Tuesday Reminiscences slash Paper Heart

Tyler and I watched Paper Heart last night. Well, more like, I watched it while Tyler sat next to me and read a book, but I think it mostly counts.

It's a documentary about comedienne Charlene Yi and her quest to figure out what love is and/or find it, as she believes she's never been in love. Throughout the movie, she interviews people who have been or are currently in love, and somewhere along the way, she meets Michael Cera at a party and... yadda, yadda, yadda.

The movie, I felt, was generally just OK, but I thought it was pretty interesting hearing people talk about falling in love, and what that was like. A few people mentioned the "lightening bolt" aspect of falling in love. The crazy, euphoric high of being with another person.

This did not happen for me (sorry honey). So, for today's Tuesday Reminiscence (I know, you're thinking, 'does she still do that?'), I thought I'd tell a story of something that dramatically shaped my views on love.

When I was a freshman at UCSB, I knew that living in the dorms would be my own personal hell, so I asked my brother (who was attending UCSB at the time) to ask around and find me a roommate. Through an amazing stroke of magical-ness, one for which I will be forever grateful, he (or his wife) hooked me up with Vivian. I don't think she could have a better name, because living with her was so fun and lively and vibrant and exciting. Vivian comes from a family of 6 sisters (Claire, trusty friend and neighbor and also one-time roommate being among them), and grew up in a rural town outside Fresno. That year, she invited me home for Easter.

On their property, they have a little concrete patio-like area among the trees by the creek, and we were all sitting around, chatting. Vivian's older sister, Beth, was there with her husband and small children. Someone called Beth's name and asked her to do something, but she didn't hear. She was just sitting there, staring at her husband with the most contented, happy, peaceful look on her face. "Beth! What are you doing?"

"I was just... admiring my husband," came her answer. He was also just sitting there, not doing anything particularly manly, or impressive. (Although, my memory is not particularly reliable. He could have been chopping wood with his shirt off, or something... but I don't think so.)

At first, I thought this was bizarre. I didn't have much experience with love; my parents got divorced when I was 16 and I don't remember them ever staring at each other.

I soon forgot this small encounter. A few years later, I met Tyler and we started dating. As we moved toward that 'are we, aren't we' moment, I caught myself just looking at him and smiling. In a flash, I remembered Beth and Tim and the patio. And, I knew.

How does love work for you?

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember throwing up

I've been throwing up... a lot... um... recently, so I thought I'd tell a throw up story.

Lillian was 4 months old. My husband and my friend Stephanie's husband were in the same program at Cal Poly, and I think they were working on their senior projects, or their theses, or something to do with airplanes that was taking up a lot of their time, so we decided to take a day trip down to Santa Barbara and leave the men folk to their eigenvectors.

As you travel south from San Luis Obispo, about an hour away, 30 minutes north of Santa Barbara, is Solvang. I'm not really sure why this place exists, but it's a Danish tourist trap. All the houses have Danish architecture, they have statues of Hans Christian Andersen strewn about, you can buy Danish pastries at every turn... you get the idea. I had been there when I was young and if I was more dedicated to this post, I would have found the picture of me with my siblings behind this wood thing and put it up for comparison. But, I'm lazy. Also, I didn't know Lillian was chewing on the wood at the time. I was just trying to get her head over a body while holding her out sideways from me, which was very tiring.

We decided to stop there for lunch.

I had a chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomatoes, and it was delicious. As I was eating, I realized I couldn't see my food very well as there were bright flashes across my vision. And, anyone who gets migraines with aura knows what's coming. I took two Excedrin and tried to lay down on a cold stone bench in front of a bookstore. Stephanie took Lillian for a walk around while I prayed that the Excedrin would kick in before the headache.

No. Such. Luck.

After laying down for approximately 10 minutes, I felt a rumbling in my tummy. I sat up and quickly figured out that I couldn't make it to the bathroom in the bookstore as I didn't know where it was in the store, or even if they had one. I turned around, and threw up my chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomatoes (and probably the Excedrin) into the bush behind the bench. I felt really bad doing it because it was a shallow planter at about shoulder level if you're sitting, so there was no hiding what I had just done.

Stephanie came back and I said that we had to leave and that she had to drive us back to SLO. She was really nervous about this because 1. She had never driven our car and didn't like driving anyway and 2. We had to get gas for the return trip and she's from Oregon, the land where you don't pump your own gas, so I don't think she'd ever done it before.

We got back just fine but I couldn't eat sun-dried tomatoes again for at least a year.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember donating blood

I had some hot chocolate this morning in my "Help Someone Live To See Another Sunrise" mug that I got for donating blood. I have O- blood, the universal donor, so the lady at the blood donation place called me to remind me to come in every 8 weeks. I didn't mind it so much, and it was like instant karma. And free cookies, popcorn, and juice.

After Tyler and I were married, I started making him come with me to donate. He only went a few times because he hated it. Pansy.

One of the times we went right before Tyler was going to take me to work. He finished first and was sitting in the recovery area. As I walked past him to get my popcorn, he gave me a big, hearty slap on the rear. This is very unusual for him and I looked at him in astonishment. All he said was, "I bet people are going to be really nice to you today at work. You know, because you gave blood." Ok, weirdo.

Twenty minutes later, I walked into work and was getting myself all set up, when my coworker pointed out that I had a sticker on my rear end. A sticker that said, "Be nice to me, I donated blood."

I had to stop donating blood after I had Lillian, just after I got my 3 gallon pin. You know how they fill up those extra little vials at the end? Those are for testing your blood for various diseases. I got a notice in the mail that I had had a false positive for some obscure blood-borne disease that I'd never heard of whose name was mostly letters and numbers. The notice said that I did NOT have this disease and not to worry. The next time I donated, I got another notice that said I had another false positive for this disease and although I did NOT have it, it said that because of the two false positives, I could never donate blood, tissue, breast milk, or my organs in the event of my death. I don't know if I believe that because my mom had thyroid cancer 26 years ago and at the time, they told her never to donate blood, and then just recently, the Red Cross people said that enough time had gone by, and she could donate again.

So, if the waiting period for cancer is 26 years, what's the waiting period for a disease you don't even have?

Tuesday Thinkback - In which my english class resembled an episode of Jerry Springer

Due to Amanda being incapacitated, you will have to suffer through one of my posts.

I have often told Amanda that my high school was ghetto. We have driven past it several times as we have been to visit my parents, but I don't think she has ever really experienced it. Here are a couple of examples of things that were different between our high schools that I have discovered:

1. Amanda's school had a gym and an auditorium that were not the same room (I believe several dances were held in our gym, although not being much of a dancer, I did not attend)
2. Amanda's school had something called "Show Choir" of which Amanda was a member. Apparently it is part choir and High School Musical. Amanda told me once that there were competitions to see who could have the biggest hair. Big hair at my school was usually accompanied by a pick)
   
3. White people were not a minority at Amanda's school. I think she said there were one or two black people in her school.
4. I've never asked, but I think it's safe to assume the pool at Amanda's school did not include a shallow end. (this made for interesting water polo games at MA)
   

Now I did not grow up in a ghetto, but my high school did fall in the middle of several colorful cities. My high school was a cultural experience to say the least. I once had to deliver a pizza (I delivered pizzas for Rount Table in high school) to my school and found a whole wing of classrooms that I had never noticed before and I'm pretty sure it's because nobody there spoke English.

With this background, we now arrive at my senior year English class taught by Mr. Cane. Having previously failed my junior year AP literature test (which I attribute to my confusing Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo in one of my essays), I decided not to attempt another AP English class my senior year. I found Mr. Cane's class to be much more my speed. We were given such assignments as looking words up in the dictionary and reading 3 books throughout the course of the year. Some times we had "debates" in class led by the students. I got through the class by playing tetris on my calculator after finishing my calc homework, or hanging out with Nick (or Duke Nicolas as I see he is known now).

On some of the more exciting days in class, a couple of our classmates decided to have one of their usual shouting matches in class. Mr. Cane was a litte on the pasive agreessive side, so he let them yell at eachother for 5-10 minutes before asking one of them to leave (usually the girl). About half way through the year when the class started to thin out due to dropouts and/or birthing children, the same two people had a slightly more heated argument than usual. I have no idea why they started yelling. It may have had something to do with the guy calling the girl a beast or possibly something worse, but it ended with her leaving the room. However, on her way out the door, she was inspired to pull the fire extinguisher off the wall and hurl it in the direction of her assailant. He was fast enough to dodge it, but it did bounce off his desk and glanced off another student. I'm pretty sure she never came back to class after that.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember when I thought Tyler had died

*Sigh* We used to live here. This is a place called Montana de Oro (there's supposed to be a tilde over the second 'n' but I'm on Tyler's computer and I can't figure out how to make one) and it's my favorite place on earth.

That's the ocean.

Look at us: so young, so... unencumbered by children. It was a lazy Saturday just a few weeks after we were married, and we decided to hike Oats Peak. Just like that.

When we got to the top of Oats Peak, it was really, really foggy. We thought it would be funny to take a picture of Tyler falling into the mist.

One second after I took this picture, Tyler fell off the side of the mountain, which was not a small distance. My heart stopped. I screamed. I ran over to where he disappeared to find that he did not, in fact fall off the side of the mountain. There's a gentle slope behind him which he stepped down and into the fog to make it seem like he fell off. Jerkface. I really did think he fell and died and that I was a widow at 21.

I don't think I've quite forgiven him (five years after the fact) because one of us brought it up a few days ago, and I was mad all over again.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I look forward to Guy Fawkes Day

As I was walking around trick-or-treating with Lillian, knocking on doors belonging to people I don't know, I was thinking about how bizarre Halloween would seem to somebody from a different country that didn't celebrate said holiday. If you just happened to move here the day before Halloween and you just happened to leave your lights on that night, all of a sudden a gaggle of little kids dressed as princesses, ghouls, and ninjas would ring your doorbell, threaten you, and then hold out plastic pumpkins expectantly.

Then, I was looking at the calendar this morning, trying to schedule an appointment for Lillian and I saw that this Thursday is Guy Fawkes Day. The only reason I have any idea what this holiday is about is because my Canadian friend Mallory asked me right after she moved to the States whether or not we celebrate it. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about and she was shocked. Because who wouldn't want to celebrate a holiday which mostly involves just setting things on fire?

So, this morning, as I was looking at the calendar, I decided that I wanted to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day this year. I don't think that we can carry a burning effigy through the streets as this will probably get us arrested, but we can build a bonfire in our backyard and burn things.

I have a lot of experience with that.



Santa Barbara, 2001. Yes, that is what you think it is.


I'm not entirely sure how this burning party started... but we took turns going into the house and finding things to burn.

Man, it was fun having Vivian as a roommate. She told me that it wasn't until she was a teenager that she realized that other people's moms told them NOT to play with matches.

Other things burned that night: a tampon, a giant sombrero, and a pool of isopropyl alcohol.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember a halloween past

I realize it is Friday, but bear with me. I just read this Slate article about people who love visiting graveyards and especially love taking pictures of tombs and uploading them to a website that is like Facebook for graveyards. These people are called gravers. Secretly, I wish I was one of these people. I love graveyards and one of my favorites is the one in San Luis, wherein can be found this large pyramid. On it is carved something like, "DO NOT DISTURB THE SLEEP OF DEATH" or something equally threatening. It has Masonic symbols all over it, which brings up the point that the Masons have the best graves. Hands down.

The Halloween of 2004, we were all just puttering around at Patrick and Peter's house, maybe 5 or 6 of us. I don't think we even really realized it was Halloween, just another weekend night with nothing much to do. I believe it was Peter who suggested we go over to the cemetery just to look around at the cool graves. We got in all my favorites: the headstone that's shaped like a tree stump, the Sinsheimers plot, the Jewish section, all the quirky Mason's graves and ended up sitting around the pyramid, talking. From the pyramid, you can see the drive-in screen, so I think we watched the silent movie for a while, or at least made up what the actors were saying.

Then, a police car pulled up. We all just looked up and watched as an officer got out and walked over. "Good evening, officer," Peter said in his pleasant way that he has.

"Well, you didn't scatter..." she began. It was only at that moment that I saw how it must've looked. Five or six college kids hanging around a graveyard at 11 o'clock on Halloween night. Who does that? And, it had seemed so normal up to that point.

I think we talked to the policewoman for a few minutes and then she left.

Not a particularly exciting Halloween edition of Tuesday Reminiscences, but seriously, how many modern people get to be buried inside their own pyramid? The Tucson cemetery is huge; it's several city blocks at least. Maybe we'll go over there one of these days and poke around.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember being gappy but happy

It appears as if Nora is blessed with a diastema, or a gap between her front teeth. Of course, we can't be sure until all her teeth come in and get all settled, but for now, she's got a great one.

My dad has a diastema, and although my sister Anne told me the other day that she used to have one before she had braces, I have zero memory of this. Less than zero. And I don't really believer her because...


I was always a little irritated that out of 7 children, I was the only one who inherited it. Here's a picture of me on Halloween my sophomore year of high school, right before I got braces. I was teased mercilessly by my older brother about my diastema when I was very young, such that I didn't show my teeth in pictures for about 15 years. My friend Carlin (who is on the top of the picture) thought it was the coolest and wanted me to show off how I could fit my tongue through the gap.

Warning: gross picture to follow.


In order to fix the gap, I had to have a frenectomy. Your frenulum is the little piece of tissue that holds your lips onto your gums; you can feel it when you run your tongue up between your lip and your teeth. When my braces pushed my two front teeth together, my gum tissue got all bunched up and when they took my braces off, it would have just sprung back, so I had to have it taken out. I'm 100% positive that Anne did not have this procedure done, which furthers my theory that she did not have a gap.

When I pointed out to Tyler that Nora has a gap, he was a little irritated. I thought he was miffed that she has a physical "blemish" and that she might get teased about it. I assured him that it builds character and that she'd be a stronger person for it.

"No, that's not it. It's just that now we have to pay for her to have oral surgery to fix it."

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which Tyler explores what we all know

My friend Emily came over and asked me how to use iMovie. By way of demonstration, I poked around on the computer and found two raw clips and made this little movie.

It's not that great, and I'll understand if you never read this blog again because the movie was so lame, but it has one part that I think is really funny.

We took this trip in March of 2008. We went to DC for a week and then drove up to Boston for a week. During these weeks we saw a lot of historical sites. I planned most of the trip, so I knew all about the historical significance of our stops.

After visiting a few sites, we settled into a regular routine: we would arrive and look around for 5 or 10 minutes, then Tyler would say something like, "so, what was the Boston Tea Party?" Or whatever it was. Let's just say history is not his strong suit.

We decided to visit Concord the last day of our trip. It was ridiculously cold; it was the same 32˚ that it was in Boston proper, but for whatever trick of humidity it felt at least 10 degrees colder. We stopped at the tourism office to get a map and the old ladies told Tyler that he just had to stop at the Old North Bridge. As we were driving there, Tyler asked why we would want to see a bridge and I told him it's because that's where The Shot Heard 'Round The World happened. Blank stare. Then he said what had become sort of a catch phrase for him on that trip, "Just pretend I don't know anything about history, or the Revolutionary War."

I explained it all to him in the car, which is why he makes the "everybody knows that" comment. I had explained a lot of things on this trip, but I think him not knowing what the Shot Heard 'Round The World was shocked me a little bit.

And for the record, Tyler is very smart when it comes to math, science, engineering, problem solving, and finding his way around unfamiliar places. If I'd gone to Boston by myself, I'd probably still be lost to this day.

Tuesday Reminiscences: Trial by fire

We were sort of forced into finishing our cinder-block walls in our backyard. I'm a little irritated about this because I had visions of, I don't know, paying the mortgage with that $300. But, (deep breath), I'll tell the full story when I have pictures.

Our neighbor's guy did the wall for us. We were calling him The Nice Man all weekend because 1. Lillian was scared of him and 2. He spoke zero English, so we didn't chat him up and we never really got his name. The Nice Man worked all weekend on finishing our walls. At one point, after he went home for the day, we saw he had left a little section undone. The section was not strictly part of the wall, so we weren't sure if he was going to do it or not. This was Sunday. (Much to my dismay he had shown up while we were at church. I told Tyler that this was the one time in our lives we've had anything close to a Man Servant and we suffered him to labor on the Sabbath. I still feel bad about it.) Anyway, come Monday, it was up to me to ask if he was going to finish that section of wall. It's true that I have been taking Spanish classes through the public library, but my vocabulary is limited to: soy ama de casa y tengo dos hijas. I was pretty nervous, but when I walked out there (armed with Lillian, a bottle of water, and a cookie) I saw that he had done that little section. Phew. We had an awkward conversation in which I told him I spoke muy pequeño Spanish and he said gracias por la galleta y agua and I made Lillian say de nada which sort of sounded like 'umbrella' but I think he got the idea.

I've had a few exciting 'just do it' experiences, and I was trying to think of one to tell today. But, for some reason, the only one I can remember is when I learned how to sing harmony. Not that exciting, but it will do.

I've always been a soprano, so in my formative years of singing, I never learned to pick out the secret alto notes hidden under the melody. My sophomore year of high school, I was trying out in front of our 50-or-so member co-ed choir for some sort of special number. I sang the soprano with another girl who sang alto. When we finished, our choir director said something like, "that sounded good, let's hear it again except switch parts." I froze. I really wanted this number, but I had no idea how to sing harmony; I'd never even attempted it. Ever. Not once.

As happens so often when I'm nervous, I said said something dumb, "But, I don't know how to sing the melody." (Of course, I meant harmony). Without skipping a beat, my director replied, "Well, good thing altos sing harmony, then," and he cued the pianist to begin the intro (he was always a very no nonsense sing-or-get-off-my-stage kind of guy). A fellow soprano sitting next to me sensed my anxiety and hummed my starting note. I screwed up a bunch at first and I'm pretty sure I wasn't singing very loudly, but I ended on the right note, and that's all that matters right?

I didn't get the part, but I realized that singing harmony isn't all that hard.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember a science project

The other day, I sent Tyler to take care of the spider webs on the patio because we were having preschool at our house the next day. He yelled that I should come check out this spider. We couldn't see the underside, and the backside gave no hints. I was curious as to what kind, so I captured it in a jelly jar, and put in some Kleenexes soaked in fingernail polish remover to kill it.

While it was dying, I searched the internet to find out what kind it was. On it's back were some red dots arranged longitudinally, and I couldn't find a picture of one like that.

Finally, it died, and fell over. Then I saw this:


and I knew exactly what it was.

You may be wondering about my spider-capturing-and-killing skills. When I was a freshman in high school, I took Honors Biology, in which we had to assemble a bug collection with 50 different kind of bugs from some number of different orders, and we had to identify them down to the genus. I think it was to teach us about binomial nomenclature, or something, but I could have learned that from a book. What it did do was make me feel like there were bugs crawling on me at all times. I had nightmares that every bug I killed had mutated and come back to life and came after me, wielding the little black pin that I had stabbed it with to mount it to my posterboard. I would lay in bed and slap my legs because I was sure there were millipedes crawling on them.

For that project, I spent untold hours chasing moths, butterflies, and bees at my younger brother's baseball games, digging in the dirt in my backyard, and hoping I didn't catch malaria as I sat around a pond in Carbon Canyon hoping to catch a dragonfly.

And, I'll just say that this project would have been So Much Easier had we lived in Arizona. Black widow spider? Check. A bazillion crickets? Check. Very large beetle that seems like it belongs in Ancient Egypt and not by my front door? Check.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember a bet

Often times, I think I have the pokiest child in the history of pokey children. Lillian dawdles, and "just a minute"s, and "be right there"s into next Thursday. If I tell her to do something and leave her to her own devices to do it, there's a 100% chance it won't get done. For example, right now, she's pushing 30 minutes in emptying the silverware. I realize she's 3, but I think if you count how many times I have to say, "Lillian! Get down here and get your shoes on" in a given morning, it will be at least 20% higher than any average mom.

I don't remember being pokey myself, but I have one memory that suggests to me that I probably was. I don't know how old I was, the memory is of that foggy quality that makes me think I was pretty young... so maybe 5. My mom told me to put my shoes on, and I guess I was taking kind of a long time because she came in and said, "I don't know why it always takes you so long to put your shoes on. You know, I bet you can't get your shoes on in under five minutes!" In hindsight, she probably wasn't actually challenging me, but that's what I took it as. She walked away and I whipped those shoes onto my feet as fast as I could, just to show her how superfast I was.

I got up to show her my lickety-split handy work. "Mom, I put my shoes on!" I was sure she'd be so excited and say she was wrong about telling me I was a slow-poke. Nope. "Good, get in the car," was what she actually said.

I'd be lying if I said this didn't hurt my 5-year-old self a little bit. But this is pretty much the only negative memory I have of my mother*, which goes to show that she's was, and is, an awesome mom.

*I actually do have another negative memory: like the first, I was pretty small, and asked my mom what an Autummus was. As in Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the Autummus.... And instead of answering my question, she just laughed at me. This greatly hurt my feelings. I was confused about this (the lyrics, not being laughed at) until I was a teenager and came across some sheet music to the song.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember the last time I had a job

I've been trying to get a job. I hate looking for jobs. I hate updating my resume. I hate calling and talking to people who don't want to give me a job and tell them why they should hire me.

In November of 2003, I moved to San Luis Obispo, knowing only one person (my roommate), I had no job, had only been to the city once before, and only a few month's worth of savings. Immediately, I began filling out applications. I applied for real jobs where I could wear a pencil skirt and possibly some sensible black heels, pretend jobs where I would wear a name tag, restaurant jobs where I would wear a tie, and even some jobs where I would wear rubber gloves. SLO is not a big city and all the jobs were taken. I got all my classes on MWF so I could work TR, but no luck. Application after application, interview after interview, I was shut down. November finished up. December came and went. I had no idea what a grind it is to have people tell you over and over again that you're not good enough to make sandwiches or file papers. "I know the alphabet, I promise," I would say. "It doesn't matter," came the answer.

January came. My rations became meager. I started eating a lot of oatmeal and oranges. I started thinking about the possibility of moving back home.

Finally, near the end of the month, my luck turned and I got a job at San Luis Trust Bank as a teller, which job carried me through the next few years: nursing school, meeting and marrying Tyler, having Lillian.

The funny thing is now, I have a license. I'm qualified to do something that people need me to do, that I could get paid real money for doing, but no one is hiring new nurses. The nurse recruiter I spoke to yesterday said it happened like this: there was a nursing shortage so everyone went to nursing school. All those people got hired. Now there are a lot of novices working in the hospitals and Arizona has state mandated ratios of how many novices vs experiences nurses that can be on the floor at any given time. Ergo, the hospitals can only hire experienced nurses to keep up with the ratios. Q.E.D.

You need to have at least 1 year's experience to be hired, but you cannot get 1 year's experience unless someone hires you. I hate trying to get a job.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I contemplate Nora Ephron

I'm a big Nora Ephron fan. For those of you who don't know that name, she wrote some of your favorite movies: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Mixed Nuts and most recently Julie & Julia. (And no, I didn't name my child after her... but her name might have served for, um, inspiration.)

Yesterday, I was reading about Julie & Julia and Ms. Ephron and thinking about the book that she wrote, I Feel Bad About My Neck. It's pretty funny, and there's one part that I think of all the time. She talks abouy how there's a song that Edith Piaf sings called Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, and it's a great song where she sings about she has no regrets. Ms. Ephron then says something to the effect of, "Not me. I have a lot of regrets."

I think this stuck with me because I feel like people are pressured into accepting all of their decisions as they all add up to the person you are today. But, there are decisions that I regret. One of the ones that, for whatever reason, sort of haunts me is one I made during my senior year of high school.

Brace yourselves.

I dropped out of show choir.

In my experience, show choir doesn't really exist outside of Southern California. It's best to experience show choir, so here's a video of the choir I was in performing Heartbreaker in 2007, which is a few years after I was in it (and dropped out).

I performed with the lesser show choir for my freshman and sophomore years of high school. My junior year, I decided to take the year off and switch to drama, which I did and had a lot of fun. Then, senior year, I tried out for the top women's choir (pictured in the video) and made it in. After a few weeks of school, I decided to drop choir. The show choir schedule is pretty hectic (competitions every weekend and a big show once a quarter), and I was taking 4 (or 5?) AP classes, 6 AM seminary, mutual every Wednesday night, aaaand I was filled with that snobbish teenaged antipathy that sabotages most everybody. I decided that to do my best in my AP classes (which is funny, because I ended up getting my first F in one, but that's a different story), something had to give, and that was show choir.

But, memories are made out of the stuff you do, not all that late-night studying for AP tests (although, sometimes if it's real late, it gets pretty funny). So, in looking back, I can't help but think all that snobbish teenaged antipathy would have been helped by singing and dancing, instead of being fed by isolating myself in my room with a comparative politics book.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which we visit the crazy house

Before The History Channel became The History of War Channel, it was cool and had interesting things on it. Once, they ran a program on the Winchester House. I was pretty young, 10 or 11, and I had no idea where it was located, but I was completely fascinated. My sister Anne and I begged Dad to let us go visit it. I don't remember what he said exactly, but I think he told me it was too far away. It was built by Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester, of Winchester rifle fame. She believed that the house was haunted by the ghosts of those killed by the Winchester rifles and that only continuous construction would keep them away, or something like that.


Construction on the house continued around the clock for 38 years. The house has all sorts of numbers of all sorts of things: 160 rooms, 950 doors, 17 chimneys, 5 or 6 kitchens, staircases that lead to nowhere, itty bitty cabinets, doors that open into nothing (complete list of stats here)

I had almost forgotten about my desire to go see it, until Tyler took me home to meet his family for the first time; I had never driven to Northern California before. And, when we passed San Jose, I saw a big billboard for nothing less than the Winchester Mystery House!


I may have squealed with delight. Too far away? Maybe, but I think I took that to mean it was in Kansas, or something. Here it was, in my own state!


We didn't go on that day, or the trip after that. But eventually, I got to take a tour and check off 'visit Winchester House' from my life's to-do list.

I don't know why I don't have any pictures of the inside. Perhaps we weren't allowed to take any. Tyler, do you remember? It was really cool, although (and Myriah, I think this is how you feel about Hearst's Castle) all I really wanted to do was explore on my own: peak into rooms, open drawers, wander aimlessly for hours. Ah, oh well.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I channel my forebears

I was at The Wal-Mart today, in the sewing section (I wanted to buy bias tape to make Lillian an apron out of a dishcloth, which I'll have to post pictures of sometime, because it's really cute. I didn't want to go to The Wal-Mart to get it, because it's a little far away and I'm into helping my local economy, and I saw that there's a quilting store not that far from my house. In the car, I told Lillian we were going to the store. We pulled up, and it was a trailer in a shady looking dirt lot. Lillian, always quick, said, "Mom, that's not a store, it's a trailer and there's monsters in there." I thought she was probably right, so we drove down to The Wal-Mart), and I saw that they have patterns for Halloween costumes out already. As I looked over them, I thought to myself that no way, no how could I top last year.


And, I realized I never posted pictures of Lillian in her full outfit, complete with umbrella.


I think our regular camera was broken, or lost, or both, so I took these with the camera function on our video camera... so they're not that nice. I think that's why I didn't post them before; they were not up to my exacting standards.


But, the cuteness is too much to keep underwraps any longer. Any ideas for this year? I'd like to do something even more disgustingly cute, that involves the whole family with some sort of theme... like... make Lillian can be a Wii, Nora can be a Wiimote, and Tyler can be the TV. Something like that, except not lame like that idea.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I almost kill my first patient

As the likelihood of me ever finding a 40-hour-per-week job is dwindling into nothingness, I was thinking about how I procured the ever-so-promising degree that is now proving to be not very useful.

When you start nursing school, they put you in Long-Term Care, which is a euphemism for Old Folks' Home. You have clients assigned to you, but they mostly take care of themselves, and they don't let you anywhere near medications, so, you mostly just give baths and take blood pressures. After a few weeks of this, you get moved into Acute Care, i.e. a hospital.

In order to let you get near real patients, they make you come to the hospital the day before and write down everything there ever was to know about your patient. Then you go home, and look up everything you wrote down and make sure you know it cold: lab values, diagnostic tests, diagnoses, comorbidities, medications, possible side effects of treatment, and the like. If the instructor catches you in the hallway, they will quiz you and if you don't know the answer to their question, they will incinerate you with their laser beam eyes and then graffiti your grave with big red 'F's. Or so they made it seem.

I was ready. I had done my research. I had reams of paper and cheat sheets hidden in my clipboard. I hadn't slept the night before for looking things up in my Taber's Medical Encyclopedic Dictionary.

My patient was a somewhat elderly woman, I don't quite remember what her diagnosis was. Anyway, I showed up with her breakfast tray and started to introduce myself. Uncovering her tray, I saw that breakfast that morning was pancakes. She asked if I could cut them up for her. Sure, piece of cake. That done, I moved to wheel in the blood pressure machine. As soon as my back was turned, she started coughing. Then coughed more. I sat her straight up in her bed. Then she started gasping and wheezing. I patted her back. Then she turned bright red. I thought about doing the Heimlich Maneuver, but she was so old and frail and the thought flitted across my mind that you weren't supposed to do the Heimlich unless they aren't breathing, or coughing at all. This lady was doing both, so I wasn't sure what the heck to do. I stuck my head out of the room as the floor supervisor happened to be walking passed. I very calmly (actually probably the opposite) asked her to duck in for a moment.

By that time, the old lady had coughed up her little piece of pancake and was laying back down, exhausted. After that big scare, the rest of the day was actually kind of cool, because I got to go with her to have a swallow evaluation, in which she swallowed barium while being x-rayed, so you could watch it go down into her stomach, or lungs... which is what it was actually doing.

To this day, I'm very glad she didn't die, as that would have sort of tainted the rest of my (non-existant) nursing career.

Middle Idaho Days + Tuesday Reminescences

Ok, this Tuesday, we're going to talk about me versus the yellow jacket. While in Idaho, Brian's (visible below, just to my left) mom let us stay in her 5th wheel out back. This arrangement worked out perfectly and we are very thankful for her hospitality. However, we weren't the only ones who liked the 5th wheel. While in and around the thing, we were almost constantly under attack by yellow jackets. I did not encounter these guys anywhere else during my time in Idaho, whatever that means.

After breakfast on the 4th, I went back out to the trailer to brush my teeth and finish primping. As I walked in, a wasp followed me, so I left the door open hoping that it would just fly back out. It did not fly back out, it flew right into my hair.

Those of you who know me in real life can probably guess that I did not react calmly to the situation. And, in the course of carrying out my not-calm reaction, in which there was much jumping, screaming, and flailing, I injured myself. The end.


Here we are awaiting the start of the parade. Oddly, this is the only picture I have of Allison or Brian.


Lillian took her job of gathering up the salt water taffy very seriously. We were the sole candy gatherers for the family because the boys were in the parade.


If we had only remembered to bring our goat, we could have been in the parade, too.


Here are 'them boys on their motorbikes.' I uploaded the small version of the picture, sorry, so you can't click on it to make it bigger, but they're all there.


After the parade, and the BBQ at Aunt Rosie's house, the boys took another few laps around the dirt bike track that runs around the house. On the right there is the trailer we stayed in.


Here is Nora and Baby Hudson. Living in Arizona, where the low in the dead of night is somewhere around 80˚, it did not occur to me that my children would do anything that would require them to wear pants. Thus, when we went to the fireworks, Nora had to wear these leopard jammie pants and endure much redicule. And, that's a pretty standard face for Hudson. He's the crankiest baby I've ever seen.


The fireworks display was put on by the local fire department. I can totally see the logic in this. They would set off a few, and then stop because the hill was on fire, walk down, put out the fire, and repeat the process. I learned a lot at that fireworks display, for example, in Idaho Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John counts as a patriotic song and although it's spelled Pocatello, it's pronounced Pocatell-a or Pokey, for short.

Still to come: The moon, in Idaho.

Tuesday-ish Reminiscences: Where I Develop a Fear of Cows

We just got back from Idaho and it's environs. While driving, I had a flood of memories from road trips of yesteryear, so instead of talking about Idahoans excessive use of "there" (as in "them there 'skeeters are thick at the crick" (I really did hear someone say this, no lie)), I want to talk about a trip I took to Utah sometime around my senior year of high school.

Andrew at Bryce Canyon

It was my younger brother, my mother, and me. Andrew and I sort of led separate lives, and this was one of the first times since we were little that we spent any amount of time together. We went to all of the national parks around Southern Utah, went rafting in the Virgin River, then up into Provorem and SLC.

Andrew at Escalante Staircase

I actually have 6 or 7 pictures of Andrew in different places: Andrew in the Virgin River, Andrew at Arches, Andrew at Hoover Dam. I'm sure we took regular pictures, I just have no idea where they are.

I was driving along Hwy 12 while my mom napped in the backseat when we came upon some cows in the road, right by the cow sign. (I'm not sure why the picture scanned in black and white, but it gives it an artistic quality, don't you think?) I thought it was pretty funny, so I took a picture. I honked at them, but they didn't move. After a few minutes, Andrew decided he wanted to touch one. He got out and cautiously made his approach. As soon as he got close, the cow lowered it's head and began to charge. In my memory, the cow was gearing up to ramming speed, but it was probably just walking.


Ramming speed or walking, it was menacing and Andrew ran for it.


Tyler always laughs at me because to this day, I'm a little scared of walking close to free range cows. But, I mean, look at that guy; if he had his way, he'd eat you and everyone you cared about.

Tuesday Reminescences: Satherhood

Here's my dad and brothers in November of 2004.

I thought in honor of Father's Day, I'd tell a story about my Dad, and one of the most important lessons he taught me. (This is how I remember it, so I apologize if this isn't exactly how it happened. I also apologize to Anne for remembering one of her not-so-good moments. We all know I've had my fair share of them.)

I was 14 or 15, and my sister Anne was 16 or 17. Dad had a big black truck, which was parked on the far left of the driveway. Anne had her bright blue 1970 Dodge Dart parked just to the right of the truck. I came in a friend's car, just to run and grab something in the house, and we pulled up slightly offset behind the truck, so we overlapped Anne's car by 6 inches or so.

I ran inside and got what I needed and came back outside where my friend was idling in the driveway. Dad was out playing basketball with my younger brother (I think) and some neighbor kids. I stopped at the top of the driveway, probably to explain where I was going, who with, when I was going to be back, etc, when Anne needed to leave. She started backing up, but had to angle her car a little bit, so as not to hit my friend's car. I suppose she underestimated how long her hood was, because she ran right into Dad's truck and scraped down the side of it a little bit until the car cleared. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both looked at Dad. After a second of stunned silence, he asked for the basketball, shot a basket, missed, and went into the house to make a phone call.

I don't remember what we did next, if we went inside to apologize, or if we just left because we didn't know what else to do. I for sure don't remember being yelled at, or my sister getting in trouble.

This event cemented something in my brain about my Dad, and taught me some lessons about what kind of parent and person I wanted to be.

1. I learned that freaking out is not helpful, and is, in fact, counterproductive. This has shaped a lot of the way I handle difficult situations, I think. I have a very, "well, let's solve the problem" outlook on life. When friends call with problems or to complain, I often ask if they want me to fix it, or to just listen. Nursing school and working in the hospital wasn't as stressful for me as it was for some of my classmates, because of my just-get-in-there-and-do-the-thing philosophy.

2. I learned that my dad could be rational if I ever did anything wrong.

3. And, I learned that our possessions are just stuff. It's not worth making your kids scared of you to yell endlessly at them because they ruined something. My dad restored classic cars, putting hours of work and untold dollars into these cars that I got to drive around as soon as I got my license (and sometimes before). I remember lecturing my friends on how to treat the car and not to slam the doors, but I don't remember being inordinately afraid of crashing or otherwise wrecking the car.

So, thanks Dad. Happy belated Father's Day.