End of School Year Photos Etc, etc, etc,

This isn't an end of school year picture.  It's just a picture I really love.  There's not much I like more than to retreat to my bedroom with a book or a good text conversation in progress while sipping on the hard stuff. 

 

Labor Day weekend was Brig's company party at Lagoon.  We had a great time!  First time we've been to Lagoon without getting into an argument or having a child meltdown.  

Freaky sky ride.  It makes my knees weak and the bottom of my feet sweaty.  I passed and just pushed Brielle in the stroller to the other side of the park. 

Ava had her first grade program a couple of weeks before school let out.  They sang Beatles' songs and did choreographed dances all to the theme of Funky Fish Party.  I really love this girl. 

Why I can never fold clothes why Bree is awake.  She likes to snuggle her clothing possessively.  It's cute but makes for a prolonged laundry day. 

The girls were drinking their orange julius's snuggled up on the couch with a blanket shielding their delicate hands from the cold beverage.  If you look closely you'll see Ava has zombie eyes, I think. 

End of school fun run.  Ava begged Brig to run with her and then promptly left him for her friends.  Don't worry.  Apparently her friends decided to run the whole way and she said she had to preserve her energy for recess.  So Brig got to walk with her.  When she saw me waiting for her she began to run.  I've been doing this the whole time mom! Right. 

 Ava and Emilie enjoying a day in the sun. 

 Sunday afternoon nap.  I love when my kids cuddle up on me when we nap. 

 Ava and Brielle at the softball diamond.  Twice weekly you'll find us there. 

Taken at 10:30 at night.  Summer is so hard for me to keep the kids on schedule.  But I was dealing with this...

 

The end of school blues.  Ava's the only kid I've ever known to be sad for summer vacation.  She cried the night before...and five minutes after school let out...and later that night thinking about her teacher.   My Ava, loves with her whole soul she does. 

 Brielle wasn't sad.  It was time to party!

 Another funky fish party pic.

Donna, Ava and Emilie.  The three Amigos.  Ava is still bummed she wasn't born in China like her friends, but hey you've got to play the hand you're dealt. 

 Well at least one of us was smiling.

 

Worn out.  Lagoon will do that to you, either that or Lay's Potato Chips have some magical sleep property I was not aware of.  

 I never noticed my flintstone foot in the picture.  It seems to be enjoying itself though, so carry on. 

 Life can be really rough when you're 2 1/2.  Especially when your mom snaps a photo instead of actually solving your problems.

 One day I'll sleep through the night.  That day hasn't come yet. 

 Play hard...

 Crash hard!

This is what I wear when I don't want anyone to recognize me.  The mustache looks totally authentic. 

Trapped in a Borrowed Dress

The sun filtered through my childhood home's basement windows.  The clock read 3:30 p.m.  Having survived another day on the long bus ride home from my middle school in Richmond, UT I believed it was time for another forbidden foray into my older sister's closet.  Not a soul was home in the house.  I cracked open a cold one...Coke that is.  I preferred the bubbly over ice in a goblet so that I could pretend I was some fancy lady at some fancy party and not just an ordinary seventh-grader in a small town where half the residents could be traced back to a handful of settlers.  Believe me, Clarkston, UT is a tangled web of cousins and cousins by marriage.  You almost need to sit down and do some genealogy before talking bad about someone to someone else.  Chances are they are related. 

But back to the closet raid at hand.  My sister never let me wear her clothes.  How I envied the maroon tinged Doc Martins, and rows and rows of big baggy pants that my sister could probably burrow into like a sleeping bag.  But hey, it was the nineties and grunge was in.  My cousin Rory and I had a weekly date so we could specifically watch the angst of My So-Called Life together and ruminate in hushed voices what it would be like to reach out and touch Jared Leto's silky blond hair.  I wore white wife-beaters that came in a Hanes three pack in the men's section covered by flannels of all sorts of different colors.  But my sister's wardrobe was the ultimate grunge fantasy.  Striped XXL t-shirts abounded.  She was always borrowing friend's clothes, which only made the fruit that more forbidden for me. 

The red and pink shag carpet smelled of damp, as it always did.  I marveled at my sister's underground lair.  If she was home this is where she spent 95% of her time.  Locked away from the rest of us being much cooler than me, or that's the way I saw it at the time.  I ran my fingers over the dark wooden slats of the folding closet doors, sealed tightly and shut off like my sister seemed to me.  I gently pried them open beholding the splendor of the second hand clothing that my sister got for killer deals at our local thrift store. 

I flipped from one article of clothing to the next, daydreaming of myself with blond hair, like my sister's.  Maybe we'd go up the canyon together, or whatever it was that she did and we would talk and laugh.  Make fun of our parents.  If only I could wear clothes like her, maybe she'd think I was cool enough to be with her.  You're so grown up, Denise!  You used to be so annoying but now you're my favorite sibling.  Here, take my other pair of Doc. Martins.  Now we can stomp around in them together.  I imagined all this as I spied a new article of clothing that hadn't been there previously.  It was a sleeveless matte black cotton dress that fell to the knee.  The cut was simple, with a fuller skirt and white stitching around the seams.  The perfect thing to wear with army boots and your Kirk Cobain look-alike boyfriend's denim jacket that wreaked of stale cigarette smoke. 

I took another sip of bubbly and pondered whether I should try it on.  It clearly wasn't hers.  She'd never worn it that I knew of.  That meant it was a friend's.  Most of my trips to her closet consisted of day dreaming and simple looking at the clothing.  I rarely tried on things.  My sister always knew when I had.  She later told me it's because I messed up the hangers when I put the clothes back on them haphazardly.

What the heck, I thought.  Heck, because I was a good Mormon girl who hadn't uttered a single swear word at the time.  I bet my sister could cuss a blue streak though.  She was a rebel.  She didn't care what anyone thought of her.  And so I removed the mysterious friend's dress and slipped it over my head.  There was no zipper.  This should have been my first warning that something could go awry.  I struggled to fit the dress over my shoulders and full bust, but once I had shimmied and stretched that cotton weave to it's limits the dress fell easily over my waist and hips.  It was a bit snug I observed in the full length mirror in the upstairs bathroom.  My bust felt a distinct kinship to all those news reports on getting your yearly mammogram.  Pretty soon I got a tingling under my arms because the arm holes were so tight.  Oh dear. 

Starting to sweat I decided it was time to get the dress off, it had started to feel like a steel corset.  The Grande Dames...(my boobs) were having the life squished out of them.  I pulled the dress up to take it off.  I could only get it to the bottom of my bust.  I grunted and growled.  I pulled and I stretched but I could not get out of the dress.  Sweating in earnest now I ran to the microwave to check on the time.  There was no telling what time Darcie would come home.  For a good twenty minutes I fought with every fiber of my being to peel that tortuous dress off of me.  Crying I finally made a fatal decision. 

The cold metal of the scissors against my hot skin was a welcome relief.  Snip.  Snip.  Snip.  With every cut I saw my sister in my mind's eye screaming at me for what I had done.  She'd banish me from ever setting foot in her bedroom.  All hopes I had of a friendship with her would be lost.  With about a five inch cut in the upper seam under the right armpit I was finally able to pull the dress free.  And my boobs sang. 

I quickly changed back into my clothes and took the ruined dress to my bedroom and shut the door.  What was I going to do?  I could ask my mom to sew it but then I'd have to deal with those consequences and she'd probably make me tell my sister as part of my penance anyway.  No.  The only choice I had was to sew it myself.  The only problem was I didn't know how.  I took my mother's sewing kit from the hall closet.  The sewing machine was like some unknowable technology to me, as alien as disliking the taste of chocolate.  I threaded the needle with white thread.  Black would have looked better but I couldn't find any.  I heard the side door open and close.  I shakily tied a knot in the end of the long thread.  Then I set to work.  My stitches were big and clumsy.  I passed the needle through the rent fabric closing the gap as best I could. 

As I finished I nearly gasped at how incredibly obvious the wound on the dress was.  Oh well.  Time to face my fate.  I left the dress in my room and went in search of whom ever was home.  It was my brother.  I was saved.  He called me tub-o-lard as I passed and I called him dummy.  Our deep bond shimmered in the air like dust motes. 

I gathered the dress in my bedroom into a ball and tucked it under my shirt, just in case.  As I quickly placed it on the hanger I looked once more at the maroon Doc. Martins.  She was so lucky.  I crossed my fingers and left her room as it had been.   

I gave myself ulcers worrying about it for weeks.  Eventually the dress disappeared from the closet, gone back to the unfortunate owner a little more dilapidated than before.  My sister never said a word about it.  And I never tried on another dress without a zipper. 

Some Bug's Mother

"AHHHH!  Mommy help me!" Ava screeches through our door.

Brig shakes his head with a long suffering only a lone man in a houseful of girls knows.  I couldn't blame him for his lack of response.  Just that morning Ava had barged into our room, alligator tears pouring from her Norwegian green eyes (eyes that are both blue and green at the same time, coined for the descendants of my immigrant Grandfather Carlsen).

"Daddy!  Daddy!" she sobbed in anguish.  Surely a truly tragic declaration was about to unfold.  "Daddy I need you!  NETFLIX ISN'T WORKING!"  The truly tragic news now delivered she threw her torso onto the foot of our bed, her arms outstretched as if a pilgrim come to worship at some holy shrine after a long, dusty journey.  I watched all this with one eye open, stifling the urge to bend it like Beckham on her head resting only a few inches from my feet.  It's Mother's Day!  I complained silently in my mind.  Brig grumbles something under his morning breath as he reluctantly rolls out of bed to help our beleaguered daughter.

We lock eyes in shared empathy.  Here we go again.  I sat on our bed, ankles crossed and a powder compact in one hand while I finished applying makeup.  Brig stands in a state of undress, perusing his choice of ties, his long hair curling over his ears as I again admonish him to get a haircut hippy!  We flirt in our own way.  A mix of witty innuendo and teasing personal putdowns, usually having to do with the other's intelligence.  Interspersed with subtle compliments about the other's appearance, it makes for a brew of mock scorn and shy adoration that we conjure when we are in one of our "mountains" phases of our relationship.  Those cyclical seasons when you've pulled out of the valley of divorce-might-be-a-good-option-I-can't-stand-the-way-you-eat-your-cereal and decide you don't really despise your spouse and you just might keep them around awhile.  They amuse you after all, and when they smile the beauty of said smile scorches your eyes.

Yes, we were tempted to ignore our eldest daughter but there was something in her voice I recognized as authentic panic.  "Go Honey," I urged my husband.  He still looks undecided.  "Go see if she's okay.  She sounds scared."  He opens the door.  Down the hall Ava is stock still and petrified, her head turned to her left and her eyes focused intently on her left shoulder.

"A bee!" she yells, "I have a bee on me!  Get it off!" From my vantage point on the bed I watch as she turns slowly toward her dad revealing the loathed insect.  To my amazement he reaches down and squeezes the bug from off her shoulder like a stray piece of lint and makes for the bathroom.

The questions begs to be asked and I ask it, "Is it a bee?" I yell, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging in my head where it belongs...you big fool!  Bees have stingers you know?  

"No!  It looks like a flying ant," he answers.  Ava now saved, pads back over to the couch where she resumes the viewing of a deeply enriching program...My Little Ponies.  My face now on, I hurriedly tend to brushing my teeth and finding shoes and socks for Brielle who is loudly protesting the choice of programing in the living room.

"My show!  My show!  My show, Mama!" she yells turning to me in appeal.  I smile and brush her complaint off as I am wont to do in matters of sibling relations.  I am thinking about getting to church so I can help set up the assembly stations for our Mother's Day butterfly pin the primary kids will be making for their moms.

As I'm brushing my teeth I notice movement in the toilet to my left.  This is never, ever a good thing.  Ever since I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets I've had an unnatural fear of a snake emerging from the toilet pipe, it's head breaking the water directly beneath my unsuspecting buttocks.  WHAM!  Fangs sinking into my vulnerable backside.  I'm Moaning Myrtle.

For a split second my eyes glaze over as I imagine all this taking place in my mind.  My heartbeat quickens like it does when I fear the slimy, synthetically configured Jabberwocky from the 80's made-for-tv movie Alice in Wonderland will round a corner in my house and run right into me.  It's tiny arms permanently outstretched, vaseline drenching it's clearly plastic body.  It still terrifies me.  Things like the toilet asp and the Jabberwocky...I tell myself they are not real, but it doesn't stop the fear blooming in my fertile brain.

I shake my paranoid head and inch towards the toilet.  My wondering eyes reluctantly plumb the watery depths of the family lavatory.  The winged ant, much like Custer, is making it's last stand.  Or Custard's last stand as I used to believe it to be.  I always pictured a recently slender woman after months of dieting and thigh-jiggling miles on the treadmill, walking past an ice cream shop.  The woman stops in admiration, drool forming at one corner of her mouth.  Nary a drop of custard has touched this woman's lips in months and she feels the absence like a babe ripped from her newly toned arms.  But that's neither here nor there.  The poor insect is swimming for it's life.

I spit the foaming glob of toothpaste into the sink.  "Brigham!  It's swimming.  The least you could have done is flush it!" I yell leaning over and pushing the shiny silver lever.

Ava enters the bathroom and asks innocently, "What's swimming, Mom?"

"Oh, that bug that I thought Daddy had squished.  Poor thing was just paddling around hoping for a life line," I say loud enough for Brig to hear, hoping he'll be shamed into admitting he's a bug sadist.

Ava's eyes well with tears.  "What's wrong, Honey?" I ask.

As the deluge begins again for what seems like the tenth time this morning she moans, "KILLED ON MOTHER'S DAY!"

Taken aback I ask, "WHAT?!"

"That might have been some bug's mother!" she shouts.

"But I thought you wanted Daddy to get it off.  What did you think he'd do with it?" I ask perplexed.

"I thought he'd squish it quick.  He could have put it outside too," Ava cries.

Brig takes this opportunity to stride into the bathroom like some conquering hero, "Well that bug messed with the wrong family.  That bug did not deserve a quick death!" Ava's hysterics are resurrected anew.

Sheesh.  You're really helping, Honey.  I look down at my phone.  It's time to go.  I want to tell them they're both being ridiculous but I don't.  Instead I offer, "That bug wasn't a mother.  I'm sure of it.  Don't worry, Ava."

Ava glares at me.  "Then it was a Daddy!  Or...or a big sister!  Or a little sister!  Killed on Mother's Day!" she swiftly stumbles over the words like a fall down the stairs.

"No!" I say in my best no-nonsense disbelief.

"You don't know!" Ava yells, clearly in some sort of Irish mourning for the bug, recently dispatched to a watery grave.

"Ava.  It's OK," I begin.

"KILLED ON MOTHER'S DAY!" she shrieks again.

"We've got to go!" I tell Brig who is ignoring us both as he mops his mane with my precious hair gel in a bid to control the chaos that sits atop his head.

Ava is still sniffling as I herd the girls out the door to our waiting decade old champagne - colored Corolla.  "Ava, bugs don't live in families like humans do.  You're making too much of this, Sweetie," I patiently explain.

She gulps but says nothing.  As we pull away from the house I see her splotchy forehead in the rearview mirror, a dead giveaway of her distress as it has been from the day she was born.  Her red-rimmed eyes meet mine in the mirror, "Some bug's mother," she whispers accusingly.  I reach back and pat her hand, sigh and shake my head.  Happy Mother's Day Mother Bug Murderer, I think to myself.

Blog slacker and what I overheard at school

I haven't been blogging.  Obviously.  Instead I've been packing.  We found a new place to rent.  A WHOLE house.  It doesn't even have a basement and that makes me incredibly happy.  I think I'd be fine if I never stepped foot in another basement again.  It's a cute little house right across the street from Ava's elementary school.  She's so happy to get to walk to school.  We will be moving Saturday. 

I had a root canal today.  I have the worst teeth in the whole world.  I did go for a 8 year run without a single cavity after I married Brig.  But recently it's been nothing but bad news.  My dentist didn't do himself any favors when he told me that I must have had some country bumpkin dentist growing up because I had some weird dentistry going on.  Hey, I loved that country bumpkin dentist, I thought.  He called everyone kiddo and let us choose a prize after our appointments.  He also was very generous with the laughing gas...something you could learn from.  He likes to crack jokes and ask me questions when I have my mouth open like a yawning whale.  Yeah I know, it's not very flattering to compare oneself to a whale.  But I'm a renegade like that.  I shake my head or try to crinkle my eyes especially crinkly so he knows I find what he's saying amusing.  Here's something odd.  I've noticed before that there is a hot beverage machine in the waiting room.  It makes hot cocoa that's at least 500 degrees and the girls get all whiny that it's taking too long to cool down.  But anyway I saw a fellow patient open the bottom part of the cabinet today to reveal a mini fridge.  And lo and behold it was stocked with Coca Cola products!  I guess it keeps the good dentist in business. 

Before my root canal I ran up to Ava's school to stuff envelopes like I do each Monday.  I usually listen to a podcast as I work, but today I left my phone in my purse and didn't think about listening to anything besides the normal goings on of a school.  I overheard a heated discussion going on a short way down the hall.  It was between a student and teacher.  The teacher asked what was going on?  I didn't hear the girl's reply but it was something like abject oblivion.  The teacher then laid her accusations at the sheepish student's feet.  "Lucy told me you put Windex in my drink!  That's not okay!  Now go back to the classroom.  I'll be there in a minute."  The rest of the class had already entered the computer lab.  WINDEX!  In a teacher's glass!  That's one deviant pupil.  I've always said teachers should get paid more. 

Another reason I haven't been blogging is that I've been editing my story, The Tanglewood Tree.  It's rough.  Some days I think it's okay and others I have so many self doubts that I feel like just giving up.  I love to write.  When I'm in the story and the words are flowing from my imagination to the screen it's one of the most transcendent feelings.  It brings me such joy that even if nothing becomes of these stories I guess it's gift enough to have the experience of telling that story. 

Other highlights of my week:

My mom coming down over the weekend to help me pack.  I love her.  It was nice to have a bed companion who snores like me.  (Brig was on a scouting weekend). 

Ava being such a good example to me.  Her faith puts mine to shame. 

Brielle pooping on me.  I thought maybe letting her run naked around the house would nudge her in the direction of the special Mickey Mouse potty we bought for her.  Instead as I was going through notes Brig kept from college and tossing most of them she sad down on my lap, buried her head in my shoulder and apparently did her duty.  I didn't know it at the time.  I thought she was just snuggling.  Only when I pushed her away to stand up a few moments later did I realize I'd been crapped on.  I began screaming like a car alarm.  Pure shock.  This made Brielle panic and she grabbed me and in the process smeared poop across my cheek.  It was a mess.  Both of us and the carpet needed a good scrubbing.  It was Brielle's first shower and she bawled the entire time.  I love toddlers.  I love potty trained toddlers better. 

Easter and Whatnot

I downloaded these pics shortly after Easter.  And then I'm not sure what happened.  Ava was teasing Brielle.  Brielle was crying.  I turned into monster mom.  You know, life.  We had a great Easter.  Me and the girls stayed up with my parents for spring break.  We rode four wheelers, went swimming or sweating (you decide) at Lava Hot Springs, and just generally enjoyed being country girls once more.  It was too short.  And that's all I've got to say about that.