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...