There are a lot of things I admire about my parents, and would like to emulate. My mother has the patience Mother Teresa, for example. My dad can fix anything, even stuff that wasn't broken before, and I love his gregarious personality. But instead of those traits, I got Mom's bad teeth, Dad's bad vision, and one more thing from Dad - a lousy sense of direction.
It was inevitable, I guess - the story goes that when Mom was in labor with me, there was construction and Dad ended up getting lost on the way to the hospital. As is typical of family stories, I don't think they were in any danger of having me on the side of the road, but it fed the stereotype of Dad as someone who was always getting lost.
In my family, we called them “shortcuts.” One memorable shortcut was on our way to Hersheypark in Pennsylvania that took an extra two hours. After that, anytime it seemed like Dad was lost, we would ask, “Did you take a shortcut?” Fortunately, he never seemed to have a problem being lost. He just laughed it off.
Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When I got my driver’s license, all of a sudden those places that I had been driven to for years seemed like grand adventures. Would I get there? Would I make it home?
I would drive to the stake center 30 minutes away and it would take me an hour to get home. After high school graduation, I attended my very first Single Adult activity in Annapolis, about an hour from home. Once I recognized the looks I was getting as “Look, fresh meat!” I realized the difference between “Single Adult” and “Young Single Adult” (roughly twenty years at this place) and hightailed it out of there. But I didn’t get home for about three hours, after getting lost and ending up in one of the scarier parts of Baltimore.
When I drove from Maryland to California, I defied Mom’s predictions by only getting lost once, after leaving a Dairy Queen rest stop in Wyoming. My only options were towards “Laramie” or “Green River,” so naturally I picked the wrong one and headed east for half an hour before I could turn around. Happily, I was able to stop at the DQ again on the way back. Man, I love me them Blizzards!
Things were supposed to get easier when I moved to Utah. The whole numbered-streets, inspired-grid-system thing was going to be my navigational salvation. And it is, so long as the place you are looking for has a numbered address, the road is either north-south or east-west and not diagonal, and you can figure out which direction north, south, east, or west is.
For some reason, the church built the Mt, Timpanogos Temple way the heck out in the middle of nowhere, and I have the hardest time getting there. The directions I got the first time I went were kind of vague: Turn right on the street right before the Purple Turtle, then turn left at the "Manila 1890" sign, and there it is.
One time I missed the turn at the Manila sign and didn't realize that I was lost until I got to a booth at the entrance to the Uinta National Forest. Apparently, my stake forgot to ask an important question in the temple recommend interview: “Do you have an intimate knowledge of American Fork and surrounding environs?”
I found myself alone at the temple last night, and when I was leaving, I ended up taking a “shortcut” back to our home in Orem via… Alpine. Yes, Alpine. Not that it isn’t a lovely town, but I was as surprised to find it there as if I had just come across the city of Enoch.
I attempted to come up with reasons why I had gotten lost – The clouds were hiding the mountains, so I couldn’t tell which way was east! The road I was on didn’t have numbers! I swear I was going the right way, but I accidentally parked on the wrong side of the building! None of that sounded plausible, even to me, so I decided to do what Dad would have done. I laughed out loud, then turned up the radio, and headed home.
Not everyone is lucky enough to get the genes that make even a drive home from the temple a mini-adventure.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Attack of the Churro
Multi-tasking was not at its finest today, as I attempted to carry two churros and a carseat holding Darcey in from the car at the same time. It just didn't seem like a prudent use of my time to have to make a whole second trip just for two churros. I mean, two churros? I may not be Hanz and Franz, but certainly I can handle a baby and two churros!
Apparently, no I can't.
The problem was that Darcey's carseat handle was not in its full, upright position, so I was carrying her at an angle, trusting that the $1 per hour that the Chinese laborer was paid was a worthwhile incentive to do a good job at assembling the seat belt. I don't actually trust that, so I was holding the carseat handle with one hand, and the bottom of the seat with the other. If you are keeping score at home, that leaves exactly no hands for the churros, which weren't even for me. They were for Brad and Noah who were on their way home from school and when Brad found out that we had gotten churros at Costco without him, he'd get so far bent out of shape we could use him as a hanger. A surly hanger at that.
So the churros, which I had grabbed before realizing the precarious carseat situation, were being squeezed by the hand that was holding the handle. Darcey lay there in her seat, gazing up beatifically as a shower of cinnamon and suger dusted her face with every step. She's a trooper, she didn't even flinch. But with each jarring step, a little more shook loose, until tiny churro chunks were bonking her on the forehead. I'm watching the hail of churro come down on my baby, but I was only a few feet away from the counter, so I forged ahead.
On my last step, though, the churro broke in half and fell straight down, whacking Darcey right in the eye. I don't know if you've ever been churroed, but I can't imagine it feels good. (I've never been churroed myself, but I have been hamburgered, or more appropriately, my car has been hamburgered. I was visiting a friend at her apartment and when I came out, someone had taken a whole hamburger and smeared it across the side of my car. The bun was still sticking to the window, and there was ketchup everywhere. I will take being hamburgered over being churroed anyday.)
Darcey didn't cry until I took the churro away from her. I think she had been staring up at the churro, willing it to break and fall down so she could eat it. This girl will eat, or attempt to eat, anything. So the churro falling on her face was probably cause for great joy and celebration! Until I took it away, her horribly mean mother who never lets her have what she wants even though the boys all get churros.
Darcey cheered right up, though, when she realized that her face was covered in cinnamon and sugar. She licked her lips over and over, trying to lick up some of that deep fried goodness. Then I had to go and ruin that, too, by taking her out of her seat and brushing her off. I wouldn't have considered cinnamon or sugar, both normally dry ingredients, to be so sticky, but dust a 7 month old baby in it and watch out - you've got a substance that should be marketed to NASA to glue on those tiles they are always having trouble with.
And the stuff was everywhere. I mean everywhere. Babies are well known for their crevices and folds of skin that trap food and other debris, and this is no different. I lifted up her head, and there was a veritable storehouse of cinnamon all in her neck. I tipped her forward, and there was cinnamon sugar in her hair.
Which is all to say, if Darcey wasn't sweet before, she sure is now. She smells fantastic and probably tastes good, too, although we're just going to leave that untested. When I gave Brad the broken churro, he started to look disappointed that his was broken, until I told him that it had fallen onto Darcey's face, at which point it was deemed a better churro than Noah's whole one, because it had a story behind it.
In my family when we were kids, when a kid did something stupid, my parents would ask, "Is this the kid that we dropped on their head?" The question was never, "Is that the kid we dropped a churro on?" But what a great question that would be. And in our family, we have the answer.
Apparently, no I can't.
The problem was that Darcey's carseat handle was not in its full, upright position, so I was carrying her at an angle, trusting that the $1 per hour that the Chinese laborer was paid was a worthwhile incentive to do a good job at assembling the seat belt. I don't actually trust that, so I was holding the carseat handle with one hand, and the bottom of the seat with the other. If you are keeping score at home, that leaves exactly no hands for the churros, which weren't even for me. They were for Brad and Noah who were on their way home from school and when Brad found out that we had gotten churros at Costco without him, he'd get so far bent out of shape we could use him as a hanger. A surly hanger at that.
So the churros, which I had grabbed before realizing the precarious carseat situation, were being squeezed by the hand that was holding the handle. Darcey lay there in her seat, gazing up beatifically as a shower of cinnamon and suger dusted her face with every step. She's a trooper, she didn't even flinch. But with each jarring step, a little more shook loose, until tiny churro chunks were bonking her on the forehead. I'm watching the hail of churro come down on my baby, but I was only a few feet away from the counter, so I forged ahead.
On my last step, though, the churro broke in half and fell straight down, whacking Darcey right in the eye. I don't know if you've ever been churroed, but I can't imagine it feels good. (I've never been churroed myself, but I have been hamburgered, or more appropriately, my car has been hamburgered. I was visiting a friend at her apartment and when I came out, someone had taken a whole hamburger and smeared it across the side of my car. The bun was still sticking to the window, and there was ketchup everywhere. I will take being hamburgered over being churroed anyday.)
Darcey didn't cry until I took the churro away from her. I think she had been staring up at the churro, willing it to break and fall down so she could eat it. This girl will eat, or attempt to eat, anything. So the churro falling on her face was probably cause for great joy and celebration! Until I took it away, her horribly mean mother who never lets her have what she wants even though the boys all get churros.
Darcey cheered right up, though, when she realized that her face was covered in cinnamon and sugar. She licked her lips over and over, trying to lick up some of that deep fried goodness. Then I had to go and ruin that, too, by taking her out of her seat and brushing her off. I wouldn't have considered cinnamon or sugar, both normally dry ingredients, to be so sticky, but dust a 7 month old baby in it and watch out - you've got a substance that should be marketed to NASA to glue on those tiles they are always having trouble with.
And the stuff was everywhere. I mean everywhere. Babies are well known for their crevices and folds of skin that trap food and other debris, and this is no different. I lifted up her head, and there was a veritable storehouse of cinnamon all in her neck. I tipped her forward, and there was cinnamon sugar in her hair.
Which is all to say, if Darcey wasn't sweet before, she sure is now. She smells fantastic and probably tastes good, too, although we're just going to leave that untested. When I gave Brad the broken churro, he started to look disappointed that his was broken, until I told him that it had fallen onto Darcey's face, at which point it was deemed a better churro than Noah's whole one, because it had a story behind it.
In my family when we were kids, when a kid did something stupid, my parents would ask, "Is this the kid that we dropped on their head?" The question was never, "Is that the kid we dropped a churro on?" But what a great question that would be. And in our family, we have the answer.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Bringing Down the House
The rest of the house is jealous of the new kitchen, so they've created the Appliance Solidarity Movement and are staging a coup. They are sowing the seeds of discontent and getting more and more previously content pieces of equipment to join in their master plan. Already we've had several days of strikes, and the threats of more work stoppages are loud and frequent.
I could see the problem brewing way back when the remodel was going on. One day, every lightbulb in the basement blew out at the same time. We, naturally, assumed it was a problem with the wiring or some such, since they had been down in the basement fiddling with stuff that day. The boys' bedroom was without any lights for something like two weeks, frustrating their need to leave all the lights in their room on when they leave for school, just in case their toys are afraid of the dark. The electrician came back and screwed in a new lightbulb, which made me feel like the butt of a joke: How many Simmons' does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None - they're too stupid! They have to hire someone to do it! Okay, so not a joke you'll be telling around the water cooler anytime soon, but still.
The same electrian switched the doorbell chime to a new, non-paint covered one, and miraculously the doorbell itself stopped working right. He claims that the chime works fine, the button outside is probably fine, it's the thing that the electricity goes into that is probably broken. I can't remember what that part is called, but it doesn't really matter, because no one knows where it is in order to replace it. It could be sealed inside a wall, Cask of Amontillado style, just begging and weeping to be released and repaired, but we don't know. It will suffer for eternity, apparently, and we'll have to suffer with a doorbell that goes "click-dong" instead of the traditional and always preferred "ding-dong."
Maybe you are falling into the trap that I myself did, which is the idea that maybe the common denominator here is the electrician, who also gave us such gems as the ceiling fan that whacks into the cabinet door when opened, the off-center recessed light, and the garbage disposal that wasn't put on all the way, flooding the under sink cabinet and necessitating a call to the plumber because, again, we're too stupid to know that the problem was ultra simple to fix. I for one was all ready to blame the electrician for all of this, but the problems didn't stop when he left.
One morning I turned the water on to get in the shower, and it was stone cold. I checked a couple other faucets and they too had no hot water. I decided that lighting a pilot light was something that regular people did all the time, and surely I could do it too.
Turns out, I can't. This pilot light was sealed behind a glass door and was supposed to always stay lit, so there wasn't really a way to light it with a match. I learned this after about three hours of crouching on the floor of the furnace room, with my head jammed between the water heater and the broken soft water thingy the old owners so graciously left for us, trying to look into the window to see if the light was lit, or if there was a spark. The water heaters were only three years old, so I finally called the phone number of the installer who had left his sticker on them. It was not a reassuring phone call.
When he asked me what kind of water heaters he had installed for us, I told him, and he replied with "I was afraid you'd say that." Apparently, the heaters are pure crap, and we can either have him replace them with the latest model of pure crap for free, or we can upgrade to a supposedly crap-free brand for $500 each. (We have two.) Generously, he came out and jimmy-rigged a repair for us for free, but told us that it was probably a temporary fix and at some point we'll have to come up with a real solution.
The water heaters are right next to the furnace, and that's where the discontent spread next. On the morning after Christmas, we awoke to find the house a balmy 64 degrees - apparently, the layer of toys and wrapping paper were not sufficient insulation for the cold night, and clearly, something was wrong with the furnace. I went back to my hypothesis that a regular person can light a pilot light, therefore so can I. There's nothing like tenacity in the face of personal ignorance.
This time it took about two hours to figure out how to light the pilot, with about 15 minutes being spent attempting to take the front panel off just to access the burner thing. Since I didn't get any repair knowledge passed down to me either through genetics or education, I have to say thank goodness for the internet. I found some generic instructions and eventually an owner's manual for the furnace, but these are written by people who start with a basic understanding of how to build a furnace, and therefore don't deign to tell us novices all of the minutiae. If you had asked me before this whole debacle where one could find a thermocouple, I would have replied "On a space shuttle."
It took me probably 20 minutes of staring at the metal tubes and widgets before I finally decided to just light a match and stick it into the whole mess and hope for the best. It took me another 10 minutes to get up the courage to do it, though, and it wasn't until after I sent the kids upstair and got my soul right with God before I could actually light the match. Pictures of the mushroom cloud where our house once was kept flashing through my mind, along with what the neighbors would say about me: "Poor, stupid idiot. They found her body with a match stuck right into the open gas valve! It's a wonder she lived as long as she did, being that dumb." It wasn't until I decided that if I did blow the house up, I probably would die instantly and therefore it probably wouldn't hurt, that I finally lit the match.
I didn't light anything. So I lit another match. It blew out before I could even approach the thing. A third, a fourth, nothing. I started losing my fear of setting myself on fire, since apparently I couldn't set even flammable things on fire. I tried again, again, again, no dice. I thought about getting Zack down there to do it - if anybody could get soemthing to catch fire, a three year old could. And do it well. I got a piece of paper and lit that, but it wouldn't stay lit either. What the heck is wrong with me?? Finally, finally, on about the tenth match, I stuck it in at the right angle and with my head three inches from the ground, angled upwards, hair on the dusty gross floor, head wedged between the furnace and that cursed soft water thing, I could see a flame. I did it! I danced all around the house, cheering for myself - I am useful after all!! I congratulated myself and insisted that everyone in the family do too. After about 30 minutes, though, the house was still cold - turns out, I had forgotten to turn the thing back on. But that didn't dampen the exhilaration I felt at being able to fix something without spending $100 and getting withering looks from a repair man who charges so much as a way of saying "This repair is beneath me."
Turns out, lighting the pilot light didn't end our heating problems, because the darn thing keeps going out. Today was the fourth time, and once last week I had to light it at like 1 a.m. because everyone in the house was awake and freezing. So I'm a pilot lighting pro, but it's not going to prevent me from having to call a repair guy anyhow.
The coup has now spread to the plumbing, as our seemingly calm and patient toilets have all of a sudden decided that they aren't taking our crap anymore! This one we can pin right on Zack. Finally the boy is potty trained, but frankly the amount of toilet paper he stuffs into the toilet is ridiculous. There are days that I have to change the roll every day. I'm not one to judge whether a substantial amount of toilet paper is required - one of the beauties of potty trained kids is that I am no longer an expert on anyone's bowel movements other than my own. But unless there is some kind of gastointestinal bug going around, I just don't think an entire roll is ever needed.
The first clog, about two weeks ago, was pretty quickly plunged and the bathroom was saved. But the second one made me grateful for an almost endless supply of beach towels, because the amount of water that poured out of the toilet made me wonder where the levee was that broke. (FYI: 6 beach towels, one bath towel, and one bath mat is what it takes to soak up a tank full of water.) After plunging, using a plumber's snake, and a wire coat hanger didn't work, I finally broke down and called a plumber. I picked the one that said "$39.99 per clogged toilet" in the yellow pages, although I discovered that's only if there's more than one clogged toilet - our single toilet cost $80.
Now, a week later, we've got another clog, and it's just not coming out. I've got a layer of towels around the base of the toilet, just in case, and while I'm waiting for the plumber to come again, I'm trying to design a new product I call the Toilet Bib, which would be a plastic swimming pool-like thing that surrounds the base of the toilet to catch all the water overflow from potty-trained kids. It also would help keep the floor clean from boys who think that they can stand and pee even though THEY CAN'T.
There are other, little ways that the house is rising up against us. The DVD player, less than a year old, broke. One of the lights in the living room fixture doesn't work (yes, we changed the bulb, very funny). There is a fax machine noise when I answer the phone. I'm waiting for the ceiling fans to all turn on and fly the house off a cliff or something. Maybe the house will land somewhere exotic, that way even if the place is falling apart, it will be warmer than Utah!
I could see the problem brewing way back when the remodel was going on. One day, every lightbulb in the basement blew out at the same time. We, naturally, assumed it was a problem with the wiring or some such, since they had been down in the basement fiddling with stuff that day. The boys' bedroom was without any lights for something like two weeks, frustrating their need to leave all the lights in their room on when they leave for school, just in case their toys are afraid of the dark. The electrician came back and screwed in a new lightbulb, which made me feel like the butt of a joke: How many Simmons' does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None - they're too stupid! They have to hire someone to do it! Okay, so not a joke you'll be telling around the water cooler anytime soon, but still.
The same electrian switched the doorbell chime to a new, non-paint covered one, and miraculously the doorbell itself stopped working right. He claims that the chime works fine, the button outside is probably fine, it's the thing that the electricity goes into that is probably broken. I can't remember what that part is called, but it doesn't really matter, because no one knows where it is in order to replace it. It could be sealed inside a wall, Cask of Amontillado style, just begging and weeping to be released and repaired, but we don't know. It will suffer for eternity, apparently, and we'll have to suffer with a doorbell that goes "click-dong" instead of the traditional and always preferred "ding-dong."
Maybe you are falling into the trap that I myself did, which is the idea that maybe the common denominator here is the electrician, who also gave us such gems as the ceiling fan that whacks into the cabinet door when opened, the off-center recessed light, and the garbage disposal that wasn't put on all the way, flooding the under sink cabinet and necessitating a call to the plumber because, again, we're too stupid to know that the problem was ultra simple to fix. I for one was all ready to blame the electrician for all of this, but the problems didn't stop when he left.
One morning I turned the water on to get in the shower, and it was stone cold. I checked a couple other faucets and they too had no hot water. I decided that lighting a pilot light was something that regular people did all the time, and surely I could do it too.
Turns out, I can't. This pilot light was sealed behind a glass door and was supposed to always stay lit, so there wasn't really a way to light it with a match. I learned this after about three hours of crouching on the floor of the furnace room, with my head jammed between the water heater and the broken soft water thingy the old owners so graciously left for us, trying to look into the window to see if the light was lit, or if there was a spark. The water heaters were only three years old, so I finally called the phone number of the installer who had left his sticker on them. It was not a reassuring phone call.
When he asked me what kind of water heaters he had installed for us, I told him, and he replied with "I was afraid you'd say that." Apparently, the heaters are pure crap, and we can either have him replace them with the latest model of pure crap for free, or we can upgrade to a supposedly crap-free brand for $500 each. (We have two.) Generously, he came out and jimmy-rigged a repair for us for free, but told us that it was probably a temporary fix and at some point we'll have to come up with a real solution.
The water heaters are right next to the furnace, and that's where the discontent spread next. On the morning after Christmas, we awoke to find the house a balmy 64 degrees - apparently, the layer of toys and wrapping paper were not sufficient insulation for the cold night, and clearly, something was wrong with the furnace. I went back to my hypothesis that a regular person can light a pilot light, therefore so can I. There's nothing like tenacity in the face of personal ignorance.
This time it took about two hours to figure out how to light the pilot, with about 15 minutes being spent attempting to take the front panel off just to access the burner thing. Since I didn't get any repair knowledge passed down to me either through genetics or education, I have to say thank goodness for the internet. I found some generic instructions and eventually an owner's manual for the furnace, but these are written by people who start with a basic understanding of how to build a furnace, and therefore don't deign to tell us novices all of the minutiae. If you had asked me before this whole debacle where one could find a thermocouple, I would have replied "On a space shuttle."
It took me probably 20 minutes of staring at the metal tubes and widgets before I finally decided to just light a match and stick it into the whole mess and hope for the best. It took me another 10 minutes to get up the courage to do it, though, and it wasn't until after I sent the kids upstair and got my soul right with God before I could actually light the match. Pictures of the mushroom cloud where our house once was kept flashing through my mind, along with what the neighbors would say about me: "Poor, stupid idiot. They found her body with a match stuck right into the open gas valve! It's a wonder she lived as long as she did, being that dumb." It wasn't until I decided that if I did blow the house up, I probably would die instantly and therefore it probably wouldn't hurt, that I finally lit the match.
I didn't light anything. So I lit another match. It blew out before I could even approach the thing. A third, a fourth, nothing. I started losing my fear of setting myself on fire, since apparently I couldn't set even flammable things on fire. I tried again, again, again, no dice. I thought about getting Zack down there to do it - if anybody could get soemthing to catch fire, a three year old could. And do it well. I got a piece of paper and lit that, but it wouldn't stay lit either. What the heck is wrong with me?? Finally, finally, on about the tenth match, I stuck it in at the right angle and with my head three inches from the ground, angled upwards, hair on the dusty gross floor, head wedged between the furnace and that cursed soft water thing, I could see a flame. I did it! I danced all around the house, cheering for myself - I am useful after all!! I congratulated myself and insisted that everyone in the family do too. After about 30 minutes, though, the house was still cold - turns out, I had forgotten to turn the thing back on. But that didn't dampen the exhilaration I felt at being able to fix something without spending $100 and getting withering looks from a repair man who charges so much as a way of saying "This repair is beneath me."
Turns out, lighting the pilot light didn't end our heating problems, because the darn thing keeps going out. Today was the fourth time, and once last week I had to light it at like 1 a.m. because everyone in the house was awake and freezing. So I'm a pilot lighting pro, but it's not going to prevent me from having to call a repair guy anyhow.
The coup has now spread to the plumbing, as our seemingly calm and patient toilets have all of a sudden decided that they aren't taking our crap anymore! This one we can pin right on Zack. Finally the boy is potty trained, but frankly the amount of toilet paper he stuffs into the toilet is ridiculous. There are days that I have to change the roll every day. I'm not one to judge whether a substantial amount of toilet paper is required - one of the beauties of potty trained kids is that I am no longer an expert on anyone's bowel movements other than my own. But unless there is some kind of gastointestinal bug going around, I just don't think an entire roll is ever needed.
The first clog, about two weeks ago, was pretty quickly plunged and the bathroom was saved. But the second one made me grateful for an almost endless supply of beach towels, because the amount of water that poured out of the toilet made me wonder where the levee was that broke. (FYI: 6 beach towels, one bath towel, and one bath mat is what it takes to soak up a tank full of water.) After plunging, using a plumber's snake, and a wire coat hanger didn't work, I finally broke down and called a plumber. I picked the one that said "$39.99 per clogged toilet" in the yellow pages, although I discovered that's only if there's more than one clogged toilet - our single toilet cost $80.
Now, a week later, we've got another clog, and it's just not coming out. I've got a layer of towels around the base of the toilet, just in case, and while I'm waiting for the plumber to come again, I'm trying to design a new product I call the Toilet Bib, which would be a plastic swimming pool-like thing that surrounds the base of the toilet to catch all the water overflow from potty-trained kids. It also would help keep the floor clean from boys who think that they can stand and pee even though THEY CAN'T.
There are other, little ways that the house is rising up against us. The DVD player, less than a year old, broke. One of the lights in the living room fixture doesn't work (yes, we changed the bulb, very funny). There is a fax machine noise when I answer the phone. I'm waiting for the ceiling fans to all turn on and fly the house off a cliff or something. Maybe the house will land somewhere exotic, that way even if the place is falling apart, it will be warmer than Utah!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Resolutions for 2007
No, that title is not a typo. I am a big fan of New Year's resolutions, except for one problem: I never accomplish the things that I set out to accomplish on January 1st. They all tend to be "Change my life radically and become a different person than I was on Dec. 31st" kinds of resolutions, which somewhere deep down I know sounds much easier than it really is. And to look at the positive side of things, I do accomplish many things that I never would have bothered to write down, but ought to be acknowledged. So this year, instead of trotting out my tired list of flaws disguised as a handy to-do list, I'm going to write the list I should have written last year.
1. Have a baby. Name her Darcey, and have her be the absolute, most angelic baby the world has ever seen. Dress her in the cutest clothes available, including a darling Santa dress that causes almost every single member of my ward to tell me how cute she is, including the mother of Darcey's rival for cutest baby in the ward (i.e. the only other baby in the ward).
2. Get passports and leave the country. Pick a really exotic place that no one can find on a map. Get a company to pay for the vast majority of the trip, and make sure the dollar has a great exchange rate, so I can chortle mightily at what a steal this is.
3. Start a blog. Write at least once a week. Find out that writing can be fun, and an interest I never knew I had. Realize that this is just one more way to get people to stroke my ego. Try not to be so self-centered.
4. Keep going to school. Slow and steady gets the degree, they always say. For the first time, drop a class because it looks like too much work (Meteorology) and instead take Business Law. Regret buying the book for Business Law - the class is just too easy.
5. Remodel the kitchen. Spend a ridiculous amount of money on it, but have it be worth every penny afterwards. Love the kitchen. Hug the pantry and rest my cheek on the countertop. Ponder whether money can, in fact, buy happiness.
6. Go to the gym with more regularity than ever before in my life. And when I take a month or two off, start going again without beating myself up over not doing it perfectly.
7. Make it to 2008. Survive with a majority of brain cells intact. Keep slogging away at life's daily challenges - don't give up. Find respite in friends, dates with Ryan, reality tv shows, and time to myself. Laugh at things that go wrong, look on the bright side as often as I can muster. Love my family.
1. Have a baby. Name her Darcey, and have her be the absolute, most angelic baby the world has ever seen. Dress her in the cutest clothes available, including a darling Santa dress that causes almost every single member of my ward to tell me how cute she is, including the mother of Darcey's rival for cutest baby in the ward (i.e. the only other baby in the ward).
2. Get passports and leave the country. Pick a really exotic place that no one can find on a map. Get a company to pay for the vast majority of the trip, and make sure the dollar has a great exchange rate, so I can chortle mightily at what a steal this is.
3. Start a blog. Write at least once a week. Find out that writing can be fun, and an interest I never knew I had. Realize that this is just one more way to get people to stroke my ego. Try not to be so self-centered.
4. Keep going to school. Slow and steady gets the degree, they always say. For the first time, drop a class because it looks like too much work (Meteorology) and instead take Business Law. Regret buying the book for Business Law - the class is just too easy.
5. Remodel the kitchen. Spend a ridiculous amount of money on it, but have it be worth every penny afterwards. Love the kitchen. Hug the pantry and rest my cheek on the countertop. Ponder whether money can, in fact, buy happiness.
6. Go to the gym with more regularity than ever before in my life. And when I take a month or two off, start going again without beating myself up over not doing it perfectly.
7. Make it to 2008. Survive with a majority of brain cells intact. Keep slogging away at life's daily challenges - don't give up. Find respite in friends, dates with Ryan, reality tv shows, and time to myself. Laugh at things that go wrong, look on the bright side as often as I can muster. Love my family.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Thought for Christmas
If God really didn't want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, he would have packaged it in a hard plastic shell and wired it to the tree. And maybe included a door for batteries that you have to use a screwdriver to open. And then given them three or four kids who all want their fruit opened first. By the time Eve finally got her own fruit opened, she'd be too pooped to eat it.
Seriously, do I have to come up with all the good ideas?
Merry Christmas! Here are a few pictures to make your morning happy - your house can't be as messy as mine!
Seriously, do I have to come up with all the good ideas?
Merry Christmas! Here are a few pictures to make your morning happy - your house can't be as messy as mine!
Friday, December 14, 2007
The Grinch Lives Here
I like Christmas as much as the next Christian, but I am thisclose to stamping my foot, crossing my arms, and declaring this a No Christmas Zone.
It's not even Christmas that has my hackles rising, it's not the busyness or the visitors or the stress of decorating or the obligatory neighbor gifts or even the rampant commercialism of an important religious holiday. No, my biggest beef with Christmas is toys.
I hate toys. To look at toys from the point of view of a rational adult, it's difficult to see why we buy toys in the first place. For the most part, toys provide merely temporary happiness. They are something that gets played with for a few days after Christmas, until the batteries die or the novelty wears off, and then the toy gets deposited in a box of similarly discarded toys, to be pulled out when searching for that lost dart from the Nerf gun or something.
When toys do get played with, anything with more than one piece ends up distributed between every room in our house. Today, there are Magnetix in the family room, craft room, and the basement and markers in the dining room and living room. That's in addition to the pile of dvd's that Zack took out and piled on the dining room table, the books that have been pulled off the shelf, the coats/shoes/backpacks that were deposited in the entry and the living room, and the Santa hat that has no home, and floats from place to place in the house. I fight the encroaching toys by putting them in nicely organized boxes and storing the boxes in the basement, bringing up a few boxes at a time so as to keep the mess to a minimum and rotating the boxes to ensure maximum play time. It doesn't usually work, but I try real hard.
I'd love to do some kind of statistical analysis of the true cost of toys. I picture an equation that looks something like this:
Number of times a toy was asked for X Dollar amount spent on toy = Expected Joy From Toy, or Minimum Joy Units
Scoring:
One Joy Unit for each time the toy was played with during the Christmas break
One Joy Unit for each time the kid mentions that toy when asked "What did you get for Christmas?"
One Joy Unit for each time the toy is coveted by a sibling and a fight breaks out over who gets to play with it.
Two Joy Units for each time the toy was played with during the month of January.
Three Joy Units for each time the toy was played with every month after January.
Five Joy Units for having to change the batteries due to actual use, not just leaving the thing on.
Five Joy Units if the toy was played with on their birthday (when theoretically they would have newer, better stuff to play with)
Minus Five Joy Units for not being sad if the toy breaks
Minus Five Joy Units if, after a week, the kid cannot remember the last time he saw the toy.
Minus Ten Joy Units if the kid attempts to sell or give away the toy.
Now, let's analyze a couple of presents from last year. Brad asked for a Rubik's cube about 5 times, and it cost $10, so I expect that toy to garner at least 50 Joy Units. He played with it a grand total of one time, on Christmas day or thereabouts, and then it sat on his dresser until the summer when he attempted to sell it for a dollar. So by my calculations, that toy which should have gotten us about 50 Joy Units, ended up with -9 Joy Units. Yes, it actually caused us Negative Joy, or in other words, Actual Pain. I got 9 Pain Units from buying him that toy.
Noah, on the other hand, got his Star Wars Lightsaber game, which he never asked for but cost roughly $30, so I'll give that a Minimum Joy Unit expectancy of 30. That toy was played with many times a day during Christmas break, garnering let's say 10 Joy Units. Every time it was played with, a sibling demanded a turn, causing many, many fights, for another 10 Joy Units. It was played with probably every day in January, for approximately 60 Units, and although play tapered off after he beat Darth Vader, it has enjoyed a renaissance of late, and I'd say the game has been used about 100 times this year, for 300 Units. We've changed the battery at least three times, for an additional 15 Joy Units. So this toy, which I had only expected to give us about 30 Units of Joy, has instead produced a whopping 395 Joy Units and counting.
The problem with Christmas is that more toys go the Rubik's cube way than the lightsaber game way. I worry that this year, we'll go so far into the Pain Unit hole that we might never recover. The kids have done a ton of asking for things, but I just can't forsee the eventual Joy earned from each item ever equaling the Minimum Joy threshold. And Noah is really starting to worry me, because he asked for every single BYU item available on their website, plus various baseball paraphernalia. But in the last week or two he has switched back to his Star Wars fascination, which means that all of the stuff we bought a month ago is already starting to garner Pain Units.
Last summer I asked the boys if I could just not buy them toys, but instead give them money. Noah was completely two thumbs up with that idea, whereas Brad was on the fence - could I give him some toys and some money? But no one wants to wake up on Christmas morning, open a box of dollar bills, and then go on about their day without even being able to go to Wal-Mart and spend it like it's going out of style. So we're back to buying toys this year, and I'm doing it with a Grinch-y heart. Maybe someone can give me a "Get Out of Pain Free" card in my stocking this year. I think I'm going to need it.
It's not even Christmas that has my hackles rising, it's not the busyness or the visitors or the stress of decorating or the obligatory neighbor gifts or even the rampant commercialism of an important religious holiday. No, my biggest beef with Christmas is toys.
I hate toys. To look at toys from the point of view of a rational adult, it's difficult to see why we buy toys in the first place. For the most part, toys provide merely temporary happiness. They are something that gets played with for a few days after Christmas, until the batteries die or the novelty wears off, and then the toy gets deposited in a box of similarly discarded toys, to be pulled out when searching for that lost dart from the Nerf gun or something.
When toys do get played with, anything with more than one piece ends up distributed between every room in our house. Today, there are Magnetix in the family room, craft room, and the basement and markers in the dining room and living room. That's in addition to the pile of dvd's that Zack took out and piled on the dining room table, the books that have been pulled off the shelf, the coats/shoes/backpacks that were deposited in the entry and the living room, and the Santa hat that has no home, and floats from place to place in the house. I fight the encroaching toys by putting them in nicely organized boxes and storing the boxes in the basement, bringing up a few boxes at a time so as to keep the mess to a minimum and rotating the boxes to ensure maximum play time. It doesn't usually work, but I try real hard.
I'd love to do some kind of statistical analysis of the true cost of toys. I picture an equation that looks something like this:
Number of times a toy was asked for X Dollar amount spent on toy = Expected Joy From Toy, or Minimum Joy Units
Scoring:
One Joy Unit for each time the toy was played with during the Christmas break
One Joy Unit for each time the kid mentions that toy when asked "What did you get for Christmas?"
One Joy Unit for each time the toy is coveted by a sibling and a fight breaks out over who gets to play with it.
Two Joy Units for each time the toy was played with during the month of January.
Three Joy Units for each time the toy was played with every month after January.
Five Joy Units for having to change the batteries due to actual use, not just leaving the thing on.
Five Joy Units if the toy was played with on their birthday (when theoretically they would have newer, better stuff to play with)
Minus Five Joy Units for not being sad if the toy breaks
Minus Five Joy Units if, after a week, the kid cannot remember the last time he saw the toy.
Minus Ten Joy Units if the kid attempts to sell or give away the toy.
Now, let's analyze a couple of presents from last year. Brad asked for a Rubik's cube about 5 times, and it cost $10, so I expect that toy to garner at least 50 Joy Units. He played with it a grand total of one time, on Christmas day or thereabouts, and then it sat on his dresser until the summer when he attempted to sell it for a dollar. So by my calculations, that toy which should have gotten us about 50 Joy Units, ended up with -9 Joy Units. Yes, it actually caused us Negative Joy, or in other words, Actual Pain. I got 9 Pain Units from buying him that toy.
Noah, on the other hand, got his Star Wars Lightsaber game, which he never asked for but cost roughly $30, so I'll give that a Minimum Joy Unit expectancy of 30. That toy was played with many times a day during Christmas break, garnering let's say 10 Joy Units. Every time it was played with, a sibling demanded a turn, causing many, many fights, for another 10 Joy Units. It was played with probably every day in January, for approximately 60 Units, and although play tapered off after he beat Darth Vader, it has enjoyed a renaissance of late, and I'd say the game has been used about 100 times this year, for 300 Units. We've changed the battery at least three times, for an additional 15 Joy Units. So this toy, which I had only expected to give us about 30 Units of Joy, has instead produced a whopping 395 Joy Units and counting.
The problem with Christmas is that more toys go the Rubik's cube way than the lightsaber game way. I worry that this year, we'll go so far into the Pain Unit hole that we might never recover. The kids have done a ton of asking for things, but I just can't forsee the eventual Joy earned from each item ever equaling the Minimum Joy threshold. And Noah is really starting to worry me, because he asked for every single BYU item available on their website, plus various baseball paraphernalia. But in the last week or two he has switched back to his Star Wars fascination, which means that all of the stuff we bought a month ago is already starting to garner Pain Units.
Last summer I asked the boys if I could just not buy them toys, but instead give them money. Noah was completely two thumbs up with that idea, whereas Brad was on the fence - could I give him some toys and some money? But no one wants to wake up on Christmas morning, open a box of dollar bills, and then go on about their day without even being able to go to Wal-Mart and spend it like it's going out of style. So we're back to buying toys this year, and I'm doing it with a Grinch-y heart. Maybe someone can give me a "Get Out of Pain Free" card in my stocking this year. I think I'm going to need it.
Seeing is Believing
I wouldn't have believed this if I didn't see it with my own eyes. My first thought was to check outside to see if there were pigs flying across the sky, or check the weather report to find the temperature down in Hades.
I made something fancy for dinner. And my kids ate it.
I'll wait a minute until your hearts start again, I know this comes as quite a shock.
Ryan's parents were going to come up for a visit a week or two ago, and I bought a pork tenderloin so that I could try out a new recipe on them, for Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Grilled Pineapple. Yum! But they didn't end up coming, and so the pork sat in my fridge while the pineapple went bad, because it seemed stupid to cook this meal for just us and the kids. But it was just going to go to waste if I didn't cook it, so one afternoon I whipped up the glaze, spread it on the pork, and popped it under the broiler.
Naturally, as with everything I attempt to broil, I burned it. I don't know why it's called a broiler - a burner is a more appropriate word choice. I guess "burner" is already in use in another part of the stove, a place where I rarely burn things. So the glaze is completely black and charred enough that it lifts off in chunks. But the middle of the loin is still pretty pink, due to the fact that my brand-new, just used once for Thanksgiving, digital meat thermometer is now broken because it can't handle the heat from the broiler. So I overcooked the outside of the pork and the thermometer, but upon cutting into it, I haven't cooked the inside enough.
Ryan came home at this point, when I'm about 30 seconds away from chucking the whole thing in the trash and getting out a box of cereal for dinner, but he claims it smells good. I was only making this for two people to eat, trying to keep my expectations realistic, so if he was still game, I thought I'd keep plugging away at it. I sliced that bad boy up and laid each slice on the broiler pan, then put it back in the oven to try to, at the very least, heat up the E. coli bacteria that we were going to have as a side dish to our possibly undercooked pork.
When they were nice and toasty (and the pork looked less pink) Noah and Zack were both hanging out in the kitchen. So just to humor ourselves, we told them that dinner was ready and they sat down. I put out plates with a piece of pork on each one. I had some steamed veggies that were in a bowl also on the table. We sat down and Ryan and I each took a kid's plate to cut their food for them.
And then they ate it.
All of it.
Noah was even excited by the bowl of steamed broccoli on the table. No one complained about the crust being black. As far as I know, they didn't even take the burned parts off, just ate the whole thing.
This is such a stunning development that I barely know what to think about it. Do I could this as a fluke? Is this just a precursor of good things to come? Should I expect this kind of behavior more often? Is this a reaction to us trying to be more laid back and less uptight about mealtimes? Or do they just like pork?
My guess is, the planets aligned for this one meal and I shouldn't expect this again. Most likely, if I cooked this again they would completely reject it. But it does make me see what is possible for the future: someday, my kids are going to sit down and eat dinner like grown-ups! We'll have scintillating conversation as we explore the pros and cons of universal health care or conservatives' reactions to Romney's JFK speech. I'll ask them if they've read any good books lately, and we can discuss them.
I'm going to look back fondly at this dinner as a nice, one-time thing. Right now, Zacky and his friend Jonathan are eating lunch while wearing snow hats pulled down over their faces. Brad and Noah both think it is perfectly acceptable to crawl under the table instead of walking around it to go get a drink. Later that night, we found Zack playing our Star Wars lightsaber game with a piece of pork shoved in his cheek, like a chipmunk. And fish sticks are still received with cheers and accolades. But they know to thank me for dinner, which they do every night, even when they choose to make themselves a sandwich instead. I just didn't believe I'd ever see the day.
I made something fancy for dinner. And my kids ate it.
I'll wait a minute until your hearts start again, I know this comes as quite a shock.
Ryan's parents were going to come up for a visit a week or two ago, and I bought a pork tenderloin so that I could try out a new recipe on them, for Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Grilled Pineapple. Yum! But they didn't end up coming, and so the pork sat in my fridge while the pineapple went bad, because it seemed stupid to cook this meal for just us and the kids. But it was just going to go to waste if I didn't cook it, so one afternoon I whipped up the glaze, spread it on the pork, and popped it under the broiler.
Naturally, as with everything I attempt to broil, I burned it. I don't know why it's called a broiler - a burner is a more appropriate word choice. I guess "burner" is already in use in another part of the stove, a place where I rarely burn things. So the glaze is completely black and charred enough that it lifts off in chunks. But the middle of the loin is still pretty pink, due to the fact that my brand-new, just used once for Thanksgiving, digital meat thermometer is now broken because it can't handle the heat from the broiler. So I overcooked the outside of the pork and the thermometer, but upon cutting into it, I haven't cooked the inside enough.
Ryan came home at this point, when I'm about 30 seconds away from chucking the whole thing in the trash and getting out a box of cereal for dinner, but he claims it smells good. I was only making this for two people to eat, trying to keep my expectations realistic, so if he was still game, I thought I'd keep plugging away at it. I sliced that bad boy up and laid each slice on the broiler pan, then put it back in the oven to try to, at the very least, heat up the E. coli bacteria that we were going to have as a side dish to our possibly undercooked pork.
When they were nice and toasty (and the pork looked less pink) Noah and Zack were both hanging out in the kitchen. So just to humor ourselves, we told them that dinner was ready and they sat down. I put out plates with a piece of pork on each one. I had some steamed veggies that were in a bowl also on the table. We sat down and Ryan and I each took a kid's plate to cut their food for them.
And then they ate it.
All of it.
Noah was even excited by the bowl of steamed broccoli on the table. No one complained about the crust being black. As far as I know, they didn't even take the burned parts off, just ate the whole thing.
This is such a stunning development that I barely know what to think about it. Do I could this as a fluke? Is this just a precursor of good things to come? Should I expect this kind of behavior more often? Is this a reaction to us trying to be more laid back and less uptight about mealtimes? Or do they just like pork?
My guess is, the planets aligned for this one meal and I shouldn't expect this again. Most likely, if I cooked this again they would completely reject it. But it does make me see what is possible for the future: someday, my kids are going to sit down and eat dinner like grown-ups! We'll have scintillating conversation as we explore the pros and cons of universal health care or conservatives' reactions to Romney's JFK speech. I'll ask them if they've read any good books lately, and we can discuss them.
I'm going to look back fondly at this dinner as a nice, one-time thing. Right now, Zacky and his friend Jonathan are eating lunch while wearing snow hats pulled down over their faces. Brad and Noah both think it is perfectly acceptable to crawl under the table instead of walking around it to go get a drink. Later that night, we found Zack playing our Star Wars lightsaber game with a piece of pork shoved in his cheek, like a chipmunk. And fish sticks are still received with cheers and accolades. But they know to thank me for dinner, which they do every night, even when they choose to make themselves a sandwich instead. I just didn't believe I'd ever see the day.
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