In Case You Were Wondering...

I'm still here.  The computer is not on the fritz.  I just haven't been writing on this blog.  Also my camera is broken, so I don't have any pictures to share. 

I will say though, that life is great.  We're headed into June and what month is better than June?  My husband has morphed into my father and has been spending a lot of time in the saddle...the bicycle saddle.  I have odd flashbacks when Brig asks me to rub his sore legs.  Mom rubbing Dad's baby smooth legs in the front room.  Life is just full of oddities, isn't it?  You marry a guy that you think has very little in common with your father and then ten years later...BAM!  Joke's on you. 

On the other hand, he did tell me that I am just steps away from becoming a Mormon Tabernacle Choir listener like his mother.  He was mocking my radio choice.  100.3 FM One-Hundreeeeeed!  You've heard the jingle.  But what he doesn't get is that I drive around with kids in the backseat.  I have to be careful of what song lyrics enter their very impressionable brains.  Case in point: we were driving downtown and I'm not sure what station it was tuned to, but the song Let's Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel came on.  I turned the station after a couple of incredibly suggestive lines and immediately Ava pipes up, "Mom!  I liked that song."  Then she started singing part of the chorus and I nearly drove my car up over the curve and into the Little America Hotel.  Now I have to disagree with Brig.  My mother-in-law has those heavenly voices blasting the second you turn the key in her vehicle.  I do not.  While Brig is walking around in full spandex.  You tell me who is more like the other one's parent? 

I had a Gyro for the first time today.  I can still taste it in my mouth and it's been hours later.  It was good, but strong.  Hopefully the spices they used on the lamb won't be eeking out through my pores tomorrow. 

I came across a show the other day while flipping channels.  It's called Impractical Jokers on TruTV.  P.S. I hate when people spell words incorrectly.  Why couldn't TruTV have used the E?  It's only one letter more.  It's like Rite Aid.  There's nothing right about spelling rite that way. 

I digress.  One clip in particular had me laughing.  It reminds me of something my friends and I might have done in high school if we had mics in our ears telling each other what to do.  I'll embed it on the bar to the left.  If you don't hear from me for another three weeks it's because I'm really enjoying June. 

The Adventures of Tick Head and Ant Girl

Last week was rough.  I dealt with two buggy situations I never envisioned myself having to deal with.  My mom used to tell me that whenever her or one of her siblings had a cut that had more than a smidgeon of blood that my grandmother would take a quick look and promptly send them next door to her mother's house to get taken care of.  I used to think this sort of strange.  She was the mother, shouldn't she take those injured chicks and harbor them under her wing?  After these rather minor situations I completely understand.  If I had a mother living next door I would have done the exact same thing.

We went rock climbing in Draper last Monday at a place call Red Rock Crag.  When I say "we", I mean Brigham and Ava.  I simply tried to keep Brielle alive up there.  Also I'm not fond of heights.  Not at all.  We spent an hour or so there, then packed it up and called it a day.  This will be important for later.

On Wednesday afternoon I was in the kitchen doing dishes when Ava comes rushing in from outside.  "They are all over her and she doesn't like it!" She exclaims upon laying eyes on me.  I wrinkled my forehead and said, "What's all over her?" The her, being my baby, Brielle...that much was clear to me.  Ava sighs in frustration and says, "Just come out here!" and starts marching out the door.  I follow bemoaning in my head how I can never get anything done without being interrupted a dozen times.

As I walk up the steps from our basement I see her.  She is standing at the top of the stairs whining.  I quickly see why.  There are ants swarming her.  I can see them crawling everywhere...her legs, her belly, her arms, her neck, her face (I know, her face!) and in her hair.  I'm serious when I say that it appeared like her hair was moving, that's how many ants were climbing around in there.  "What in the world!" I yelled and quickly scooped her up and rushed her to the bathroom.  I stripped her down and plopped her in the bathtub and turned on the shower.  She is bawling and reaching for me.  The ants that transferred when I was holding her have descended upon me like a plague.  I can feel them crawling behind my ears and down my neck.  I swat them away as I wash Brielle.  After I got her calmed down and dried off I got angry.

I took the bug killer and sprayed every last one of the hoard into oblivion.  My motto with most bugs has always been live and let live.  Even with spiders.  Call me crazy but if they are not directly threatening me I let them be.  But these "harmless" little ants messed with the wrong mama bear.  I was fuming.  I kept finding ants crawling around in the bathroom and kitchen and took great satisfaction in squishing the life out of them.  I later asked Ava what happened.  She said they had sat down on the sidewalk to color with chalk and the ants had quickly inundated them.  She said, "I brushed them off of me, but they got Brielle.  I tried to brush them off of her too, Mom."  Craziest thing ever.

The next night after a bath I was braiding Ava's hair into little french braids all over her head so her hair would be wavy the next day for her dance performance at school.  I got two-thirds of the way over her head when I spied something curious.  At first I thought Ava must have picked a scabbed and it had clotted up on her scalp, but as I looked closer I saw legs moving!  I froze.  I slowly stood up and stepped away from Ava as if she were a bomb.  I just kept thinking to myself...don't freak out, don't freak out.  Ava looked at me as I reached for my phone and she said, "What's the matter, Mom?"  I'd never be good at Poker, my emotions are always written on my face.  "Uh, I think you have a tick in your head.  But it will be alright.  I'm just going to call Dad at work," I said trying to sound nonchalant.  "A tick?  In my head?  What's that?" She asked getting a frightened look on her face.  "It's uh, it's a bug.  It buries it's head in your skin.  You probably got it on Monday when we went rock climbing.  It'll be okay I just am not sure what to do," I said feeling my skin crawl as I once again looked at the gross brown body.  She started bawling.  I felt shaky.  I eventually got her calmed down and worked out what I should do with Brigham.  The next day we took her to instacare to get it removed before her dance performance.  Even writing about it now makes my arms and legs feel weak.  I have decided we will not be back to Red Rock Crag anytime soon. 

Off The Grid

Eighty dollars later I can rejoin the online community thanks to a new charging cord.  The second one in three years.  Apparently we are just super hard on the cord, or else it's an overlooked design flaw meant to net Apple even more money.  Eighty bucks and it's made in China...come on!  It's like the lyrics to the very wise folk duo Flight of the Conchords in their song "Think about It":

"They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what's the real cost?
'Cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper.
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers
When you got them made by little slave kids
What are your overheads?"

Nonetheless I'm still here.  Nonetheless I enjoy using the word nonetheless.  Awesome.  In some ways a couple of weeks away from the computer was nice.  I couldn't believe how many mindless google searches I must do because I'd be talking about something with Brig and I'd say, "Let's google it." and then remember that we couldn't.  I'm a very curious person who regularly looks up the origins of a phrase and other such useless information.  Google is good for that. 

While I was away Ava's soccer season ended.  She played 0 minutes of six games.  She did however cower next to me and emphatically shake her head no when her poor coach would try to get her to play a few minutes.  It was not fun to get her dressed in her gear and drive up there with no assistance from my working husband and spend the next forty minutes chasing Brielle off the fields and try to keep her from grazing on other people's snacks.  Two times I couldn't even convince Ava to exit the vehicle.  Listen, I'm not trying to get her to become some soccer prodigy it's just that I paid money for this...for something that was her idea to have her be weepy the whole time thinking someone was going to drag her onto the field against her will.  It bothered her that she was one of only three girls on the team and it also bothered her that her coach was a man.  If she's not a mini-me I don't know what she is.  Somehow I instilled my fear and loathing of men into her psyche as well.  It wasn't intentional.  I'm sure she'll send me the bill for her future therapy sessions when the time comes.

Brielle is talking constantly.  When bedtime rolls around I'm so happy for the silence I can sit in.  I love my baby, I do, but it's a lot of babbling.  A lot.  She's also taken to eating chapstick.  Ava had a couple of dozen floating around her room and I think Brielle has managed to ravage six of them.  I had to throw out the markers as well.  I have graffiti all down the hall from when I ran to the store and Brig said he'd "watch the girls."  Right. 

I've been writing on a new story and since my computer was not useable I had to write the old fashioned way.  The calloused bump on my right middle finger has returned due to writing this way.  I'm grateful for a keyboard. 

And last of all I started a poetry blog.  It's simply for a creative outlet, but feel free to look at it.  I'll put the link on the sidebar.