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...

stuff

I really like that show #1 single and I just can't believe how much Lisa Loeb reminds me of Emily Asplund in some way and also how I wish I could leave a dressing room in a thong and go as Isaac Mizrahi if he liked my underwear...her bottom is totally awesome...also, speaking of bottoms, that last post made it sound like I wiped my child's bottom with my hand instead of her nose...just wanted to clear that up...also, I wanted to say how nice it is to read all of your blogs and really feel that you are the smartest people on the earth or at least really good writers that make me smile and feel like stuff makes sense in life. Thank you for that Marsha and cindy and becca and Brigham and Jared and kim and everyone else...i love you

three revelations and a duh

I'm home from church today because I have these two babies and both of them have green snot and fevers. I haven't been able to go online forever because we were using this laptop that the law firm gives Gabriel when he goes out of town that has an internal modem and someone on our floor has internet so we somehow get it for free only we had the laptop for like three weeks and Gabriel totally wasn't out of town...at least physically, so we had to give it back but we took in our own computer control tower thing to the IT guys at the law firm because it wasn't working and one of them put into our own computer the thing to get internet so we thought, awesome, we can now steal internet with no guilt....sort of...I must interject here that 99 percent of the lawyers at this law firm have no reason to even think of heisting the place like we always seem to do because they're fully loaded and we're like, rad, they gave Gabriel a job at this totally good place with tons of benefits and stuff to mooch like laptops and tickets to the Jazz games that we can use (or sell) and little packets of apple cider you mix with hot water...good thing we look remotely respectable, huh?....A N Y W A Y...the point is that the Lord doesn't just let you do stuff forever that's weird with no consequences so our computer takes like, and I'm not joking, 15 full minutes to go to the home page of google and then never connects to anything else because it's old and too slow...sad...Gabriel is going to Mexico on Tuesday, though and brought home this little baby again so here I am again...

now to the point of the post:
duh: when you are really excited that your husband brought a computer that works home and all you can think about is going to blogger to see what you've missed and you put in Baby Einstein world animals to entertain your toddler while she eats cheerios and milk with a spoon....you can't just LEAVE her there for a half an hour because the milk gets thrown all over the wall, floor, baby, booster seat, etc...
revelation #1 when your toddler freaks out that she has splattered milk everywhere and babbles unintelligably, things containing, 'galleta', 'down' , 'oh man' and 'leon' (which she learned from watching world animals, no less so the experience was actually educational for her) and you come with your wet paper towel to clean her and the wall and the floor like it never happened, you have a moment where you realize that for at least one person on the planet for at least a few more years, you are the person that can fix anything...
revelation #2 when someone gets squeezed out of you you somehow grow the ability to wipe green snot from their nose one hundred gazillion times a day and even with your hand when there is no kleenex, clean their bottom when it smells worse than the worst bottom and wake up in the middle of sleeping soundly to walk in their room and put the blanket back on them and see if they are still breathing.
revelation #3 when you have been in your house for a week without leaving because your children are sick and it's too hard to take them out and then you go shopping in a mall on a friday night with people that go out all the time and look clean and shiny and go into debt buying True Religion jeans and have professionals cut their hair and fingernails, the devil makes you feel fat and ugly and less than really good because he knows you will notice that you're wearing an entire outfit of that jersy fabric that makes you feel like your clothes fit even though they would fit a refrigerator box because they stretch so much and he knows that you used to look good most of the time and you will equate that with your self-worth so he tries to make you feel like poop....and I did...so I left the mall and went to Ross where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came and they don't speak english...where I bought three skirts...out of jersey fabric... and came home triumphant to find Gabriel in the aftermath of Dellah throwing up all over Ruby and herself and the bed and the clean laundry...Dellah didn't get squeezed out of him so he was a little more mortified at the sight and sounds of it all but can run a washing machine and bath water so he survived...we are having people over for dinner tonight so I have to go and make chimichangas and salsa and and refried black beans with garlic and onion and angel food cake with strawberries and cool whip...I know...I'm cooking...weird....

Sheesh...

It's saturday night and we just got back from being in this hotel in the literal middle of absolutely nowhere and realizing that if we were Hondurans and all lived in the same room our whole lives, we would never sleep and hate each other...It took us 5 hours, did you read that right? Five, CINCO HORAS, to get to somewheresville about 15 minutes before Logan...it should have taken an hour and 20 or 30 minutes and we had only gone 6 miles in an hour and a half...I think we figured that our average speed was something like 6 or 8 miles an hour...I mean, it was snowing like nobody's business and every single car on earth was on I-15 and all surrounding roads and what with the screaming banshees in the backseat, man, talk about the 6th circle of Hell...sheesh...Anyway, we got there and I got stuck in some snow for one afternoon and had to be pushed out and I barely ate any fruit or vegetables and I used one of those hairdryers attached to the wall and it basically just snowed and snowed and now we're back. The best part of the trip was calling Cammie Monson after I saw her and Jason's announcements in the Ready Made magazine...it was so good to talk to her and realize that she is just living life like me and still the same great person as always only now a she's a mom to this adorable little boy, Soren...
Valentine's was good. I got a really nice blouse from Banana Republic and some roses and a ring from Banana Republic that's pretty blingy like I like...a good day and then Matthew Lampros and Gabriel made Mary and I fillet Mignon and potatos and creamed corn and it was so good I could gain weight thinking about it.
My dad went on Valentine's day to the hospital for a test on his heart because he has been short of breath and not feeling good and they sent him in an Ambulance to Tacoma to have surgery right then. He, luckily did have to have a bypass even though he had a blocked artery but they put a stint in his artery and some balloons in some veins and he's recouperating ok...send up a prayer for Lewi if you get some extra prayer time.
I was crawling on the floor today looking for a lost red crayon and Dellah was barking like a dog..I guess she thought I looked like one down on all fours like that...funny...

on the eve of love day

today I wanted to jump off the balcony and whatever happened in the ivy and cement below would have been fine...mostly I think I was in popsicle withdrawal because I am in love with those real fruit popsicles but coconut flavor with the real pieces of cocnut and mmm mmm mmmmmmm, I am telling you something, the ones from Michoacan in Mexico are hardly any better...so when I don't feel I have enough popsicle running in my veins the 'I don't want to take a nap, I pooped again, I chewed my bottom lip so I look like a crack addict and I won't let you put medicine on it, I peed on the floor because you thought I could handle 2 seconds without a diaper, my pacifier fell out for the 12th time in 5 minutes and I can't put it back in by myself' stuff is just a little much.
I don't know if I've mentioned that I am one of these ultra methodical habit eaters but I eat the same things all day every day for like weeks and weeks and then, one day, I just stop those things and switch to other things. Right now it's those infernal coconut popsicles and those Ling Ling's chicken and veggie potstickers from Costco and orville redenbachers pop-light kettle corn...last month it was the oreo mcflurry and these weird 100% maple santa clause shaped candies from Smiths that were on sale after christmas...it was a dark time but not as dark as the pregnancy where everything made me deathly ill except a loaf of cinnamon toast every two days and a huge horchata from Betos at least once a day....
so they have closed two of the Big Lots in my 6 store circuit that I'm on to find good things....it's devastating to arrive at a place and see a vacant space and a for lease sign when you've got your shopping shoes on..now my options for finding all the varieties of Fiskars scissors for a dollar have been decreased by 25%... you feelin' me? man, they should warn folks and not just up and go like that. I have to say that I like the Tyra Banks show...I know, I know...I've tried to pretend that I would rather watch Martha Stewart at 3 but the truth is, I almost always go to Tyra...what is it about that girl? I think it's that she walks in on a runway at the beginning of every show and there's like a fan blowing her hair and it's just so crazy...the other day she did this show on phobias and she's totally scared of birds so she brought on these birds and totally almost cried she was so scared...it's just good talk show..maybe I should tell her how afraid I am of the statue of liberty and other giant things and she would send me to New York...it's worth a try...then again, I think it would actually freak me out to see the statue of liberty no matter how many H&M's there are per capita...

cinco cosas interesantes

SO, I don't really know where to start, except the beginning, a very good place to start...i don't know how to tag anyone else but if I did, I would tag Brigham so...Brigham red and underlined...go...
1. I was raised in Bear Grass North Carolina where there are two schools, grades k-6 and grades 7-12, my class had 22 people and then I moved to Seattle at the end of 10th grade and my class had 600 people. I was captain of the cheerleading squad in both schools...go Bears, go Rams... A major develpment was when the town next to Bear Grass got a Wal-Mart when I wais about 13.

2. I lived for 18 months in the nowheresvilles of southern honduras where I was a. attacked and humped by a chemically altered man, b.fell down a revine, hit my head on a rock and slipped into a river, c. almost broke my hand when a bridge broke underneath us and I had to scuffle to the earth and climb up the other side d. got some mystery illness where I couldn't even open a refrigerator or lift a pencil e. Contracted every known type of parasitic entity red, round, pin, amoeba (some of which made appearances....ahhhhh) f. I ate armadillo, iguana, old cow, soup with chicken feet, fish with all their parts staring at me and drank oatmeal water... g. I wore cotton flowered moomoo dresses from Costco every day with white cotton socks and mary janes with holes in the soles. my clothes were washed on a rock every week. h. I took it upon myself to go around every month washing hair and combing out lice and giving haircuts to people who washed their hair with laundry soap and had never had a haircut. (of course I had lice too) i. I learned spanish which came in handy later. j. bathed with a bowl out of a trough of water every day. k. I talked to people about the truth and felt really happy.

3. Something actually changes in my chemical make-up when I hear the songs, "we belong" by Pat Benetar and 'crash into me' by Dave Matthews...things have been known to happen.

4. I got pregnant 10 minutes after I got married and 10 minutes after I had Dellah, I got pregnant AGAIN (using birth control and breastfeeding Dellah) making me freakishly fertile with the irony being that pregnancy is a near death experience for me and like being terminally ill for 40 weeks.

5. I can commune with the shopping spirit. I can actually sense when there is a sale in the store and, most often, there is something amazing or one thing left that I have always wanted or needed and it is in my exact size or the color I wanted. This has always happened and the prices I pay for items is scandalous. I feel this is a special gift to me as a consumer. I can tell anyone where to buy anything and how much it will cost and that is my promise to you...vote for me for the most amazingly average person on earth...

so that's five (or so) things about me and I will add that I just cut my hair the way it always should be (short, short, short) and I feel much better about myself and the prospect of all other things. Thanks, Marsha...I think...for tagging me....I will pay you installments but not lame arse installments, I will pay good amounts because I don't like feeling like there are unfinished businesses...oh, I'm moving to number 309 in two weeks in case anyone writes letters anymore. It's 100$ cheaper a month so we're outa here. love and more love. Brigham, go....!

pelvic thrusting toddlers

Ok, I've now hit the end of the charade...apparently I've been 'tagged' by Marsha in this strange cyber chase game so now it's my turn to say five things about myself and the facade that I actually know how to work this infernal blog thing has crumbled. sure, I can write stuff and it gets on the screen but I need a tutorial, I fear because I can't manage to figure out how to get any more pictures on the postings and I don't know how to tag someone else and have it appear in red and underlined and all the business....wait....does it have to do with the color thing at the top of this box? Hmmm...I wonder...it's possible you're just writing names in red and underlining them...could it be? somehow I doubt it.
I realize that when you are a parent your world revolves around small people and there is a certain amount of rebellion in this for me...I don't think it's natural to forsake yourself and only think of others right off the bat from day one...it's a process and for me (a selfish and self interested soul) but I'm pretty much happy to say that I am getting better at it and telling stories about what they do is fun for me (mindbogglingly boring as it may be to the reader) :). Dellah stands in the middle of the room, feet shoulder width apart, and crows like a rooster, 'rr-r-r-r-rrrrr' (with implied rooster inflection). The funny comes when she says the first rr and then for the rest of the sound she thrusts her pelvis and chest forward in this bizarre movement and proceeds to repeat this so many times your side hurst from laughing. I have no idea where on earth the movement comes from but Martha Graham said that all children inately move from their pelvis and that honest movement, primal movement, must be recalled and will also originate from the pelvis. Bedroom analogies and pg-13 ratings aside, perhaps she's a modern dancer on the inside.

nannies, nearsightedness and misnomers

I have to say there is a certain amount of anxiety that I feel whenever I am asked by this blog thing to enter those weird swimming letters in a row as they appear. I know it's to test that a real person is doing things instead of a computer program or something but I get all stressed and is it just me or are they sometimes hard to decipher?...have we really come to this? there has to be another way. I'm legally blind for goodness sake! it's embarrassing. ps, keith looks cute with facial hair.
I just saw nanny McPhee and may I say, Collin Firth aside (who doubtless makes any movie worth the watching), it really was so good. There was this supersaturated color to everything and it was one of those experiences where you actually think, if I would have done this movie, I would have done it just like this and then you just go on watching and thinking, this is good. I haven't decided how I feel about the cgi baby mouth talking but overall, really good. It was my night off which I get once or twice a week to just go and not come back until after whatever I did from about 6 until the end of the late movie...tonight was TJ Maxx and Ross followed by ColdStone and the movies...let me hereby declare my love for Gabriel Sanchez and his thinking I deserve a break every now and then. also my love of the cake batter ice cream at Cold Stone.
I visited Andi today and saw her baby without a name and her carpet that will be replaced tomorrow and some Marsha Ellis art on the walls and further strengthened my resolve to become the possessor of the art of my friends. It can't be that hard. You just give them money and they give you art, right? It actually feels like they are there in the room when you look at their stuff. That is my favorite part because i wish you were all there in the room with me most of the time.
I have spoken to my children in spanish only since the day they were born so that is their first language but there are certain things you can't translate like 'twinkle, twinkle little star' and I'm a little teapot, etc so today in Target Dellah saw my t-shirt that says 'rock' with a star after it and gave a stirring rendition of the part of twinkle, twinkle little star that she remembered...it went like this..."up a ba da ba da guys...lie da bala nice..guys." I tell you, if Brigham was upset about the lyric of that one song he had confused all these years, I wonder how Dellah will feel about that one when the little gringo kids rub it in that she's a little off? vamos a ver.

lo que pasa aqui en el barrio

lo que pasa aqui en el barrio

so, it's tuesday and tonight are my two favorite shows on t.v. American Idol and House. Let me just say that if I had Tivo my life would be so much easier because, ideally, I don't really want my children to watch television but, as it is, I am addicted to certain shows, and, like an addict, I don't care who is around, I HAVE to watch and, as a result, their world will probably be tainted because of me and they'll blame me for everything and hate me forever. But that's later and maybe I'll get some will-power or at least a Tivo before it happens...fingers crossed. Also, I really wish I were getting diamonds for valentine's day but who really gets diamonds for valentine's day that is a real person with bills and a 4'x7' kitchen? I have decided I will settle for something else but I don't know what...
Dellah says, 'oh man, poops!' every time she has a poopy diaper, like the poop totally infiltrated her personal space without her consent. I wonder how many things I do that about...oh man, love handles...oh man, can't stop shopping....oh man, bags under my eyes...

I just ate the last of those little powdered sugar covered balls with the walnuts that you sometimes see at weddings only I make them about once a week. The recipe says it makes 30 but I can only ever get 28. Those extra two would make a big difference I think.
I can't wait to get my yoga booty ballet in the mail so I can work them off :)
I wish I was in California for an art show like all of those that are in California for an art show right now. I also wish that the art show were in San Francisco because then I could go to H&M and the art show but as it is, I am in Salt Lake in number 829 with no more cookies.

gabriel with his mom and dad in front of their newly painted PURPLE house.

Somehow it feels good to have a place to say things with no real expectation that anyone will read them. Today was a little on the normal side which is why it was noisy and stressful. Ruby cries most of her life because she has something called Sensory Processing Disorder which keeps her from registering her senses the way we do and makes her brain get really overloaded all the time. She goes to occupational therapy (i guess I take her there actually) every few weeks or so and this past time, the therapist, Roxann, (if you have to go to therapy, your therapist may as well be called Roxann) started a treatment for Ruby that includes 'brushing' her every two hours every day. It's with one of those little rectangle brushes that surgeons use to wash their hands and we go over her legs and feel and arms and hands and back really firmly and them 'stimulate' her joints starting by pushing down on her head and moving to her soulders and elbows, etc...i must say, as if there weren't enough things to do, it seems that every two hours comes around an awful lot.
I don't think I mentioned that I finally triumphed over math 97 and stuck it right in the big man's face who thought he had me beat with the three failed attempts to pass the finals! Embarrassing but true, I finally went all the way down to Provo and took the challenge exam and got a 70%. What did I need to test out of Math 97? A 70%, obviously. The divine intervention of the whole thing is hardly lost on me. The Lord knows I'm not good enough to get an 83% or something wonderful so he heard my prayers and gave me the bare minimum....so often the case....like those prayers to please lose the weight i gained from having two babies 10 months apart how I lost like 10 pounds and he seems to have stopped listening...and then sometimes he goes above and beyond like all those prayers for a husband and stuff, in which case I got one out of the perverbial gold mine/broke the mold category when He handed me Gabriel. oh, we may be building a townhouse in Sandy. We know the builder so it's a good deal and a way to build some kind of equity in life instead of renting here in the nosebleed section...that is kind of exciting so maybe my children can grow up knowing what grass is and what the sun feels like instead of only being able to count to 8 because that's how many floors the building has and we count in the elevator :)

 

elves 

 

my little rubiferous 

 

utah gaming association 

christmas

I've never done this before so I hope it ends up somewhere like where it should...We just had Christmas in Seattle with my family and it was Dellah's first navidad with an idea of what goes on in the world so she walked around all day saying 'ho ho ho' when asked what santa clause says and loved her presents and all the normal. Ruby just sat there basically burried under so much stuff she couldn't focus but I'm sure she's happy about all the acquisitions on the inside. I got lots of good stuff too because Gabriel has gotten all professional about the whole thing and did some great things (ie, he had my orange Hanover Recycling Center t shirt that I wear every single day remade because it's about ugly now) and brought back some really pretty jewelry from Mexico...blah blah..here are some photos.