hi, it's me....

Man oh man oh man....It's been a frickin' month since I wrote and I seriously don't even know where to start. I'm not very good at chronology anyway so I'll just get started. I was all kinds of fed up with my situation a month ago so I went to the DR. and told him, "look, I'm fat, I'm tired, I'm weak and I'm taking anti-depressants and I don't feel depressed...you have got to do something." He tested my thyroid...negative..and then had me take a pulse oximeter test over a night to see if I may have a sleep problem (apnea etc.)
Two days after that Dr's appt., I had pulled my back out strapping Dellah in her stroller at the Gateway mall and by the next morning it was so bad I couldn't move in my bed. Gabriel had to pull me off the side of the bed and walk me in to go pee...I know...glamorous. Then I took some tylenol and laid back down and my mom came in to say goodbye because she was going to drive back home to Washington after being here for 2 1/2 weeks trying to keep my sister together. A little later all I remember is feeling like something huge was pressing on my chest and I couldn't breathe very well so I grabbed Gabriel's arm and the next thing I know, he's standing over me talking to 911 and I hear the fire truck coming down the street. apparently, I departed the bedroom for a little while and was shaking and making weird noises (those of you in the car that morning after I got my cooch worked on will remember the scenario)...blah blah...anyway, I got taken to the hospital by 5 manly firemen and one manly fire-lady and spent the next 7 hours there getting MRI's, EKG's, EEG's, blood work, urine samples, chest x-rays etc, etc...they even squirted nitroglycerine under my tongue...it was weird. My mom turned around in Ogden and came back to Salt Lake to take care of my kittens for another 2 days which helped a ton. The ER doctors found an arhythmia in my heart or a long QT if that makes more sense (I'm sure it doesn't) so I was really weak and I couldn't breathe very well and that lasted for several days afterward and still happens periodically. I met with the cardiologist and he wanted me to wear a monitor for 2 weeks to see if we could get more info. Long story longer, I wear this rediculous pseudo i-pod looking thing that records my EEG whenever I press the record button that I'm having pain and then I call the office and press another button and all the info reads out on a strip of paper there...I can't tuck my shirt in and that sucks because I have all these wires here and there...
I got a call from the sleep doctor a while ago and they said that I stopped breathing several (like 15 or 20) times an hour and I needed to have an evaluation so I went there yesterday and got one and set up an appointment to go to a sleep lab and get hooked up to a bunch of wires and 'sleep' and spend the whole next day getting tested for narcolepsy by taking like 5 scheduled naps still hooked up to the stuff....I know! I thought only people like Steve had narcolepsy but apparently it doesn't only mean that you fall asleep at the drop of a hat...it's got other symptoms. The sleep doctor was so nice and I really got this glimmer of hope that maybe the sleep apnea thing would answer all of my questions...energy, weight, productivity, heart....we'll see but I'm hopeful.
I went to the homeopathic doctor this past friday and he did his voodoo that he do so well and gave me some enzyme business for my guts to see if it will help the general well-being of my cuerpo. I'm basically leaving no stone unturned until I can get to the bottom of why my heart hurts and my body retains every pound I have gained from 2 pregnancies and I have no ability at all to wake up in the morning. I went off the zoloft because I don't feel depressed, I feel tired and I think they're different. I WAS depressed but now I'm just fat and tired...or sick and tired or fat and sick and tired.
On a really good note, my little Fruby started WALKING this past week on wednesday and now she can stand up by herself and walk 5-10 steps and fall and stand up and walk and fall...it's glorious!
Dellah signed some sort of secret pact with evil 2 year olds in a plot to destroy the patience, christianity and coping mechanisms of their parents. And yet she really is so great...I don't know...she's a gemini...there's two of her.
Jen Holmes came back to North America to have the third Holmes baby so I have seen her a lot and been social with Zendina and Andi and liked the outcome...it feels nice to have friends. We even went to the fair on a blustry day and did the whole 'we take our kids to the fair because we're mothers' thing. Now I just need to see my OTHER friends like Marsha and Emily and Cindy and I will be full of joy...you can't have just some friends without missing all the friends.
We picked out our floor and carpet for our house in Sandy. We also picked our appliances and I am getting the refrigerator of my dreams (not the one with the TV but at least the one with 3 doors and really nice) and the washer and dryer of my dreams too...a really cool blue gray front loader business...
They told us it would be done early in the new year like jan or feb. but they told us late fall before so who knows.
I watched that show on Bravo last night called project Jay about the guy that won project runway the first year and it was seriously so funny. He is creepy smart and he reminded me of marsha (not aesthetically) but the way she's creepy smart and good at everything and has all this potential to take over the universe and likes to swear. Marsha, maybe you should do project runway.
I think that's enough blog today. if you made it this far, you get out of jail free.
xoxo

experimentation

Today is a day of trying just to see...you know, 'let's just see'...so I'm sitting here in my living room in my favorite chair with my feet up writing on 'the firm's' laptop and trying to be very quiet while I watch my two female offspring entertain themselves with random things around the room....the room which is currently in a state of disrepair but, none-the-less...they're playing with no initiation from me and no talking from me and no video and no music and no nothing....it's like, I think this might be what heaven is like...small people that you're responsible for playing by themselves so that you can do something for yourself and not have to be responsible for them...or something like that. Heaven is probably actually very different because to get to Heaven you probably have to like getting out of your favorite chair to DO something and also like being responsible for people....
oh well...for today it's good. Although Ruby's diaper is beginning to offend from across the room so I'm sure I'll have to step in pretty soon.
I never taught my children to lipsync...I, therefore, have no idea why on earth they do it other than the fact that there's something for everyone but when their little toddler tunes are on, they both just blab their silent mouths in sync to the music instead of actually, audibly singing....very strange...
actually, last night, I think it was, Dellah was up way too late and she started singing the word galleta (cookie) over and over again to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star and then switched to row row row your boat but inserting words about mami and papi and galletas and so forth....there are moments of clarity in life and for me, this was one. I have given birth and am raising someone almost exactly like me. I wonder if spastic-spontaneous-superfluous shows of personality are nature or nurture...ooops.
Ruby has decided that a spoon and her fingers no longer get the food to her mouth fast enough, so, to my alarm, she just sticks her face in her bowl...the whole face...she could drown!! oh well. She'll be one of those skinny people who eat all the time...I hate/envy people like that so I guess this is a nice lesson to learn that skinny people who still eat a lot are people too...
love to all
My oldest sister's life has pretty much fallen down and broken all over the floor. It's hard to see that happen and not know how to help. It's so much worse that I could have imagined for her. And thus we just pray.
Sally the camel has no humps cause Sally is a horse, of course!....those toddler tunes get in the brain and they just don't get out!
I really want to see that movie Step Up in the same voyeristic way that I always wanted to see Dirty Dancing Havanna Nights but never did...I will see Step up though...I'm so glad that dance movies are still being made. I love dance. I love movies. I love dance movies.
I also love Gabriel. I have a hard time thinking of someone cuter than Gabriel. David Beckham is in town and he's pretty darn cute but he likes girls like Posh spice so I could never allow myself to like him...plus he's not Gabriel. Gabriel is seriously my favorite boy.
Dellah is wiggling her head like a bobble head right now and it's so funny because she totally didn't get in the neck line...that little girl has the biggest head and no neck! so cute.
my mom's coming to town today...whoo hooo!!

mechanical bull

Last night we went to this work thing for the 'Firm' and there was a western theme. Everyone got a bandana of their choice upon entering....there was also a mechanical bull....I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to. I could not deny it.
And then reality hit and I realized that I didn't know these people from Gabriel's work and they were all standing around watching everyone ride and I have never been one to take a public chance unless I'm pretty sure I'll succeed or am surrounded by cheering supporters....Mechanical bulls aren't really up my alley and yet...kind of they are...
Not to mention the fact that when law firms have parties they spend a gagillion dollars on prizes and the prizes for the best femal bull rider were two moves and a cool metal box AND AN IPOD!! That was the clincher. I stood in the line like three times and then turned around and wandered back to Gabriel and the girls pretending I hadn't just stood in line....
then I just decided to do it and I had to sign a waiver on my life and then I mounted the beast....I watched that one move with luke Perry that one time about bull riding so I wrapped my bandana around my hand and squoze my thighs and the rest is history....
bull riding is a lot harder than it looks or than one might think. I pulled a muscle in my bottom. But I was so proud of myself like exceedingly proud in a freekish way because I totally did something I was afraid to do. Then we left before the prizes because Gabriel didn't feel like staying....obviously not as important for him...
We've been to a neurologist, had an EEG and and MRI for Ruby in the last week. I just felt like we had to get to the bottom of all this...it's just too much crying and too little normalcy. Of course all the things were normal and we're waiting on another test but we're pretty much in the dark where Ruby's concerned. At least it's not her brain...everything else is pretty much treatable at least.
The next thing will be another EEG to see if she's having seizures.
fun stuff.
the stuff that dreams are made of.
the nightmare kind of dreams.
My little sister is moving to Arizona in 3 days. I'm sad about it. I don't like the idea one bit but what can I do? Sisters are great things.
Gabriel and I went salsa dancing last weekend and he told me that If I meet my goals for health and fitness (my goal is to lose 40 pounds by Christmas) he'll fly me somewhere with really good shopping and give me money to shop!
I love Gabriel.
Now on to the health and fitness part....

I'm up too late.

Some people say someone is crazy by saing they're 'up in the night'...hm...interesting. I'm definitely up but I don't see that as incrimination. I didn't say it before but I went and saw the Pirates of the Caribbean the other day and, might I add as a parental aside, I fully buy my children happy meals too often so I can get the toys from the Pirates stuff...have you seen those? It's hilarious. Ruby totally has this red doo rag that velcros in the back and dellah has this actually pretty awesome inflatable sword and this stuffed south park looking Johnny Depp doll...and the box for the happy meal has punch out pirate eye patch and ear ring and medallion! Come on now! It's like too good to be true. Anyway, I went to see the movie and I have to say, I got that giddy !YYESS! feeling several times. I don't remember Captain Jack having quite such obviously fake dread locks in the first one thought which was my only draw back...I kind of liked the stringy, scraggly mess a little better but the voodoo lady in the swamp? Oh my freaking goodness...I full on wanted to BE HER! I noticed the filmmaker tried not to put Orlando Bloom in the same shot with Johnny Depp so as to prolong the generalized assumption that Orlando Bloom is in some way remotely good looking as anything besides an Elf....in reality, Johnny Depp made everyone in the movie look abismally ugly...poor unfortunate mortals. I did find myself not hating Kiera Knightly though and thinking she was cuter than I have before....some of those sword fights were on par with the time Yoda fights in the second new star wars or was it the first...ooops, I don't know.
Today was Pioneer day and we took the progeny to the park to play and I quickly realized that all the other parents were just kind of lying around watching their children play and we're like following ours around and doing everything with them...someone could totally get hurt or stolen or something! what's wrong with those people. If they would have actually been up on the huge play thing they would have noticed that some degenerate smeared an alarmingly poop-like substance all down the twisty slide which could have produced a stain that even Oxy Clean can't get out....
Last night Dellah was sitting in her high chair eating and she just busted out the name "Bonnie Raitt" which is so weird because a really really long time ago, she asked me who was singing on the music at DI and I told her, Bonnie Raitt...a steal trap, I tell you, those small people have minds like steel traps.
man, I can totally picture the scenario when you talk in your family about some taboo issue or person and your kid totally goes and tells everyone or that person what you said....
I watched the movie, 'she's the man' today...why?
I have no words.
Gabriel says he has a surprise for me on friday having to do with our anniversary....I didn't realize before in my life but I'm pretty sure I hate surprises. No control...what IS it!? crap.
Have you heard that Paris Hilton song? what is up with the fact that it's actually not horrible? that girl sold her soul to the darkside...I totally know it.
My dad helped me buy a giselle the other day...the exercise thing from that spasoid with the huge muscles and the fake ponytail...tomorrow is my first day with no company and no Utah holiday to start my road to fitness and fake ponytails. I bought this random dress at DI the other day that I have hung on a hanger as my inspiration....It's not that inspirational in and of itself but I'm pretty sure the right bag and awesome shoes will take it over the top.
her I come no pecan sandies and no coca cola (except on special occasions) and no popcorn balls....
ok, I think I already fell off the wagon there...too many no's.

initiation

So I am now a real Mexican. I have had visitors in or around my house for 10 days from Mexico City. Gabriel's old mission companion and his wife and their two beasts, I mean, boys, ages 4 and 6 and his wife's mother came to town and we have been out late and eating out and out of money and out of our minds for over a week. I thought Gabriel, the king of order and anti-chaos was going to blow a gasket with those obnoxious children slobbering and putting their feet all over everything we own. They are so nice thought, really. The grandma had me pick yarn so she could make Dellah a sweater and Ruby a blanket and SHE DID! in like two days! It was like bionic knitting! And they totally cooked for us two or three times making enchiladas and mole (pronounced molay and not the actual underground creature fried up in a tortilla) and rice and etc. I suppose for my initiation into latinaism and being fine that anyone at any time comes to stay or visit at your house for however long they want, this was a pretty good one because they actually stayed in our friend's apartment that are out of town right now so we had some space to breathe and our children could sleep in their own beds. All we had to do was have the Coca-Cola free flowing and they were pretty happy.
not to mention that they took a break from spending thousands of dollars on preppy Polo and Tommy Hilfiger clothes to come with me to DI where they dropped a whopping $280 (I didn't even know that was possible because I think my all time high was like $48 and they didn't even buy 'small as is'...just clothes.....amazing.
I think they may have been good luck as I found yet another Oilily item for $3....I uttered an audible YES!
Speaking of three, we will have been married for three years on wednesday the 26th so we're going to leave the babies for longer than five minutes and hope for the best (we'll be gone about 2 1/2 hours.)
Gabriel is talking to a Head Hunter about some other possibilities for us so we might be relocating. That's about all I can say about it without getting sad so I'll stop. Not really sad about a new adventure, I just don't deal very well with change.
I noticed while these visitors who kind of do and don't obey God were in town that it just isn't worth it to me to be blase about the gospel. There are just so many things that have got to be done right if this little life is going to end the way it's going to have to stay forever and ever and it all depends on now....it's just dangerous to play with forever thinking tomorrow is a sure thing. I'm not that brave.

Tomorrow is the Pioneer day parade here in downtown Salt Lake. It's hot as blazes outside and there are these freakshows out there laying on the grass since 7am all up and down the road saving their 'spot' when I'm going to walk out there tomorrow and stand right smack dab beside them. amazing. Amazing. I do think I'll go sleep outside the new IKEA they're building here though because apparently, they give really good things to the first 100 people at an openinig.
You gotta choose your battles man.
Dellah just slammed her cheek into a wooden chair and is holding a small bunny filled with ice on it. It looks like we beat her because she has a huge bruise already. She woke up from her nap today and fully speaks like a grown up. It's eerie because yesterday she didn't do that....even this morning. Ruby has not been informed that she is a baby and has limitations besides just that and that she can't do stuff. She wants to walk around and leave the house and drive the car and fly a plane when she can't even crawl with both legs under her yet. She must not have gotten the memo that she's about two shakes shy of the short bus....She's truly beautiful my little Ruby. I love that baby.
Good thing about Utah is that tomorrow is a holiday and I get my Gabriel all day long. Maybe I'll get a nap!!!!!
just think of it.

rubiferous

it was the fourth of July when we celebrated independence. Gabriel, Dellah and I but especially Ruby. Ruby crawled for the first time in over 14 months of her life and she did it on freedom day....appropriate.
Now she crawls everywhere and all that crawling has pushed 4 new teeth out of her gums all of a sudden.
amazing.
My mom is 40 miles away on the freeway headed here for a visit. I'm excited to see her.
I had such a good time the other night with my friends Emily Andi and Kirsten. We went to the movies but we didn't see a movie and then we went to dinner and Andi bought us food and then we went back to her house and talked and talked and talked. It was nice to be around folks with no babies in sight.
It was really odd that on my last post there were all these total strangers commenting...
where are my people?
Where are my friends?
do you just not check here anymore because I don't get online as much anymore?
I understand.

so here's the thing

So here's the thing. I shop at Wal Mart. I shop there and I go there and I like it. I save so much money and I get things I need and I like it. Here's another thing...I don't change my underwear every day and I come down here to the internet room while my children are sleeping sometimes and I'm totally ok with both of those things. Wanna know another thing? Sometimes when I'm out and I'm at the end of my rope and I need a coca-cola product and I don't feel like buying some kiddy orange fruity crap for my children....I pour coca-cola in their sippy cups and watch them chug away....I drink coca-cola and I like it.
yep
I do these things.
You know what else I do? I just chew gum sometimes instead of brushing my teeth because I JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE BRUSHING THEM!
Here's one. The other day I was in DI and some guy looked at me and my crying 2 year old and said, "Good G_D, Why don't you control your child!" to which I responded, "EX-CUUU-SSE ME, SIR? (to which he replied, 'you heard me') (to which I replied) WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU COULD CONTROL A TWO YEAR OLD WHEN THEY'RE CRYING? THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR OPINION! (at the top of my lungs). After which I meandered around the store pretending to look at things while my blood returned to a simmer. You just absolutely SO DO NOT go there with me. I totally went hos on that dude (and no, he was not mentally challenged, however, testicularly remains in question).
I do my best, you know? I don't read fashion magazines because they make me feel bad about myself. I don't hang out with snobby people because they make me feel bad about myself. I don't read trendy parenting magazines telling you what Brad and Angelina's baby eats breakfast in because....you get the picture.
My new house is going to be built in the very same parking lot as a wal-mart....wal mart and lowe's actually and I'm pretty stoked. I can just ride my bike there to get milk at midnight.
and I like it.
you know what else? I totally want the refrigerator with the television in the door so that I can watch meaningless television when I eat cereal or make food. I love television.
I love sugar.
I love saturated fats.
I love carbohydrates in all their forms
I love meat
and I cry when I hear cheesy mormon songs on the Sounds of the Sabath.
I have back fat.
I have front fat.
I have grey hair.
I have mid-digital hair on my ring fingers.
It's possible I have toe fungus.
I only read my scriptures a few times a week.
I hardly ever make it to all three hours of church.
I hardly ever make it through the day without thinking something terrible or mean or cruel and probably saying it after I think it.
I love buying things and returning them and feeling like I have free money to buy something else.
that's the thing.
I just am all of these things and I just kind of always will be until I am like Jesus and that just has to be ok.
Sometimes I feel like people try to be someone they think they should be and I'm just too tired to do that. I'm too tired to make dinner. I'm pretty glad it's friday because I like fridays.
Tonight I am going to the movies with my friends because that's what friends do. Now I am going back upstairs because that's what mothers do.

pushing it

Today we went with GAbriel to get a CT scan on his head to make sure that his headaches were just migranes and not tumors or something...that was 12:30 and then after an hour or so we dropped him back off and work and went to Draper to look at Downeast Home for some Pottery Barn good at Target prices....then we went to TJ Maxx and then I ran over my stroller because both of my children were screaming and I forgot to put it in the trunk...the stroller is fine...then we went to Sandy to drive past the huge dirt area that rarely changes but we like to call it 'home' and got a happy meal and came back to Salt Lake where we went to the Health Department to pick up my INH prescription (I'm a public health hazard so I have to go to the 'infectious disease' office once a month right next to the HIV office) and then we went to DI where I saw Zendina and then we went to Hires Big H but they didn't have a peanut butter milk shake so we went to pick up Gabriel from work because it was 6. Somewhere between the big plot of dirt in Sandy and seeing Zendina in DI I realized that I was totally pushing it with my children. They were miserable. They were all sticky and dirty and frizzy and wrinkled and I was like, ONE MORE THING...JUST ONE MORE THING....ME, ME, ME....poor things. We go days without leaving the house and then we have these marathon things. moderation.
I wish it was easy for me to understand what has happened to my body. Amazing, really, when you think that I used to prance around life in a leotard and tights and not look that bad and now, well, I look 'that bad'. Blah blah, two kids, blah blah...I don't think that's an excuse when there are people that look teeny and they have 4 kids and I don't even seem to be losing one pound after having Ruby. I feel a strange indignance towards it. I'm so mad, actually. It's a weird feeling to have been something. I read the other day that you can't live in what you were or what you hope you will be...only what you are. I suppose that's true but I'm not throwing out the teeny pants just yet. I just can't do it. In my mind I'm normal...in the mirror i'm dillusional.
Gabriel goes out of town tomorrow AGAIN to Mexico until Friday...that's right robbers and theives...come and get us....
I have this little tin box of solid watercolors that I got in the kids department and I can't stop painting retarded things all the time...I have no idea what I'm doing but I really like it.
Wednesday I have the pleasure of cutting off Zendina's dread locks which are well past her bottom. She's ready to do it and I'm ready to help. It's a new day.
I like the sound of a washing machine and dryer going at the same time. It makes me feel the thrill of productivity with the comfort of slothfulness.
:)

Sunday things

I was thinking today about how all these love songs talk about Sundays and rainy sundays and sleeping in on sundays and relaxing and movies and whatnot....I think if mormons thought really hard about it, most love songs don't really apply to us.
Today I taught relief society about prayer. That was good since I really like praying and prayer almost to a fault. I think you should pray about pretty much everything and therefore, there is probably a backlog of answers to most of my petitions but I think I'll keep it up.
Then we had a meeting with the stake presidency where they released Gabriel as the second counselor in the bishiopbric.....whew! I finally get my husband back on sunday afternoons, I get to have help going to church, I get to see him on tuesday nights, I get an extra lap to try and juggle babies on in sacrament meeting while they spit raisins on my silk stuff......and then in the next breath they called him to be the FIRST counselor in the Bishopbric....oh well....for that nanosecond, it was nice to be 'released'...now back to the grind.
I stood outside the nursery door today for a while and watched through a little crack how big my Dellah is and how she learns about Jesus and talks and plays....it's surreal. I taught her (since we live next door to the Salt Lake Temple and see it all the time) that the Temple is Jesus' house and now she says "mira mami, templo, casa de Jesus'....cute
I guess I have a few years before she actually goes there and realizes that you don't actually SEE Him in his house (or at least I never have) and thinks I lied...for now it's cute.
Mexico beat Iran in their first game of the world cup...I can't believe I even know that but Gabriel is a little obsessed with the whole thing so VIVA MEXICO!!!
speaking of Mexico...the inlaw thing has simmered down since we got calls from both of his parents yesterday apologizing and we figure it's better to forgive than fester in hatred, racism and terrorism...what?
I got some nice things at Anthropologie the other day because Andi said I should tell Gabriel that getting some nice things at Anthropologie would make up for my current emotional strain...like a business transaction...you buy me this, I forget about THAT!...
I got a nice little bowl made of ceramic leaves and some perfume and a belt...which was too big and I'm taking it back...not big, good, big, bad..
The truth of the matter is, there has GOT TO BE a special corner of Heaven for people who can change some of these diapers I've been changing lately and keep their lunch down...I swear to you!....rancid.
I think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby looks like she's going to be a mouth breather and I think that's pretty funny because she's just a baby, not the shroud or Tourin or something. I love how famous people have babies and all of a sudden it's like famous people invented 'the baby' when I'm pretty sure Eve invented the baby...well, God, but Eve too.

wednesday already

It's funny how time flies. It seems like it was just sunday and now we're halfway there again! This morning, my little Ruby woke up before Dellah and we had a few minutes alone to eat cereal and chat and she crossed her chubby little arms to say the prayer. When those little firsts happen sometimes out of the blue, I really feel like all is right in the world.
Zendina came over today and we swam in the pool downstairs and chatted about things. It was a very nice visit.
Most of the times, I've noticed that the anxiety of a future event is not nearly comparable to the drama that event actually holds....since I was a little kid I've always been the type to not invite people to have sleepovers (or I suppose the adult equivalent to that would be just a visit) because I would get all stressed out about not having enought fun toys or my house was boring or I just would run out of things to say in my mental scenario. It never ceases to amaze that if I just calm the heck down about hanging out with people, it most always turns out completely normal and low key....seriously, the baggage we all lug around! It's atrocious!
I made a pretty good birthday cake for Dellah's birthday (my first maternal baking experience) and I realized that all the flavors you thought only your mom could create with edible ingredients, actually can be recreated by following a recipe...I would almost prefer that they stay unattainable somehow because that would make the fact that all the other sensations of childhood are more dull now, a little easier to 'swallow' as it were.
hooray for buttercream icing.
Hooray for babies in their diapers playing with water.
Hooray for the way chlorine makes your hair feel like you have product in it.
hooray for inlaws that tell your husband you're a witch and you're the reason he's changed for the worse creating a huge family eruption...
wait.
no.
not hooray for that.
viva mexico and all your antiquated ignorance!!!

Dellah Eve

tomorrow is my first child's second birthday. Once I get beyond the sheer impossibility that I even HAVE children, the fact that one of them walks and talks and refuses to obey is yet another hurdle to jump...two years old...what a little joy she is...truly the light of my life.
She is getting a wooden puzzle with magnetic fish on it with a wooden fishing pole and a magnet on the end of it. I'm sure it will be stone cold hit. Speaking of cold stone....the other day I went in and asked for the smallest to go pint and they gave me like a half gallon thing and charged me for the small one. We also signed up for the Birthday club so they just sent Dellah her free coupon to let her parents get ice cream on her birthday becuase she doesn't know any better. Viva Cold Stone!!
Tonight is Michelle and Ryan's wedding reception and we are going to see them and any people who may be going to see them as well at the Springville art museum. Long drive but worth it.
Have I mentioned that all systems are go again for the Sanchez townhouse in Sandy this winter! Hooray for the Sanchezes. I can't stop thinking about having my own 2106 square feet to do whatever the bleep I wanna do and have us all sleep in appropriately separate bedrooms and have my parents or any other visitors not have to sleep in Dellahs room and have her glow worm going off at all hours of the night. Two words...stainless steel appliances....ok, three words...ok, one word...whew!!
I have to get myself and small people dressed to go so I'll write more later.

back east

We're here in merry old Virginia with ourselves and our progeny. We're here with Gabriel's parents also that just got off a Carnival cruise to Puerto Rico...that's a pleasure. Especially when I was cutting his mom's hair this morning and she thought she would tell me that she never had post pardom depression with all six of her kids because the Lord loves her and that I should just 'animate' myself and snap out of it because she didn't have time to have depression (like I'm so lazy depression just landed on my stagnent body in the gutter or something.)...whatever. Never hurt the person's feelings that's holding scissors beside your cerebral cortex.
We had a horrendous plane ride with a reprieve in the Chicago airport when there was a reprieve in the food court with a Dunkin' donuts where I promptly bought half a dozen of these out of control creme puffs that took me straight back to my childhood before fat accumulated anywhere on me. Ruby had a fever...dellah screamed the whole way....Now we're here and we sleep in the same room...all 4 of us...so we've been waking up really early and then I've been sleeping in until noon if I can (take that, mother in law...that's right....noon!!...lazy, lazy me.)
Tomorrow we're going to williamsburg and on the way we're stopping at H&M to find some tender mercies and momentary happiness bought with filthy lucre. YES!! We're going to Busch Gardens on Fridsay...double YEs!
Before we came we went down to Provo to have a yard sale with my sister at Wymount and we made a cool $350 selling whatnots...of course that was gone mostly before we left but the best part of the day (besides the fact that my parents were there and I love to see them so much and have them see my children) was the fact that I got to go and do a girly thing with my friends at Marsha's house for Michelle's bridal shower. It was like manna in the wilderness. All these shiny girls and pretty faces...like wonderful...happy. I didn't get to stay long enough but it was a little sip of juice in a martini glass on a hot day.
Greeting from the east coast. We're sleeping on our niece's bed with the plastic sheet so I guess it's time to go try and be quiet on a crinkley mattress so we don't wake up the whole house.

internet in the house

We finally got a g-card for the computer in our bedroom so now we can have internet connected to our apartment and not have to borrow it from Gabriel's work's computer. It's a good feeling.
My parents are in town which is always a good feeling, especially since Lewi's got the things holding his arteries open now and we've got to cherish every moment with him and gently urge him to put down the saturated fats. My mom's going to women's conference. She went to Wal-Mart and bought some leather sandals like the ones I bought for $12.87 so she could walk around in comfort. I think when you have lots of money you forget that cheap places sometimes have good things.
Speaking of money. I don't think we'll be able to get the house we wanted. Too much money. The price rose $40,000 from the original quote we got and we've been trying to make it work in an imaginary budget but you can't get apples from grapes so we mourn a little because it would have been really great.
I wanted to talk for a sec about the earlier post where I wrote about being married versus being single and say that I am very sorry if I implied or even said that one was better or easier or harder or worse than the other. I know that being married and having children is wonderful. I know that being single was wonderful too but that there is always that emptiness and a nagging lonely feeling in the bottom of your conscience even when you're totally fine and having fun. I don't want to be condescending to you. I love you. I have a hereditary Eeyore the donkey aspect to my personality that taints my writing I find. I just have all this weird anger for some reason. I have been miserable with post pardom depression since after Ruby was born and the medicine sucks and I just feel like a stranger in my own life and especially my own body, for so long I can't remember being normal. I know I say caustic things disguised as prose to somehow be able to maintain that passive aggresive thing that seems so chic to do. I am so sorry, E and M if i offended you. I just miss you and some days I miss my life without my 24 hour on-call status so much I am tempted to run away and just be 'me' again. The transition from single to married and from married to housewife/homemaker person has been really hard for me. There is a family in that group of girls we have that no husband or child can replace and a happiness too. Not to say that I don't love my family. I do. I adore them and their little selves and Gabriel and his love and company and I know I am supposed to be here and I'm happy here and doing ok, it's just a sense of loss and distance because I want to be 'there' too. I don't recognize myself in the mirror. I am chubby and clogged pore-y and frumpy and other random things ending in 'y'. It's the medicine I take and the solitude that bring all this out I think.
Someone said last week that some years are questions and other years are answers. That really helped me. Not some hours or days or months but actual YEARS can be hard and trying and then some year from now I'll figure it out maybe. I know I'm just one person and I don't have the right to act like my problems are anything other than what they are...mine...I'm sorry again if I came across in any other way than sincerely in love with my friends and family...sincerely in love with God and grateful.
I am crying now.
I should stop

Sabado Gigante

(saturday april 22, 2006)
There's this one show that originates in Miami I think and all of Latin America watches it...It's called Sabado Gigante! and it's this variety show...so annoying. The announcer is like SAAABBAAADOOOO GiGANTEEEEEEEEE!
I was just thinking about that.
Anyway.
Today I got a sitter (his name is Gabriel) and I took a shower, got dressed, covered up my zits and my dark circles and went to encounter Cindy and Kim in REI. Then we went to encounter Steve 'Homeowner' Hansen and his wife Krista at their new house they bought. Then we all went to dum, dum, dum....THE BOMBAY HOUSE!!! Let me insert here that you can lie in your bed at night jonesing for that food and when you go and actually eat it, it is JUST LIKE your daydream or better...only more expensive.
It was so nice to see those folks and get in touch with my roots, so to speak, not that I'm uprooted but maybe I'm in a different planter or something. I had all these grandiose visions of Andi and Marsha and Emily being with us and then Marsha and Emily were gone to Vegas and Andi never got back to us.
sad. But glad I got to see them before they went off to Europe to cavort and try their luck at un-hostile hostels...fingers crossed. It sounds like cindy dropped a load of cash making sure she had every gadget for travelling so I hope she'll do REI proud.

(sunday april 23, 2006)
Ruby woke up this morning and couldn't eat because she couldn't swallow milk, her mouth was so full of sores and white headed chicken pox. She cried for an hour without stopping and I prayed for at least that long without stopping to know what to do since I was alone with her and Gabriel was speaking at ward conference. I finally called my mom and she told me to feed her through a syringe so I did that and 1ml at a time, she drank the milk. Poor, poor little missus. She really is a sore sight for eyes. I'm in a state of disbelief that she is going to be one year old on tuesday! unreal. I think my eyes refuse to see her as anything but a teeny baby.
I made pizza today. very good. Even made my sauce in the blender and grated mozarella and chopped onions and tomatoes and sprinkled corn meal on the crust...very good. Cindy left some oreo klondike bars here last night so that's for dessert...what would you doohooohooo, for a klondike bar?
My new food obsession is marshmallow popcorn balls...can't stop...can't stop....so good.
i love you.
xo
erin

BRING IT ON !

In a flurry of pink sweater shrugs and little dresses with flowers painted along the bottom hem and white ruffled socks and little white shoes from DI that basically look very new but were only two dollars, I couldn't forget the plastic, unrealistically colored grass and openable eggs with no yolks and random stocking stuffers for the spring (one of the compromises with marrying a foreigner is that he didn't have easter baskets and hasn't learned how to do them so I bought my own kit kat and big red and small gummy lifesavers and pronounced myself the easter bunny). All the goods laid out, of course, what I might wear to feign that I actually had something new for the occasion swirled in my head until I finally fell asleep...only to be awakened, not at the normal hour of 9 or after or even having to wake my children up because they were still asleep when it came time to go to church...no...Dellah was standing in her bed at 7:15 in the morning (she NEVER wakes up that early) and informed me that she was not going to lay back down. 5 minutes later she was out in the living room playing kitchen and I knew it was all over somehow. I got dressed. Meagerly but springy. I got Dellah dressed. Gloriously and fluffy and springy. Ruby got awakened at the time to get to church on time and she got dressed. In the basically same outfit as Dellah which I never do but Easter is Easter and pink and stuff.
So I get all the snacks together and the coloring stuff and the juice and heated water for the powdered milk and passies and diapers and wipes and random unplayed with toys that will prove novel in the chapel...They're both in the stroller. The door is opened. Ruby starts to cry but I can handle it. Dellah starts to cry, but I can handle it. I promise treats. I give out passies. The crying persists. I wheel them out the door, unwilling to concede. The crying increases. Maybe I can still handle it. The faces redden, the sweating starts, the shaking begins (them, not me), soon the crying turns to shrieking and I realize that I can no longer handle it (even with my anti-depressants) so I come back in the door where the crying continues, two beautiful little pink confections melting to ugly, splotchy, sweaty, desperate creatures only formerly human, now, quite assuredly something else.
Happy Easter. I called Gabriel in tears and informed him we would be absent from Easter Sunday. At least I had a roast in the crock pot so that the smell of my frying brain was undetectable.
I found a second to reflect that the Savior died so we could overcome. Maybe I can. Just not right then.
The whole day went something like that morning.
Then Wednesday I was touching my little Ruby's hair that is all golden and soft and I notice a little bump under her hair...then I notice a little bump by her mouth...then I change her diaper and notice 3 little bumps on her cooch.
THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS!!!!
IT'S THE FRIGGING CHICKEN POX!!!! Do you have any idea when you get immunized for those? I do! It's on your one year check up....yeah...you know when Ruby will be one?...do you?....yeah...THAT'S RIGHT!...NEXT THURSDAY!! of course. So every time my child wakes up from a nap, she LITERALLY has 10 if not 15 MORE blistery pustules and I'm heart-broken for her, she's so sweet. The worst is that she's also teething her first little teeth and she has a fever of 102.5 with the chicken pox and she's just a wreck.
now we'll just wait till Dellah gets it.
yes!
I hope all of you wanting to marry someone and have sex and have all your problem disappear into the great, breezy oblivion of bouncy pink babies and picket fences will actually understand that life is life and it ABSOLUTELY does not get any better than it is right now for you. If you don't believe me I suppose you can keep pining away and know I'm right later.
Take it from an ex-piner....just go to the movies and take a nap and when you wake up, just be nice to folks and someone will marry you and that will be that.
I suppose that's not all the way true. It is nice to be married but it is hard and it brings up all your issues and you have to work it out because you don't want to be a statistic and then children are just these little strangers you have to harness and who knows how to do that?
Anyway, when I was little I had about 3 bumps when Jenny got the pox and I swear to you that right now I am itching and have random bumps and I live in fear of 'the POX!'
I agree with Marsha about blogs. It should way be more about writing that a popularity contest. This post was super long and it was mostly just for me. I fully expect that anyone who even comes here, stopped reading about 5 run-on paragraphs ago.
I went to J.Jill last night and I really super want this one skirt with a little ruffle along the bottom and about only 10 0r 11 things in Banana Republic. Please, Santa. Also I really need a hair product that isn't lotion for your body because that really doesn't work too well and I'm all out of the legit.
On a happy note, I really love body flex. I have lost about an inch or two and you don't even have to MOVE! it's a miracle, I tell you....a MIRACLE!!

eek!

Did you people see the news on any channel where Jason Anderson got hit with a baseball bat riding his bike down the street and he blacked out and pulled himself up by his arms on an electric box but saw his attackers right before he blacked out, calling it a senseless act of random violence with malicious intent?....hmmmm....could ALL of that be true? tragical.

deliverance

Gabriel and I got invited to go to this luncheon for the Sons of the Utah Pioneers this afternoon in the upstairs of the Lion House. That house is pretty phat and if I were a little child of one of the 150 little children that lived there, I would probably be thinking I was pretty cool. So I was there in this lunch and a congressman spoke and was talking about the constitution and the pioneers and he said, "The French are always revolting" which of course has this double entendre and everyone laughed and I thought...how weird that all these people are here in the middle of the day on a wednesday eating yeast rolls with honey butter and thinking they can make fun of a whole country. I'm full on glad they didn't think to make fun of the Mexicans who just had this whole big 40,000 person march on sunday to boycott the emigration situation (good rhyme) because then I would have to get all up in their wrinkley faces and ring them a new one. We were talking on the way there about how we would start the organization called the sons of the Mexican pioneers and how just Gabriel and his brother would probably come...are they the sons of the pioneers that came to Utah or are they called that because they LIVE in Utah...I don't know but, Free Lunch, those are the only two words that mattered.
The relief society president, sister McCracken came to babysit and only Dellah was awake so that went ok since I handed her this whole container filled with skittles and M&M's when she walked in the door and Dellah was all over her like the S on a skittle from then on. She brought Dellah this little snow globe with glitter and whinnie the pooh as a peace offering and Dellah was like, 'yeah, whatever, give me the candy'. I would probably be the same way since winnie the pooh gets on my nerves.
Ruby will be one year old on the 25th and at one year, babies stop breast feeding or drinking formula and they can have whole milk so we've been substituting an ounce of milk with 5 of formula and 2 of milk with 3 of formula and so on until we were at half and half and then today I was like, ok, for a year now I have been buying two cans of formula every two weeks at $28 a can and I am so totally sick of spending $120 a month on powdered crud so I'm doing 6 ounces of whole milk and that is just that. I microwaved it. I shook it to distribute the heat evenly. I walked over to Ruby lying in wait for refreshment. I put it in her mouth and BAM! she just starting sucking....like it was what she had always drunk.
Hail to the financial freedom, the deliverance, the emancipation, the bill of divorcement from the nasty powder cans!!
now we have to find $350 to buy her a crib and a front facing car seat...
does this ever end? If it weren't for the large horchata at Betos...$1.83 of bebida refrescante I might blow a gasket!

woohoo!

I got to DI today to do my daily rounds (not daily but often) and I realized that they had marked everything up. Small baby t-shirts were like $4 and women's skirts and stuff were like $8 and I wish there was a font large enough for me to understand WHY ON THE EARTH THE MORMON CHURCH WANTS TO MARK UP STUFF THAT GOOD PEOPLE GIVE TO THEM SO THAT POOR PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO SAVE MONEY TO BUY A HOUSE CAN'T EVEN BUY A STUPID KID'S SHIRT WITH A BUNCH OF FOOD STAINS ON IT FOR LESS THAN $3!!!! It just irate-ifies me! It makes me have to think of new words for anger!! It's not enough that you're going to get something with someone else's funk on it but now you have to pay a dollar for each stain!
it's sick.
Anyway, I found some things that were still $1 and changed the tags on the ones that SHOULD have been $1 and got an Oilily dress for $3 and some brand new white leather nordstrom sandals for Dellah Faye and I found a copy of my very favorite book as a child for 5o cents...it is called 'Rabbit's New Rug' and I love it. Just seeing the inside graphics makes me feel all good inside. So, after I was done being totally embittered, I actually had a good day at a couple of DIs. Then I got a really bad stomach ache after trying to exercise so I figured that was some greater power telling me not to exercise so I had a Mountain Dew.
Have you ever thought that you want to go get a pedicure but your toenails are so gross you are just embarrassed? That's how I feel right now. I've never had a pedicure or a manicure or been waxed in any way or had my hair professionally dyed. Isn't that funny since I basically eat and breath the desire to be a beautyschooltician? I suppose the curse with that is that you feel like you should just do it yourself because you don't trust folks. It just makes you end up feeling gross and homemade..
Speaking of which, the homemade, not the gross, Gabriel made dinner tonight on account of my sick stomach...grilled cheese sandwiches....exquisite...even that tastes so good when you don't make it yourself. Have I mentioned lately that Gabriel is like the very best person ever? He is. And his bottom is cute too...
Right now we're watching the mexican news on channel 99...I suppose that's just one more way to tell that I must really love him.

what a wonderful world

So I don't know if everyone goes to 7-11 more than me and have already seen these amazing drink machines but I was agog. You put the ice in your humongous cup and press a flavor button like cherry or lemon or vanilla and then while the little light is on you press the beverage button and the flavor comes out with your drink! amazing. I truly think there are those people in the world with dreadfully too much time on their hands but amazing, none the less. Next time you want to get you or your family 1900 ounces of beverage for 8 cents, you should try it!
So I taught relief society today and then we actually made it all the way through sacrament meeting through the merits of a ziploc bag of mini marshmallows and a small plastic cup and saucer with three almonds that Dellah would pour from the cup to the saucer and the saucer to the cup and the cup to the....plop, plop, plop....you understand...plop plop is so much more desireable that that scream that breaks glass and is accompanied by a stiffening of the legs and a flailing of the arms...
so I am Erin the Conqueror...
We found out that the house we want is a lot more money than we expected or that they told us it would be and, after mourning for a little while, I picked my bottom lip off the floor and we thought, why not just go and see what deal they can give us and just see. Gabriel has done work for the owner of the building company so he will give us a discount, we just don't know how much yet....until then, we put down some money to hold the perfect house in the perfect spot and we'll just send up alms to the gods of finance that we can afford to buy the rest of it.
The nursery people gave Dellah a doll and she wasn't having any of that since the only other little kid in there is a boy and they just assumed he would want a truck and she, a doll...whatever! She made it abundantly clear that they were to put that doll back in the cupboard and get her a truck...now! So then they both had two trucks and life was happier. They also stopped giving her goldfish crackers after a while and she said, "pez, galleta, yep, yep"...'pez...pez' (which means fish) and then finally after 5 minutes of the galleta, pez, yep of it all, she said, "CRACKER!"....I suppose she decided they weren't understanding spanish baby talk so she busted out with english....I have no idea where she learned cracker but it was really funny. Ruby ate some banana puffed rice things and then proceeded to put her big opened mouth on my face for an hour or so and give me slobbery kisses...I literally smell like banana and my face is all stiff from that particular beauty masque.
so I should probably make dinner or lunch or whatever but I just want a sandwich. Maybe I can cook an onion or something so it smells good in here and just make Gabriel a sandwich...yeah...I'm sure that'll go over well. 8 hours at church for a sandwich...
I found the body flex videos at DI...I was so excited because I haven't done body flex since my mission and it's so weird but it totally works...for two dollars, maybe I can look better by our trip to Virginia to visit Gabriel's brother in May...I mean, our trip to H&M, I mean, family...
So I want all of the girls to be able to have a weekend that we do every year so we can always get together and see each other. Doesn't that sound fun? We can go to different places and do different stuff every time. Married people, not married people, but just girls and we can eat out and shop and stuff. what do you think?

owies

today I went out in the pouring rain/snow/poop to get my medicine from the pharmacy and go to DI when I got a call from Andi who had heard from Whitney that Downeast home in Sandy was having this huge sale on children's clothes from a really expensive brand name...so I got on the freeway and went to meet Andi and look at the pretty, pretty clothes and covet most of them and buy only 3 of them. While I was up at the cash register, Dellah was in her stroller and was playing with Xan who was standing beside her...The next thing I know, she has fallen on her face on the cement floor and is screaming with blood in her mouth. I was holding Ruby who also started to wail and I grabbed Dellah and Andi put Ruby in the carseat and Dellah and Ruby were screaming so loud the world stopped turning for a few minutes from sheer cacophony, not to mention all the shoppers who stopped to watch us exit into the pouring snow to go to the hospital. Dellah's lip was split open on the inside and her tooth was moved back and down...Upon shutting the car door and calling Gabriel, the floodgates of sadness and guilt and all other maternal negativity were opened and I was rivaling the sky with precipitation...My poor baby...my poor little beautiful creature with a huge lip and bloody drool and a tooth that will probably turn brown and fall out and she's not even two! So we took her to the ER and they said she was not quite stitchable and then we took her to the dentist who said to go to the pediatric dentist so we went to the pediatric dentist and he said, because Dellah spends all day with a pacifier in her mouth, the tooth that was moved back was actually not moved back far enough to go behind her bottom teeth (which would have meant having to move it back and blood and tears) because her front teeth are a little further out like a true passy sucker, we should just leave it alone and whatever happens to the color will happen and we should give her motrin and let her sleep. She kept looking at me with gigantic blue eyes and a huge bloody lip and saying, 'owie, mami....mami, owie...' and a bunch of other unintelligable things which had something to do with her mouth...I have never seen my children bleed before and I really didn't like it at all...what a brave little missy...she was over it long before I will be, I think...
It made me think how much parents love us...it's a little insane how much my world revolves around two small people who treat me like 'the help' and never say thank you for anything.
I think being a parent really is a way to be like God. It's hard.
thank goodness for black forest ham sandwiches with kettle cooked potato chips on toasted bread or I'd go crazy...

serendipity of the first degree

So, aside from the point of the blog, may I insert here that, at some point in my life, I was exposed to tuberculosis by some nasty person who coughed in my atmosphere and have had a positive skin test for it for about 7 years or so. I recently started a regimine of medicine that I have to take every day for 6 months to kill all the lurking, dormant tuberculosis so that, some day, when my defenses are down, it doesn't crop up to kill me or whatnot...the problem with the medicine is that there are side effects, and, of course, when there are side effects possible, even for 1 percent of the people alive, they end up being MY side effects so, I can't seem to wake up in the morning and the whites of my eyes look yellow and some other things best left unposted...
ANYWAY...yesterday, tuesday, I decided to scrounge myself up off the couch and take a shower for the first time in days and put on something clean which ended up being my dorkiest whitish khaki pants and some stupid t shirt and sandals and no make up and I had just popped a zit on my chin that had been threatening to erupt for days which left a huge uncoverable red mark....I needed to get some student manuals for the family and marriage relations class that my mom teaches at the distribution center so I got this miraculous spot on the street in front of the JSMB and decided to run across the street even though the light was turning red and I have this whole stroller issue slowing me down...as I walked to the door I noticed in the huge picture windows that I should have totally paid more attention to myself and then I looked ahead and saw....Jared Clark and Suzanne Heaton....obviously I hadn't seen Jared in almost two years and Suzanne in more time that that so to think how close I was to not seeing them at all in 10 more seconds was baffling...I had to hug Jared a really big hug because he is not a small person and I wanted to make up for lost time. Notwithstanding the ugliness of my face and outfit, I think I felt the way we will feel in Heaven when we see each other and realize we are in the same place and it's been so long and we are so happy. I don't understand married people who act like they never had friends of the opposite gender before the got married or if the did, they are all chilly and weird to them...I was just so glad to see Jared! At least the babies looked cute and Dellah sang a rousing rendition of kinkle kinkle little star to them as we all stood in line at the distribution center. To make things better, as if they could get better, when I got back in the car, the song, 'Suicide Blonde' was on and that is a really good song (once in a long while).
Today we went to pick up Gabriel from the airport because he's back from Mexico. I didn't get a present this time but I informed him that every time he goes away, I expect a present. He seemed ok with that. I can't believe Mandisa got kicked off American idol. I so hate that Bucky Covington guy and I wish it would have been him but I guess those that don't vote don't really have a say.
I had a crown burger today and I think it is seriously one of the best foods on the green earth created by the Lord. My stomach still feels happy....except for that one little episode when I had to leave my family behind and tear off running for the bathroom when we got home....a small price to pay....I'd rather have to run every now and again that have that pesky gall bladder killing me every time I have greasy food. I got a book about the greek isles...I hope I go there some day...at the rate they're going, I'm pretty sure Cindy and kim willl make it around the world before age 35...as for the rest of us, we buy books at DI for a dollar. :)

faith

I believe that some day, I will stop having these little red moles appear on my skin. I believe some day I will get to sleep until I feel like waking up and then sleep some more. I believe that eating really yummy food will one day be seen as, not a way to get and stay chubby, but the only way to live. I believe that even when things are hard like the mostly always are, Jesus had it harder and he knows how to help. I like what I heard yesterday; Jesus is the great Creator and he knows how to fix what he has made.
I like when my husband has a fresh haircut and a fresh shaved face and yummy cologne and wears a black button up shirt with a little stretch that makes him look very manly. I like when my baby says, 'Mami' whenever she has a problem because it makes me feel like I can do anything. I like when I wear sparkling accessories and feel sparkling myself. I like cutting hair in high heels like my alter-ego Monique would. I like Ling Ling's pot stickers from Costco because they take 7 minutes to make and they taste like a restaurant. I like thinking about taking naps and exhort all within the sound of my voice who do not have offspring to please, please take a nap on my behalf and drool on your pillow and wallow around in your covers and stick one of your legs out of the blanket and rub it on the top of the covers until you fall ever so softly to sleep and then wake up with squinty eyes and impossible hair to have a yummy treat....think of me....think of me fondly....

church on saturday

I like conference. I like watching it and I love feeling good and learning things and remembering things I already learned. I realized today, though, that when the camera zooms into the conference center at the beginning, and it's like on the ceiling and then goes down to the choir, if I wasn't a Mormon and I just flipped the channel to conference, it FULL ON looks just like the starship enterprise in there! Have you noticed that? If it had little floating seats it would look just like the senate meetings in Star Wars...peculiar....curiouser....
I made chicken salad and orange cool whip, fruity salad and cut up strawberries and baked cookies and got all ready to have my aunt, Merri Ellen and uncle Charlie (whose real name is Robert) and my sister, Flarnk (whose real name is Jenny) and her husband, Kendall and their baby, Ethan come over to my house. They got here all around the same time...around 8:30-9-ish and Dellah's bedtime was at 8 so that gives a clue. Ethan was really cuddly and my babies were all crusty and moody and 'don't touch me or look at me or I'll scream and cry'...they totally don't get that you only really have kids so they can pick up stuff off the floor that you don't feel like bending to pick up AND so you can show them to people and have people think they're cute....today they weren't super cute...Dellah threw up in the sink after squishing her finger in the laundry closet door and Ruby wouldn't finish one single bottle without crying....sheesh...I gotta get me one of those babies that's just a little lower maintenance. My uncle lost 40 pounds by stopping the consumption of Mountain Dew and drinking water....food for thought. I forgot to bring in the cookies I baked from off the balcony so no one got to eat them and now I'm "stuck" with thirty of my favorite powdered sugar coated little balls of bliss while my husband is out of town for the next 3 days in Mexico AGAIN!!...man, you can take the Mexico out of the Man but you can't seem to take the man out of Mexico!!! It's the 3rd time already this year alone! crazy.
The Henri Bendel Pomegranate candle smells like how I picture my house in Heaven is going to smell...I wonder if we will be able to smell in heaven...ARE there smells in heaven? Dessert for thought...

por fin!!

Now that I'm pretty sure no one even checks this to see if I'm still alive, Gabriel got the laptop back so I can write a wee bit more. Just to give a run-down, so much has happened...wow, where to start...let's see, it's been 12 days so...that's about 144 diapers, 84 bottles of milk, 50 screaming fits, 25 time outs, 30 penicillin pills, 5 showers (yep, just five), 3 doctors appointments, one occupational therapy appointment and a partridge in a pear tree...
same old thing...I guess if a person doesn't write in their blog for two weeks and a tree falls in the forest....it still makes a noise.
I just got finished cleaning the house because my aunt and uncle are in town from North Carolina and they said they were coming over to visit...I haven't heard back from them still but it feels good to have clean mirrors and vacuumed floors and pictures hung on the wall...I also tried to take care of the extra chocolate covered krispy kremes because they were cluttering the counter...you know, you do whatchu gotta do!
Ruby rolls over in her crib and likes to stand up and hang on to the ottoman she drank out of a straw the other day. Dellah walked up the stairs and slid down the slide by herself at the park and swang in the big girl swing while I pusehd her...if only she would stop being addicted to a pacifier, we could probably understand a lot more of her constant babble.
Ruby will be a year old on the 25th of April...I can't even hardly believe that but mostly I can't believe it's been a year since I gave birth and my pants still don't fit!!!!
yesterday I was walking in the building and there was this stick figure girl with this little piece of fabric attached to her lower body that she obviously thought was a skirt and she was paying the pizza guy and hauling a big old pizza box up to her apartment...I have to believe that she was just the middle man and was then going to deliver it to someone else. She obviously only eats cucumbers.
I have recently become addicted to going to DI and finding small clothes for my children for a dollar. The other day we were there and we saw this really old homeless looking guy with gray hair and facial hair and he was asleep on one of the couches that was for sale, holding one of those nylon pinwheels that goes in the garden where each of the petals was adifferent rainbow color...I thought to myself...thank goodness my children got to see that...truly America at its finest...you just never know what you can find at DI...my favorite is how they sell stuff you can get for free in real life for like $3.
anyway...now I've updated myself in cyberspace.

strep

I feel like poop. I woke up after sleeping for 14 hours and I need to go back to sleep. My throat is covered in white nastiness and I am taking antibiotics. I was looking forward to a very different weekend like visiting Marsha on this, her birthday, or returning some bad purchases or swallowing without agony and tears....I just sneezed and was brought to my knees in pain...I notice there has been a famine of comments to most everyone's blog...I wonder if that is some lunar phenomenon or if everyone is bored or busy...I'm not busy so I better stop being boring then. time to go.

luck o' the Irish

So my parents named me Erin in 1976 in rural North Carolina where I would be the only Erin for miles around. Every substitute teacher with blue hair and bi-focals would call for 'Erwin', 'Ervin', 'Errrin Tootle', 'is HE here' and all that I endured with irate grace that the word Erin eluded so many southerners...occasionally, I still encounter occasional correspondence spelling my name AAron which is obviously the masculine way and I just suck it up but today....TODAY.....TO DAY, was my day, America....yes....today was free taco day at Taco maker...if...yes, and only if your name is Erin...yes!
Now taco maker is, almost, the most disgusting mexican food that I have encountered in my natural life but when they call my name, I come a runnin'....and it's for two weeks! Free tacos to everyone named Erin for two weeks! The rather portly woman at the register who was missing most of her teeth informed me that I was actually the first Erin to have been by since the promotion a week ago...(i know there are more Erins than just me, I'm pretty sure it's the taste (or lack thereof) of the food and the toothless service precluding most discerning Erins from frequenting the Taco maker). But I needed validation. Today was my day. Erin Day. Green eyed, dark haired glow in the dark white with freckles, Irish Erin day.
Erin go Bragh!
While we sat in the food court with my little family, my frugal husband beaming with pride that his wife got a free taco and he used his Blimpie punch card to get a free ultimate club so our whole lunch was $1.71 for a drink (and a little more for an oreo McFlurry because, you know...), Ruby began pulling her blanket in front of her face and pulling in down again while we said peek-a-boo...over and over again, my little Ruby played a game, cognitively, alertly, intentionally!....this may be normal for the other kids but Ruby has been a perpetual conundrum to me as a mother and now this!...my little baby is a real baby!! So I cried in the food court eating my free taco and watching my happy baby...
a good day.
except I think I'm getting sick...it's the throat...it gets me every time.
I got my little treats that I bought off of Marsha's etsy site and I am so happy with them...so cute...a little pair of so cute paper girls...
happy Erin day, everyone...may the force be with you as it has so obviously been with me today...
xoxo

Tuesdee

We had one of those awkwardly long terms with the 'work computer' and Gabriel took it back on monday so I'm down here in the computer room at the Brigham (apartments) typing on this huge keyboard that feels like its fake it's so big. Our car is in the shop until tomorrow night so I have been maroon fived at my house doing nothing...I suppose I could go and take a walk but that would be overrated and much too exerting.
I took a shower today...that was enough exertion. I have to give props to shave gel...it's just miraculous, actually...isn't it? How that bright blue little dot becomes a whole leg full of lavish foam? I for one don't know how I shaved without it before it was on sale at Big Lots.
These are some things I wish Utah had:
Dunkn' Donuts
Big Al's (seafood place in North Carolina)
H&M
Top Shop
Krogers supermarket
Urban Outfitters
humidity

That about sums up my wish list.
also I wish I lived by all my friends so I could have people to talk to that weren't internet people but internet people are better than no people.
goooooo....oreo McFlurries...especially when you get a little dollop of the creme from the inside of the oreo that's all cold and mixed with ice cream.....so gooooood.

sundee

Today I taught a lesson on the Holy Ghost and personal revelation in Relief Society. I feel like this about it....'ummm...i think it could have been better...it's all a big blur....I feel a little sick to my stomach'....
I suppose there's always next second sunday of the month.
Then I came home 20 minutes before the end of the three hours, stepping on two old people in my row because there were people trying to say their feelings and no one could hear them for my unabashed banshee sisters. It was dumping snow today so that was really good. I love when you're inside and it's dumping snow..
So I got home and took a nap while my babies took and nap and then Ruby woke up after 1 1/2 hours so I got up to feed her. Aren't you glad you're reading this? I sure am glad to be writing it....blllaaaaahhhhhh, blah blah
anyway, I made this new recipe today for penne rustica with whole wheat penne and 1/4 cup of olive oil and onion and garlic and zuchinni (it was supposed to be broccoli, but come on, i hate broccoli) and a cup of chicken broth and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese and salt and pepper and bacon.....YUMMM...of course we added the traditional Sanchez avocado but that was some good pasta...
I'm going through all my real simple magazines from the last 3 years and tearing out the pages I think I will want to refer to later....I'm realizing there is a tweezerman ad in every single real simple...strange. I have some tweezerman tweezers that I found in the hallway here at the Brigham apartments...of course I picked them up because they're expensive...they're lavender....i boiled them to get any foreign funk off them and they're great!
i digress.
I think being the last person to watch Walk the Line was a draw back because I had heard nothing but fantastic reviews and I somehow expected it to be a transcendant experience and leave me glowing with my car lubed and my teeth flossed but it was good. Just a movie...I kept focusing on Joaquin Phoenix's scar and getting mad for some reason. I really liked it but not as much as Nanny McPhee. Reese Witherspoon was so skinny though...her legs were like little girl legs.
My new food thing is making perfect white/gold pancakes and making more than I need and eating them later cold....i love me some flap jacks!! Also I bought some creme horns last night at Wal-Marticus and I feel a relapse coming on...I've been clean for 18 months but the gall bladder's out now so lardy creme can't touch me now....bring on the creme horns!

friday night fever

Tonight the Sanchezes went to the Bombay house for the first time since Emily Asplund's birthday like two years ago when Dellah was 4 months old and I announced I was pregnant with Ruby...after having various people be amazed by that announcement and some laugh at the combined good and horribleness of it, I went home and threw up the Bombay house and hadn't been back....until today when the vegetable coconut kurma was in rare form and the mango lassi was as the dews from heaven...MAN I'M GLAD WE WENT TO THE BOMBAY HOUSE!! Dellah loved the kurma too and the naan and I thought, "train up a child"...only the lights are so low and yellow there that I didn't realize her whole face was that same yellow/orange color from all the lovin' of all that kurma until we got outside and needed a serious wet nap....and then we went to Cold Stone and had a sugar fix and now we're home watching 'walk the line'...it has been a really good day. I'm so happy it's friday. Nothing really changes but for some reason the weekend just always feels better doesn't it? Last night Ruby did the sign for 'eat'. I teach those babies signs from the time they're tiny and it's so nice when they do them back at the right time...ah, little Rubiferous, she's really in there..

la nada que para mi es algo

Yesterday I met Andi at the Gateway mall and we walked around in the sun and snow with 4 children. Consumerism with children is not for the faint of heart...especially in Anthropologie and j. jill where you get looked at like a special kind of leper if you bring strollers and children who scream and run...it was good to be with Andi and sit in the food court and talk about stuff. I realized that if I did things like that more often, I mean things with adults from yesteryear, then I would feel a lot more like life is the party I'm pretty sure it is on some level.
Then I went to enrichment last night where, for some reason, I felt compelled to wear this ultra clingy dress with slits up the sides and a scoop neck that I had no business wearing and then I put a little sweater thing over it and my leggings with no feet and my cute flats with the bow...who even knows what I must have looked like (probably the girl that didn't get the memo that you shouldn't have back fat or belly fat to wear that dress) but I actually felt good about myself like, 'yeah...that's right...I own this dress and I wear it and I look cute, ok?' I think that's something good about me. I have always worn things that I wanted to wear even when they didn't make obvious sense but I feel good and then I look good.
They were celebrating the 164th birthday of the RS and we actually sang happy birthday to it which, for me, was where I had to draw the line but we listened to some sisters honor the elderly ladies in our ward (I know, the median age in our ward is actually 64 years old but these were the REALLY old ones) and I was just amazed at the 15 years spent in missions from one lady and the 13 children of another and the PhD in education from this woman who is just frail and tiny and sister Daines who was wearing THE actual dress that she wore after her wedding 76 years ago and the necklace that her husband gave her BEFORE they got married (this amazing art deco crystal bauble)....basically I left after having cake and thought, if I can even make it to 94 years old (which I sincerely hope I don't before Jesus comes back) and be even nearly as cool as these ladies, I will have done something really good. They honored 10 women and all of them said (which I thought was interesting) that forgiveness means forgetting and we cannot be happy without the forgetting... I started thinking how many times in almost 100 years you would have to forgive and forget in order to even stay sane...I'm glad I went.
I was supposed to teach the home school little girls in my building ballet this morning like I do every other thursday only this morning I was so tired it was just not going to happen so I thought I would just avoid the subject and disappoint everyone and not care and then I woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to go and felt that guilt when you know you're a jerk and there was a message from one of the moms saying they were going to cancel the class because Sariah was sick....yessssss....don't you just love when you are a slacker but you don't look like THE slacker because someone else did something slackerish first? I love that. So, I'm still in my night gown and have decided that my preferred outfit is somewhere between heels and a clingy dress and a nightgown...or maybe both. what should I make for dinner? I haven't made dinner in so long it's like a crime...one of the ladies last night was like, "I have learned that every meal I made for my family my whole life was part of me and an expression of love that we could all share in"...I felt like poop...
it's just so hard to think of something to make every day and then timing it just right and man...sheesh.
Oh, the funniest thing I heard on the view this morning was that someone said how much the public likes looking at fashion on the red carpet because it's on real women with real bodies instead of on the runway on human hangars....oh...and all this time I was thinking the movie stars were unhealthy and too skiny and now they're NORMAL? what? I am more and more convinced that famous people actually just fly in from another planet to say stupid things like that because the rest of us would never even think of saying something that dumb.
dellah is expressing angst from her crib by banging on the wall with her foot...i guess she's awake. duty calls.

making up for lost photos

these are Ruby's new summer shoes...I have to say that I just put them on her to see how cute baby feet look in sandals...obviously she only wears them inside since it's freezing outside but summer's commin' and she's ready... This is me and Ruby because we hang out a lot. She's cute...I've been cuter but it's all I can do these days...at least I'm happy...most of the time :)
This is Ruby and me in the living room of our old apartment that we don't live in anymore...that is how we live...Ruby attached to me in the Baby Bjorn because she can't be put down but hopefully she can get over that before kindergarten because this thing only goes up to 23 pounds.
This is Dellah who isn't going potty but she likes to sit like a funny person while she watches baby einstein...yes, she is wearing leg warmers with her skirt because the apple doesn't fall far from the mama tree and I think it looks even cuter on babies than on humans. Dellah is very cute and likes to say so many things and surprise us with things she knows that we didn't know she knew...like today she said giraffe...well, actually just 'raff' but she was looking at a picture of a giraffe so she toatally said giraffe..
so there, some pictures from the last little while...I tell you, it was traumatic to put these on here and I don't know how many times I can do it but maybe once a month or so or maybe more if I can figure it out and feel happy about it. I am sad that superman's wife died...it just seems too sad for words for their little mini superman kid...at least they're together now and maybe somebody will get them married in the big house so they can fly to the ice castle together forever.
We went to Ruby's therapy today and got told that maybe she needs to be put in a full body stocking thing to simulate closeness and comfort. She also is pretty sure that Ruby's having a meltdown lately because we moved and she is really sensitive to changes in her environment....I know, I know...it really does sound like bunk to me too but when you're around Ruby for longer than 2 hours you realize that she really has some issues that make her 'not like the others' so to speak....so now I'm looking for a neoprene unitard for an infant...good luck, Erin.
Today I have eaten 3 avocados in various forms, mostly in quesadillas...I also got the 'gotta have it' size of cake batter ice cream and ate it with much joy and rejoicing this afternoon and evening, thinking, this is the best ice cream on the face of the earth...
I would like to add Salma Hayak to my list of oscar favorities and Jamie Foxx to my list of disasters...i hate turquoise shirts with tuxedos...come on now...
Gabriel told me today that he has been reading my blog...I found that entirely appropriate since he is my spouse. I love Gabriel. He seriously works harder than anybody I know. I wake up and he's gone in the morning because he is that responsible...I am so happy I married someone who understands that you have to be like that to be successfu (because I know it but it's just so hard for me to do it)...I am also glad that he bathes every day (because I can't always say the same for myself) and that he wears pink ties and lavender ties and looks really nice all the time like a real life lawyer (because I like to look nice all the time but most of the time I look like someone wearing the same jeans and t-shirt every day)...basically, Gabriel is most everything I wish I was but am not yet...except a man, which I am glad I am not! he is wonderful. I love Gabriel.
By the way, that one Burger King commercial for the chicken sandwich where it's like a bucking bronco chicken and the guy is riding it is THE FUNNIEST thing I have seen in a long time...
go avocadoes, go coconut popsicles, go cold stone, go ling ling pot stickers, go Marsha for going to Europe, go me for uploading pictures, Go Rams '95!!! go winter for never ever leaving Utah and staying all year so we freeze to death.

time spent

we're living here among the wreckage of what used to be organized stuff but now, in this space, it's all come apart...we got to bed super late last night and today was stake conference so we dredge out of bed and go, and what?, The satellite feed from the stake center to our building was totally busted and we sat there for 45 minutes looking at each other other thinking, ok, we got out of bed to be uplifted and here we sit....then we got visual feed with no audio, followed by garbled audio with no visual and then barely intelligible audio with fuzzy visual for the last 40 minutes or so....with squirmy babies and no real cohesive spirit to keep you rivited, i can just go ahead and say my Sealy and my 400 thread counts were straight up screaming my name...we're watching the oscars right now and Ruby is sitting way up by my shoulder sucking her hand watching a stirring rendition of "it'shard out here for a pimp" like it's the philharmonic or something...I don't think baby einstein has come out with a "baby street smarts" video yet, so she'll have to take it easy on the gangsta rap...Ok, "it's hard out here for a pimp just WON the oscar and I have to say I'm a little sad because Dolly Parton was totally working it out with that travelin' through song and I have to say, I cried out of sheer Dolly is so good-ness...this is another reason why I really wish I had Tivo because this show really is just about 6 awards or so and it goes ahead on and lasts FOR ever...everyone's faces are getting more shiny and they all look a little bedraggled...
these are the people I think look amazing though:
Meryl Streep
Michelle Williams (man she looks am-azing)
Reese Witherspoon
Judi Dench (please Lord, let me look like her when I'm her age, she's my favorite lady)
Naomi Watts
Sandra Bullock (although I totally had a shelley segal ball skirt with pockets in the front like 8 years ago and everyone's like, wow, pockets, wow, whatever)
Felicity Huffman

these are the people I think looked rediculous:
Charlize Theron
the girl with Phillip Seymore Hoffman
I want to say Keira Knightly but I can't decide if my feelings are tainted by bad orthodontia
Charlize Theron

my new food obsession is avocado with salt...i'l l go eat a third one now...

saturday is a special day....

This particular saturday is especially special in a special way because, here we sit in the sanchez' newest living room that we rent, literally swimming in belongings that I am ready to forsake at this moment and live the life of a pauper...WHERE DID ALL THIS POOP COME FROM? AND WHY DO I HAVE WITHOUT A JOKE, 16 PAIRS OF DIFFERENTLY PATTERNED BLACK TIGHTS?...and that's just the black ones!!! We somehow have managed to stuff ourselves into this place that's even smaller than our OTHER one that we thought was too small...unfortunately, the balcony is not as deadly here on the third floor as it was on the 8th (I just tried to spell 8th and for some reason I couldn't figure it out...eighth, eigth...I'm tired)..
so,When you ask the elder's quorum to help you move, you basically sign up for, 'please go ahead and break everything I hold dear or is of any value in my life' help and to me that's not actually helping although I suppose you pay for what you get but I went and bought those hooligans krispy kremes and pineapple orange juice this morning I expect a darn sight more than negligence at the cellular level which obviously some of them struggle with on a daily basis....one guy actually shows up to help SOAKED in sweat like he's been on the treadmill since tuesday wondering what we want him to carry and I'm like, oh, I don't know....something WATERPROOF!!!...lame. So they dropped our flat screen tv on the floor, broke the wheel of the leg of the crib and thereby, broke the leg of the crib, broke the laundry closet door and that's only what we know so far! Then the brigham apartments gets it's parking garages broken in to this past week, and I have no idea until last night when I went to pick up Gabriel from being gone all week, that the passenger side door won't open because someone tried to pry it away from the car with a crobar and since they couldn't get it, now we can't either...double lame....or maybe that's triple lame...i suppose since my one solace was that my car was at least nice and clean and new looking, I am now being humbled...got it...thanks...
It's a lot like camping here...Dellah's eating some grease with food that Ronal McDonald made her in the middle of the living room surrounded by boxes and watching cruz azul play soccer...whenever she sees soccer she says, 'GOOOOOLLLL' whether they've scored or not which I think is really funny. She talks so much it's just a shame most of it is incrypted...
I am sitting on the floor with this (borrowed) laptop on a box filled with DVD's (woohoo by the way, we totally get stolen internet down here too!!!) and my crown burger coca cola balancing precariously beside it...I better go so I can contribute to the order, not the entropy...escribire mas, mas tarde...

that half a size really matters

so the saddest thing is when you are always on the search for the wear everyday shoes in black and brown and you actually find them in TJ Maxx where shopping is affordable and they have both black and brown in a 9 1/2 and neither one in a ten...it turns out that after reproducing twice, my once 9 1/2 foot is now and ten and I am no longer in the running to becoming America's Next Top model....today on the Tyra show there was this chubby girl who was like, watching America's next top model motivates me to exercise and I lost 60 pounds....
what?
I have to say that watching America' s next top model almost motivates me to do everything but exercise and lost 60 pounds...like advocate smart people instead of dumb skinny ones that want to make money off of their skinniness because they know they're dumb and never never living with people that steal your energy drinks or even more, never living with people that DRINK energy drinks...
I gave two haircuts today: one Jessica Rabbit and one Erin Tuttle(pixie action) to the moms in my ward. I sure do like cutting hairs...I can't wait until I can go to school and have a hair salon/boutique/bakery shop where I can sell all the stuff that Marsha and Cindy make and my dad's cookies and cut folk's hair...it's going to be called 'South'...if anyone makes a hair salon/boutique/whatever named South now, I will totally pimp slap you to oblivion...do you hear me? anyway...good times. I have to go upstairs and move out of my apartment now by myself because my husband is gone so I hope I don't stub my toe for the 100th time today because I'm already walking like my name is Mos Def and my jeans are down around knee caps...walk, drag..walk, drag...what up, what up...I got soul but I'm not a soldier...

shameless consumerism

Today I went to costco and became an executive member because I spend so darn much money there I need 2% back at the end of the year and I was informed that there are special mornings when you can go before everyone else can go and they give you pastries and juice and stuff...I'm all the way sure that I will never be up and shopping at 8am in the near future so it doesn't really matter but I guess that's as close to a red carpet/gift bag/celebrity treatment thing I'm gonna get...maybe I'll do it once just to feel cool....cool and bed-headed with pajamas on.
Then I went to wal-mart where I bought more coconut popsicles because the two boxes (12 total) that I bought on saturday were gone and also some fruit and milk and the lady and the tramp dvd and some new sharpies because I love buying sharpies and having them in every color and tip size and blah blah but I never use them and then somehow, when I need a sharpie, I don't have even one! so more sharpies. then I got some generic razors because I tried to ride the 'VENUS' razor is the best thing ever wave but it's just not and I just need something to get the hairs without all the hype...the venus actually really sucks. Then I went to the drive-thru at Subway to get the sub of the day which is turkey breast only the guy was like, could you wait just a minute, I'll be right there and then it was like more than a minute or even 10 of them so I hit reverse and got outa there since it was 8 till 4 and meg ryan was going to be on Oprah...I always wondered whatever happened to her...and I vowed never to inject collagen anywhere on my face and turned the tv off and read some more book and ate some more popsicle and here I am...
today I wore a dress because it is glorious outside and it made me feel good. We drove with the sunroof opened and Dellah was all quiet so I turned around and realized that she was all paralized by the sun in her light light blue eyes and I know how bad that hurts so I closed it...moon roof instead...Ruby started out with two turquoise socks and came home with one which always amazes me because she just sits in a seat that I heave around everywhere and never moves or walks...where IS that sock? I wanted to get Pride and Prejudice on video for 17$ at wal-mart but they were all out....I really hate that.

retards

So I just left my sleeping child upstairs in our locked apartment to come down to this computer room in the building and check my e-mail because I'm a retard and then I saw that someone had printed out some CRAP about mormons and it had all these pictures of people in their garments and inside the temple and they said rediculous things like heaven is only for perfect, sinless, married mormons and I was like, I just HATE when people who are so stupid they have nothing to do but write s-hite like that and there are actually people who are not going to ask the real truth and just believe that hooha...I balled it up and threw it away. Sometimes I am amazed at how Salt Lake is like the most anti-mormon place I've ever lived and everyone in the world just assumes it's the center of mormonism....I suppose there's opposition in this as well...retards...it bothers me I guess because this is my life...this is the religion that can help everyone know who they are and how to be happy and people make it seem trite and bogus and that makes me want to get all up in their face and spit. It doesn't change my mind or my life it just bugs me...kind of like ugg boots and hair extensions and acrylic nails.
I was sitting upstairs in my house reading a book by Colleen McCollough (the one responsible for the Thorn Birds, a book I revisit at least once a year because, come on, priests and farmhands and green eyed irish girls, and a mom named Fee) called the Grass Crown about the Roman Empire and the early folks before Ceasar, etc....and all I kept thinking while I was reading about the forum and Livius Drusus and Publis Rutillius Rufus was how much I wish my name was Mos Def....I mean, really, don't you? That is seriously awesome...
One time when I was at the dentist in high school the receptionist lady who was Mike Bedard's mom told me that Erin Elaine Tuttle sounded like a name from a fairy tale or something...that was nice but it's no Mos Def...
today I wished I was mostly deaf at least because Gabriel is out of town and Dellah colored on my cream damask ottoman with a blue crayon and dropped black beans on the carpet and screamed the entire time we were in Big Lots spending $50 on things like sidewalk chalk, facial cleanser, toilet paper and a closet rod extender by rubbermaid...amazing how the total just grows and grows as you accumulate a cartfull in Big Lots....Ruby cries every time someone looks at her that she doesn't know...right now that's happening with some foreign folks using the fax machine...i guess I should go before one of you calls family services about neglecting dellah in my apartmentand Ruby in public.
love

Spell check

I totally know how to spell the word Attorneys....i hate when I look stupid in print...so you know I know and I know you know...there

dinner

We just ate at Red Robin because it's Gabriel's last supper with us until friday and we have to eat up to survive the cold winter alone....or at least the week...I had the quacamole burger...so good...and about a hundred fries and ranch and some strawberry lemonade...annnndddd the mile high mud pie which we all shared and Ruby got all made like, 'just because I don't have any teeth, you still have to feed me whipped cream every 10 seconds or I'm going to scream my baby scream until you do', so we did. I hope I can find a way to talk after tomorrow when I don't have this Dell Inspiron 700m from Kirton and McConkie Attornies at Law...
do you think people should own scales in their home to weigh themselves? I can't' decide if it's good to know or better not to or what....discuss...reply....love me....I love you

marsha

I just talked to Marsha on the phone. Marsha is nice. I like Marsha. My new year's resolution was to try and find my phone and answer it more. I'm glad I did.

Otis Redding is just so good

what IS it about Otis Redding that just does it all the way right? I swear, I think I mentioned before that 'we belong' and 'crash into me' do funny things to my ph balance but I have to add 'these arms of mine' and 'try a little tenderness'...come ONNN...those songs are stone cold AWESOME....whenever you can just feel the passion in someone's voice when they start going off on the original chorus at the end of a song, they always get my vote...there's this Italian girl that sings in spanish named Laura Pausini and she has that quality...i darn near cry every time she screams, di me que si me adoras, aunque este todo el mundo en contra and on and on...I only listen to 106.1 anymore that is this latin radio station...it is just so good in the afternoon to make dinner and merengue in your kitchen...everyone should give it a try...except when i HAVE to turn it off because it's annoying.
I was telling Gabriel the other night while we were watching Isaac how it's so odd because he's not a man or a woman, he's just a person and it's so strange to see someone be a 'character' before you think of their gender like that...so strange...oddly appealing to everyone and no one at once...
I am sweating here in my house like a freakshow...what is going on? I had to open the balcony door there for a second...man...I'd like to think my metabolism is just through the roof but I think the thermostat says its 73 in here so, oh well...
Dellah teaches me lots of things...she is a whole person with so much to say and yet she can climb on you like a house kept animal and often does...today as I was typing she was climbing on me and leaning into my face saying, 'hi'.....switch positions, 'hiiiieeee'....move again to make me type the wrong thing...'hiiiiiiiiyyyeee' and I started thinking about all the times you're in a store and some kid is like, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom and you're like ANSWER THAT KID, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU IDIOT, INSENSITIVE, RETARD? it's just so cute when someone wants to talk to you all the time like that (except when Cindy used to send me out of her room for watching her do stuff like sew or read or some other activity that was not a spectator sport)...I pretty much answer Dellah every time she addresses me because I think how sweet it is that she just barely can talk and of all the things she can say, she wants to say them to me...gosh...it's just so sweet. I wondered today though how many times God is like, hi, hi, hi, hi and I don't answer or hear or choose to listen...it's so much easier when the person is standing on your arm/lap/foot/computer keyboard.
could I just say here that I'm just kind of sick of Napolean Dynamite...come on...I totally got it...it was funny, llamas, wigs, puffy sleeves, funny dance, mexican guy, tether ball, blah blah but he is just so annoying and I wish wal mart would not sell stuff with all the sayings on them and how sad is it that utah puts him on billboards like he's our claim to fame or something or like he actually invented the word "Gosh"...come on....and what about the people that have actually watched that dance scene so much that they have it memorized when John Heder totally improvised that and it obviously wasn't even important enough for HIM to memorize...sorry...anyway...he's a really bad actor and a mouth breather and I'm kind of over it.
Today I saw like 30 minutes of the movie Yentel and I am all the way going to rent that tomorrow...I am fully fascinated to know how that movie goes....I mean, I really was like, AWESOME....I have always heard about it and the 'papa can you hear me' song and whatnot but it actually was so good when I saw it...I love Mandy Patinkin though (the spaniard in Princess Bride) and there are like naked parts of guys in the water and Barbara Streisand was going to marry a frizzy haired girl to get closer to him and, man...hardcore...a must rent...
I just HAD to wear these really awesome shoes friday night on my shopping escapade and I have the most painful blister on my pinky toe that impedes me from wearing shoes at all now...feast or famine...awesome or flip flop...i need a popsicle...there are two boxes in my freezer...if I like something I have to buy a gajillion of that thing...I liked this one skirt at ross so I went back and got another two(different colors)...I liked these one shoes so I bought them in black and brown...I like these one bibs so I get obsessed about having to have all the ones they make for my kids and it's like, ok, I am ocd, let's move on...