Which, when I lived in Japan, was Boys' Day; Girls' Day (ひなまつり, Hinamatsuri) is 3 March (third day of the third month) and also a fun and beautiful holiday, with all the stores and most houses sporting massive doll displays like this one:

*BUSHED*

OMgosh so tired. We cleaned all three bathrooms today all sparkly and germ-free, to get rid of the hurls we had going through the last week. That part was fine. Then I decided while I was in the mode, it was about time to do the kitchen floor. Mopping the kitchen is always a killer. I should do it right before bed and then just climb in and die, that's what I should do.

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Now playing: Depeche Mode - Clean

I guess I was strong then, too.

Didn't know what to do with ourselves after dinner, so just for giggles I tossed in an exercise DVD and told the kids they could join me if they wanted to. They did some of the dance moves, and everyone asked for weights when it was time to work out arms. Mack quickly grew frustrated that he couldn't follow the weights routine and said, "I'll just do sit ups, since I'm really good at that." He did sit ups for a bit, then pulled up his sleeve to reveal his left bicep. "Jackson! Feel my abs!" I asked him how he got so strong and awesome and he said, "How I got strong, is I turned four!"

White Rabbits

I am so into music. Long, long ago, when I was in junior high school, high school, and college, I was a concert-goer. I amassed CDs in alarming numbers (sometimes at the expense of food budget) and if I liked even one or two songs of any group that came to town, I'd totally go to their concert. I'm sure I hit 100 (I saved all my stubs, back in the day) in the years between the ages of 15 and 23 or so.

And they weren't all $50 concerts, either, oh no. They were $5 and $10 and sometimes if the group was *huge* (by my standards) $15, so pretty affordable. And now I pay $35 for Muse and $50 for U2!

So last night was a blast from the past. My sister Joan, my niece Liz, and I went to see White Rabbits at this tiny little bar called the Urban Lounge in SLC. The maximum capacity of the joint is 299. Tiny. And tickets were only $10, just like when I was in high school.

I love White Rabbits. I'd say they're my #3 favorite group. Knowing (as my faithful readers do) that #1 is Muse and #2 is Radiohead—both bands of critical acclaim, accomplishment, and large fanbase—you can see that I esteem them pretty loftily. I see huge, huge potential from these guys, and in ten years I'm going to their $35 concert and I'll laugh about the tiny bar I saw them in way back when. I listened to them for the entire 100-mile drive up to SLC and the entire 100-mile drive home and didn't get sick of their songs even hearing them multiple times (because I have CD versions, and live versions, and a couple of acoustic versions...). Here's a playlist if you want to hear my six favorite songs in order of favoriteness.

So how was it?

Opening group #1 was Mini Mansions. I had never heard of them or their music, but they were great. It was a really enjoyable set. Well done, guys. Music was great, singing was great, easy to listen to.






Opening group #2 was Here We Go Magic. Musically they started off each song well. They have a lot of musical talent. I didn't like the lead singer's style of singing, sounded very falsely falsetto to me; but I think this band's strong point is probably singing, like everyone in that band could sing and had a mike, which made for lots of harmonies and multi-part vocals. Each song went on a bit too long. By the end of every song it just sounded like an eternal jam session we weren't interested in.


For the main event Liz, Joan, and I were really excited for White Rabbits, and we gave up our little table-with-chairs a few feet from the stage and stood front and center instead. And they didn't disappoint. They sound fantastic live, and played all five of the songs I cared about hearing the most. Percussion is White Rabbits' strong point, but the two vocalists sound superb together and they faithfully recreated their layered music on the tiny stage, even with all the limits in sound technology in that bitty little club.
Setting up and soundchecking


Cute lead singer is cute





I could have reached out and touched them
if I were creepy like that.



(I completely loved this beat-up guitar)

Sometimes two power drummers just aren't enough.
You need three to get the job done.




I did have a couple of very minor disappointments:

• Pretty much no eye contact between the band and the crowd. Dude, I was two feet away from Greg Roberts for the better part of an hour, singing my heart out, and he never once looked me in the eye. I don't think any of them really noticed who sang along or knew their songs.
• I could have stepped up onto the stage at any time. These guys don't have a crew or security, they set up and soundchecked their own gear. But after the set was over they walked off the side of the stage and into some mysterious door, instead of mingling with the crowd. They totally, totally should have mingled.
• But I realize I see things through innocent-colored glasses; maybe if they mingled more, too many women would come on to them. How were they to know I would just talk, and not try to get a hotel key card? *shrug*

There are two drummers, Matt and Jamie, but I'm afraid I can't guess at which is which; one sat at the drum kit, and one stood and added percussion of all kinds. The standing one—dude could move. It was kind of primal the way he hit those drums. But Mr. Sits At Kit was my favorite member of the band. He did look out at the audience, he smiled at us, he smiled at other band members, he looked like he was having a marvelous time. And he walked around the venue while the other bands were playing, kind of mixing it up. I want to pinch his little cheeks, wish I'd have gotten a picture with him when he walked by our table.
Me and Joan
Me, Joan, Liz

This is Mike, one of the guitarists from Here We Go Magic, totally chatting up my adorable niece Liz.