I Simply Remember My Favorite Things ...

I really want to get back to posting more. Unfortunately, much of what goes through my head these days is a little bit of a downer. (See my last post ...) So, in an effort to show that I do in fact appreciate that my life is not absolutely horrible, I am posting a list of some of my biggest blessings at the moment. It's not the sort of thing I usually do. I run the risk of sounding cheesy, or worse, braggy. Today it's a risk I'll take. With a smile on my face.

I am so excited for #3. She is starting middle school next week, and with it, orchestra. Being a former band-geek myself, I love when my kids are involved with music, especially at school. She's been taking guitar for about 5 years now, and is adding violin. Her guitar teacher also teaches violin, and so their focus is shifting for a while until she starts to get the new instrument down. She's had 3 violin lessons now, and is doing really well. YAY, #3!

We've jokingly called this summer "the summer of #2." It's not entirely true, but a great deal of time has been spent by me on the road taking #2 to drivers' ed and soccer. The great news is that she's passed drivers' ed and is now in possession of a learner's permit. That's also the scary news. But honestly, it's not too bad. She does pretty well. And come late February, we will have another driver at our disposal, which will be cause for much rejoicing. The greatest news is that #2 made her high school JV soccer team. After being cut last year, she worked her little tail off, improved vastly, and is so excited to be part of the team. They are a great team, too. It's so much fun to watch her play in a stadium.

Along similar lines, #4 is taking a break from soccer. This is really a huge relief. It's a break for our schedule, and it will be good for him, as well. #4 likes sports on a recreational kind of level, but his true interests lie elsewhere. It will be good to pursue things like music and drama.

I am taking a vacation in a couple of weeks. It won't be long, but I'll be with a couple of my favorite people in a beautiful city, and I cannot wait.

It's almost fall. My favorite season. I'm really having to hold back pulling out the autumn decor. Sweater weather for me is as comforting as cocoa. Apples and pumpkins, rusty foliage and chrysanthemums. I hope the weather this year doesn't skip from summer to winter. I'll be crossing my fingers.

Then there is Yogalaxmi. She deserves her very own post. Be watching for more on her ...

Finally, no list of my blessings is ever complete without a little bit on my life partner. I would love to say that I got such a great husband because I knew what I was doing when I picked Larry. But let's face it--I was only 19. All I knew was that I couldn't stand the thought of continuing on with life without him. I lucked out. I got a talented, intelligent, hard-working, funny, responsible guy. There is no one on this planet who I'd rather spend time with. He is incredibly supportive of me, and he needs my support as well. He has also taken on responsibility for my mother. He does it willingly and patiently and selflessly. Today I am thankful that he was born 41 years ago. Here's to another 41, at least!

Spiritual Thoughts, Temporal Behavior

For those of you unfamiliar with my family or my religion, I will start with two author's notes.

1.  I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as LDS or Mormons.  We send out young men and women for 18 months to two years to proselytize, preach the gospel, and baptize.  They put aside their regular lives for these missions and far from being compsensated for their efforts, they rather pay for the privilege to serve.  To help them out financially (and also to get to know them) church members are encouraged to feed the missionaries meals at least once daily.  That meal is generally dinner.

2.  I have four children, three girls and a boy, whom I refer to on this blog in birth order as #s 1-4.  They are aged 14, 12, 9, and 7.  Numbers 3 and 4 are just under 23 months apart.  They have a love-hate relationship.  If we're keeping score, hate is usually ahead.

Now to my story.  A few months back, a new elder (missionary) was transferred into our ward and announced to the congregation.  His last name grabbed my attention, being my uncommon maiden name.  I leaned over to my husband and whispered, "If he's from San Diego, we're cousins of some sort."  He was indeed from San Diego, and we are second cousins--our grandfathers being brothers.  I introduced myself to him after sacrament meeting and suggested we'd have to have him to dinner.

The dinner calendar in our ward is in high demand.  In Western Mass, where I grew up, we had two sets of missionaries assigned full time to our ward  because of the geographical size.  In Southern California we usually had one.  Here in the Boise area we have 5 wards sharing a set.  The end of each month a calendar with 8 available dates is passed around Relief Society, and it's often filled after it has passed through 8 pairs of hands.  So I approached the woman who manages the calendar directly and asked to be put on for February.  Last night they came.

It was great to get to know Elder K. a little.  There wasn't much to catch up on.  The only person he had contact with in my family line was my grandfather.  And I did not grow up in San Diego anyway, and really had very little interaction with my own first cousins.  He was surprised my granddad wasn't a baseball fanatic like his.  I can't picture mine with sports equipment.  My uncles liked basketball.  And out-jumping each other.  Out-anythinging each other.  We did find that harassment is apparently a family trait that crosses over through all of us.  

At the end of the meal, Elder K. asked us if they could leave us with a short message.  This is standard.  And truly, I enjoy the spirit that the missionaries bring with them into our home, and usually this is part of that.  Usually.

We adjourned to the family room where Elder K. asked if we had something to blindfold one of the kids with.  A bandana was produced and tied around #3s eyes.  He had her feel our family Book of Mormon and #4 set it somewhere out of the way.  He spun #3 around several times and then instructed everyone to make tons of noise, except me.  I was to be quietly giving #3 directions to find the book.  I'm sure we all see where he was going with this.  It was a good object lesson.  Or it was until #4 ran and slammed into his blindfolded sister, tackling her to the floor.  He thought that would be a more effective distraction than the yelling in her face that he was previously engaged in.  He was right.  But no one was hurt, no one even cried, and once we continued with the search, Elder S., who we'd learned earlier was #8 of 11 kids in his family, had a difficult time keeping a laugh suppressed.

Scriptures located, object lesson completed, Elder K. tried to make the message concrete by talking to the kids about listening to the Spirit and the Prophet and their parents rather than the negative influences of the world.  This is the point at which #4, who had been laying exhaustedly on the floor, rolled to the side and let one rip.  "Are you kidding me?," I quietly yelled.  (You know that quiet mom yell.  If you're a mom, you've done it.)  Elder S. lost it this time, the suppressed laugh, that is.  It was so embarrassing.  Luckily the missionaries were in a hurry to get on to their next appointment before my son could act even more the part of the natural man, or I guess the natural boy.

It was so bad that when they left it was Larry who started the lecture about behaving with company in the house.  Although, he added the caveat that it would be okay to pass gas if the visitor was Dustin (an employee and friend of Larry's) or Uncle Eric.  Nice.  I guess they never truly out-grow this, do they?  

Brooke, Kim--be warned.  #4 has permission from his father to act like a slob in your presence. 

I would really like to have my cousin to dinner again before he's transferred.  I assume he'll be happy to come.  But I won't be surprised if he has his companion give the spiritual thought.

Col. Mustard, in the Library, with the Candlestick

Ok, well, not exactly.  But we did solve the mystery of Stinky Pete.  I originally posted about this almost an entire month ago, and the, er, trouble had been going on for a little under two weeks at that point.  It's been a while, and I'm so relieved, if not a little grossed out, to have figured it out.

The solution reads like this:  "The previous renters' cats, down the heating duct, with the urine."

It now makes sense that we didn't smell it until we started running the heater, heating "things" up.  We contacted our landlord who reacted in a surprisingly unsurprised manner, and then called the heating and cooling guy who is coming Monday morning to replace that section of ducting.  Until then, we have closed #4's vent, and covered it with a huge, folded towel.  Larry bought a small space heater so #4 doesn't freeze.  

Eew.

The Price of Democracy

I volunteererd at the school Book Fair this morning. This meant that I had to get up eary, shower, make lunches, and get the girls and myself out of the house about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Larry, who generally takes the girls, instead went to vote and take #4 to preschool.

My mom picked up #4 as she does most Tuesdays while I have accupuntcture. When I'm done I go to her store, get the boy, hang out, and then we pick up the girls. Today when I got to my mom's store, #4 was wearing a construction paper Indian headdress bearing his name hyphenated with "fast-runner" and a sticker on his shirt letting all of town know that he had voted.

As it happened, this was the time I had appointed to go vote myself, and upon hearing the change in plan, #4 whined, "But I don't want to go vote, it takes too wong!" Assuming they'd hit bad lines, I reassured him, "Oh, but Daddy doesn't know the fun line games that I know. We're going to play fun line games." Not entirely convinced, that promise at least took care of the whining. My next move was to rack my brain on what fun game we could possibly play waiting in line for the next available machine, all during the three minutes it takes to drive from my mom's store to the polls. Luckily it hit me. "Honey, Daddy voted at about 8:15. Lots of people vote then. It's 1:45 now--I bet there won't even be a line."

Feeling pretty confident that the mystery fun-line-game wouldn't be needed, I still felt great relief to see an open machine on my precinct's side of the room. Checked in, card inserted into the machine, the whining started up again. "This takes too wooong. I don't want to vote."

"Buddy, it's not going to take long at all."

"I want to go hooome."

As I touched each candidate I nervously checked my peripheral vision for signs of annoyed fellow voters and tried to quiet my bored son. Finally, everything voted for, I just now had to check the printout as it rolled under the viewing window to make sure everything had been recorded correctly. "See, buddy almost done. We'll go get the sisters in just a minute."

"Weawwy? Almost done? That was fast."

"See I told you there wouldn't be a line."

"We didn't have a wine, Daddy didn't know how to do the machine. But then he did."

I'll have to ask Larry what happened with his machine, because I'm pretty sure he knows how to touch a circle by his candidate's name on a screen. Good thing we don't live in a precinct with punch card ballot machines. As we all know from the 2000 elections, those are remarkably tricky and I'm just not sure #4 could have waited that long for his parents' voices to be heard. But hey, at least he now has TWO stickers on his shirt.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I've been collecting some little verbal gems from my #4 for a few months. Here they are, in no special order.

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM "BIG J"

• Boys are cool 'cause they wear awesome shirts.

• If you don't have a butt, you can't poop. That's why everybody gots to have a butt.

• Why does he (Rush Limbaugh) have a heavy voice?

• Real things are bigger than pretend things.

• Two boys are better than one boy. We're all the boys we've got! (said to dad about fixing things)

• Please means RIGHT NOW!

• Orange trees means we're down the mountain.

• If I was born on Christmas, Christmas would be December 23rd.

• Um, superheros don't really "pick up." (spoken to his un-hip mother while wearing Superman jammies, with a "duh" tone in his voice)

• Welcome back to summer. It's been a long commercial.

• When you're hurt, you need to be alone, unless you're at the hospital.

• Lilly Rock (a peak on our mountain) is heavy.

• If you're an old man and you have a stick, when you get married you have to put the stick back where you found it. If you remember, you can.

This last one was out of the blue. No idea! Maybe a commentary on how #4 loves collecting rocks and sticks, and though Dad--an old married man--thinks they're cool, he doesn't seem to have any of his own. It's so interesting to think about how the world appears to a kid. Things we say must sometimes sound very odd. Words often have different meanings, and adults sure are hard to figure out. I still have a hard time with some of them.