Don't Call Me Lady

For Becky

2010-09-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

My sister was one time waiting in line when she struck up a conversation with an old man, he told her about his wife, his God, and that dirty sonofabitch cancer. She came home and told me how kind and gentlemanly he seemed, except when it came to that dirty sonofabitch cancer, which had crossed the bounds of his courtesy, had provoked him to call it by it's full name.

I was reading a book called "Let's Be Enemies" to my daughter and thought of you, Beck. When you moved up from Texas I prayed at your first Sunday school meeting there that you would feel welcome. A year later I was making fun of you while you said the prayer in that same Sunday school class, but later that day you brought me brownies anyway.

I'll never forgive you for that.

You always tickled me until I got really angry. I hated it. Nothing feels more invalidating than trying to be mad when you can't stop laughing. I made fun of the trace of a Texas accent that you still had until you got really angry. I had not mastered the art of knowing when to shut it. I'm obviously still working on it. you were my best enemy whenever you weren't my best friend.

I felt like Laurie in Little Women, as Amy was always meant to be rich, Laurie was always meant to be a March, and the Brown girls had meant to be Tunnels. And it was good of the Tunnell girls to take us in, take us along for floats down lazy rivers in the blue green summertime. Jumping out with our tubes in your back yard, is there anything in the world more luxurious for a thirteen year old than your own private river? Playing SkipBo and RummiKub and dodging angry geese and making cinnamon rolls. My land, even thinking about it now who wouldn't want to be a Tunnell?

I hope you're not reading this, I hope you are busy getting better and eating cinnamon rolls and playing SkipBo. But while I'm down here and you're up there I'll be thinking of you and praying that you feel it and calling cancer, which I will never capitalize because the dirty sonofabitch doesn't deserve it, by it's full name.

You'll Have to Eat Your Lunch All by Yourself

2010-05-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

One time, when my sister was about four or five, we went for a hike. She really had to go potty, badly, and absolutely could not wait, so my Mom took her a few feet away from the trail and helped her go outdoor style. Things were going pretty smoothly until a party of about ten hikers passed us and Dee gave em a little more bum than they had expected to see that day - or as I like to call it, a Brown Family Hello.

I'm traveling down memory lane because I'm being more sociable, or at least trying to be, and I'm feeling a little bit exposed.

I am having a gathering, if you will, in a couple of weeks, with some awesome people I met on the Apron Stage. Yeah, that's right, I'm meeting people at a park that I have never met except on the Internet. And I'm bringing a plate of brownies, and a spoon.

Oh yeah, I'm exposed.

I turn 30 on the 30th. I had a plan, 30 days until 30. I would do something fun every day until I turned 30 with a friend or acquaintance and just generally party it on up. Then I realized, in order to do that I would run the very real risk of finding that I just do not have that many friends. I'm pretty sure I do, but my ego can't handle 30 days of realizing people feel pretty ambivalent toward me and now my twenties are over.

Here's the problem, like my sister, I have needs, hers was to go number one, and mine is to be loved! The problem is that in order to fulfill those needs some exposure, vulnerability, has to take place. I just cannot trust that that will not be the moment when a party of people come traipsing by and laugh.

For Dee

2010-04-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

Dee would hide behind the curtain on our sliding glass door while the four of us hummed the theme to the Johnny Carson show.

Da dada dee dum dadadadadadadaaaa da dum dum dum

Then Cliff would try to suppress laughter while saying "Ladies and Gentlemen, heeeerrrrre's Deedee!

Dee would fiddle around, trying to find the end of the curtain. Finding success she would emerge, throw her chubby arms out and flash a row of pearly white baby teeth while we all laughed and clapped and generally encouraged her to believe she was the center of our universe.

She really was.

I'm the youngest of the older four and Dee is eight years younger than me besides. She was all of our baby to share, fight over and pass off.

We would alternately treat her like her much abused Elmo doll, making her play "bewilder baby" where we would throw pillows at her toddling body, trying to make that faint crinkle sound babies create when their diapered bottoms hit the floor, and then we would treat her like our own personal baby genius and applaud her attempts to say "biodegradable".

She would sing snippets of Saturday's Warrior, she would cry and tell us that we treated her like junk. She would call us names like "big bird stop sign" when she was angry. She kept growing up as we kept growing out of the house. I would get her ready for school in the morning.

In many ways she was my baby, but I was not her mother. I was her snot faced sister.

I'm still haunted by my fourteen year old self pulling Dee out of bed, sometimes by her hair, when she wouldn't wake up. She was just a little kid. I should have been better, and gentler and more motherly. I was not sensitive to her tender head while I did her hair in the morning, although I will say that I did try to go the extra mile by giving her Heidi braids piled on top of her head and clipped with a lacy bow because that's how she liked it.

I moved out. I got married. She moved in with me during my first year of marriage and my parents last. She was so confused at ten, and I couldn't tell her that I was just as confused at eighteen.

She moved back with Mom, then with Shelly, then with Mom and Jay, then when she was sixteen she came back to me. Dave taught her how to drive. We went out to dinner and played Nerts. She was in Madrigals. She sang beautifully, she was funny, even with such a gap in our ages we were all pleasantly surprised that our personalities as Brown children must be locked somewhere in our genetic code, because without the benefit of having had us all close to her chronologically, she's completely one of us.

I also wanted to kill her, because in many ways she was my baby, but I am not her mother. I'm her over bearing sister.

She's twenty one now. Now it's all of us who wish we heard from her more often, but I like that. I think she deserves some time where we are all a little bit longing for her to be more of a presence in our lives. I think that's exactly how you should feel in your early twenties. Like after being youngest for an eternity everyone suddenly wants to know why you never call, what's going on in your life, how work is - it's very Cat's-in-the-cradle-and-the-silver-spoon. She has pink hair and a boyfriend I have only met once. But he seems nice, and her pink hair is actually pretty cute. I hope she is living an amazing life and is having an amazing time, and I hope that in quiet moments she still wants to play Nerts with me.

Because she's not my baby, and I'm not her mother. But she is my sister.

The Demon Spawn of Hell... or...Spellcheck

2010-03-10T15:21:00.000-08:00

" Seek the truth, speak the truth, be the truth" - Frank James

It turns out the truth is ugly.

If there is one virtue that I am pretty good at emulating, I hope it's honesty. I am fairly overly sensitive about dealing with people honestly, and having them be honest with me. Lies are such an enormous waste of time when the truth is always surmountable. But there is one area in which I have converted to the inky black realms of the untrue.

Spellcheck.

I have always felt that spell check really messes with intellectual integrity, if you can't spell you should learn, otherwise you should proudly display your lack of spelling prowess as one of those things that separates out the true hearts (who will find your poor spelling adorable, like your weird pinky toe nail) from the false ones (who will see the form rather than the substance of the thing and make fun of you behind your back).

I have had many a good natured argument with both family and friends over what was once my firm anti spellcheck opinion. I have been told that it probably aids proper spelling more than it enables, also that it is considerate to the reader for whom one writes. I used to wave these arguments away as one more small cave to one more little technoloical pest ...and it's all fun and games until one day those little pests become so powerful they start keeping us in plexiglass wombs living only a cyber reality. That's right. I saw the Matrix, and it scared the crap out of me. And it all starts with Spellcheck.

Then, one day, in a moment of weakness, I tried it.

Oh no.

I am an idiot.

and now everyone knows it.

And now I'm hooked because, you see, there is no gateway drug to spell check. It's like going from nothing to crack, I was completely unprepared, but now I can't live without it. How long had I been spelling thier wrong? Was I really that far off in spelling miscilaneous? It was like I had just discovered my own nakedness for which I had previously been blissfully unashamed.

But I still never correct my poor grammar, obviously. I have to keep it a little bit real.

*No misspelled words were harmed in the making of this post.

Happy Birthday, Dad

2010-03-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

I yell "I'm not angry! I'm just... emphatic."

I have become my father.

I remember crying when he would try to show me how to clean my room, or do my homework. I was sure he was angry, but now I know, as I bend over my son, whose trying not to cry as I attempt and fail to teach him fractions, he wasn't angry at me. He was just emphatically trying to teach me the concept of multiplication.

"Dad, what does five times five mean?"

"It's five, five times."

"What?"

"It's five, five times"

"Dad, I still don't get it."

"What's not to get?! It's five, five times!?!"

When we would clean our room he would wait until we thought we were finished and then get out the broom. I hated that broom. He would sweep everything out that had been stashed under beds, wipe everything off the tops of our dressers and pull out any clothes that had not been folded, but just stuffed into drawers. He'd tell us to do it again and we would stare at a job that was twice as big as it had been when we first started.

But it didn't matter, I was still his shadow. He would take me to the hanger where he worked and my sister and I would crawl around and play in all of the planes and helicopters. He showed me how to do woodworking projects. I made a baseball bat rack for my brother. We would paint wooden name plates made with his Dremmel tools.

My Dad has been an actor, a rodeo clown, an army guy, an outdoor wilderness man. He's missing the top of his middle finger and has mottled brownish spots up and down his body from both grenade shrapnel and the horns of a bull. When we were little he would turn up his long eye brows at the arch and chase us around the house as a mad professor and we would scream with delight.

He sliced his hand open once. Soaking dishrags with blood, laying on his back, with his hand raised in the air on our back porch I asked him why he wasn't crying, I'd have been crying if I cut my hand like that. "Would crying make it any better?". I was about ten, it was the first time it had occurred to me that crying maybe doesn't make things better, but I quickly disregarded this as crazy talk from a man who was losing a lot of blood.

The funny thing was that crying over a chopped up hand was a waste of time, but my Dad will cry at the drop of hat, if you set dropping your hat to Hallmark commercial music.

He was a hard man to live with and far from perfect, but whenever we sang, or had drawn something, or acted, or wrote I knew even then that he was proud.

Time is such a funhouse mirror. Turning people into things that don't remotely resemble themselves from one moment to the next as you look through it. I remember being scared to death of him, of hearing the coins in his pocket jingle as he came down the stairs. Now I see a big man, who still hugs me so tight my eyes bug out a little bit. I see sour kraut and milktoast. I see a mad professor.

A few months ago Viv asked me how to multiply.

"It's just the amount of times you count by that number."

"What?"

"It's five, five times."

Worst. Lent. Ever.

2010-02-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not very bright, to be fair I do only have an eighth grade education, so hopefully my lack of sophistication has more to do with ignorance rather than sheer native stupidity.

I bring this up because I just discovered from Lisa on the Apron Stage, and mind you I am almost thirty, just discovered what Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday, or what have you, and Lent are. I also just learned that they have any relation to Mardi Gra.

For those that don't know, Lent is essentially a forty day fast from your favorite sin. I have a pretty religiously inclusive view of eternity and found this to be wonderfully in keeping with my Mormon beliefs - very "I would give away all of my sins to know thee". Also a great way to keep in mind, as was noted by Lisa, that while we sacrifice, Christ made the ultimate sacrifice, which is much more observant of the Atonement and Resurrection then my traditional ritual of crying over Easter dresses I'll never finish and then binging until I'm in a chocolate bunny coma.

But here's the kicker - the day before the start of Lent, Fat Tuesday - and New Orleans' Mardi Gra, is the observance of the fact that you are about to do without for forty days, so why not start with a little oomph to usher you in, or, depending on how you look at it, it's time to get your forty days into one night -very "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die".

I don't know if you can guess which one I'm better at. Hint - it has the word "Fat" in it.

Last night I had a party sized bag of Mini Eggs.

Today I gave up sweets for Lent, for twelve hours. Eight of which I slept through.

It turns out that my religious inclusivity mixed with my absolute inability to keep commitments has me feeling like a failure in two religions. And I was so wanting to feel Southern (aka interesting).

Oh, fiddle dee dee!

I have long suspected that I am a misplaced Southern Belle that, like Lambert, was dropped off by some incompetent stork into the lovingly blind arms of another species, in this case Mormon Northerners. While I am pretty sure I ended up much better off where I landed something about the South calls to me in a native croon, and I'm pretty sure it's two most appealing notes are big hair and addiction.

That darn addiction part got me this morning.

So I've decided I need to enlarge my idea of Lent for those of us sitting at the kids table, spiritually. The Lent Mulligan. I'm just going to look ahead and keep trying.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

2010-02-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

I ran into a friend from a couple of years ago the other day at the movies. She was a super hot, super sweet, gallery owning wonder divorcee when I knew her, but at the movies last week I got to meet her new husband.

They were the perfect couple. She runs an artist's retreat in Italy for a couple of weeks every year. They met there. They are clearly in love, he clearly feels lucky to have her, and she was at a very attractive level of modesty in accepting it.

I know I should spend more time focusing on the ideal, but I can't. Things broken and rebuilt are the most beautiful to me and I love, love, love when divorced people find love again. It makes me hopeful. Things gone terribly wrong in act two can find in act three their right.

My parents are a prime example. Is it sacralige to say I'm glad they are not together (forget I asked, better to ask forgiveness than permission, especially when that honestly is how I feel and no amount of pretty lies will make me truly righteous about it.)? I see them with my step parents and feel that we are at the end of A Mid Summer Nights Dream, things were extremely turned around, one or more parties might have indeed been an ass, but everyone found their proper place in the end.

My Dad and I just got off the phone. His wife (my Step Mommy) has put him on a diet. He is so excited to tell me "we have turkey bacon, and you know what? We barely notice a difference!", they go shopping for healthy meals, they have lost thirty lbs. each. I know that they must have their own problems, but they have enthusiasm that they share together. They tell us about their favorite places to go, why we should watch The Amazing Race, the home remodeling and hunting and fishing expos they attend. They are in love. Hope springs eternal. All is right with the world.

My Mom and my Step Dad are the same, they improve each other. They work in the temple, they go on long road trips, he tries to make her more punctual and she tries to get him to eat different foods. She laughs at cats on Youtube and he laughs at her laughing at cats.

I'm happy for them, I'm happy for me, because there is nothing so bad that life stops, it keeps moving, it keeps changing, there are always chances left to take, there will always be opportunity for heveanly respite after terrible storms. There will always be turkey bacon left to discover, both actual turkey bacon and the metaphorical, undiscovered tukey bacon in your soul.

They are both delicious.

Things Big and Great

2010-02-07T22:21:00.000-08:00

I have lived in a kind of self imposed state of claustrophobia for a little while. I am actually a little bit surprised that I have picked up writing at this brief stage of my life, because so rarely do I feel like myself. I often feel like I'm myself under glass, like the things that should be touching me I can see, but just can't quite touch. I don't know if I'm coming back out, but I feel hope bubbling to the surface of my skin. I'm seeing things open up.

I'm seeing the sun shine of friendly faces. Old and new, the possibility of things that are warm and inviting. I am feeling tiny urgings, to cook (repent now, I'm pretty sure that a Traci cooking is one of the first signs of the Apocalypse), to maybe ask friends over to dinner, to play games and to dance and even clean. I think showering and doing my hair might take more prominent roles in my future.

I am hopeful.

I am hopeful because there is a life of Big Things waiting for a prodigal me. Those big things, I think more often now, are probably things I will witness rather than do. And that makes me happy. I don't know if that can sound as happy as I feel it. I have love to feel. I have people to watch and wonder at. I have God's beauties to behold. I am taking feeble steps at being bounteous in spirit again. I don't have a lot to give, but it's getting to be more, and I think I am on the mend.

2010-01-30T21:35:00.001-08:00

I was in Disneyland last week. It rained the whole time. On the up side, the lines were very, very short. If you are an old hat at Disneyland like I am you know that when the crowds are small it's time to hit the most beloved of all rides-Peter Pan.

I prepared to board my pirate ship when I noticed the gals ahead of me. Two eighty year old women, silver halos of curled hair, no grandchildren in sight, loading up for a ride together.

I imagine two girls, maybe sisters maybe friends, laughing and whispering into the wee hours. Hair tied and in rollers and mutual fascination with dolls, then horses, then marriage, then boys and then marriage again. I think these women must have had their hearts broken given their age. Either by boys or husbands or children or dreams, things that pass by so fast and you spend the rest of your life wondering why they were was so slippery, why you couldn't just hold on.

Did they carry the hope that you start with, the disillusion with which you throw it all away, the resignation you wear as you tote your burdens, the grim acknowledgement of hardship and finally the light at the end, the understanding, the surrender?

I think I am seeing these women at the point of surrender. I imagine they have returned from a long journey into a time wear there is no time, no time for silly stories, fairy tales, and rides not made of magic, but fiberglass, cardboard and paint. They have traveled through that strange land of adulthood and are returning home with all of the wisdom that comes from a long trip abroad.

The mechanics of the ride give a shudder and start and I watch two silvery heads peeking out of a pirate ship, returning to Neverland.

Pearls of Wisdom

2010-01-13T14:41:00.001-08:00

I have a tattoo, when I wear a bathing suit people ask what the Chinese character on my back means. If they thought about it for a second they would know that it means I hit my rebellious period in 1998. I really don't know what it means, I don't speak, or read, Chinese. I imagine that the tattoo artist had a list of characters on the wall with words underneath saying things like "spirit" and "war" when in actuality they meant "spoiled white girl" and "drunk frat guy". He said mine meant "courage" but I think it shouts "dumbass" instead.

But for all of my tattoo regret I have been tempted once again. I think of all of the life lessons that have come to me in the last ten years and wish I could remember them at those crucial moments when they most want to go flying out of my brain. I want to get the best pieces of advice I have heard written on the inside of my forearm like crib notes that I can cheat my way through life with.

Here's the list so far;

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. This is maybe the most important concept, the most profound words I have ever heard in my life. Also Tootie is awesome. I have often fallen into the trap of believing that somewhere there is the Shangri La - the perfect choice that is devoid of all consequences. It doesn't exist, your choices will almost always be paired with either discipline or regret - choose which you would rather live with and keep truckin'.

Which brings me to Keep Truckin', some prefer to call this the "just keep swimming" philosophy. I prefer to keep truckin' because it is far more awesome. Constant motion - I refuse to say constant forward motion because sometimes backward motion is the most important. But Truck you must.

Que Se rah, Se rah whatever will be, will be, the future's not ours to see. Que Se rah, Se rah. (If you do not know that this song is from the Doris Day movie Glass Bottomed Boat then we have nothing more to discuss). Great things can happen through a lot of work and a lot of luck. Bad things can happen even when we do everything right. After we do our best we have to be recognize that we are not in control of this ride, so let go, raise your arms high and have fun, then maybe later you can barf - barf when you're dead. Hmmm, Barf when you're dead... nope, that's no good for me, I'm pregnant, must barf while living.

Finally, You're Traci, Damnit! It helps to remind myself of that, sometimes I forget. It also helps to put pressure on yourself to be you, if you don't contribute the qualities that make you special who will? That guy? He's not you. Asking that guy to bring some you to the table is like asking Kroger to make a delicious boxed mac and cheese, they aren't Kraft, it's never going to happen.

So I'm open to suggestions. Got any pearls for this swine?

Tricky Math

2010-01-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

I turn 30 in May.

You know, they say thirty is the new twenty. The lesser known caveat to that is unless you have kids, then 50 will have to be your new twenty.

I was pregnant with Vivian when I was eighteen, so my late teens were actually my early thirties.

I still haven't gone to college. It looks like my forties are shaping up to be my early twenties. I have a feeling that they are not going to rock quite as hard for me as my early twenty peers.

I had braces when I was twenty five. I was too busy during Halloween making Tooth Fairy and Batman costumes, but I was going to go as a tween. I was also pregnant, so there was definite material for going as an after school special. In fact, Dave could have dressed as my nefarious teacher and we could have recruited someone to be my hot, worried mom... we could have been a Lifetime movie.

My jaw has started hurting recently. I'll tell you right now if I have to live through my tweens a third time a certain orthodontist better invest in a security system and a gun with six bullets, because five won't stop me.

My midlife crisis comes in six month intervals. I've confused my life-time continuum, and now everything is all messed up. I want to take gymnastics but I'm pregnant again (going for number four!). I want to go to college but I want to run away to a coconut island with my boyfriend (Dave). I want him to still be my boyfriend - to act surprised when I do things but I want him to already know that I want to eat at Pei Wei because we've been there a million times.

I've got to take this Delorian (brain) into the shop (psychiatrist).

Girlfriend

2009-11-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

"Are you mean?"

"No."

"Oh, because I'm really nice."

"I'm a super funny guy!"

" I'm Maggie, this is my friend Ella. Do you want to play wolves?"

"Owwwooooohhh!!"

I miss the instant friendships of childhood. I wish I could just say, "I'm really nice" and have that be enough to play. Not secretly withholding my friendship based on a disagreement about something as profoundly stupid and transient as politics, or my style of discipline vs. hers.

I wish I could sit at a McDonald's Playland, turn to the mother next to me and say "would you like to be my friend?". I hate that we live in a world in which that woman would instantly think the words "restraining order".

Making girlfriends is hard. It's like dating only I'm not good at it. I was great at dating. I knew just what to do. I think dating is actually a lot more straight forward than friendship - throw your head back and laugh a lot - that's all you have to do. It shows off your hair and easy going personality at the same time. Boys like both of those things, girls less so. They want listening, and dependability, they're not as impressed with cleavage.

I have very few girl friends.

Rejection from boys never really bothered me (clearly, he was just intimidated). Rejection from girls is more difficult. That girl down the street doesn't prefer blondes to brunettes, she hates me for who I am. It's not that she wishes I were taller, it's more that she wishes my personality were better. I would rather get my legs repeatedly broken and spaced to give me height than examine and improve my personality - that would take real pain and work.

The good news is that I do have some girl friends, these are very nice women, tolerant. I love them. Some are my actual sisters, some feel like sisters. Some have seen what comes off of my nose when I have used a Biore strip. Some I wish knew me better and I wish I knew them better. Some I don't see often but my heart has made them a friend forever anyway.

Some of them have incredible bums - you know who you are... Melia.

Scrappy

2009-11-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

When I was sixteen I was sitting in the foyer of our church with a friend when an old friend of the family walked by. This old friend of the family had a little of the weird uncle vibe, when I was eight he would turn me upside down in the church hallways and crack my toes while I howled in protest of both the toe cracking and panty flashing I was giving anyone who happened by.

I tucked my feet under the foyer couch as he said hello.

He told my friend that I had always been his favorite, he said "from the moment she walked in late to her first sacrament meeting here, with her hair all over the place and her socks not matching and a big smile, I thought to myself 'I like her, she's scrappy.'".

On the list of adjectives a sixteen year old girl wants to hear about herself scrappy is like, 1,946,373rd.

But damnitall, he was right.

I think half the fight of this life is to stop wishing about what you're not and to fully embrace what you are. I can't be Grace Kelly - Grace Kelly was Grace Kelly, and even if I tried people would be able to easily differentiate between us because one of us would have taken off our pantyhose after five seconds and the other would not.

I was looking through pictures with my sisters one day, one of them held up a picture, "Awe, it looks like a cute little family and their pet martian!". A family of little dark haired kids smiling sweetly and then me, looking like a poster child for Baby Meth, in my excersaucer - it also didn't help that my head was placed strategically in front of the rabbit ears on our television. I was the martian baby.

I am the scrappy martian. *sigh*

2009-11-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

If you don't cry more than once while reading a book, but after you turn the last page you bawl, that's when you know you've read a good book.

I've always loved books like that, it's reflective of how life is. Alot of little, barely noteable nothings that when taken together, make something so big it sweeps right over you. I love that feeling.

OOh, the feeling of being swept up along with bobby bins and bits of paper, hands that scratch backs in church, moments of biting our tongues, beads and dust, passing the salt and walking to school.

The way that he congratulates himself first because he's scared you won't remember to.

How she rubs her eyes when she trying not to cry.

The way she does the dishes, even though you'd like her just as well sitting on the couch.

The way he gets gruff and sheepish at the same time.

How he looks down and nods while you're making a point.

Her hands.

Her bossing.

Jokes that aren't funny.

What we talk about when we're bored.

I think I can see why God loves us so much. I think that we aren't diamonds in the rough, or if we are , that's how we're meant to be. We have to be taken as a whole, strong and weak parts, big and little things, and together they make these wonderful, hilarious, kind, stupid people and isn't that just a wonder?

Boy I love a good book.

Why Ender's Game Sucks

2009-11-04T16:07:00.001-08:00

I just read Ender's Game. I need someone to explain this one to me, is this like reading the Oddessy? Where you read it more to marvel at how ahead of it's time it was rather than how well it has stood up to the test of time?

Ender, or Baby Alex P. Keaton, is a genius six year old and the only hope for the future of civilization. His sister Valentine is empathy and compassion, Peter, his older brother, is the devil. They have all been groomed for their world-saving potential, but Ender is a stand out, just the right combination of his two polar opposite siblings.

And so they he must walk the lonely, apparently violent, Peter-like, road to leadership.

I certainly had my expectations for this book. I thought that in the end Valentine would be the one to save the world. I thought it would be a little bit of a morality tale about how being the alpha male is actually far less productive than we give it credit for. I was hoping that, in the end, humility and kindness would triumph over all, rather than manipulation and arrogance.

I was hoping Peter would get flung into outer darkness.

I really feel that I am missing something crucial about this book, because so many people like it. Not just like it. Love it. Want to marry it. Use it as an analogy for life and leadership. It's like the time when everyone was reading those Gerald Lund books that I hated. What's wrong with me?

I realize the guy is mormon, but just because we share the same religion doesn't mean I have to like what you do (I'm also talking to you, Steven Covey, what with your baldness and big smile and can-do attitude, you make me want to take a nap, and no, I didn't fill out the dream/goal section of my planner and you can't make me!)((I'm also talking to you, Stephanie Meyer, OK, I read all your books... (embarrassed shuffle)...and I liked them... nevermind.)). I realize that he predicted the internet, but even so, if I'm going to listen to a bunch of foul mouthed know it all kids I'll put down the book and hang out with my family.

Would someone please enlighten me? What is it? What exactly makes this self pitying, non-ending book so awesome?

FEED ME!

2009-11-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

I have an eating disorder.

I'm not joking.

I cannot stop eating food. It is becoming a real problem. I don't know what led up to this moment but for at least the past three years I have become hyper aware of hunger, or even the feeling that I might, at some future date, feel hunger and I become ravenous.

It's really crossed the line over into abuse of my body. Which is awful, because I love my body, it's such a gift! It runs and jumps, mine came to me exceptionally bendy, it also came with moles all over my right shoulder. On top of that I have improved it with scars artfully placed up and down my left leg - almost like I planned it. I like it, it does things - and I am seriously concerned that if things don't change it will slowly stop doing things. That is a real problem.

I go to bed and it just lies there. I try to jostle it awake, perhaps we could have a pillow fight? But it doesn't want to. It wants to watch Biggest Loser while eating a chocolate root bear float. My body is becoming a real fuddy duddy, all it wants to do is eat. And it is horribly indiscriminate.

I mean old McDonald's french fries indiscriminate.

(If you have never known the humiliation of eating an old McDonald's french fry, I will tell you that it is right up there with going to sell your blood and finding that your ex is a phlebotomist)

I eat while wondering why, since I'm not hungry and cheeseburgers are gross.

I have to change. I have to reign this dang body in and show it who's boss. Come on, will! Where are you when I need you! We need to start a search party for my quads! Get your butt in the game! We can do this thing!

Will? self - wiiiillll? Where are you?

Oh crap, it's sitting here in it's ugly sweats blogging.

My Very, Very Favorites

2009-10-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Gold is my favorite color, if you want sparkly disco eyes you must get Clinique eyeshadow in trust fund. Let me tell you. FABuLOUS!

My favorite books; the Scarlet Pimpernel, because really, Marguerite St Just Blakenly couldn't get much better: beautiful, bohemian, misunderstood - even by her husband- and gets a lovely happy ending. Also These is My Words, also all Jane Austen, but Persuasion! Read it. Read it in the fall, the perfect time for a story about grown up love. Also Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, right before Halloween.

Looking up through flaming leaves at the chalk blue sky. Don't you just want to lick the colors off the whole world right now? They would taste like candy and spices, I know it.

Giving a pull on the basting stitch drawn through the hearts of those I love. Bringing them in like purse strings to hold them for a moment of catch and then release.

The wet blue eyes of my ninety year old friend. My, he is the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen.

Kings of Leon, yes, like everybody else in the whole world, I know, how mainstream of me. But I like it, that's how I roll.

Liberty Park! If you are in Salt Lake go, it is better than anything. Ignore the $#@& off written all over the children's playground. It adds, darlings, it just adds.

This is embarrassing, my childhood friend's mother. If I'm being honest, she truly is one of my favorite things. I'm sure my feelings are disproportionate to what they probably should be, but there you are.

My gray sweats that make my butt look awful and enormous. Ahhhh. So, so wrong and so, so comfy.

Tomato soup at Paradise Bakery. Yummy yummy yummy yummy yummy! If tomato soup was a man I would dance the flamenco with it or, him. And then I would lick the sour cream and garlic hat right off his bald head. Mmmm... note to self: get Dave a sour cream and garlic hat.

Weimeraners, sometimes I want to kill them. But they are handsome and made for autumn. They are also stupid and made for being mad at, but you take the good, you take the bad.

Happy Autumn everybody! Let's not spend our time wishing when everything we need is right here! Now let's go have some fun!

My Goodness

2009-09-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

How good do I really want to be?

Have you ever asked yourself that? Where is the line between discipleship and
insufferable-ship? When do you say enough is enough, I don't want to get any better and I'm beginning to get weirded out with all the effort?

I've known people who have crossed that line. They have gone over to the side in which their righteousness intimidates and alienates the people around them. The side in which religion has become almost an obsessive compulsive dissorder. I worry a little bit about that.

Has anyone ever found that wonder spot? The place in which religion comes from an easy joy in the heart rather than a guilty pit in the stomach? I think I have but the minute I realize that's where I am lost. I think I know people who live in that spot, but do they know that's where they live? If I told them would they no longer live there? Should I keep it a surprize?

Sometimes I look at the stars and wonder whatever this is all about. Whether I should be much gentler or much, much harder on myself. I wonder where my heart stands. I wonder if I know enough about God's nature to know where to stand. I wonder if he's mad at me. I wonder if He really really does love me. I worry that He's doing both too much. I wonder if I'll ever puzzle it out.

2009-09-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

"Wiggle, don't jiggle."

I heard that when I was sixteen after leaning over to tack a poster to the top of a chalk board.

"You're getting a little fat"

That one was by a boy who simultaneously pinched the skin underneath my chin when I was fifteen.

"You have a stomach butt"

I heard that one after I showed my sisters my after-three-babies tummy.

"When is the baby due?"

Six months after I had Abe, in the temple. I heard Satan cannot have power in the walls of the temple, so I suppose that urge to kill was just me.

And the hits just keep on comin'.

But, I've got to say, stomach butt hurts the worst. I wonder how many plastic surgeons have sisters to thank. I know mine will.

Why is it that I can't remember what the funny thing was that I was laughing about the other day but I can remember distinctly how I felt in seventh grade when I stood up to give a definition on a vocabulary word and five boys started rubbing their desks (to demonstrate what I was as flat as)?

I wonder if someday, when our recollection is perfect, it will also have perfect perspective. That would be a nice feature. I am officially submitting that right now, someone take a note. Because there are whole years of my life I remember with less clarity than the time that I heard a bunch of girls whispering that I was too fat for my jeans. We were in a Wet Seal, and the curtains on the dressing room were purple, and the jeans were Calvin Kleins that I got on clearence, and those girls were supposed to be my friends.

See?

This is not original territory, I know. But it's the least original territory that is usally the most keenly felt, that's why there is still good money in country music.

And I have a way to combat all this negativity. My Dad taught me when I was fifteen. He said;

"They're just intimidated by you, honey"

Yeah. That's right. I was now armed with the ultimate comeback to say in my head, to myself, when alone, usually with cookies. They are all clearly just intimidated.

The more you say that to yourself, the more sense it makes; yeah, that's the ticket, he just had to pinch my chin fat because otherwise he would have been too intimidated to approach me. It all makes sense now. People have to accuse me of jiggling rather than wiggling (which, by the way, is preposterous, since everyone knows that whenever possible I prefer to wiggle and jiggle, you know, you really have to do your best to please both parties, that's just good statesmanship.) because they are intimidated by my presence. My sisters are just intimidated by my stomach butt...wait...

As time has gone on I've ran into a few holes in this logic. For example, has anyone noticed alot of people on reality television say that same thing, kind of a lot? People on reality television that no one is really intimidated by at all, unless as a possible public health hazard? I think that maybe some dads confused pity and intimidation when talking to their kids. Not my Dad, though. He knows. He knows that difference, in words.

Right?

2009-09-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

Sit down around the fire kids and I'll tell you a tale of the day I met one of the greatest artists in pop history.

Abe was skipping slightly ahead of Dee and I as we walked through Gateway, he was three and adorable. As he skipped he ran into a man dressed in head to toe black with several necklaces hanging from around his neck, one of them was a large crucifix. The man kind of skipped around Abe and laughed good naturedly as Dee and I smiled good naturedly in return. We passed the man and walked about ten more feet before we turned to each other we said simultaneously;

"Was that Bono???"

We walked a little further, trying to be cool, and when that didn't work we turned back around to try to find him again. We were obviously looking for him when a manager approached us and told us that if we stayed where we were he would bring Bono out to see us for autographs and pictures. This was the one time I have ever regretted not having a cell phone.

I turned to Dee and realize that my 16 year old sister, the one whose existence had been reminding me that I was old, uncool and pregnant, had gone Japanese school girl crazy.

I have never felt so hip to a scene in my life as when I got to say "Be cool, Dee."

With three words I had become an expert and was now giving instruction.

Bono patted my belly. We asked him what on Earth he was doing in a Salt Lake City? He joked that he was looking into Mormonism. Some people may feel differently but I love Mormon jokes, and while it wasn't really a joke joke I appreciated that his banter was witty and topical. Hahahaha, oh Bono we said.

Then he surprised me. I guess he wanted to take the ball and run with it.

"Yeah, I guess I want to worship goats, or something."

Hehe..he....ehh. yeah, that's not great. You can keep that autograph.

This is the white, Catholic Irishman who wrote the most moving tribute ever made to the life of Martin Luther King Jr. This is the man who does wonderful work for AIDS, for Africa, for peace in the world. This is a man who sang a revolution of peace for Ireland. He is a great artist and a great man.

So I could not believe that I heard someone like that throw out such an ignorant statement as a joke. Clearly the point was to illustrate that he knew nothing of Mormonism, but also that the little he did know was that we are crazy. Obviously he was also not aware of how prevalent Mormons are in freakin' Salt Lake City, or I would imagine he would have leaned a bit more on the respectful side.

I was a little disillusioned by that little interchange, but lately I've been thinking about all the less than great stuff that comes out of my mouth without thinking.

So do I still think Bono is a genius and a great man? Absolutely.

I've decided that the whole experience just further illustrated to me that we all have our prejudices. We all have people, or religions, or scenarios that we think we can peg without looking too closely, and we can't. You can be freakin' Bono and still have moments where you are maybe a little bit insensitive. And somehow that make me feel a little bit better. It makes me feel like we are all just trying, and we can try to be sensitive to others who are different from us and we can also try to be understanding when someone falls a little short of expectation.

So I guess I'm still with Bono, just one more in the name of love.

My Medical History

2009-09-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Doctors Sharp and Young,

Can I just say thank you?

Like everyone else I've been hearing a lot about health care lately, death panels, socialism vs. private options and all that jazz. And it's brought me back to a time ten years ago, when you helped me.

I was nineteen, I was broke, and I was a mother. I was also on Medicaid. You could have looked at me walk into your office and jumped to all sorts of tidy conclusions, that I was unmarried (I was married), that this child was unplanned (she was planned), that we were irresponsible for getting pregnant with no thought to our financial situation (that part was probably true), and perhaps you would have felt entitled to pass judgement, since your practice would be footing much of the cost for my care. I was a kid, a pregnant kid, and my health and my child's health was now your job.

But you never did pass judgement, you were never condescending. You, who had worked hard through medical school and residencies, who had earned with hard work your right to feel superior, treated an uneducated nineteen year old as your partner in providing a healthy environment for a new child. I can't tell you how much that continues to be appreciated.

Perhaps you had to take on a certain number of Medicaid cases. Perhaps if you had been given the choice you would have only treated patients based on their ability to pay. You were, I found out later, two of the best doctors in the state. People would certainly pay. I got world class medical care, which makes you wonderful doctors.

But as importantly, I was able to walk into your offices without feeling shamefaced, with hat in hand, which I think makes you wonderful people.

My husband and I are poster children I suppose, for the Medicaid program, he was a college student when we had our oldest child. After student loans and tuition and books medical bills would have financially buried us. We needed temporary help. I can't comment on other situations in which dependence is a way of life, but I can tell you I was grateful that we could have gotten help when we needed it, and that help was given with such an attitude of caring, and pleasantness, and service.

I have to go walk my kids to school now, and I'll stay and volunteer in the classroom and I'll make copies and cut and staple and quiz children on spelling and I'll try to help because I've been helped.

And I'll do it with a smile on my face and a caring disposition because that's how I've seen it done by the best doctors.

So thank you.

I Love the Whole World

2009-09-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ

Someone to Watch Over Me

2009-09-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

I barely make it day to day.

I look like a real girl, but if you look around the facade you'll see my husband, children, friends, church members, and family are holding up the cardboard cutout that is me. I'm forgetful, I don't remember how to jump a car, I have to be reminded by bank tellers how to deposit checks, I used a car wash for the first time by myself the other day, a very nice Russian fellow with hair peaking out of his wife-beater had to explain it to me. It turns out that it's kind of fun...soapy.

Any friend of mine should be sainted, because I am a crappy friend. I'll love you, I'll think good thoughts about you and not judge you, I'll hug you or want to hug you a lot, and I'm pretty fun. If you like not having to be a fool because someone else has already filled that position, I'm your gal. I'm also usually up for anything. I'm a pretty good time, but I will almost positively not remember your birthday, or bake you cookies. If you need help call me, and I'll show up, but if you need to schedule me a month in advance, you better remind me the day before or I won't be there. I don't bring handi wipes anywhere. I pack fried chicken and no napkins, jello with no spoons, and, if you're down, we can slurp jello out of our fingers and wipe chicken grease in the grass and laugh at our green greasy faces.

I ran a relay with a bunch of gals earlier this summer, I forgot my shoes. A couple of girls drove me to the mall.

The thing is I often don't need saving, it's just that I just don't mind being saved. If I have to, I'll run barefoot like the Ethiopians. Who needs shoes when you have spontaneity!

It's also sometimes embarrassing, I'm a child. In fact my children are often more productive and thoughtful than I am. They remind me that I forgot my keys, or their homework, and then shake their heads and say Mom is crazy. Somehow it doesn't sound like an insult the way they say it, and I can't believe the generosity of the world for little people who can say I'm crazy as if it's a virtue. That there are so many people in the world who make me feel proud of myself for who and what I am.

I gotta go, it's rain storming and Maggie and I need to go for a run and a stomp.

But thanks for providing shoes, good friends of the world.

Eeeewww, I Mean, I Love You.

2009-09-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

My niece just got married, I really like the young man and have every confidence that they will have a very happy life together. They both have that humble, bashful sweetness that is so mysterious and enchanting to me. On practically the eve of their wedding I gave my niece possibly the most critical advice I can bestow on any married couple.

Fart in front of each other, before the wedding if possible, if not, as soon as you can after. It is golden advice.

Dave and I were going swimming together one sun sparkled day of our courtship and I noticed that he had a zit on his back. Some normal people might be able to look away and find something else to focus on, but I have never claimed to be normal. Do you remember the "Moley moley moley" scene in Austin Powers? Try standing in my eye line while sporting a giant whitehead and you will probably get a reenactment. It's not that I think your gross for having a whitehead, it's that I'm gross because I really want to pop it, or I want you to pop it, but for the love, someone please pop it!

Anyways.

Dave had a zit. I said "Ooh, you have a little zit, hold still and I'll get it". He stood still, maybe slightly mortified, I don't know, muttering something about it being a "sun blister" (awe, cute!) and I popped it. You know how you never want to clean your own house, but when you're cleaning someone else's it's oddly satisfying? Well I LOVE cleaning my own house! and this was even better! Thus began a satisfying relationship for me and a painful one for Dave. Little did he realize that this was only the tip of my really gross iceberg.

A few days later, he tackled me around the waist and threw me on the couch, landing on my stomach. Yup, that's right. I frogged (as I was forced to call it until I was twelve). Laugh with me not at me. But after that moment it was on. No more of the single person stomach aches for us, there was finger pulling, questions posed of whether or not one of us was trying to smuggle a duck in our pants, Dave would sometimes hold my hand so he could pull me behind him and laugh maniacally. We were in our own disgusting little heaven reserved only for us. I knew I had found my soul mate.

Things got worse, or better, after our marriage. There has been tandem bathroom usage since our honeymoon, that is until one of us has to tap out. A favorite McKay family motto is the Family that Picks Together, Sticks Together. (I need to cross stitch that on a pillow for our front room, or perhaps work it into a coat of arms at some point.)

Call us what you will, but there are advantages, most of them revolve around the fact that grosser days are in our future, and yours, whether any of us like it or not. Chances are that you will at one point be the adult diaper changer or changee and hiding normal bodily function from your spouse is just setting yourself up for further mortification on that dreaded day, whereas for us Dave will just turn lovingly to me and say "Pull my finger", and I'll guffaw and say "oh, you" as I pull out a fresh Depends.

But you don't even need to think that far ahead, some of the mothers out there can back me up, but if I had spent the honeymoon years of my marriage scared to let my husband in on my secret that sometimes I need to poop like every other mammal on the planet we never could have gotten through the experience of water breaking, baby crowning, placenta delivery, and, for some, actual pooping that is the labor experience.

It might have been my parents divorcing the same year I was married, but I planned things this way. I remember thinking very clearly that I didn't want Dave to have any surprises, I wanted him to know what he was getting so that if he didn't want me he couldn't claim later it was because he didn't realize what I was like. He knew exactly what I was like.

I was nasty, and I continue to deliver.

So for those of you out there embarking on the adventure of a new relationship I say to you; set the bar low (brow), those grumblies in your tumm-blies you're feeling don't have to last forever. A relationship in which you don't feel judged after eating some bad tacos frees up a lot of room to play. And for that matter, golden advice doesn't only have to be reserved for dating. I was going on about this to a friend when she said "you know what, my best friend and I were just acquaintances before we got sick at the same time in a Safeway after eating at Mongolian Grill, now we're like sisters."

Trust me, I'm full of crap.

2009-08-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was just reading over the post I started a few weeks ago but only posted a couple of nights ago. (it's My Best Friend, a few posts down.) I was thinking about how everything I wrote of that experience was real to me. And how disingenuous and patronizing it would have sounded from my friend's perspective. Who do I think I am? Talking about saving her as if she had needed saving from me. As if I hadn't been the one who needed saving, but it was at the same time those feelings were real to me, I wasn't making them up. And if I look from her perspective it hurts me - I was probably much more attached to her than she was to me, and she let me hang around, and feel cool, and use her as a convenient vehicle for my own self motivated self destruction. See, ouch, that's not as fun.

I've been thinking a lot about skewed perspective lately. I've had a few people share their own memories that have included me in forums like this and I have been surprised by the things that were mentioned and the things that were omitted. It's not fun, it kind of hurts, it's often the truth, but the least generous truth.

This sort of thing is happening everywhere it seems. I have been listening to the radio and noticing a disproportionate amount of kiss off songs - You'll Think of Me when you think of The Best Days of Your Life and I hope it Gives You Hell so take your cat and your freedom and move it to the left to the left, with everything you own in a box to the left. I can't help wondering, if given the opportunity, what the other party would have written about them. Maybe their song would have been entitled The Fact That you Wrote a Screw You Song Just Illustrates That the Problems We had Were Not All On Me. It's a little wordy, it probably wouldn't have as much of an audience, since we all love that righteous indignation, but I kind of like it.

I read the Glass Castle last year, and from my own experience with, let's say, a slightly unorthodox upbringing, I was curious about how much of that book would have been verified by other parties present. After Naomi Judd wrote her book, Love Can Build a Bridge, in which she exonerates a lot of her own questionable behavior as the choices of a woman who had no choices, her daughter Winona was quoted as saying " some day I think I'll write a book, I'll call it "The Truth".

Now, writing a screw you song is a little different, I think, than my post about my best friend who will always have a reserved parking space in my heart, but when recounting any personal experience the implied my intentions were always pure and I may not be perfect, because that would be annoying, but I'm pretty close is a special gift that we almost always save to bestow upon ourselves.

So in summary, my intentions were always pure, and I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty close.

It's Still Magic Time...

2009-08-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

Small update. I take it back. I am still magical, but I've decided that it's best for me to maintain my amateur status. It turns out that I am not yet ready to go pro. I am not calling it quits, but I also don't want to pimp out special moments just so I can have something to report.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

But don't stop believin'.

It's Magic Time

2009-08-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

I've always thought, like most people do, that I''m a little bit special. When I read Harry Potter I think, as most people do, if that kind of thing happened it would happen to me. I've always thought that maybe other kid's stuffed animals were made of fabric and stuffing (and in Chuckie's case an urge to kill) but mine couldn't help but be animated by the fairy dust that trailed off of me and all around my room. Don't get me wrong, they never spoke or moved, but I like to think that I had developed an understanding and respect for their need to keep up the charade as part of the rules by which all stuffed animals are governed, and I am pretty sure they had a quiet admiration for my insight.

I believe in pretty much everything, mermaids, fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Nigerian prince who needs our help. I think the world is as magical as you are willing to believe it to be. I think that we owe it to each other to make it more magical. I've always suspected trace amounts of magic on my person, but now I've decided to focus it.

So here's what I propose to myself - I'm am going to try to make a little magic a few times a week. Frivolous, silly, awe inspiring kind of stuff, the stuff that makes you think anything might be possible, and I'm going to practice on as many people as I can, but I'm going to practice primarily on the most receptive audience, my children. I'm thinking unbirthdays, midnight bike rides, hot air balloons, fancy dinners and secret admiration. The things that put a skip in your step and make you wonder what kind of happy surprise is lurking around the corner of life. I want to report back on my most fantastic successes and mortifying failures.

So this is my new idea, to spread magic, and what is magic if not the most frivolously necessary kind of love? The truth is I loved my stuffed animals so much that it was impossible to me that they could not love me back. I still see it that way, my eight year old heart was so full it had to have spilled over and made extra little hearts. Now I just want to fill up my heart until it has to spill over and fill those around me.

Wish me luck. I believe in wishes and luck.

Adult Braces

2009-08-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

Adult Braces. If they had had them during the Spanish Inquisition we'd all be Catholic. I think it's more effective than water boarding - not only is it killing your mouth but you are also positive that at any second you are about to explode with shame. It's a double threat, making you wish you had never been born with an oral cavity while at the same time giving you that feeling that no one has been uglier in the history of the world and underneath the nearest bridge is your new ideal living situation. Nothing like having a salad for lunch and unwittingly wearing it until dinner or that feeling that your molars are about to shoot across the room immediately after turning the key to you're expander.

Hehe, Expander, it sounds both accurate and benign, like naming an electric chair Sparky.

I know at this point one would probably think, Oh, ha, yeah I remember that. Let me just tell you now that you don't. If you had braces when you were thirteen then you were distinctive, but part of the main stream of society. If you are an adult who is currently wearing braces you are the equivalent of those who lived in the underground, trying desperately to avoid the occupation of People with Parents Who Loved Them. And the PPWLT's tyranny knows no bounds. They politely try not to stare too hard as you try to pull your lips back over your teeth after smiling and they ask "So, they're comin' along, right?".

Ohhhh, I want to die.

Or they reminisce about their own experiences with braces, like it gives them cred. "I hated my braces, those bands are soo uncomfortable."

Yeah, you suffered in a cafeteria, I'm at a cocktail party. If you can't see the difference then I am not about to explain it to you.

But then, as you look away, you spy a metallic glimmer from across the room, you do a double take, there, a woman trying to smile with her mouth closed. Can it be? Yes she too has the tell tale guard-like bulge around her mouth, as though she came to a grown up function prepared to wrestle, or play football. She definitely has braces too. She turns to look at you and time stands still. You both begin to walk towards each other, pushing past waiters and other party goers until you meet in the center of the room, grasping each others arms.

How much longer do you have?

A year, you?

Six months.

Wax really helps.

Thanks. Hang in there OK. You're in the home stretch now.

You too, don't give up the fight, for straight teeth I mean.

It's not like I had never seen braces before, but even I was shocked when I got my first look in a mirror. Do they make braces in a Large, and if so why am I wearing the XXL? I'm driving home with my kids and as I look back I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror and start to cry. This is so embarrassing. I'm so ugly, and I'm a grown woman for crying out loud.

Just then I hear my four year old, Vivian.

Don't cry mommy, you're beautiful.

I look up through my tears and smile.

Vivian gives me an editorial once over.

Just don't smile.

I'm sitting in my orthodontist's chair while some cheerleader with a string of perfectly proportioned pearly teeth sticks various pointy objects in my mouth. I think that if they made dental equipment out of Pop Rocks instead of metal perhaps dentists wouldn't have that high suicide rate. It's a party in your mouth. But it's not like they do nothing to make the experience a little more fun. I did get to choose a graphic for my retainer. I chose a Grateful Dead skull. I'm not really a huge Dead fan but Rolling Stones graphics, while appropriate, were unavailable.

They also give you the super fun choice of bands to go around each individual brace. I'm stunned to find not one, but three shades of green. Seriously? You want this metal contraption that covers ninety percent of your mouth to have a green accent? Call me conservative, but this is not the arena in which I would like to let my freak flag fly. "You can have them alternate red, white and blue, for the Forth of July." offers cheerleader.

Wow.

I'm good, I actually already have a patriotic diaphragm and I don't want to look too busy.

My Best Friend

2009-07-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

BE FOREWARNED: This post is a bummer. I have wanted to steer towards positive, funny, or inspiring topics, but this is what came to mind. It's true, I lived it, I hope you like it, but happy it's not.

She was the most beautiful girl that most people had ever seen, if I hadn't loved her so much I would have resented always feeling like the fat, unattractive, brown haired friend. The Teresa to her Barbie. She had long blond hair and was cool in ways I was never going to be cool. and she was my best friend.

I met her in eighth grade. She had moved to our small town in Washington from Fresno, I don't know personally but as an adult I have had a few friends tell me that Fresno is kind of a dump, but as a thirteen year old all I heard was California and began to mentally trace the letters in glitter - Fresno.

She was the only girl I knew who was as skinny as I was. Both of us were embarrassed to show our bird legs in swim suits and neither of us wore short skirts for the next three years. I actually don't remember Jessica ever wearing a short skirt. I got over it when I turned 16 and gained an extra twenty pounds, but I'm not sure she ever did.

We were also both existing on the fringes. Growing up in the Mormon tradition, I visited her as part of the beehive presidency. We walked into her room and saw a pack of cigarettes on her floor, I told her that I had smoked too and we were friends. I had a project. I didn't realize she had one too.

My family hated her, other parents in the ward forbade their kids from playing with her. I got my first taste of what I took to be complete hypocrisy. Weren't we christian? Why wasn't everyone being her friend? They didn't bother to know that she had had a pretty crappy time of it. So many people in this world like to forget that before you become the perpetrator of anything nefarious you have typically been the victim hundreds of times. There was kindness in her that seemed to have grown in an unlikely environment, and a pettiness in so many others around me who had no excuse. I turned my back to hollow concern and decided to live in a different world for a while.

We were joined at the hip, it was, in many ways, some of the most important times of my life and a complete disaster at once. I lost a year and a half and still pay consequences like that student loan that only charges the interest. I began to see at the lower points of the ride I was on that those forbidding parents might have just had the experience and sense to see something coming up the road and to get out of the way. But even at my most clear headed, I still would have killed for her.

My sister took a class in which they talked about the symbolism in dreams. She asked me to give her some dreams to interpret, so I told her about how I often dreamt that I was saving my friend from drowning, no one would help me, so I would dive into the sea and find her under the water and I would pull her up, but even as I was saving her I knew someone would have to stay . I knew I was drowning but before her head hit the surface or my eyes stopped seeing I would wake up.

One day I came up for air and I knew that if I swam in the deep end anymore I would drowned. So I left. I left her, my beautiful friend, there in the deep end.

2009-07-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

Am I a racist? Short answer? No. Long answer? Probably.

I once had a friend in junior high whose most embarrassing moment was screaming He's got a gun! and dropping to the floor when a black guy reached for his wallet at a restaurant. That was the moment I knew that wetting your pants is NOT the most humiliating thing you can do and went home content.

I think I have tried to live my life in such a way as to avoid that kind of scenario at all costs. No one wants to be a jerk. And if you were born not in the South and/or after the civil rights movement than you really don't want to be a racist jerk.

I've actually felt a little called out though recently, and I'm beginning to realize that I can do a lot better than I have been.

My sister in law turned me on to this sight that deals primarily with race relations, and at first I've got to say I felt a little ugg, can we let it die already? Can we all just try to get along and live our lives?

Then I made a comment about white girl butt, to which I got the response there are a lot of black girls that don't have butts and you know what? that's true, I know a couple. Whitney Houston is an excellent example. I read a post talking about black history month that essentially gave a short quiz on black history, you know how much I knew about black history? Eli Whitney and Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and Malcom X, that's about the extent of my knowledge, and I began to think that these people who harp about latent racism might be on to something, because I can plead ignorance, but the truth is I have often chosen not to know.

Don't get me wrong, I think black people are as cool as the next white person does. I really enjoy the music, the seemingly more embracing culture, how darker complexioned women can rock the colors yellow and purple in ways that I will never be able to. And I strive to be cool, I try like only white people can to do that hey, this is so natural, man. I am so at ease with your culture that I know very little about and I feel so at ease immediately, so I am for sure not racist.

The thing is, that's a bunch of whooie, if you walk into a room of sneeches with no stars upon thars, but there are stars upon yars, I don't care how cool you are, it's going to take a second to find your way into feeling cool with that. Period.

And you know, in my unfortunate friend's defence, she was a pretty nice person in general, and living in a rural town in Washington State, she only seen three black people in person in her entire life. I feel like I can defend her a little bit because I grew up in that same town and while I like to think that I am not an idiot, I had seen the same three black people, and it did not really prepare me to be the super cool person that I wish I was.

But I think it's time to get out there and try, and it's probably past time to make the choice to know something outside of my own experience. And hopefully, at some point, I'll be for sure not racist, and maybe a little bit cool.

Love dosen't come from daisies, it comes from foxholes...

2009-07-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

Remember that time that was awful? Some people would say we shouldn't but I think we should. Remember those times when no one was happy in our home, and we knew all too well the reality of a Telestial life. The reality of a group of satellites drifting further and further outward with nothing left to orbit?

Remember when in all that darkness every now and then we would grab on and pull each other back with some weak and feeble gesture that even now means more to me than almost anything I've experienced since? When sometimes all you had to give was barely anything at all. I still treasure those barely anythings the most. I hold onto those barely anythings like dog tags from a foxhole that was covered over decades ago and now grows daisies. But I still like to remember, I hope you still remember too because those days were the days that made me love you.

I remember when all I could do was cry and you just stood there and let me, and then you laughed and I laughed and it wasn't OK, but really it was.

I remember being so lonely and rejected and then one of you would do something funny and Dad would laugh so hard great tears would stream down his red cheeks and it was like Christmas! or the Forth of July! Did you see Dad's face? that was priceless...

Do you remember that time when we sat in a hospital waiting room laughing like a couple of idiots?

I love you because we've been through hell and back and I'd turn around and do it again just to know such damn fine people.

Do you remember when our life became a kaleidoscope and all of the pain and sickness and betrayal caught the light and bent and refracted into hope and acceptance and pride for all that we have survived together? I don't remember when, but I know it happened, and I know it goes on happening...

and I still keep it in my heart.

Ahhh Potential...

2009-07-09T11:45:00.001-07:00

A friend called me about three or four weeks ago and was very complimentary. I would pretend that I'm not the type of person to repeat a compliment but I am that type of person, I am exactly that type of person. I jump around and make people guess why I'm so happy and then when they are annoyed and refuse to guess I yell that someone said I looked pretty today, or that they liked my picture, or they think I'm cool. Um, someone thinks I'M COOL! I can't keep that to myself! Are you kidding me?!? That doesn't happen all the time, and even if it did happen all the time how could anyone ever get so many compliments that they can be modest and reserved about it? Doesn't everyone know that it's the best thing in the world?

Anyways, my friend was very complimentary.

She said I had a talent for writing and to keep it up. I took that to mean that I have potential.

And that's why four or five weeks ago I quit.

I have been told I have potential in lots of things, braggy, but true. And that is just were I like to stay, cozy in my little nest of potential because, when you have potential, you have not disappointed anyone yet, you have not proven them wrong, you have yet to suck.

But I turned 29 last month, and I've begun to realize that potential only looks good on ingenues. Once you hit a certain point it stops being potential and starts being a little tragic. All that potential devolves into all the things you could've done but never did. I'm a juicy translucent peach devolving into a black sack of mush in your refrigerator and I'm beginning to stink and it's time for a wake up call.

I don't want to be a black bag of mush. I'm a juicy peach damnit!

So here it goes world, life, imagination audience! I'm going to start doing, and being and living! I'm going to start sounding like Liza Minelli a lot more (see previous sentence)! I'm going to draw you pretty pictures and learn how to scan them on my computer! I'm going to continue tap dancing until I'm really good and I am going to be an ariel contortionist! I spelled that wrong, it was supposed to be aerial contortionist but I like that better anyways because then I am also a mermaid!

So look out world! I am going to be A LOT more frequent with my blogging!

It's all that I have to give...

2009-05-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

Dave and I have a song, it Annie's Other Song, it's John Denver, it's love shouted out in an hopeful voice. It goes like this;

I'm bringing me home to you
it's all that I have to give
My life, my love my everything
it's you I choose to be with

For a long time I've wanted to have our wedding rings engraved to say my life, my love, my everything, but I'm looking back...

Once there was a time when I was so full of possibility and fear and apathy. And I spoke to Dave over five hundred miles of open land in love tones, wanting him to save me, wanting him to fix me, wanting his soul to be the spackle and my soul to be the home, I wanted him to be the thing that shored up the weak and crumbling parts of my exsisting structure.

I made him promise that we would be happy. So he promised, and I believed.

Then he closed the distance of open land, and we went home to each other.

We sat in an empty apartment with a sleeping bag. I peppered him with hopes and requests and expectation. We laid in the dark and talked about all the things you feel absolutely have to be settled when you're new. Will we do this? Oh yes, of course. But I also want this, let's not forget this. Oh, we could never forget that, ever. And we'll name our children... and on and on and on...

I'm bringing me home to you

I did our daughter's hair and nursed our son while he slept. I made little cards and art projects and went on walks and picnics. He went to work while I slept and wrote love notes and read stories and got everyone out the door and into the car when we were late. We went to the park and hiked on the weekends, we endured the spotlight of summer sun while our children looked at elephants and bears, and then we would or turn our heads to each other and smile and the smile said we are a team and you and I are the captains...

My life, my love, my everything

Then I got a little more selfish.

I worried that I married too young. I worried that I would never be myself again. The novelty wore off but the apron stayed on. I got the crazy eyes of someone who's thirsty thirty minutes into a trip across the Sahara. I got sad and far off and when I was present I was in constant terror that he felt the same. We would get on each others' nerves and get snippy and insecure. And then our children would look up at us hopeful and dependent, he would smile from across the kitchen and I would remember, that smile would be like a renewal of a covenant, we are a team and you and I are the captains. As he would smile I would remake every choice that brought me to that kitchen and those children and that smile...

It's you I choose to be with

Now I think I want my rings to say it's all that I have to give, because guess what, it's not much. but it's Dave's. It's everything I have, my love, and my vindictiveness, my fingernails clicking against his in waiting rooms and churches, my pettiness, my smile. It's all that I've got and it's his.

In My Own Defence

2009-05-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

I would like to take this opportunity to finally give my side of a few regrettable incidents that may or may not have happened in the almost 29 years I've been alive.

Dear Pool Owners, notice that I did not say ool owners, that's because I peed in it. Sorry. I was little, and bathing suits are really hard when your five, they roll when you try to pull them down and it takes twenty precious play minutes to get it back on. If it's any consolation I now have stage fright and cannot even pee in a lake on command, so there you go.

7 eleven that I stole a pack of Tic Tacs from. Again, I was pretty little at the time, well, I was pretty little the first time, and that first time I felt so guilty I had to hide behind the family room couch to eat them, but once you've gotten the sweet taste of forbidden Tic Tacs in your blood it's a fast road to hell, hence the rash of burglaries between 1984 - 87.

OK, this one's a shout out to all the girls who came to my 12th birthday party. It's hard to pee in the woods when you are wearing really baggy pants, OK? Can we just leave it at that? Why don't you try it out while I giggle? Geez, I had just had like a liter of Pepsi. It's a normal bodily function, just because I functioned on my baggy pants... you're so immature. Also those Barbies you found in my room were my little sisters, and I only played with her because I had to, I was babysitting.

Friend I accidentally hit in the groin during a church dance, I would like to remind you that I was minding my own business, just casually swinging my arms when you came walking up behind me. So I dropped you like a bag of granite in the middle of the dance floor, did you not notice my arms? swinging?? Hello??? How am I the bad guy?

Pregnant Nurse I joked with during my pregnancy examination, I just want you to know that I was trying to have a sisterly moment there. Speculums, ugg, right? Can I get an amen? Is this thing on? In retrospect I realize that this might have put you in a difficult professional situation, what with your colleague right there, but, come on. Seriously. We both know. Not fun.

Yoga instructor I would like a word with you. Do they not teach you in yoga instructing school that maybe the upside down scissor kicks are best left for home study as embarrassment will surely ensue? Did you miss that day?

Mom and Dad, okay, okay, I kind of get it. It might be a little bit my fault. I'm sorry I ever walked away without giving you a hug because you didn't take me to McDonald's that day. I was young, I didn't know about being tired or poor. I'm sorry I ever glared at you like I hated you just because I couldn't play at a friends house. There really isn't a "my side of the story" to that one. I'm sorry I ever took twenty dollars out of your wallet like you owed me anything or snuck out of the house and made you try to find me because I was sure you didn't care about me. I didn't have a whole lot of perspective at that time. I didn't know about how easy it is go to bed every night loving your children so much and wake up the next morning and forget to tell them, day after day. I didn't know, but now I do.

My kids, I'm failing/embarrassing myself/you in new and exciting ways everyday. I don't know what to tell ya, you should have thought of that before you decided to be born. But if this list is any indication, I may be dense but I'm no quitter. I won't throw in the towel in the face of one personal embarrassment/failure, or even hundreds of personal embarrassments/failures. And one of these days I'm going to get it right. And it will all have been for you.

You're Fluffy Now

2009-05-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

I was on the phone with my sister the other day when I found that my dog had torn apart my LoveSac. It was in shreds. I came downstairs to find a very guilty looking weimaraner (weimaraners are the most guilty looking of all the dog breeds, all large eyes and long faces) and one three year old girl blissfully throwing upholstery foam into the air and watching it flutter down like snow. I was overwhelmed by two feelings and tugged at by a third all at once-

A. complete irrational fury

B. a soul crushing sense of futility

C. a vague idea that someday this might be funny, which only fueled feelings A and B.

It wasn't long before Maggie got the idea that she needed to distance herself from this synthetic blizzard fast so she started crying about all of the fluff that wouldn't come out of her hair or off her dress.

"MOOOOM! I'm still FLUFFY!

"Well, You're just going to have to live with it, you're fluffy now!"

"BUT I DON'T WANT TO BE FLUFFY!"

"Well, you should have thought of that before!"

...then in my ear I hear a chuckle..

my sister was still on the phone.

"You're fluffy now.... Awesome...You're going to hell"

Alright, I may have momentarily convinced my three year old that she would be covered in upholstery fluff when she graduated from college, maybe in her elderly years she would be at the grocery store wriggling a pointy finger at small, naughty children and saying in a shrill, warbly hag voice "I was once a naughty little child just like you AND I'M FLUFFY NOW!!" Then perhaps she would hobble to her Cautionary Tale Retirement Center. Yup, pretty sure I'm going to hell.

It did make me think of all of the untrue things we tell our children so that they might "learn their lesson". My husband tells me a story about his brother repeatedly punching him in the arm until his mom finally told his brother that bruises cause cancer, I cannot even list all of the horribly wrong things I've had friends tell me that their parents told them to keep them from being sexually active (for the love of Pete, the truth is scary enough folks) Then there is a whole sub category of ridiculously exaggerated consequences which might be possibilities, sure, but likelihoods? Probably not. There are quite a few little chestnuts that my own parents told me that took until my adulthood to realize hheeey, wait a minute, that's not right. Why do we do it? Do we forget that the primary lesson that our children will learn is that their parents are full of crap?

Maybe it's just shoddy parenting, we don't want to take the time to really explain away or discipline a problem properly. It reminds me of a show I saw once saw, in it Shelley Long played a mother who would explain the dangers of things like electrocution and carbon monoxide poisoning to her three year old, taking the time to acquaint her with consequences she could not have possibly understood, but still, maybe that's a better strategy than saying monsters who want to suck off your fingernails live in electrical sockets (hmmm, that does sound pretty compelling, I cannot guarantee that won't be given a try.) No wonder most of us are paralyzed with fear, we've been told that one false move will destine us for a life with all of our teeth rotted out of our heads, our eyes shot out, and livin in a van down by the river.

Still, she probably won't play in fluff for a little while.

A Note from a Stargirl

2009-05-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

I was made fun of last night. If I had a Sunday shoe to shamefully drill into the ground as I said that I would.

I went out to a karaoke place last night in hopes of seeing a friend. I waited around and listened to the really good music until I just couldn't take it anymore and I had to dance. So I went out and danced, by myself, with no one else dancing, for about ten songs. Then someone got up and sang Piano Man, and you can't dance to that song, you have to twirl, preferably while thinking of all of the things you planned in life that never materialized. I'm twirling around, looking like what must be the drunkest person in the bar when I am in fact the most sober, just high on life and an over developed sense of whimsy folks.

As I'm twirling a couple decide to come up and twirl with me, but not in a pleasant way, clearly it is in a "let's make fun of this girl who is so nuts that she won't understand what we're doing" kind of a way. I wanted to point out that they were on a date, in a bar, with a live band right in front of them, and the only thing they could think of to do was make fun of someone else. But I didn't.

After I twirled I left.

I have a friend, and even though we have only hung out together really once I consider her a dear friend. I had never met anyone before where, just by being in their presence, I felt the Spirit. She is the most genuine, sweet, thoughtful woman I have ever met. She is not a game player, she doesn't try to look put together. Her clothes don't come from Anne Taylor, or even Downeast Outfitters. She comes a little too close, gathers your hands in hers when she speaks, she goes with you for nature walks where you sing primary songs rather then asking you to lunch. She's just herself. I was basking in the glow of this friendship when I first heard someone say something negative.

"She's been a little off for a while"

"She's a sweet woman, but I don't think she's totally all there"

It was so disheartening, because, if I'm lucky, I'll end up exactly like her. And I just got a little glimpse into the down side of my future.

I don't know what compels us to make sure everyone else is conforming to our standards. So many things seem so much more silly and arbitrary than singing songs or dancing around to me -french manicures, fake hair, jeans with heels - if those things make people feel happy or sexy or young I say do it, but none of those are life necessities and yet all fit in the confines of what can be considered "normal" and "together". I don't get the game and I don't want to play.

If anyone needs to find me I'll be in my corner twirling.

Three Kisses

2009-04-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

Kiss # 1 1/2

This is another half. I'm beginning to think that things that never really happened are the only things I remember.

Whoa Nelly, how kissing a friend can be the best or worst thing in the world. I had a friend. A really great friend. I don't know if he ever knew how highly I regarded him. He was modest, and shy, he was funny and would blush when you said his name. He was tall with green eyes. He hung back a little bit but was always with a louder, more obnoxious friend, which, sometimes, was me.

We were at a friend's house and we started wrestling, on her bed. He pinned me down and tilted his head in the I'm-going-to-kiss-you sort of way. It was like that creepy moment in the Lion King when you know it's supposed to be kind of Oh, hehe, we're friends wrestling but also, so so much more and it makes you want to clean your ears or call Nala a whore. That was actually the first time it had occurred to me hey, moron, wrestling boys on beds might give them the wrong impression.

He leaned in and I thought about how stupid I had been to let my beauty and charm disarm him this way, so I made a plan, I'll make out with him for a while, be his girlfriend, wait until he dumps me, and then maybe I'll get my friend back. Such were my problem solving abilities at the time.

He looked at me lovingly....

You only have yourself to blame

brushed my hair back...

he was just a deer in the headlights, helpless in my glow

leaned in...

Oh no

and then he bit me on the nose.

Awesome.

Kiss #2

I was on my roof at night, he was really nice to me, like boys that age are never nice. The kind of nice where they walk you home, and they hold your hand, and they don't try to lean in somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes in to the first date. Maybe he just didn't really like me but it was like a revelation. Boys can be nice, and respectful, and still want to hold your hand. I don't think it had ever occurred to me before. So three dates in, on a rooftop at night my whole perspective changed.

Kiss #3

I was so silly, I hadn't learned anything. I went on a trip to Mexico with six guys I had never met on a days notice. One of them was Dave. He put up with my puppish school girl behavior for about three days. Now he tells me that at that point he was seriously concerned about ending up in the friend zone. So after a lovely meal at a fine restaurant (Hooters) we went for a walk past a fountain and a little band. I have this compulsion, if there is music playing I'm dancing and if there is water running I'm in it, so I'm dancing around this fountain, when Dave grabs my hand, and walks over to a bench, and sits me down on his lap, and showed me how it was going to be for the rest of my life.

And it was so good that that's just how it is.

I was a Brown girl

2009-04-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

You know 'em, you've seen them cantering through hallways at school or at church, throwing cascades of thick hair and letting loose a confident whinny, all legs under denim cut off shorts. Girls who were born in a kind of harem, bunches at a time, looking like a clan of liberated nesting dolls. Sunshine, summer girls who's bright disposition would leave you completely unprepared for the thunder and lightning that made them.

Shelly was first, actually, no, Mom was first, I would watch her get tickets, write deposit slips at the bank. The way her eyes looked up from beneath her manufactured lashes. The curl of her fingers as she moved her hand across a check. Her polyester nighties that felt just like the real silk kind and were the color of mermaid fins, I would steal them and pretend I was a turtle hiding in my shell, I think that being the imagery of choice says something but I can't say for sure. The times my friends would meet her and whisper your mom is pretty your mom is pretty your mom is pretty. How I wanted to dreamily sigh I know and curl my lip back and snarl at the same time. How I would forever alternate rolling my eyes at her and emulating her.

We all fell in line behind, each cute or beautiful or luscious or sparkling in our own sphere. Never are you really dressed unless your wearing a girdle and heels. Always improving on the lashes God gave you. The haughty Vogue mugging in the mirror. The Hey-that's-mine-did-he-ask-you-out?-If-you-get-it-dirty-I'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you-don't-be-such-a-little-jerk-you've-got-a-zit-right there din always playing in the background.

Shelly was the next. Darker, more like the gypsies we all really were, at least in my magical mind. She was charming and talented. She was also angrier, deeper, and stronger. More passionate, in her grudges and in her charges. Tresa had the words. The way. A luster that I still can't understand fully because my resentment clouds my view like a damn swarm of misquitoes most of the time. Then me, scrappy, sunny, a silly thing, a foolish thing. Then Dee who is a chameleon and a mystery still, maybe because she is the most like me and maybe because she is the most like everybody.

We were talented, and long limbed, and lovely and no one stood a chance, I forget any of our failures, they must not be worth remembering.

Time has gone by though, and I have faded, I am too smart by now to speak for everyone else. I am still a sunny, silly, foolish thing, and I have not had to take inventory of my scrap for some time now. But now I am a Mrs. D McKay and girdles seem to hide less than they used to, although high heels are still fabulous. But as I see a beautiful girl, forever seeming to be frozen in carefree laugh, I think to myself you know, I used to be a Brown girl

Play it Again Sir Mix a Lot

2009-02-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

Does anyone not know the opening lines of I Like Big Butts? I ask because my six year old son just came in the room muttering to himself about little bitty waists and round buns in your face. "Excuse me!?!" He starts to guffaw sheepishly "Mom, I said buns, not the b word (butts, the s word is stupid and the d word is dumb, I love this age)." I'm kind of resigning myself. I''d rather be the mother of a child who knows the words to I Like Big Butts than be the mother who has to explain why it's inappropriate. Particularly since I sing it every time I see Matt Harpering go to the free throw line. Baby got back, my friends, baby got back.

The truth, and I cannot lie, is that I do like big butts, I've been trying to get one for most of my adult life. I have an affliction that my sister Shelly coined as Brown Elephant Butt(itis, I added itis because it sounds more like the medical problem it is.). My butt grows wide and flat rather than out and bootiliciously. It's white girl butt. It's especially unfortunate because I do like to shake it quite a bit, which ends up looking as misguidedly enthusiastic and sad as a kid with no arms trying to give a high five.

I've become fairly covetous. I find myself looking at other women, checking out their bums, ocassionally mouthing the word daaaamn. Wondering if it would be weird to say that as a heterosexual, I can objectively tell them that they are owning their jeans. I'm still not sure if that would make someone's day or make them want a shower.

So I go on, shaking my phantom booty, doing squats and lunges, wearing pants with flaps on the pockets, asking personal trainers to work my can like it owes them money, and remembering the words of another irrepressible optimist - the bum will come out tommorrow- I'm pretty sure that's what she said, anyway.

Three Kisses

2009-01-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

I have to preface the next few blogs.

I'm pretty average, I think, in the amount of time I spend thinking about my romantic life (average, at least among my people, the Silly Women with Idle Time, as you would suspect by the percentage of blogs written by this over represented group, we are legion.). And as I look back there have been a few defining moments in how I have learned to lust and love, want and be wanted, and they have almost all come with a kiss that I still keep in the pocket of my memory. So in the spirit of pointless disclosure I've decided to share. I've been a girl, I hope by now I'm a woman, and I've gotten by with a little help from my (boy)friends.

Kiss #1/2

I was in middle school, can I save all other discription? Yes, I think that's enough.

His name was Jeremy, he had blue eyes and a smile and the gate and frame of a twelve year old boy who'd grown up in a trailer park. A saggy black shirt hanging from wirey arms and hands that he always had in his pockets. The mother in me now wants to fix him a sandwich. He smoked behind the school at lunchtime and drank with his friends, which was still pretty shocking for me at the time, but in my memory he was a sweet, funny boy and I liked him.

We were in eighth grade and by then most of my friends had already been on the wrong end of a spinning bottle and I was beginning to feel exposed, the straggling sheep. Jeremy and I had already made the solemn commitment of going "out" but after a few weeks of passing notes and talking through our friends Jeremy was ready to cut the crap and take it to the next level.

Maybe it was because I was still just a little kid, and that would become clear to both of us once I somehow managed to screw up, maybe I was protecting myself from the heaping ridicule awaiting me once he told everyone I was a terrible kisser ( a junior high student does have to assume ridicule is waiting in the wings somewhere because, usually, it is.), maybe I was reluctant to cross that threshold into teenage romance, whatever it was, I was terrified, he on the other hand, was as urgent as a twelve year old nogoodnick can be and it was beginning to wear me down. After an eternity, or, two weeks, it's hard to tell time in preteen, I finally relented and met him behind the middle school to give him my first kiss.

We held eachother awkwardly around the waist but tried our best to act really cool about it. He smiled at me and I tried to stop vibrating with terror. We both leaned in and closed our eyes. But before our faces touched, I peeked.

His mouth was open. His tongue already out.

I may have screamed, but I know I ran.

It took me four more years before I attempted kissing again, seven before I would close my eyes.

#1

I was kind of a late bloomer. I didn't get boobs until I was 16 and then boy did I ever get 'em! I think I might have actually heard a BANG! (or was it a BOING?) when puberty finally hit. My kissing life started pretty much the same way, lots of waiting around and it still managed to be a surprise.

Four years after my failed attempt, I was going out with another boy, although this was different because we did actually go out to various places together, so in that sense, I had made some steps forward, but apparently not enough because Jake was beginning to complain about getting shut down every night. Now I'm only stating fact when I say that I was the most outrageously shameless flirt in exsistence, but I was also all talk and no action, since now the suspense in my own mind had mounted so much that it was almost impossible to not be paralyzed with fear at the thought of touching lips with another human being. Poor Jake, it was a deadly combo for a sixteen year old boy to handle.

One night I was piled in a van with about fifteen other kids, dropping Jake off at his home first ( he had really strict parents and a rediculously early curfew). I walked him to his door and then returned to a car full of kids who were already in the know about my secret shame and anticipating news that my virgin lips were no longer virgins. We were all dissapointed in me, again. The car was still a can of sardines so I was sitting on my friend Christian's lap when a flash of genius struck. Christian and I were safely entrenched in friend zone, on both sides, and I felt confident that he was one of those rare friends you find as a teenager who wouldn't throw you under a bus and I loved him dearly. So, feeling like the weight could actually be off I dove in, to his face. I was a little surprised, he was a little surprised, the car was a little surprised, and afterwards we both laughed. But that's how it happened. Like almost everything in life should happen, as far as I'm concerned, in front of an audience with a really good friend.

It was the best first kiss ever.

2009-01-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

You may have already guessed it, I'm not a rocket surgeon.

I have long since admitted that I suffer from a crippling case of intellectual little man's syndrome. That's what happens when you didn't finish eighth grade and went on to become a stay at home mom but you still believe you are as smart as most people in any given social setting. One becomes frusrated with condesention after having a word explained that you already knew, or the not exactly complementary look of surprise when you make a point in a debate, or the congratulatory pat on the head that you read a book without having previously gone to college. It can be... frustrating.

But I ask for it sometimes, too. I really don't give a crap about my spelling (as you can probably tell). It's not so bad as to keep anyone from understanding my meaning so it's just not that important to me, I often dumb myself down for the benefit of others, so, for example, a guy with not alot of social graces can feel he's really bringing alot of useful information to a conversation, or someone who I know prides themselves on their intellegence can shine without feeling that they are getting any competition from me. I'm always surprised how often people use my trying to be gracious to kick my in my mind balls with a lot of patronizing tones and dismissive looks. And, yes, I did just say mind balls.

Lately I've been wondering why this bothers me so much. Who cares if I'm percieved as smart or stupid? I think I've come to a conclusion. I'm identifying myself by my brains, which is just as insufferable as people who identify themselves by their looks, or their money or any other thing that catergorizes one person over another. But with intellect it is so much more dangerous, because THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMART. There's the smirky "I can turn a phrase" variety, there's the "I read alot of books", there's the "I'm a computer engineer" and my favorite, there's the "I have a lick of common sense".

I once had a friend ask me if I thought my husband was smarter than me. It was obvious by her tone that she was asking because she had that question in her own relationship. It made me so sad, not only because she WAS smart, and the comparison made her feel as though she wasn't, but that was such a small piece of such a wonderful person.

I often wonder if I put the huge weight of small adjectives on my own children. Smart, pretty, kind, funny. Because in my mind I know them, but what comes out of my mouth are small, grasping, human words, when the word for them is their name, coming out like a sigh, reverent and full of love. Why is she trying to be merely smart? doesn't she know that she's Vivian?

I guess I should try to turn that question on myself a little more.

The Most Magical Place on Earth

2009-01-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

I've lived a whirlwind, jet setty sort of life the past couple of months, I suppose the holidays probably make everyone feel that way but for me it's true. When I'm not flitting (driving in a minivan) off to some exotic (Washington) destination to entertain the masses (sing bad kareoke to five barflies and five awesomely supportive mormon ladies) I'm staying at home, going to party after party, where the ham is always hot and the sprite flows freely.

And I haven't even mentioned spending New Years in Sundance, you know, Hollywood's winter playground? Robert Redford lives like two miles (and several security gates and surveilance cameras) away from us. Sure, I've never met him, nor have I seen him or anyone remotely famous (actually, that's not true, I did see Ed Harris once on a hike, where HE PET MY DOG! Well, not my dog, but my brother-in-laws dog) but just knowing that I COULD is luxury enough for me.

But until I do get invited over to Robert, Bob, that's what I call him, over to Bob's house I'll have to content myself with making smores with the under ten set. Lecturing my husband on the many ways in which he could break his neck sledding off a really steep hill, then, when he does not break his neck, letting him push me into doing it too. Playing card games with my sister and brother-in-law. Watching our children play together and hearing my two year old sniffle and tell me she really misses her nine year old cousin who she refers to as "her boy" once he's left to go sledding. Eating way too much candy until I've created a giant ball of gummi that sits like Jaba the Hutt in the bottom of my stomach. Sledding at night with nothing but the chilled air and the black and the blue and the stars and kids giggle/screaming.

We leave for Disneyland, you may have heard of it, Millcreek's winter playground? In two days. I love it there, love dosen't even describe it. When I die, if heaven dosen't look exactly like Main Street, USA, I will want a refund. We will have fun there, I will eat a turkey leg, it will be fantastic, but mostly it will be great because we are going with another beloved sister and brother-in-law, more cousins that are the best people in the world. The love and memory and confidence I have in my family is the most magical thing, wherever we are.

80's Mormonism was the very best kind of Mormonism

2008-12-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

I was on the phone with my sister yesterday, talking about my week, and how I had recently observed the sacred Christmas tradition of seeing Micheal McLean in the Forgotten Carols. Her response, to my horror, was "Oh groan, Micheal McLean is such a hack!" ! What! Does she even HAVE a testimony?!? Now, don't get me wrong, I can understand a little of her feelings, I hate country music for the emotional manipulation (Jesus Take the Wheel, ugg, Jesus help me to not beat Carrie Underwood with her own geetar) but it fits just perfectly in the bounds of an earnest, cheesy, nerdball religion like mormonism. I mean, come on, Three Kings DID Find the Lord, and So Can WE!

It made me think of all of things that I really miss from mormonism at it's most awesome, like, for example, where did all the roadshows go? Why do I get mostly blank stares when I reminise about a little chastity variety show called A Time for Love? When did our life become so complicated that we could no longer determine who our bad friends were by waiting for them to break into songs about zero population being the answer (and no, sir, you are not my friend).

You know, I'm not saying this with one of those sarcastic bemused smirks we all like to wear nowadays to make ourselves look smart. I really did learn alot from those nerdball experiences of my youth. I really did want to date boys who would "just warm me and not burn me" leaving me "only good things to remember". I really did learn from Saturday's Warrior that the best friends you will ever have on this Earth are the ones you were born with. I really did learn that Sister Smith, when given the role of Roadshow Director, would get so drunk with power that she would demand no one make direct eye contact while she tried to get Timmy to carry the Liahona with the right emotional heft and elevate this "two bit dinner theater crap into something IMPORTANT!"*

But really, those cheesy moments made an impression on my young mind. I still get teary when I read my kids a bootlegged version of My Turn On Earth because, take the dorkiness away and what you get is some real gospel truths, and, while we still have the truths, a spoonful of cheese does help the medicine go down (it also works well with crackers). It just makes me sad that this growing generation will hear a little more about putting thier flippin phones away during a lesson and a little less about celebrating the light, so our joy will burn bright, when we follow the right, and keep the Lord in our sight, and my pants fit too tight, I think I'll go fly a kite... what were we talking about?

*This might not have actually happened