Snapshot of Life - March 18, 2007

7-9:30 - Fill in the typical morning routine here, including, but not limited to - getting up to turn on a video for #3, going back to bed, refereeing a fight between children, coercing #2 to have breakfast (I withheld token-using privileges until he ate), laying in bed listening to my book while #3 jumped in and out of bed with me, etc.

9:30 - DH is in the shower so I start the get-ready-for-church routine. #1 gets dressed without a comment, #2 throws a fit and takes 10 minutes to whine his way upstairs where I help him get dressed, and I pick out clothes for #3. I think #2 must have been hypnotized once while I was not paying attention, because he has an automatic response to the word "church," which is to scream "I don't want to go to church!" and various forms of that statement. He has a similar hypnotic reaction to any insistence that he eat something.

9:45 - My turn to get ready for church. While getting ready once this week I noticed a new thing growing on my shoulder. What the heck kind of freak am I??? Seriously, it's like I'm some kind of mutant! And not the cool, teenage ninja type of mutant, or a crime fighting x-men type either, the creepy kind of mutant that you feel sorry for if you see them on the street. Yikes. My doctor said that things grow faster while you're pregnant, but this is starting to be ridiculous. The only upshot (if there is one) is that this is on my shoulder, so I can have it removed by my regular doctor and not the plastic surgeon I'm seeing.

Speaking of my plastic surgeon, he is way too comfortable with other people's bodies. The first time I saw him to do a biopsy on a lesion on my face, I was laying on the exam table listening to my ipod, which was laying on my stomach. He sits in his chair, wheels it over, and with his elbows on the table, leans his arms on my stomach to reach my ipod and see what I was listening to. I'm a big fan of personal space - crowded places like Disneyland or Costco on a Saturday when all the sample ladies are out make me nuts. I just don't like people touching me generally. So I thought that was weird that he did that. Then this week when I went in again to have him look at the thing on my neck that is re-growing (have we had the mutant discussion already?) I was sitting in a chair, and he wheeled himself over to me and got right up in front of me, to the point where our knees are touching. Not just slightly bumping if we aren't careful, but like 3 or 4 inches of overlap. I turn my head around to show him the thing on my neck and he examines it for a minute. And then he's looking at my face, reaches over and grabs the skin around the lesion on my check and squeezing to check out wrinkle lines around it, that's all fine and expected. So he's talking to me, and decides to check out the neck thing again, but instead of asking me to turn around, he just reaches his hand around behind my head and starts rubbing the thing on my neck.

Now, this is all simply odd behavior to me - I don't feel truly uncomfortable, just that he clearly is different about personal space than I am. Here are my reasons for not feeling uncomfortable:

1. I'm 6 months pregnant, and weigh 200 pounds. I'm clearly not in the most attractive, cheat on my husband with the hot doctor, mode of my life.
2. There's a nurse in the room at all times.
3. All the nurses that work there are well dressed, not your typical chubby women in scrubs that look like pajamas, but more sophisticated scrubs. If there is such a thing.
4. I get the feeling that he is just a friendly, comfortable guy, who wants to make his patients feel comfortable with him, since he is the one going to be chopping me into little pieces on Wednesday. (Can you tell I'm not really looking forward to this on Wednesday?)

But just to recap, here's the things that do make me feel a little uncomfortable:
1. He's good looking. He wears jeans and like a long sleeve t-shirt type of thing, and his hair is done in kind of a Ryan Seacrest kind of messy, spiky, gelled thing. If we were in California still, I'd be sure he's a surfer. Maybe here he's a snowboarder, I don't know if that translates.
2. What if I was going to him to, say, have a breast augmentation done? Would he reach over and grab them to check out how big he thinks they ought to be? Thank goodness I've never needed to be undressed around him before. That would be awkward. Maybe as awkward as realizing I'm writing about breast augmentation on a blog that my parents and grandparents are going to read. Yikes.
3. My real doctor recommended this guy to me by saying that this is who he'd send his wife to. My thought now is, if he knew how comfortable this guy is with peoples' bodies, would he still feel this way? My husband has already said that after this surgery, if I ever need a plastic surgeon again that I have to find someone else. He said this after I mentioned that the guy was good-looking and that I didn't feel uncomfortable, I think he would prefer that I do feel uncomfortable. But in fact, I just think it's weird.

Oh, incidentally, this plastic surgeon was honored with some kind of humanitarian award last year for his service doing surgery in Ghana. I don't know if that is relevant or not, just thought I'd throw it in there.

10:35 - We are all ready to go, the boys were asked to be reverence children in Sacrament Meeting today, which means that they stand up at the pulpit and be an example of reverence for all the grown-ups that come in, talking and being rowdy before the meeting starts. Last time we had this assignment (which is made by the primary secretary), we had a flat tire and got to church totally late. So we made up for it this week by being there about 20 minutes early.

11:00-2:00 - Church. The first words out of #2's mouth when he sat down in our pew after his stint as reverence child was over was "I'm hungry." Maybe I could suggest a reverence child for the entire hour of Sacrament meeting, instead of just the 10 minutes before the meeting starts. Junior primary was as loud and irreverent as usual, I can tell it's wearing on everyone, not just me - our most capable teacher did sharing time today (class presentation) and came home thinking he had done a terrible job because he just could not hold the kids' attention. I was thrilled, actually, that it went as badly for him as it does for me, because that means it's the kids and not me doing something wrong!

2:30 - DH keeps the kids outside while we have a primary presidency meeting with our member of the bishopric at my house. We haven't met for a while and have several things to cover, but it goes well and we get a lot accomplished in an hour, with only a little off-topic conversations. The activities committee talked to my counselor about having the primary organize a children's activity during their upcoming family activity in June. The spin she put on it is, we get to count it as one of our quarterly activities that we are supposed to organize, and everyone will already be planning on going to this, so wouldn't that be great for us? Well, reading between the lines, what she gets is free baby-sitting during a ward activity, and what we get is the primary leaders missing a ward activity so that we can supervise all of the kids. I'm not opposed to this set up across the board - we did it once last year and it worked out well, mostly because we made sure the primary teachers weren't impacted at all, just us as a presidency (and it was and activity that I didn't care about missing). Well, before we could even give an opinion on this particular proposal, the bishopric member pretty much torpedoed the entire idea and was quite vehement about us not being the de facto babysitters at a ward function. He obviously was really passionate about this opinion, and I thought that was fantastic - I love that he really supports the primary and looks like he's willing to fight for us in a case like this.

3:30 - Meeting is over and the family comes back inside. We've been invited over to have dinner with another family at 5:30 and I'm bringing dessert, so I grab some cookbooks to try to find something to make, with the limitation that I only have so much butter on hand. I decide on a new recipe which looks like it's going to be brownies with marshmallows on top. I hear noises from downstairs which indicate an argument over the pod-race game, so I go down and ask if anyone would like to help me make dessert. #2 immediately volunteers and runs upstairs to help - he loves, loves, loves to help in the kitchen. Most of the time. Especially when it's dessert and not dinner we're making. And if there's nothing fun to do instead. But most Sundays it's him who helps me make dessert. #3 comes with him and both of them pull chairs over to the counter, one on either side of me and my KitchenAid mixer. It's quite crowded in there, but I don't complain because this is what being a good mother looks like, and I've got to give this a shot. They both help, to a certain extent, and are happy, #2 especially likes cracking eggs, and he's getting a lot better at it. It's times like this when I can glimpse the future, and it looks good.

4:15 - Our home teachers come over, one is our next door neighbor who is also the teacher I mentioned earlier. We think he and his family are just terrific, and he's so great with the kids. Plus they always bring candy to reward correct answers when they teach the lesson, so #2 usually asks if it's time for the lesson yet, interrupting us as we sit and gab.

5:00 - HT's are gone, and I get the brownies out of the oven and taste one. It's not so good, which is disappointing, and I have to decide whether to use my final stick of butter on the frosting that the brownie recipe calls for, or if I should make an emergency backup dessert of no-bake cookies instead. I'm in the mood for the cookies, and don't want to throw good butter after bad, so I go to make the cookies. At the same time that I'm having my dessert dilemma, DH realizes it's bath night and if we don't get a bath in before we leave, it won't get done. He bribes the older boys with a token each if they take a 5 minute shower, and they both go for it. #2 is in a particularly good mood and doesn't fight over this one. #3, however, is going through a stage where he absolutely hates taking a bath, and will just stand in the water and scream. Friday's bath, which I handled while DH was at Toys R Us buying a new swingset, consisted of him screaming from the minute I told him to come inside for his bath, all through taking him upstairs, running the water, and me depositing him in the tub. He stood there screaming and I went into our adjoining bedroom, because it's so loud and echo-y in the bathroom I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I knew he wasn't drowning as long as I could still hear him screaming. I was hoping he'd calm down and enjoy the bath, but when it was apparent that wasn't happening, I decided to get it over with and just washed him as quickly as I could and got him out. He finally stopped screaming sometime after he was completely dressed. My ears didn't stop ringing for a long time. Anyhow, today's bath sounded about as bad, but quicker, because DH didn't waste time hoping he'd enjoy himself. Once he was out, though, DH called me over to get #3 dressed. When that was done I made a batch of no-bake cookies, which take about 5 minutes with no kids helping (10 with).

5:40 - We leave 10 minutes late for our friends' house, but that's not a big deal. We are having lasagna, salad, rolls, fruit salad, and corn for dinner, lots of different foods that my kids like, which means that they both (Boys #1 and #2) take one look and say they aren't eating the lasagna. DH marches them over to the trays of marshmallow brownies and cookies and asks if they would care for any. They say yes, and he says, that unless they eat their lasagna, they won't be getting any dessert. The real miracle comes in when we load up their plates with a variety of food, and they actually eat it all! No "how many bites," no "yuck," no "is this enough?" They just ate it. And then, hold on to your hats, they both ask for seconds. Granted, it's rolls and fruit they ask for, but hey, they are actually eating enough to make them full! Without me twisting their arm! Then to top it all off, they go and play nicely and I even see #1 pushing #3 in a swing. We get to talk to our friends and have an all-around pleasant time.

7:30 - While we sit around and gab, DH tells me some great news - he has to go camping. While this is normally a cause for great concern and prayer for something horrible to happen so that he doesn't have to go, in this case we are both excited. The date for the campout is the exact same date as the next ward activity, which we were trying to find a reason we didn't have to go. Why, you might ask, would we purposely not support someone else in their calling and what, exactly, could possibly be worse than a campout? Prom. That's right, Prom is our next ward activity. Adults only, and single people are supposed to feel welcome too, although how that could possibly happen is beyond me. The activities committee is trying to encourage everyone to get really into it, you know, with corsages, and maybe go out to a nice dinner beforehand. In Relief Society, apparently the activity was announced and all the women were encouraged to coerce their husbands to go. Could that not be a sign? That people are having to coerce others to attend what is supposed to be a fun activity? And the announcement includes an assurance that we will all have a good time. And that is exactly why DH, a known camp-phobic, is actually excited to attend the scout training campout the same night. His prediction? Low attendance at the Prom.

8:10 - We leave our friends' house and I realize that I sat and talked the entire time while DH handled everything that came up with the kids, so I tell him that I'll put the kids down to bed by myself tonight (usually we tag team). He thinks this is a treat and goes downstairs to play Pod-race with #1. The other two kids go to bed fairly easily - #3 was effortless as usual, and #2 was not bad. I go back downstairs and listen to my book (the sequel to Twilight, which I polished off yesterday and immediately bought the sequel to, for another 2 credits) while I clean up the kitchen and do some dishes. My mother-in-law calls to talk about a work situation - she's dealing with a complete jerk in her department (she's in the pharmacy now) and she's tried to get a transfer to another department but they aren't doing it for her. So it looks like she's going to make some kind of ultimatum tomorrow - get me out of the pharmacy or I'm leaving. Her daughter wrote a letter for her to explain the situation to management and she read it to me to see what I think, and I told her to be prepared for them to show her the door. She thinks it is all probably a blessing in disguise, because she can certainly find a better job somewhere else than Kmart, and just needed a kick in the pants to make such a big change. She's worked there for like 13 years.

9:00 - DH and I are sitting on the couch talking about work, as usual, and other stuff. We are relatively child-free, which is nice, but we can hear #2 up in his room, singing to himself, and counting by 5's to 100 over and over again. He can be such a cute, sweet kid sometimes. I know I complain about him, because there is a lot of drama involved in many things that he does, and when things with him are not dramatic, I am too busy feeling relieved and trying to prevent the next round of drama, that i don't really appreciate what a good kid he is. Today during primary, I looked over to where he was sitting and was surprised to see him trying not to cry. We have a lot of criers in this younger group, but #2 is absolutely NOT one of them. He is one of the best behaved kids in there. I was so shocked to see him looking so sad that I almost started crying too, because I knew whatever he was upset about had to be bad. I walked across the room and took him out into the hallway and asked what was wrong. It turns out he somehow hit his nose on the chair in front of him, and it hurt bad enough to make him cry. I hugged him and hugged him until he was okay again, he got a drink at the drinking fountain and went back in. So many times that he cries I just get frustrated at him or tired of hearing it - I was glad to know I still have enough compassion to see my boy cry and want to cry with him. Makes me feel like I still have some humanity in me, they haven't beaten it out of me yet.

10:37 - I've been writing this blog for probably 1.5 hours - normally I write in bits and pieces all day, but I just haven't had a chance today, and I wanted to get it done tonight and put it up. DH has already gone up to bed, which is not a good sign, as he almost never ever goes to bed first. Oh, by the way, I wanted to mention this gripe - why is it that I hear my mom needs a second opinion on a mammogram from a comment made on my blog??!? Does this not register as important enough to warrant, say, a phone call? I recognize that maybe we don't want to turn this into something bigger than it needs to be until there is more information; I didn't mention my abnormal skin cancer diagnosis until I knew that it wasn't serious, but this seems bigger than that. As the only other person in our family with breasts, I'd think that I have some right to information here, I have a vested interest in the situation. That's pretty much all I have to say on the topic, other than, I can't believe I've used the word "breast" so many times when my DAD is going to be reading this. I think I better just post this and not think about the uncomfortableness that I'm currently feeling - maybe I need to drop in and see my plastic surgeon to feel a little less awkward. :)