Tiny notes

Dear Katie,

It made my day when you forwarded me this from your local hamlet's community board:

Hi Pegboarders,

A really beautiful woodpecker just now met his end on one of our
windows. Wondering if anyone has a good use for his plumage. Let me
know; I'll be in Boulder tomorrow for a drop off if so.

Doug

Me

Dear Doug,

I don't know you but you are straight up crazy in delightful ways.  How does your mind work anyway?

Me

Dear Weather,

90 degrees in late September is ridiculous.  I have sweaters I want to wear here.

Me

Dear Mark,

Without your disapproving looks the school room that is now sort of my "office" is getting out of control.  You need to go in there and glare and maybe I'll clear off a few spaces.

Me

Dear Universe,

How many packages sent to your missionary son are too many?  I'm asking for a friend.

Me

Lunch for three

Saturdays often mean errands and lunch along the way.  Also our children usually don't want to come with us.

Last Saturday one of the errands included getting Emma's phone repaired.  Emma was at a choir function but Mark said, "I want to go!"

I knew two things.  1) Mark wanted to come along because he thought we were going to the Apple Store and 2) we weren't planning on going to the Apple Store.

When Adam found out Mark wanted to go with us, he was pleasantly surprised.  I told him Mark's misconception.  I said, "We don't have to tell him we aren't going to the Apple Store.  We never said we were going there."

(Does this strike anyone else as pathetic and desperate?  These are the depths of parenthood we have sunk to.)

When Mark found out that we were going to Bad Apple, a repair shop (with a clever name) he said, "What?!?" But I added that if they couldn't fix the phone we would go to the Apple Store.  (More desperation.)

So Mark tagged along.

And I think he was glad he did because he perused the phone cases very thoroughly at Bad Apple and he is now definitely in the market for a new case even though he doesn't need one.  Story of Mark's life.

When we were ready for lunch, we batted around ideas.  The bane of Braeden's existence has always been Adam and me deciding where we are going to eat.  It's a tough call.  There was Wallabys right there and we'd never been.  Adam pulled up the menu on his phone.  It is a BBQ restaurant with an Australian slant (for example Taz Eggs were on the menu which it turns out are pickled eggs...ew.)

Adam read there were ribs on the menu and Mark said, "Shut up and take my money."

We were technically buying the lunch but message received.  Mark loves him some ribs.

Wallabys was a great place!  I already want to go back.  The experience was slightly marred by the football game that was playing on the TV in the corner.  BYU was being slaughtered by Michigan.

At one point, Mark got up to look for the bathroom.  It's a big restaurant and he wandered one direction and then circled back by our table.  As he passed us, we heard him muttering about having to search the entire Outback to find the bathroom.

So now I've decided that every week I am going to pretend we are going to the Apple Store.  I like having Mark along.

Having a migraine

I used to get migraines more often when I was younger.  I don't miss them.

Friday I woke up with a headache (always fun) and as the day progressed it just got worse.  Once Emma got home around 2:30, I decided to let the migraine win.  I was going to bed.  I gave her my phone and told her she was in charge if Mark needed to be picked up.  (He was staying after school to lift weights--what?!?--and had a ride home but I wanted Emma to be on standby in case that didn't work out.)  Did Emma have a slight gleam in her eye that she was going to have the house to herself for awhile?

So I took a nap, then I lay on my bed trying not to die.

Mark came home and I stumbled out to the hall and talked to him over the railing for a few minutes.  It went something like this, "How was school?"

"Fine."

"How was weight lifting?"

"Fine."

"I'm dying so I'm going back to bed."  (It's possible I tend to exaggerate.)

"OK."  (My kids are unfazed by exaggeration.) Did Mark have a slight gleam in his eye that he had a stretch of uninterrupted time ahead of him?

It's different when my only two kids at home are the introverts.  Braeden would have been checking on me every twenty minutes for his own social needs but Friday afternoon I really could have been dying and no one would have been the wiser....

Around 6:00, I decided for a change of scenery.  Adam came home and found me downstairs on the floor, listening to The News From Lake Wobegon on my phone.  (Laying on the floor feels better than a bed when I have a migraine.)

He gathered me up and told me he was going to make dinner.  He had brought home things for Showering Rama.  That is my favorite Thai food.  It is rice and chicken and spinach and peanut sauce.  Very simple and I like it very mild.  Every Thai restaurant in Washington has Showering Rama on the menu and not one Thai restaurant does in Utah.  This is both puzzling and tragic.

I told Adam I didn't want to eat.

He told me I needed to eat.

I said I wasn't hungry.

He said, "I'll make it anyway and you might change your mind."  (This exact scenario has played out identically hundreds of times in our twenty years of marriage.)

He asked me when I'd last taken Advil.  I said sometime in the morning.  I told him my stomach hurt too much for Advil.  He told Emma to get me a glass of water and two Advil.  He got me a cracker and gave me a 1/4 of a bottle of Coke Zero.

And I started to revive.  Within an hour I felt a lot better.  And I even ate some dinner (like Adam knew I would).

My family is good to me and I need them all.  Emma takes up the slack and answers the phone (and told Adam I was sick).  Both kids let me rest.  Adam saved the day like always.

I just needed Braeden to keep me a little company.

Sniff.

Is it just me or is time dragging?

Equal partnership

On any given day, besides earning the money to keep our family chugging along on its merry way, Adam will do some of the following:

-try to fix Emma's broken cell phone
-give encouragement to one of us
-go help a lady in the ward with her computer, after I volunteered him for the job
-figure out any computer problem I have
-advise me on any number of things
-listen--it's his superpower
-be the one to know how to use the TV remotes (I don't even want to know--too much responsibility)
-provide a shoulder to cry on--literally, sometimes that man gets a wet shoulder
-console me on any number of crises I may or may not be overreacting to

In exchange, if he needs help on Word Bubbles, I can usually help him.

I think it's pretty much equal?

I mean, Word Bubbles.

Finding an app that is like Boggle pretty much made my day.

And I need to cling desperately to anything I am better at than Adam.

Tiny notes

Dear Young Women,

When I say I can play the opening song on the piano, I don't really mean I can play it.  (You noticed?)  It's more like I'm saying I can't play it but I'm trying to get better.

Me

Dear Eye Disease,

Go away. Seriously. (Please)

Me

Dear Adam,

Thank you for not blocking my number when I text you complaining and whiny texts about my eye.

Me

Dear Adam,

You didn't block my number, did you?

Me

Dear Mark,

Thank you for lighting up with a smile when I brought home a library book for you.  (You weren't always like this.)

Me

Dear Emma,

When you come home from school and sit on the couch and I put my legs across your lap and you talk to me, that is my favorite part of the day.

Me

Precious commodity

Attention from Emma is not just tossed around.  Her MO is in her room, door shut.  Maybe because Braeden is gone (that kid left a hole the size of Texas when he left), she has come into my room a few times--when I was in there with the door shut. (Introverts unite!  Separately!)

She'll say, "What are you doing?"

I will tell her.

She'll say, "Oh," then, "Do you want to do something?"

And I say yes, because when does that happen?

The other night we rented an episode of What Not To Wear from Amazon Instant Video.  We love watching that show together but since we don't get a lot of TV channels we don't do it very often.  Also, I knew that it was a rare and fleeting opportunity.  Mostly doing something with Emma only happens if she wants it to happen.

Yesterday morning, I found this note by my sunglasses.

She gets up super early every other morning for early morning seminary while the house is still asleep.  (My mom knows I don't get up with her and yes, she disapproves.)  And sometimes she leaves notes on those mornings.

Emma is independent.  She rarely asks for anything.  She wants to do what she wants to do and then she does it.  She always knows how much money she has in her bank account and she keeps her car full of gas.  She is on top of her homework.  Always.  And she doesn't take kindly to suggestions or comments (trust me on this one).  If, on a very rare occasion, she doesn't do her best work on homework, it is like the sky is falling and the end of the world.  She has an iron will and I usually just stand back in awe.

So when she goes out of her way to tell me she loves me, my strong and stubborn and self-sufficient girl, I pay attention.

I love her too.

Newport News news

Yesterday morning was pretty much consumed with getting Braeden's email.  You think I'm kidding?  He sent a brief one to Emma which I saw so I knew he was emailing so then I couldn't leave my computer.  When I finally got the email, I had to send it out to people on the list and then the list was messed up so I had to fix it.  Then, naturally, I had to write him back.  Immediately.  Because if I didn't do it right away nothing bad would happen but I still had to anyway.

All morning.

But it was a happy way to spend the morning.  He sounds happy.  He looks happy.  He lives in a scary part of town.  He told me not to worry.

Oh.

OK.

Glad he told me not to, otherwise I would have worried.

He sent this funny anecdote to Emma:

Something funny happened the other day.  One of my companions stopped a guy coming out of a store and offered him a pass along card.  The guy turned him down.  This is how it went:
Guy:  No thanks, I'm a devout Catholic.
Elder Garcia: (smiling sincerely)  Oh, OK.  Well I condemn your faith.
Guy:  (confused) ...what?
Elder Garcia:  (still smiling)  I condemn your faith.
Guy:  Um... OK bye.

Commend Elder Garcia.  Not condemn.  We looked up the definition of condemn later and it was all about "dooming to hell" and stuff like that.  Hahaha this is probably why people think we're a cult.

On the one hand, it's kind of a sad story, because I want to find the guy and explain.  He meant commend!  I promise!  On the other hand, it is incredibly sweet.  I picture these earnest young men, out trying to teach people about Christ and trying to connect with other people, innocently and unwittingly using the wrong words in the process.

A for effort, boys.

People of Newport News, they're trying.  And their mothers miss them, so please take care of our boys and don't judge them too harshly.

His mission president sent us this picture of Braeden with his companions.  They normally have groups of two but they live in such a rough area (!) that there are three of them.  Marianne pointed out they aren't small boys either.