For 2010

...Men are that they might have joy...

For 2010...more joy.

(The image is Maxfield Parrish's painting Ecstasy, my absolute favorite.)

Turning 28 and Who I'm Not

I turned twenty-eight this December.  My mood was as bleak as the weather.  I cried in the kitchen most of the night while making dinner.  I wasn't sad I was older.  That doesn't really bother me.  It was that it had been ten years since I had turned eighteen and things have not exactly turned out as planned.  To say I was full of idealistic romantic nonsense is an understatement. 

I found a piece of paper I had written down 100 goals in one of my classes my senior year.  While I've accomplished twenty of them, I'm not exactly sure the goals were that difficult or that...sane.  For your reading pleasure I've plucked just a handful of inexplicable goals. 

Ahem. 

Number 66:  Take a ride in a dryer.  Hmm.  I'd like to say I don't remember what this was all about but I do.  I overheard a classmate talking one day in seminary about how her and her friends had gone to a local laundromat and taken "rides" in the over sized dryers.  For whatever reason her story set my imagination on fire and I just had to experience the thrill of...of...extreme heat, dangerous conditions, and vomit inducing dizziness? 

Number 69: Be a massuse.  That's right, a MASSUSE.  Not that being a masseuse is not a worthy goal, but my spelling was horrendous.  And that's definitely not going to happen.  With Ava climbing on my lap fifty times a day and commanding I rub her back I give all the massaging I can deal with. 

Number 72:  Own lots of lingerie.  At least I spelled that right.  This list is just making me sound dumber and dumber isn't it?  So ambitious.  I have to think that for a hormonal eighteen year-old the forbidden mystery of lingerie must have seemed intriguing.  I wonder what the teacher grading my paper thought?

Number 81:  Never see a rated R movie.  I must have either been lying to myself or I had suppressed the memory of ALREADY having watched a rated R movie.  I was in 8th grade sleeping over at a friend's house.  She put in a movie.  I asked what it was and she replied "Pretty Woman".  That was one of those moments when I pictured my story being featured in The New Era.  I would valiantly suggest we watch a more wholesome movie and feel that warm glow from not giving into peer pressure.  Then Richard Gere popped up on the screen and I didn't open my mouth for the next hour and a half.  Not proud.

Number 82:  Quit drinking caffeine.  Still working on that one, curse you Coca Cola.

Number 85:  Live to see world peace.  I'm sure I pictured myself lounging in one of my many pieces of lingerie, resting my arthritic MASSUSE fingers, sipping on a glass of water, and reflecting on my thrilling ride in a dryer while I watched the crawling news banner run across the bottom of CNN announcing WORLD PEACE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!  GO OUT AND HUG A STRANGER!  Noble?  Yes.  Realistic?  Probably not. 

Number 88: Make dinner for a week.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Someone else making my food for 19 years must have dulled my wits.  I wonder what I imagined would happen after I grew up and got married.  A handsome Italian husband who cooks and cleans?  We are wealthy enough to eat out every night?  Or I have a live-in chef?  My bet is on number three.  I didn't even know how to clean a toilet properly until I was 20.  At least I can check this puppy off of my list!  Score one for me!

Number 93:  Get a pettacure.  Once again spelling.  I was a country gal, okay.  The closest I got to a pedicure was sinking my tootsies into the manure laced muck in the bottom of City Creek as I waded.  I can also check this one off but I'm still waiting for a decent pedicure given by someone who will actually massage my feet instead of soaking them and then painting my toenails. 

Number 43:  Get tan.  This one is laugh worthy.  By now I've accepted my ghostly pallor as something I can't change unless I want to subject myself to cancer causing tanning bed rays.  I already have enough premature lines showing up on my face, I definitely don't need an accelerant. 

Number 48:  Have tonz of grandkids.  Tonz.  I remember when I used to use words like this.  And how back in the day it was cool to replace an S with a Z. 

So I guess while I'll never be eighteen again with so many question marks about my future staring me in the face I can say if I made a list today it would be quite a bit different.  Hopefully these last ten years have taught me a lesson about what is meaningful and worthwhile. 

The fact is I did let my regrets about the things I have not accomplished get me down for a couple of hours on the evening of December 6th, but whenever Ava says something that makes me laugh or tells me how good of a mom I am (praise I don't really deserve) I realize the work I am doing now, though at times tedious and thankless, is something that will make a difference in the world.  Because it makes a difference to Ava. 

I'm not the adventurous, globetrotting, lingerie owning, tan, athletic archaeologist/novelist/social worker/ballet dancer married to a foreign good-looking man of wealth.  But you know what?  I'm okay with that.  I'm a restless stay at home mother of one, who continues to learn lessons about love, patience and faith from a group of amazing people in my life.  I struggle with my self image, my weight, and where I'm going in life.  I love to laugh and dance and read and write.  Some days I get lonely and depressed.  Some days the house is an utter disaster.  Some days all I can do is grit my teeth and pray to make it through.  I'm human.  I'm trying to do better.  I know who I'm not, but I'm still trying to figure out who I am. 





 

I've Been a Scrooge

I haven't been in the mood for Christmas.  Really, it probably would take some weird hallucination with three ghosts in it to put me in the mood.  Also, I'd like to report/complain I'm still sick.  Three weeks.  Three weeks of coughing, not being able to breathe through my nose, having no energy and I hate to admit this because I'm only 28, but peeing my pants every time I have a cough attack.  Listen, I had bladder issues before I had a child, as my closest friends can tell you.  And now you all know too.  Merry Christmas! 

I needed something, anything to boost my spirits.  So I rented Julie and Julia.  Any movie that centers around food instantly appeals to me.  For example, who can resist the magnetic pull of the movie Chocolat?  It combines chocolate and Johnny Depp.  Absolutely magical.  Back to the movie at hand.  I loved this movie.  I loved Meryl Streep as Julia Child.  I loved Julia Child herself, and her fearless approach to life.  She truly was one of a kind.  And what I loved most was the portrayal of Julia Child's marriage.  So great.  If you're in the mood to watch some yummy food and spend some time in Paris with a legend then pick this movie up.  I have to warn you that I like intimate movies, where the focus is on relationships, so if you're looking for action...this is not your movie. 

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Keepin' it Real

Let me explain.  For the second time this winter I've come down with some sort of flu.  I won't go into the misery I have been in for days all I can tell you is that two nights ago at 4 in the morning after having thrown up again from coughing so hard I crawled into bed with my husband woke him up and ask him to please load his gun and put the old girl down.  Thankfully he declined and rolled back over and went to sleep.  Tuesday morning I woke up and knew Ava was awake.  She had turned on the t.v. and I could hear Dora's annoying voice.  I had no idea what time it was.  I got up and entered the living room to the scene above. 

The advent calender had been plundered and pillaged.

She had scattered cheerios far and wide and somehow managed to knock my beloved Monet painting from off the mantle.  It had looked like some rock star had come and trashed the place.  A 4 year old rock star hopped up on sugar and chocolate.  She smiled sweetly at me, bid me a good morning and went about her business like any other morning.  I was still fighting a Tylenol PM hangover and all I could manage was a feeble hands on the hips pose and look of consternation on my pale face.  Then I took a coughing fit and lost all composure.  I collapsed into the recliner and wondered who takes care of a mother when she's sick.  Turns out, no one.  We take care of ourselves.  Or try to.  Which leads to the moral of the story...next year I'm getting a flu shot and every year after that.  The end. 

A Small Rant about Tiger Woods

Listen, if you're like me on one hand you're already tired of hearing all the sad sordid details of the whole Tiger Woods fiasco, on the other you grow more flabbergasted that a man of such high profile thought he could mess around on his wife with an ever growing harem of women of such low moral character and think he would never suffer any repercussions.  I just have to make a few points here and then I promise I'll return to my world of embarrassing personal stories and tales from the frontlines of motherhood. 

1.  It's not that he cheated.  It's that he did it in such a serial way.  Allegedly he had a personal trainer spot good looking women and would have him go up to them and introduce them.  This happened over and over again.  If you listen to any of these clearly money motivated, fame chasing Jezebels they all tell a basically similar story.  Tiger says his marriage is on the rocks, or that it is just for show.  Bada bing, bada boom.  Said Jezebel is ready to pick up the pieces when he finally leaves his wife.  OK.  What gives a person the right to think he can walk through one woman after another while still pretending to be a family man? 

2.  These women are making me want to scream.  Tiger is such a horrible guy...blah, blah, blah.  I feel betrayed...blah, blah, blah.  Of course I feel so sorry for his wife which is why I'm running my mouth to any media outlet that will give me air time or compensation, I'm sure this will make her feel better that my sincerest apology along with lurid details about her husband's affair with me is being broadcast into millions of homes.  Listen ladies, YOU had an affair with a married man.  This makes you just as culpable as he is.  You can try to justify your reasons all you want, the truth is you didn't give a damn about his wife or his family.  All you saw was a billion dollar man willing to open the door a crack to the "good life".  It wasn't about love.  It wasn't about manipulation.  It was about selfishness and power and a total lack of empathy for a fellow woman and a total lack of respect for the boundaries of marriage.  Don't try to spin it any other way.  The whole world knows you are lying.

3.  Major news corporations acting as if this is a hard hitting news story.  What has gone wrong with the world that half of all the national news each night is based around the lives of celebrities.  Those kinds of stories used to be reserved for Entertainment Tonight, but now it seems celebrities are now news worthy enough to be constantly shoved in our faces.  I don't know Tiger personally.  Or any other celebrity for that matter, except for having met one very un-magical David Copperfield on one occasion.  And I guess I have a bit more respect for an Athlete than I do for say an actor because really, why are actors famous?  Because they are willing to do ANYTHING on camera for millions of dollars and call it an art form.  What kind of moral character does this speak to?  I really don't need these people glorified for every little happening in their self-indulged lives that lack anything close to reality on the nightly news.  Save these stories for the right media outlets.  The world is a big place, maybe if we stepped outside of America once and while and looked around we might see what is really going on outside our largely entitled, privileged nation.

4.  Defenders of Tiger Woods trying to diminish what he did to his wife by saying that Elin stands to get a lot of money if she stays with him.  As if this somehow balances the scales.  I would be insulted if a man that had vowed to love, honor and cherish me did what Tiger did and THEN offered me more money to stay.  What do I look like?  A prostitute?  Someone you can pay off?  When did marriage become some business deal where emotional pain can be salved by money?  I know many women who marry these sorts of men are obviously attracted to more than just the guy's personality.  But it's just sad if you sell your dignity and your happiness so that you can drive a luxury car and wear over sized diamonds.  Shallow and insipid.  Hopefully, Elin won't be another Mrs. Kobe Bryant.

5. Final point- I promise.  It is sad for his wife to have to hear all the crappy details about her hound of a husband and his minions of air headed bottom feeders, but the only bright side to this is it has to be killing Tiger Woods.  For a man who thought he could pull so many strings and retain his reputation as a family man he has to be getting exactly what he deserves right now.  He likes his privacy so they say, but all his vile misdeeds are being flung over the fence and into the media trough for the whole world to consume.  Regardless of if he is truly sorry, I'm pretty positive he is sorry for the type of women he consorted with.  I've kept thinking, I shouldn't be judging him.  I don't know him.  But his actions speak of someone who believed their own desires were more important than anything.  I have no respect for a man that so wantonly and repeatedly hurt and betrayed his wife and for all we knew would have continued to until he was caught.  It just goes to show that a God given talent, successful career, billions of dollars in the bank, a beautiful wife and family are not enough for some people.  It really boggles the mind.

Wonderfully Weird Ava

I know, it seems like every post I do lately is a tribute to someone.  I don't know why.  I've always believed if you love someone you should tell them, because you just never know when time will run out.  That's why I tell the checker at Dillard's who is ringing up my huge bra that I like her earrings.  Maybe that girl gets sick of ringing up huge bras, maybe she's been taking a lot of flak from her supervisor for not folding those t-shirts just right, maybe she needs me to tell her I admire her taste in earrings.  You never know when the next time you'll get into Dillards will be...until your new bra's under wire snaps and proceeds to stab you in your boob at a wedding luncheon and you have to smile and make small talk when it feels like Stewart Little has invaded your undergarments and taken after you with a pokey pin.  That girl needed my compliment.  I just know it. 

The point is it was my baby girl's 4th birthday last Monday, the 23rd for those who don't want to try to count backwards in your head because you're just dying to know.  I did take pictures of her and her father playing in the snow that afternoon, but my computer is taking forever to download, so once again for you visual people out there, STBY.  That's a trendy acronym for Sucks To Be You.  I never use acronyms.  And I have no idea if it's trendy. 

Moving on.  Like I said Ava was born in 2005.  Her due date was on my own birthday, but due to my high blood pressure AKA "My doctor is going out of town for Thanksgiving and she wants that baby out now", I was induced two weeks early.  Like most blessings in my life, Ava came along just when I needed her, not exactly when I planned.

I got pregnant two months before Ava was conceived, once again unplanned.  For those of you squirming in your seat at the word conceived who are worried about where this is going I'll relieve the suspense and tell you I'm not going THERE.  I will say for a 22 year-old who had taken Adult Roles in high school and thought she was pretty book smart, I didn't know a whole lot about the effectiveness of certain methods of birth control.  And I'm glad, because maybe Ava wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for my ignorance.

So I got pregnant and then I miscarried.  A week of migraines, dizziness and throwing up is a week that has been burned into my psyche.  It's funny, because I hadn't known I was pregnant until I miscarried but I mourned for that baby.  I laid in bed and wondered what I had done wrong in my life that would cause God to smite me with a curse.  I wondered if it was too much kissing back in high school.  I wondered if it was the Coke I drank.  I wondered if it was all the days spent at the gym over the last month or so.  I wondered if it was those hot wings from Pizza Hut.  As irrational as it was I was certain I had somehow killed my baby.  I pleaded with Heavenly Father for forgiveness, for reassurance, for comfort.  I had wanted that baby, badly.  As fate would have it, my brother and his wife got pregnant at the same time.  I remember telling my sister-in-law that I had miscarried.  I thought about how for years I would look at their baby and think of the one I had lost.

Two months later and wham-o!  Ignorant Inez strikes again and I'm pregnant.  I quit the Coke.  I quit the gym and I definitely quit the hot wings, in fact they were the least appealing food on the planet for the next nine months.  For the first few months I prayed like I had never prayed before.  Please let me have this baby, please let me have this baby.  I lived in constant fear that it would happen again.  I even called the doctor one time and told them I suspected I might miscarry.  The reply was, "We can't do anything about it.  If it's going to happen it's going to happen."  Something that hurt at the time, but a motto that pertains to just about anything that's out of your hands in life.

I am so grateful that Heavenly Father gave me Ava.  She is my sunshine, as cliche as that sounds.  She's made me a more empathetic human being.  She gives me a reason to be and I almost can't remember what it was like to be just me.  The pettiness of that existence pales in comparison to the smelly, wonderful, awful, joyous calling of motherhood. 

She's four.  What can I say?  It's like Dickens and his Tale of Two Cities..."It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times."  One minute she's my best girl, the next she is some monster that surely could not have come out of my womb.

Yesterday I told her that I'd always love her even if I get mad at her sometimes.  She told me she didn't love me when she's mad at me.  Figures.  You wait, I thought.  You wait until you have kids.  Then I told her she could do whatever she wanted to do in this life.  She replied, so can you mom.  You know I almost believe it when it comes from her lips.

Then today my husband had a friend over to play video games.  Have you heard of Call of Duty?  I have.  I hear the stupid guns sound effects nearly every night.  Back to the story, so I shut the door to use the bathroom and I hear Ava run down the hall and announce, "Don't go in there, Mom's pooping!"  Really, I just about took up permanent residence in there.  I thought about waiting it out until the friend in question went home.  But instead flew out of there in record time, thereby proving my daughter's assessment wrong.  Beet red, does not even begin to describe the shade of my embarrassed face.  And P.S. I was not pooping!  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Still I love that little weirdo.  She is nearly always happy and silly.  On occasion I come up against her brutal honesty and her mean scowling face, but I love her anyway.

Ode To Girlfriends

As many of you know I lived with my In-laws basement for a little over a year...and SURVIVED! Once a month I would go out to dinner with my girlfriends. One such night I forgot to spread the word in the Smith family household that I was going to be out that night. I arrived home at 3 A.M. to find the lights out, the door locked and my phone dead. Feeling quite sheepish that I had stayed out so late I nearly decided to bed down on the deck, rather than go knocking on the door and alerting anyone to my late night shenanigans. Being me I just couldn't do it though. I imagined wild dogs sniffing me out and dragging me back to the Tremonton wilds for dinner.

I then made like Tom Cruise and went on Mission Impossible - finding an alternative entryway into the house. My first move was to try to make my way through the rose garden to the window of our bedroom and knocking on the window until my husband woke up. I couldn't get through that rose jungle without seriously scratching myself, and besides I still didn't want my husband to know I'd been out so late. Finally with spy music playing in my mind I entered the storage room beneath the deck and then through the spider infested loose window into another storage room before opening the door and sneaking past my brother-in-law sleeping on the couch. The next morning I confessed to the whole thing anyway. My mother-in-law (and I truly love her, I do) who has a way of making you feel guilty even if you haven't done anything wrong looked me in the eye and said, "And what were you doing until three in the morning?"

I have many blessings in my life, and if I have any that are especially rare and beautiful it is the love and friendship of a particular group of girls that grew up with me. Deemed simply, The Clarkston Girls, we are a crop of girls born in Clarkston in the 81/82 year. These girls I've known since I was 2. I think my first conversation with many of them went like this:

Them: "Can I pull on your Laura Ingalls pioneer braids?"
Me:"I guess so...as long as you promise to be my friend forever."
Them: "Deal."

And so it began. The answer to my mother-in-laws question was simple, "We were talking." For those who don't have a bunch of girls they've known, competed over boys with, fought with, made up with, gone through ugly awkward stages with, and loved for nearly 26 years it might be hard to fathom how a conversation can begin at 6 P.M. and go strong for another nine hours.

There is something about knowing the same oddball cast of characters from a podunk town and suffering through nearly two hours on a bus every day for thirteen years that really bonds a group of people together. The fact that they know your family, the associated baggage of said family, and witnessed many of your most embarrassing moments from the time you peed your pants during a T-Ball game at age six, to the time you decided wearing white pants was a good idea while you were on your period and the whole darn cast of Martin Harris: The Man Who Knew probably was privy to watching you skip around the stage singing and oblivious to your painfully apparent faux pas.

They don't look at you funny when you call the post office, THE mail, or shake in your boots over the mere mention of the local horror myth Swish-Swash. They don't judge you over the hours you've spent driving on the back roads, wading in City Creek (Creek being pronounced Crick) the mucky stinky stuff between your toes either being decaying plant life or cow manure from upstream, or taking a dip in your neighbors new round circular cow trough on a hot summer day. They get just as big of a kick out of watching local kids chase chickens, rabbits and pigs at the annual town celebration Pony Express Days as you do.

Over the years they've encouraged you to date a guy, and then encouraged you to dump him. They have forgiven you when you've said mean things to them during your teen angst years and you've forgiven them. They've stood by you when you've done something idiotic. They've cried with you when your heart was broken, and when something was so funny the tears streamed down your face.

They've known you single. They've known you married. And they've known you pregnant. One day you notice that those girls are no longer girls but women. Not only women, but remarkable ones. Dedicated mothers, compassionate friends and exceptional women. They've defended your weight gain - "Hey, she JUST had a baby. So lay off!" they are courteous enough not to add that that baby is four years old. They tell you your husband must be an idiot if he hasn't noticed lately how gorgeous/talented/smart you are. They love you not out of some sense of familial loyalty but because they choose to love you when they could just stop returning your calls all together.

These are they types of girls that you can have a conversation with for nine hours...and longer...26 years. These are the girls that make the 3 A.M. bed time and the associated I-can't-stay-up-this-late-anymore-I'm-nearly-thirty hangover the next day worth it. Here's to girlfriends, and the to the hope that we'll have another 26 years to talk, laugh and encourage one another. I love you girls, thanks for standing by me!

Beatiful Flower

True Story

I'm just getting over what may or may not have been the swine flu. I figure it was payback for cracking numerous bad jokes about the Swine Flu and before that the Bird Flu. In both cases my husband lectured me on how serious the situation was and I shouldn't joke about the (Ba-Gock!) Bird Flu.

I was stricken while staying with my parents and when it became clear I was not well - fever 1o2.5, splitting headache, wishing for a head amputation - I was subjected to my husband and my father arguing over who was going to keep me while I was sick. My husband pleaded with me to stay the heck away and my dad kept offering to take me home. Thank heavens for mothers! My Mother stepped in and insisted she take care of me and my daughter while I alternated between chills and sweating on the couch.

While my mother is indeed a saint I couldn't help remembering an extremely awkward and self-esteem damaging phone call between us when I was in the throws of yet another cold. The phone call in question happened a couple of years back. It goes as follows:

Ring, ring, ring.

Me: "Hello?"
Hesitant pause.
Me: "Hello?"
Mom: "Is Denise there?"
Me: "Mom, it's me."
Mom: "Denise?"
Me: "Yes, Mom it's me, Denise."
Mom: "Oh! I thought you were a man. (insert my Mom's audacious laugh here) I wondered what man you had over, because I knew it wasn't Brig."
Click.
Mom: "Denise? Denise are you there?"

I admit to be self-conscious about my deeper voice. Lawsies, add it to the list, right. But apparently when I have a cold my own mother believes I must be having an illicit affair with a strange, deep voiced man before she recognizes the voice of her beloved daughter.

Veterans

My Grandpa - Leon Stewart Cooper Jr. He was a West Texas boy just out of high school when he came to California looking for job opportunities. He got a job at Douglas Aircraft Company, met a beautiful Mormon girl and the rest as they say is history. He enlisted in the Air Corps in 1944. The war would end before he saw combat. I'm grateful to him and to my Grandma for making the kind of sacrifice to decide to enlist during war time. What I remember about my Grandpa is how soft spoken and easy going he was. His Texas accent and always saying, "Yes, Ma'am," to my Grandma. His genes are also a big contributor to this mop of curls I've been carrying around on my head since day one, as you can see. I truly believe that the generation that survived and thrived through the Great Depression and World War II were one of a kind and made a huge difference for the better in the world we live in today. Thanks Grandpa.
My Dad - Daniel Craig Cooper. He was drafted and then joined the Navy during the Vietnam War. My parents were high school sweethearts who had been dating for a couple of years by the time he joined the Navy. He served for four years. I appreciate the service he gave his country and especially admire the job so many young men like him had to do in the face of public criticism for that war. The heated opinions of the public spilled over in the unfair way the military was treated upon their return from service. None of our men serving in uniform should have ever been treated so poorly for doing what their country had asked them to do. Thank you, Dad and I love you! Happy Veteran's Day!

I'm Sorry, This One is Hysterical!

"They have candy just for me!"

Ava kept saying, "I can't believe it. They have candy just for me." We heard it about fifteen times on our trick or treating around town. I wish I would have brought my camera as the people in the neighborhood handing out candy were dressed up as well. My favorite was a French noblewoman with a white wig that reached up a foot or two on her head and her husband Gene Simmons from the rock band Kiss.

Can I tell you how sweet my little girl is? She told me that day, "You're a good mommy and a good person." Oh man. My heart melted. An hour later she shouted at me to get out of her face. Eh, sugar and spice I guess. I'll take it though.
Contemplating the mysterious red berries on this tree. We don't know what kind of tree it is, but we like it.
Sweet Ava. There once was a girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid.
All in all it was an incredibly fruitful night. We went first to Foothill Village trick or treating and that fill her bag half full. Then we came home and had dinner and went out into the neighborhood. They really go all out. Since the houses are so close together it didn't take long to take away quite the haul. Back in the day when I was a witch for the fourth consecutive year as a child it took walking through half of Clarkston to get the kind of loot that Ava got in just a block and a half. The perks of being a city kid I guess.

On The Street Where You Live

Loves Music, Loves to Dance

Our ward's Primary Program was this past Sunday. For weeks we've been practicing her line, "I feel Heavenly Father's love when I pray with my family." She had it down flat. She sat in the front row of the choir seats. I have to admit that I was apprehensive about whether she'd actually stand up and say her part into the microphone, because, well she is my daughter.

I remember hiding under the bed as a child so I wouldn't have to go to the Cache Valley Mall and perform a tap routine with the rest of our class. My mom tried to talk me out from under there for a good fifteen minutes before she gave up. Much to my delight she stood right up and said her line and sounded as cute as can be. It soon became apparent that she didn't know all the words to all the songs in the program, but that didn't stop her from moving her mouth and pretending. My husband leaned over to me and whispered, "Maybe you should have tried to teach her primary songs, instead of Mamma Mia songs." True. Quite frankly it's not as fun to dance to primary songs as it is to dance to Abba songs.

Then to my definite surprise Ava decided that she'd liven up the program by dancing to the songs. It was hysterical. She also tried to follow the song leader and copied her arm movements. What I learned is that this little girl of mine is cut from a different cloth than I am. And I like it. She's sure to keep us entertained for a long, long time.

The Faith Club

Reading has always been a way for me to escape. To go places I've never been and to know people I've never known. There's always been a certain fascination for people who are different than myself. My favorite class in college was Anthropology 2400: Peoples of the World. Diversity interests me due partly to my belief in God. The fact that He created so many different varieties of plants, animals and people thrills me.

So when I was at the library a few weeks ago this book and it's title stood out to me. The Faith Club, A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew- Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner was written out of the great fear and confusion directly after the events of 9/11. Ranya, a Muslim of Palestinian descent began to fear passing on her beliefs to her children out of apprehension about how they'd be treated. Ranya had for many years become disenchanted with the extreme voices in her religion who seemed to be drowning out the majority of Muslims who do not believe in Jihad or demonize the West. She didn't believe in covering her hair, or the segregation of men and women.

Ranya had the idea to write a children's book along with a Jewish and Christian mother to show the link between the world's three big religions. From there she started the project with Suzanne, a convert to the Episcopalian faith from her Roman Catholic upbringing, and Priscilla - a Jewish mother who had experience writing children's books. They are basically strangers in the beginning.

They began to meet weekly but soon found that the project was in danger because of the deep held resentments and misunderstandings that have always bubbled beneath the surface of all three faiths. They decided before they could begin to work on the book, they had to work on understanding each others religions.

What is so beautiful about this story is you see clearly the common thread between the three religions, as well as the common womanhood and friendship that keeps these three woman caring about one another in spite of their differences. It's another lesson in knowing and loving those we may believe have nothing in common with us. I don't know if this is the answer to world peace, but I do know it would be a lot more difficult to declare war on a people who had names and a face who you respected and cared about. If you can't demonize a culture, then you can't seek for their annihilation without turning your hearts into hard stones that no longer possess the divine knowledge of common brotherhood.

This book informed me in many, many ways. Being a Mormon and living in a pre-dominantly LDS state means coming into contact less with those that share dissimilar viewpoints. I am also quite shy by nature and have often felt like raising my voice and asking questions of those I know do not believe the same way as I do but have kept quiet for fear of offending the person or making them believe I want a confrontation in some way. I'm just a curious individual. One of the things I learned is that the Jewish religion offers no promise of an after-life. Most believe there is something but have no doctrinal support. I believe it would make practicing your religion and living according to it's principals that much more difficult. It would take a huge amount of faith and love of God to follow His commandments with no promise of reward after this sometimes sorrowful earthly life.

One Jewish prayer in particular that Priscilla shared touched me. The prayer is usually said in Hebrew and is said at funerals. It goes like this: We are like a breath; our days are as a passing shadow; we come and go like grass; which in the morning shoots up, renewed and in the evening fades and dies. If some messenger were to come to us with the offer that death should be overthrown, but with the one inseparable condition that birth should also cease; if the existing generation were given the chance to live forever, but on the clear understanding that never again would there be another child, or a youth, or first love, never again new persons with new hopes, new ideas, new achievements, ourselves for always and never any others - could the answer be in doubt?

To all My Lady Friends!

Love and Les Miserables

As I look back over the life that Brig and I have shared these past 7 years, one thing I know for sure is that love endures.  I bemoaned the fact a few posts ago that the passionate love we feel for one another in the beginning of a relationship soon is dampened by every day responsibilities.  I've never purported to have a perfect marriage, because I am not a perfect person and neither is my husband.  There are moments though, when I catch an expression on my husband's face that takes me back to when we were dating and my breath catches as I remember the bright light he became in such a sad, lonely time in my life.  We began dating in the Spring, and I can't smell awakening earth or feel the warm sunshine on my face every Spring without tying those sensations to Love. 

I look at this picture and think about how we were such strangers to one another.  We had love and hope in our hearts and that was enough at the time.  Brigham is a quiet person.  I've come to appreciate the quality he has to take in circumstances and process them before making a decision.  He is calm when I am manic.  He has been the cool water that has tempered my hot temper and passionate personality.  He teaches me every day about patience, especially when it comes to our daughter.  I don't often write about him here, and that is because he is such a private person.  This blog is, in fact an affront to his sensibilities.  The rule has always been that I can't talk about him.  But I'm breaking that rule today because I do love him.  And I'm amazed every day that he continues to love me even after seeing me at my lowest and most raw.  I think what still keeps us going into our eighth year, remains what we started out with; hope and love. 

And because life's hardships and the cynicism that comes with it has still failed to harden my hopelessly romantic heart I will share some of my favorite verses from Victor Hugo's masterpiece Les Miserables.  My copy is worn and marked up like a bible.  Yes, it's that good. 

"Listen to me; I am going to give you a piece of advice; Adore one another.  The philosophers say: Moderate your joys.  I say: Give them the rein.  Are we happy because we are good, or good because we are happy?  Live boldly for one another, love one another, make us die with rage that we cannot do as much.  Idolize each other.  Be a religion to each other.  Every one has his own way of worshiping God.  The best way to worship God is to love your wife.  No joy beyond these joys.  Love is the only ecstasy, everything else weeps.  

To love or to have loved, that is enough.  Ask nothing further.  There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.  To love is a consummation."  

 

Happy Birthday, Mom!

You were my earliest memory of love, kindess, and quiet strength.

 I was one of five children, but never felt pushed aside.  I never had any inkling of how hard you worked to make our home a happy one.  To make sure our life was comfortable.  To never leave any doubt that we were loved.

I think now of all the time, all the days that were not your own.  I remember the greatest lesson you ever taught me was about how to treat others.  Kindness is your essential essence, one I believe you came into the world with.  I haven't always lived up to the standard, but I try.

It must have not been easy, especially when you had two of your five children who's mission it was to make each other miserable.  (Darren and I).  I remember one day when you had to run into a store and left Darren and I in the van and before you closed the door you peeked back in and said, "Please don't kill each other."

 You gave me great advice in those insecure years.  Be true to yourself.  Treat others how you'd want to be treated.  Don't wear a tight white T-shirt on a cold day.  Oh yes, I remember the day you were scandalized as you truly looked at me as I ran out of the post office and got back into the car to have you tell me we needed to drive home and change my shirt before we could go to Logan.  I always have been a bit naive.  But thanks for saving me from leering eyes!

 

From you I got my big smile, my love of reading, my empathy for others, my endurance in the face of sadness.  Do you know how much I loved waking up on summer break mornings, wrap myself in a robe and know that I could find you out in the flower beds?  I'd sit on the steps in the coolness of the morning and we'd talk about everything and nothing.  You'd be covered from head to toe and a wide brimmed hat on your head and you'd look up and say, "Always wear sunscreen.  The sun ages you."  I think I also got my vampire-like dislike for the sun from you as well!

 

But Mom, I really had no idea, no idea at all what kind of a mother you were until you held my own daughter in your arms.  It hit me, that the small taste of love I had felt for my daughter, was the same kind of love, but magnified ten-fold that you had always loved me with and will love me with forever.  In the years since I've given birth I think of you each and every day.  I wonder if I'm doing it right.  If my daughter will know the kind of love that I was raised on.  I once heard a quote by Oscar Wilde that went like this, "All Women become like their Mothers, that is their tragedy.  No Man does.  That's his."  Well if that is true then I will take that tragedy willingly.  I love you, Mom.  Happy Birthday!

Proof that I'm Dying

Please excuse the pictures of myself.  I was having a good hair day and was on my way to a birthday party and well, I haven't posted a picture of myself in many moons, so I figured it was due.  So here I am taking pictures of myself thinking about how my facebook profile picture has been the same since I opened my account on there.  It's tempting to apologize for my imperfections I see in the pictures, but I won't because that would be tedious for you and you'd have to feel like you needed to compliment me to make me feel better about myself.  What I will point out though is this...............................................

 

 

WORK! Now turn to the left.  WORK! Now turn to the right. Name that tune, aye?

.......You know life is going along and you really feel for the most part like you're still 17 years old.  I mean sure the mirror, my bread dough stomach, and the nearly 4 year old child that follows me around everywhere tells me otherwise but deep down I still feel like I'm in high school.  I'm young.  I'm invincible.  I'm never going to die...WAAAAAA?!  September 24, 2009.  A day that will live on in infamy.  The day I spied a pure white hair sprouting from my head.  And it hit me.  I'm dying! 

I quickly plucked out that little sign of my mortality and photographed it for posterity...and you all.  I mean snow white.  Like that character off of X-Men after she's been put through the ringer by Magneto.  I was trying to think back to what could have possibly made my body produce a single white hair.  What kind of stressful situation can bring that on?  Hmmm I wonder?

Adding another Smith to the Family

So Brig's little brother Brice, got married last weekend.  Here are some photos.  I know, shocking.  I love the one of Ava and Brig.  There's something about seeing your husband with your daughter that makes your heart melt.  I love listening to these two talk in another room, it makes me so happy.  Brigham is many things, but most of all a wonderful father.  He has far more patience than I do, with Ava and with me.  Ava's excited to have two Aunt Kims in the family now!  She also couldn't stop hugging Kim.  I think it was the beautiful princess dress because Ava is usually shy even with Aunts and Uncles.  Next up - Brig's other little brother, Vance and his beautiful fiance, Valeree. 

A Popcorn Kernel Up the Nose

Trauma of traumas my little girl is certainly a curious and precocious child. We popped popcorn tonight. Not the big bags, but the small snack size. The kind that you have to basically have psychic powers or at the very least X-Ray vision to see into the bag and divine whether or not the popcorn is at it's height of popcorn deliciousness. I stand next to the microwave worrying about the cancer it might me causing me by standing this close and counting in my head between popping kernel sounds One...One One...One One Thousan.... The science of not over cooking those bags is a fine art. Why the popcorn makers can't figure out an exact time for the small bags is beyond me. But all that's besides the point.

I had a premonition I must admit as I looked at a popcorn kernel sitting in it's unfulfilled glory atop one of the fluffy popcorn in my daughter's bowl. I distinctly remember thinking I hope she doesn't try to taste that. It could burn her mouth or she could choke on it. Of course being me means any number of these thoughts on a variety of potential calamities flit through my mind hundreds of times a day. I'm sure there is a clinical term for what this is but I haven't gone to see a shrink just yet.

Who would have guessed that that blasted kernel, or one of it's deficient siblings would make it's dastardly presence known not in my daughter's mouth, but up her nostril? Certainly not me and I'll tell you what my exact thought was when she turned and looked up at me and said in a small scared voice, "Mom, I put a seed up my nose and now it's stuck,"...my first thought was You got this from your father's side. You can imagine the tailspin my wild paranoid thoughts went into when I confirmed that a golden kernel had indeed found it's way up my baby's nose. Images of cornstalks growing out my daughter's nose filled my head. I imagined how she' be called The Corn Girl of Michigan Avenue and people would come near and far to gape. "So...you've come to stare at the beast have you?"

When I was gestating this little child inside of myself my biggest hope for her was that she would inherit good genes from both sides of the family. My mantra almost daily was, "Don't let her get my feet or my nose...don't let her get my feet or my nose...." For those of you who have seen my feet, well I won't dwell on God's unkindness, but let's just say my toes are of the short and stout variety and none of them like to take the lead role. Which makes them, to put it bluntly - square. Fine. I can tuck them away in my wide width shoes and shield them from the glare of prying eyes. But my nose....

Why couldn't I have been born with smaller nostrils? A petite probuscis? Turns out my ancestors had proud noses. Noses that could win races in a photo finish. Who am I to turn up my snout at their genetically well endowed gift of a nose? I may not go out and get a nose job, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. The ironic thing in all this is the first time I laid eyes on my daughter I knew that she had my nose, or the beginnings of my nose. And as I counted her ten fingers and ten toes I also knew she had gotten my feet as well. C'est la vie. I loved her all the more for it.

Turns out in the end her bigger nostrils had an advantage. It made it easier for my husband to pull the kernel out with a pair of tweezers with only a few tears shed. I'm going to write this down in a book I keep for her, so she can be proud of her nose...along with how she told me last week that she had magma in her eye when she really meant schmegma!

Karma and Hair Gel

Time is a good teacher.  Over the course of the last couple of years I have learned a lot from a little thing called Karma.  Or what goes around comes around.  I've never claimed to be perfect.  I'm so not.  But I am human, and like most humans I observe those around me and I make judgments.  It's not for me to judge anyone.  I know that. 

There are many examples of situations that I made judgment calls on and then had to live through the same experience as that person I had judged.  One that comes to mind sprang from my six year stint working retail. 

As many of you know I worked for Lowe's for six stinkin' years.  In that time period I came into contact with a variety of different people.  A lesbian vegan from Oregon, a gay Mormon boy from Logan, a Southern woman that grew up in poverty and neglect, a physically abused alcoholic woman, and many, many, seemingly "normal" people.  What I learned most from working there was that people are more alike than they are different.  I became friends with most of the above mentioned people.  Everyone of them was God's child and everyone of them had a unique story that shaped who they had become.

One particular woman was a challenge for me to get along with.  And I pride myself on being able to get along with people.  It wasn't that she was abrasive or difficult.  In fact she was quite congenial.  Very outgoing and vivacious.  She was one of those that loved to talk.  And talk.  And talk.  And talk.  She was a single mother of three.  Her ex was a drug addict.  She often railed at the LDS church for how she felt that it's followers treated her.  She also had naturally curly hair. 

One day another co-worker of mine was talking about how this particular woman needed a makeover badly.  I very ungenerously agreed.  (Like I'm the fashion maven).  We began talking about how her hair was frizzy and needed a bit of taming.  So it would look good like mine, the co-worker complimented me.  She suggested I talk to this woman about what type of product I use on my hair.  We worked out a pre-planned conversation that we'd bring up in the break room while she was on her break and I'd "advise" her on how to do her hair.  I know.  I was a jerk. So we went through with our plan.  She told me she just used a drugstore hair product.  I scoffed and told her those don't work for me and I have to buy one from the salon to get my hair to look good.  She didn't say much.  I'm sure she wanted to slap me in my smug face. 

This same lady was the first to come and see me from work after Ava was born.  She brought gifts and oohed and awed over my baby.  I've never felt so low in my life as when she came and visited me and I had thought so many negative things about her in the past.

Here we are in Salt Lake City.  Rent is enormous and Brigham's salary is modest.  This leaves very little left over for luxuries.  The day I went to ShopKo and bought a drugstore gel reminded me of this woman who until the very last day I worked at Lowe's made a fuss over Ava and never said a mean word to me.  And now I see.  Karma loves me. 

No one wants to be judged on how they appear to the outside world.  The real story is on the inside of a person.  There is a member in our ward who comes occasionally.  I don't know her story, but it is obvious to everyone that she is seriously ill battling Anorexia.  In the past I have thought that Anorexic women are obsessed with themselves and need to get over it.  You know what though.  That woman is not that different than I am.  I've struggled with my weight my entire life.  Very few women escape body image issues.  To fill the hurts from my past I eat food in excess.  To fill hurts in her past she abstains from food almost entirely.  It's just another face to the same coin.  I wanted to walk over to this woman and put my arms around her.  I wanted to tell her she is beautiful.  I want to weep for her. 

These days I hesitate to judge those around me.  Of course I still do it.  But before I get too carried away with my self-righteousness I think about what they may have experienced in their lives.  People have bad childhoods.  People have bad marriages.  People have mental illness.  People have little money.  But we're all people.  People trying to make the hurt go away.  People who need love.  People who need friendship.  Very few of us can say we've ever gained anything beneficial from other people's judgments.

Guess What Tonight is??? Here is my favorite dance from last time...

Laughing My Brain Squeezer Off!

Alright.  I'm bored.  It's Labor Day and all I've been doing is labor.  Laundry, bathing a West Yellowstone dirt encrusted child, baking bread, doing dishes, etc, etc, etc....  So I decided to keep this post short and sweet! SHOCKER.  If you've followed any of my links you'll be familiar with Natalie Hill's blog Mormon in Manhatten.  If not, feel free to start off with this post.  Read all the comments to get the grasp of the full on Mormon Mommy rage vented at this girl.  Then read this post for the final and hilarious conclusion.  I laughed and laughed.  Come on Mormon Mommies.  We've all been guilty of the brain squeezer.  Just thought I'd give you a little Labor Day reading.  Maybe others like me who live not so close to their family and have zero friends in their new city and therefore have no one to not labor with at a Labor Day BBQ will appreciate the link hook up.  Ciao!

P.S. Yes I was in West Yellowstone this last week and no, I did not take any pictures.  Booo!  Booo!  Down with the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Slime...blah, blah, blah obvious reference to the movie classic that is The Princess Bride.  

Life of Pi Book Review

 I had heard of this book as you do when a book is a best seller and an Oprah's Book Club selection, like flies buzzing in your ears every now and then.  You try to ignore it and bat those pecky flies away.  I have better things to read,  I thought  like book after book that is set in Victorian England in the same time period with the same sort of characters.  So I had fallen into a bit of a reading slump.   And I decided to take a chance on a different sort of book.  

 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel begins in Pondicherry India and introduces us to a little boy named Piscine Molitar Patel.  Named after a French swimming pool he tormented by his classmates who call him Pissing.  He eventually insists on going by just Pi.  I formed an instant kinship with him as only someone with a last name that rhymed with Pooper can.  

 When political unrest comes to India Pi's mother and father decide to move the family to Canada.  The boat they are on shipwrecks in the Pacific Ocean.  From there the story becomes one of desperate survival, harrowing experiences and a lesson in faith and love of God.  

I equal parts loved and hated this book.  It reminded me of my experience reading The Kite Runner.  Maybe it's the sign of a good book when you can't decide if you've just read the most depressing book in the world or the most inspiring.  Life of Pi spares it's readers none of the awful and horrible details of surviving a shipwreck and floating on an ocean for months.  It's also faith promoting and a triumph and testament to the capabilities of the human spirit and the divine within all of us.  It's what life is.  Light and shadows.  Darkest night and dazzling day.  I can and probably will continue to indulge my reading taste for stories that contain romance and true love and happy endings, but they don't really make me think.  There is a lot of symbolism in this book and is a bit of a parable for the underlying story.  

 

A word to the wise.  This is not a true story.  I read the entire 319 pages loving and pitying Pi Patel as a real person.  The author sets this book up as if this is a true story and he has spent time with Pi and researched his story.  Can you blame me for believing him?  As one book review I read put it..."You have to be incredibly naive to believe that as the story unfolds that any of the events could possibly be true."  I have been called naive before and it's probably not the last time.  I think this book would be a great book club selection to read and discuss with others.  When I finished this book I immediately wanted to call my brother and tell him to read it so we could discuss.  

P.S. I love the picture of the slogan used in Britain in WWII.  The message of this book is not far from this.

The Last First Kiss

I have an odd appreciation for sidewalks.  I think it's because the town I grew up in had so few of them.   The sidewalks in the city are the best because they are the busiest.  I love people watching.  Wondering what kind of food a person likes or what type of person they are attracted to.  I often make up little biographies about complete strangers as I observe them.  I was walking with Ava the other evening.  I love summer evenings.  The warm night air, the beautiful light as the sun goes down.  We decided to take a shortcut from Harvard Avenue through our ward's beautiful grounds.  The Garden Park Ward church house is like nothing I've witnessed before, but the grounds are what make it special. 

  

There is a stream that runs through the grounds.  And a duck pond where two ducks reside.  Our first Sunday here one of the sweet older sisters in our ward insisted that we take Ava out to see the ducks.  Ava loves quacking at the ducks and on week days we often bring old bread to feed them.  Anyway back to the story.  So we were walking down Harvard Avenue and decided to cut through the grounds.  There is a brick wall that surrounds the grounds...

...See.  As we entered through the gate I nearly tripped over Ava as she bent down to pick up a leaf.  I never would have saw them if I hadn't have stopped so abruptly.  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and I quickly turned my head and there between the brick wall and some shrubs was a very amorous couple.  I starred for just a moment out of surprise and then told Ava to get a move on.  I stopped by the duck pond and saw the couple leaving though the gate hand in hand.  She had black hair and red lipstick and was curvier.  He was tall and lanky and I imagined he preferred the curvier girls and in my mind I applauded him.  I imagined they'd been dating a few months and were hopelessly in love.  They would stroll out the garden gate and walk down the street lamp lighted dusk towards his car.  They were headed for an ice cream shop.  I told you I make up stories for people.  As they were leaving, for just a moment I felt a surge of envy.

I've been married for nearly 7 years.  It's not even a blink of an eye in the scheme of things, I realize that.  There are many things that are so comfortable about knowing and loving someone day in and day out.  And there are many things that are not so comfortable.  I often wonder if I'm just a restless soul.  That after 7 years I'd stop mourning the slow disintegration of that spark of first love that burns so hot at the beginning of a relationship that slowly settles into a more even keeled every day love.  I partly blame society for it's glorification of the intense experience of falling in love with a person to the exclusion of all other stages of love.  And I partly blame myself for obsessively reading Victorian romance novels, crying over Disney movies, and watching Father of the Bride 123,000 times.  To say I had high expectations for love and marriage is a big understatement.  

 

Scientists have actually done studies on how long that first falling in love stage lasts and it's effect on the brain.  It turns out that type of love usually lasts 2 years at the max and the feelings and the chemicals they release actually act like a drug in your brain.  How do you stop missing that first kiss when all the memories you have of it are tied into that euphoric feeling so intoxicating to the system?  Sigh.  Can you blame me for giving that couple making out behind the brick wall an envious glare?  I admit making out on the grounds of a church house is a little odd, but the first time I walked around them I imagined myself in a Scarlett O'Hara ball gown snuggled up to Rhett Butler beneath the willow tree.  I know, stop with the period romances already...curse you Jane Austen! 

I'm not trying to bash long lasting love.  It's really the glue that keeps the wheels a churning in a family.  And the truth is I know and love my husband so much more today after going through trials and joys together than I did the day we were married.  But...I still miss it.  I still miss finding out about each other.  I miss those first tentative kisses.  I miss feeling on the cusp of a great adventure.  I've been thinking about it since that night and I've debated on taking Brig back to the garden wall and stealing a few kisses of my own.  But it would be rather embarrassing to have our Bishop discover us fawning over each other like common teenagers!  Does anyone else miss those first years together?  Or is it just me?