8 thousand reasons why I am so glad I'm not famous

The last couple of weeks have been a weird haze of activity and amnesia. I feel like eating my honey bunches of oats in the morning was about 3 days ago by 5 pm. every day.
So I was in the tabernacle choir thing from the 12 to the 16th and I mean it was REALLY time consuming. I was living on Vitamin Water and tight leotard energy for about a week.
The plusses included backstage pass around my neck allowing me to park and walk around wherever I wanted and fitting into size 10 pants for the first time in 3 years (6 years ago I would have thought that wasa huge size and now I'm like all, 'look at me, I'm so hot' and whatnot. But I am seriously glad that another DVD for mass distribution in Wal Mart, Deseret Book and beyond will not be recorded with me looking like a swollen toad in the middle of a pond with no lily pad to be found (perplexed frog) EVER AGAIN!!! good grief. wrong business to be in if you're going to reproduce and take the wrong anti-depressant for 2 years thereby thwarting any and all weight loss and enciting the accumulation of MORE weight. I digress. The point is that for those few days I was in show business actually. I had my makeup and hair done by professionals, I had costumes and a special door thorough which I was to enter and exit. I had taping sessions to get enough material for cutting and editing a DVD and I performed before about 80,000 people all together (I find that if I keep saying I you may think it was just me when there were 140 of us and the tabernacle choir with 300 and the King's singers who are world famous and the orchestra and the bell choir thus making me a veritable speck on the surface but in my reality it was 'me' you know?) and we were on live television on sunday morning. so it was a pretty neat thing to do and we got to hang out with the king's singers a lot if you've ever heard of them you'll care, if not, ehh...whatever.
I never thought I would feel this way but, aside from the exhilaration of performing for an audience, I really am not too ennamored with the whole, 'leave your family for hours and days and be around a bunch of folks in tights and too much make-up'. If anything I definitely am more in love with my little Sanchez group than I was before it all started. Families are just so good. It feels so good to have somewhere to go and people who care if you do or not.

So monday afternoon we got on a plane and came to Washington to visit my parents which we didn't know we were going to do until a few days before. My mom just decided she couldn't stand the thought of holidays with no one around, germs or no germs and you know how we aim to please So I came with the girls (Gabriel had to stay home and work and work and work) and here we are. We have had fun (my sister and her kids came too, both of us without spousal support so noise and stress abound). Jenny just left a little while ago and we leave tomorrow morning which is Christmas eve to try and squeeze in love and fun and memories and a batch of cookies for santa with our Popi (my husband) before Christmas. My mom who is currently hairless might be the cutest bald person I have ever seen. I'm not saying I want cancer because I don't but at least I'm not terrified of baldness because she wears it well (underneath a hat).
I'll post pictures of the dance thing and our actual christmas together as a family a little later when stuff stops spinning.

this just in...

I think I must be the most boring person I know....i actually don't even believe that because I think I would have fun with me if I weren't me but this whole blog thing is enough to make you feel a little wobbly. I just don't understand how there can be thousands and thousands of people on this blog world and no one wants to talk to me except 1 or 2 people?
come on folks. Have you been talking to my in-laws. None of it's true. lies. all of them.
I've given you presents and hugs and baked goods.....GIVE ME COMMENTS!

oK, so I guess in order to give me comments you have to have a post that has something to comment on besides a glittery porch wreath and some toddlers......
ummm...
shooot.
um.
Oh, ok...when I was about 7 or 8 or 9 or something I used to ride the school bus and it let me out about 1/4 of a mile from my house along side a highway called 17. The road was lined with corn crops but there was a wide dirt path that ran between the asphalt and the corn. That is where I walked. The problem was that every single day it seemed I had this amazing need to pee when I got off the school bus. I don't remember her name very well but I know that she was the grandma of my older sibling's friends and she lived in this two story house that was mint green on the south corner of the bus dropoff. She had shrubs. I peed in them. Now I don't know if it's just my personality or my astrological sign or my mental illness but I think that if I wanted to, I could probably be pretty secretive and sneaky. I think I can figure things out pretty well and that I'm pretty smart.

I had a mission companion who used to walk down the street and poop her pants and grab her crotch while she peed and when she let go her whole dress would be wet and I was like, um, hermana Lunn....you take the next adobe shack? what? I don't think so. I was like, ok missy, step your smelly self aside while I do the work for two people and try to fix this first impression we've just made of being homeless, unattractive, white cotton sock wearing incontinent American Mormons. Anyway, this girl who was completely off the deep end crazy was talking to me one night and she was like, "the problem is that I'm just really, really intelligent and that's why I don't have very many friends. I was always the best in school and could learn extrememly fast." It was in this moment that I thought to myself, "am I the Hermana Lunn of my own life?" am I dillusional? Do I look homeless and smell like poop and move like a sloth in the fast lane?
Well, it turned out that I was dillusional because one day, Sharon (who is my mom) comes to me and she's like, "Erin, miss what's her face down the road called me and told me that you've been peeing in her bushes. you have to stop that." okey-dokey...that was awkward. How could this be? How did she know since I'm this amazingly clever 7 year old scorpio, fire dragon ,future social anxiety suffering welbutrin popping genius?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

I seem to be figuring this out a little at a time here. I actually am not all that. I am actually not the smartest person or the cutest person or the most talented person or the person who deserves things just because I was born. Did you all know this the whole time and you never told me? This is a hard truth people.....some might say it's even inconvenient...the truth of this. I am just a girl. It's not a huge mystery why I never had a boyfriend until I was 18 and he was a dork. I had that amazingly gigantic wake up call at age 7 and another chance in a steamy, pee smelling missionary room to realize that folks can figure me out! CRAP! I ACTUALLY AM DILLUSIONAL!
this is very bad.

I hereby promise that I will not pee in any of your bushes and I will not have an underlying notion that I am the shiz any more. Wait! This is not a sad moment. This is a moment of clarity. So far I'm about 24 years behind so by the time my kids are married I will be a good mom and by the time my husband is bald and blind I will be a good eternal companion (at least eternity will be a little closer by then).
So that's the skinny folks. That can go safely in your list of reasons why you always knew I was totally and competely normal (in a not normal but not extraordinary either kind of a way)
happy holidays.

'tis the season

It looks like it's going to snow. We have a Christmas tree. We have these little white candles in our windows at night. We have a lighted garland with christmas ornaments hanging on it going up our stairs. We have two little christmas trees in urns on either side of our door with little white lights on them. We have a sparkly wreath on our door. Now there are two parts of me. There is the part that's like, come on, Erin...think outside the holiday gift box a little and do something creative with your decorations...your whole downstairs is pink for goodness' sake..... and then there's the part that's like, "look....this is my house and it's so simple and traditional and sparkly, hooray!" ....
rock and roll band boys or dead poet's society boys....this was always my quandry....and I ended up with the preppy responsible extremely cute and good boy....
maybe that explains the house.

It happens about once a year that the feelings of disgust start creeping up for the amount of stuff that we (I) have accumulated (namely clothing for small children). If you only could fathom the sheer volume of things I have for a little boy you would be embarrassed for me...
I SO don't have a little boy and my husband doesn't even want to reproduce again so I'll just be this freaky Norman Bates lady dressing up all the neighborhood kids like the boy I never had.
I just find it hard to give up on the whole 'at least two more kids' thing even though most of the time I am crap at parenting. There's just something about little folks that I love. Like Ruby standing on the stairs right now saying , "Mami, hep me, I need hep... I tot-ing da sky, look!"
So, anyway, I'm cleaning out the nooks and crannies and making 20 boxes into 4 reasonable ones. Some would call this consolidation. I prefer to call it 'way to make me feel like I've accomplished something and help prevent me from shopping for kids clothes.'

It's time to go to preschool now so I must adjourn. we're all wearing various renditions of the pajama and that needs to be fixed before we go.
feliz dia jueves.
erin

flashes of clarity

I am so not a morning person as my parents can painfully recall I'm sure. I have homicidal tendencies when awakened by someone that isn't myself exactly when I want to wake up. This has posed a problem in parenthood and then I heard some life changing advice from that sage counselor, that learn-ed man....Steve Young. He said, after the BYU game on Saturday which I still get a little tingly thinking about...anyway, he said in response to that annoying sports interviewer who asked him, "what have you learned from being a parent of little kids?"...he said "selflessness...you better figure out how to get selfless really quick and your life will be so much better". Genius. It sounds so basic and is so hard to practice. I don't know a whole lot of folks who enjoy putting most all of their needs and wants and druthers aside all day every day. I'm working on it so when I hear the pitter patter of small people invading my otherwise peaceful, it's snowing outside so it's not even light in the room, perfect temperature and so much space now that Gabriel is gone to work sleep...I immediately start praying not to have a cow. So far there have been no cow births.

I woke up at 4:45 the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping with some girls here on my street. We went to Wal Mart, Target, Old Navy, Toys R Us, Shopko, Downeast Home and another Shopko and Starbucks for some hot chocolate and pastry. I basically had all my Christmas shopping done for the girls so I bought about 9 movies, a red crock pot, a dust buster and some stocking hangers.....all these other people were totally trying to make others happy at 5 in the morning and I'm like...what can I buy for myself....then later on, Gabriel, feeling much the same sentiment as I did, drove us all to Sears where we bought a television larger than our children so that they can be even more frightened of Scar on the Lion King than they already are. good times.

Remember Josefina? Yeah, she's gone. We now have Ruth who is from Peru and is in our ward. She lives here with her 22 year old daughter who is seriously like this tiny little insanely beautiful wood sprite and her 15 year old who is mentally handicapped. Her husband is in Peru and they're getting a divorce and she lost her job as a nanny recently so Cinthia (the 22 year old) works like 20 hours every two weeks at $9/hr and that is what they live on besides the baby-sitting that Ruth does and the Medicaid that Nathalie gets. So sad. And you know the saddest part....that amazingly intelligent and beautiful girl has never been on a DATE! out of control. She spends her whole life with her mom and sister and had to stop studying at college so she can help pay for their life. It's enough to make me want to call Ty Pennington if they had a house to redo. Anyway, in order to help a smidge and have her feel like she is also working, we have Ruth come to clean one week and babysit the next, then clean, then babysit. For $100 every 2 weeks we have a date and clean showers. Also, she is actually the kind of person who genuinely is in love with little kids. She speaks this really fast, really slurry Spanish in a baby voice and they just think she is the best thing ever. This morning I heard Dellah asking Gabriel after tiptoe-ing in my room if that was Hermana Carbajal in my bed....no, he said....that's your mom....like always. I could hear their disappointment....THEY LIKE HER MORE THAN ME!
whatever. I like her more than me too.

So I've started playing primary music on CD while my children eat breakfast to try and squelch potential fights and then read them the little comic book Book of Mormon from the 70's to try and give them some perspective. I'm pretty sure every little bit of spirituality that you try to have counts somehow even if you don't see any changes immediately. Monday I taught Family Home evening about the commandment to love and honor your parents....we listened to "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey" about 400 times until they knew it by heart. That made it easier 5 minutes later when they were ignoring my pleas and pulling each other's hair and kicking. At least they're making an informed choice to break the commandments. Knowledge is power people.

I have a practice tonight in the Conference Center for the Christmas concert and, from the looks of it, It's not going to stop snowing any time soon....nice...life-threatening feats to be one of 140 people dressed exactly the same and one of 8 maids a milking (we have two buckets by the way, did I mention that I am dancing with a wooden bucket in each hand?...yeah...awesome)
I'm teaching a Spanish class for the Relief Society on Thursday night....tell me actually and without too many jokes what you would want to learn from a Spanish class like that. So far we don't have a second one scheduled so it might be the only one.
te amo. adios.
I just realized how many times I have said the word 'I ' in this post and it's a little nauseating. just so you know I know.

Dia de accion de gracias

In Spanish this day is called, not just thanksgiving, but 'day of the action of thanks'. I've thought about what the actions of thanks are and how I don't really do any of them and that probably means that I suck on a lot of levels but I am actually very grateful for how nice my life is. I think that to some, my life would seem ideal and even idyllic. I think that if I take an inventory and list all the bad (which I will right now) I will still probably come up grateful....let's try.
bad:
1. I used to be a good writer and have all kinds of creativity coming and going from my mind. Now I am a blank because I am depleted mentally most of the time.
2. I can't wear my cutest clothes because my body is my enemy.
3. I have probably always been totally messed up but I have never taken medicine every morning and night, reaffirming to myself that I am flawed and un-whole and less somehow because my brain doesn't make norepinephrin.
4. My mom has cancer and chemo and no hair and no energy and I feel like I'm looking in a mirror of the future every time I talk to her or about her and that scares me.
5. My baby has epilepsy and has seizures every time she sleeps and isn't the same as other kids her age and I feel when I am all by myself that it is somehow my fault for taking prevacid while I was pregnant or getting pregnant so soon after Dellah (even thought it was an accident) or falling on a staircase in remote Mexico at 26 weeks.
6. I have to make my life fit around therapy sessions for Ruby and Neurologist appointments for Ruby and make sure that Ruby takes her 2.5 mL of Keppra twice a day and make sure that I walk the line between insanity and love because when she's older she's not going to know how loud she cried and how much it made me want to hide....she'll just remember if I did hide...so I don't.
7. I don't contribute in any way to my own financial life. I haven't had a job in 4 years. I don't particularly want to go to a job every day but there is a sense of agility and freedom that come with knowing you can do it yourself...or at least some of it. I looked at my resume the other day and tried to imagine actually giving it to an employer right now...absolutely no one would think I could do anything except dress mannequins at Baby gap or teach Mormon missionaries.
8. I live in the same state with my sister who I haven't spoken to since my birthday in October and before that since last Christmas and that just feels like a small version of a lesser degree of glory.
9. That same sister lives 15 minutes from her husband's family and my little sister lives 5 minutes from her in laws and an hour from her husband's grandparents and my brother lives 30 minutes from my sister-in-law's parents. All of these people can go and do things and go on trips and have help that they don't have to pay or bribe and I don't have anyone.
10. I have hemorrhoids. bad ones. it's gross.
11. I feel like I should have another baby and Gabriel doesn't want to go through 40 weeks of sickness just to have no sleep and more crying kids....I'm pretty sure Heavenly Father is more on my side.
12. I can't see. I'm on the last contacts that you can have before you have to wear glasses over contacts for more correction and everything is still all blurry.
13. I can't find my necklace with the block of wood on the chain.

As you can tell, there are some cons. Every life has cons but I think, basically, I would probably, in most cases choose my own crap back out of a pile of every one's all together.
My children are happy and have all their limbs. They make me laugh and I can't even stand how cute they are sometimes. My husband is just unbelievably good. I mean, really. Every day I'm positive there's got to be a catch. I have a warm house. I have a new house. I have a good car. My mom and dad are alive and I can talk to them whenever they answer the phone. I am one of the 8 maids a milking in a PBS Christmas special....I just found the Charlie Brown Christmas movie in another effort to make sure that my children have every single toy and book and experience that I ever had as a child which they will totally need therapy for and I seem to revel quite a bit.
I love the scriptures. I love the gospel. I am truly positive that Heavenly Father answers prayers and I am always happiest when I do what he wants.
I have wonderful and brilliant friends who inspire me. I have good teeth. My body hair is blond. I don't have cochlear implants. I speak a foreign language and I always know when Latinos are making fun of me. I have a $90 sweater from Urban Outfitters that is the only thing I have ever spent that much money on and it makes me feel happy. My dove deodorant doesn't leave white marks on my clothes just like the commercial says. I made sweet potato souffle today for part of Thanksgiving and it was magically delicious. We went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium this morning with the girls and we didn't have to leave for anyone screaming uncontrollably or wetting their pants. I got up and did Pilates this morning in an effort to quell my appetite for later which didn't exactly work but I felt better about it. My hair is growing out to a normal length for someone with my bone to chub ratio. I'm just positive that the Savior really does live to grant us rich supply and I can be the best version of myself if I just try to be more like Him. Yesterday in the car, Ruby said, "Mami, estoy muy feliz" all in one sentence like that...out of the blue...the most unhappy, inconsolable child I have ever met who has spent her life exhausted and wordless told me she was very happy. How in the world can I think that I'm un-happy?
I have practiced the action of gratitude.

oh well

I was just sitting here up in my house for like a week waiting for something to happen that I could blog about instead of the same old crap like poopy diapers and runny noses and what I either am or am not making for dinner.
The problem we have now is that there actually isn't anything else going on at present so i suppose this post will be extremely short.
Like about this long.

unapologetic travel log

Hello, it's me, Erin. It's been a while. I'm sure you were all salivating to know what I've been doing and I aim to please. So, it was my birthday road trip which everyone else has already blogged and gotten over it but it all started with a hot juicy burger in Wendy's.

Happy Cindy...

and this was one of the other passengers on the trip who I can neither confirm nor deny being Marsha Ellis in Wendy's who seriously deserved a burger.

now that the pg rated part of the post is over, I can move on to the mostly g-rated version. In short, it was more fun that I have had as a solo entity in the world for at least 5 or 6 years if ever. I love these girls...look how cute Emily is.
I would not recommend eating anything from this particular Chinatown location p.s. and especially don't buy any fish because some of them are floating upside down. It is burned into my brian...that poor little pez. Later in the day, however, I did get, from Hector the smiley Mediterranean waiter, THE MOST FLAVORFUL AND FULFILLING COCA COLA ON THE ENTIRE GLOBE! and several of it's refills.

H&M was slightly disheartening but that didn't stop me from buying some good items (one of my favorites is a black smocky thing that Eric the disfunctional h&m employee forgot to take the magnetic thingy off the bottom of and now I'm not sure what to do except wield a hammer to remove it) alas. I also bought $23 lipstick from Sephora which is devastatingly good and a wonderful knee length cardigan from Urban outfitters which I straight up copied Cindy on but hers is tan and mine is gray. I must also add that I am glad I had spent my money in Vegas because there was this mouth wateringly tempting boutique in a gas station bathroom in Nowheresville. COME ONNN! so funny

We all needed that trip on very different levels. For me it was a validating and almost rediculously emotional thing to feel like I was a friend to these folks who are so smart and pretty and funny and they actually still like me even though I'm a housewife which must mean that all my cool has not yet worn completely off. (I also really love some other girls that weren't on the road trip very very much) So, thank you road trip girls and thank you kind Jetta for delivering us from evil.

This is Cindy proving that she can stuff an entire plate of green jell-o in her mouth at once. Small pleasures. Then I turned 31. Not that exciting. Here I am being 31. I think I look more excited than I am but it could be my pocketed t-shirt or my block of wood on a chain from H&M to thank for the smile.It was a pretty great day. Gabriel stayed home from work and we went to breakfast and on a walk and to Downeast Home to buy this out of control awesome ottoman which is a gint square.

Then we ate pizza and cake and went to bed and two days later was Halloween which looked like this: (ruby's a turtle not a frog)

and this

I am pretty glad that october's done and that Christmas is coming but come on retailers...let's have Thanksgiving first already!!! sheesh.... I bought an autumny wreath and one of those totally domestic metal wreath hanger things to go on my front door so we look all suburban and welcoming. Now I keep fantasizing about all the other wreaths there must be in the world what with my ultra snazzy wreath hanger. I'm not sure I needed one more department to freequent in every store but c'est la vie. Maybe I'll take a picture of my wreath and show you so you'll know which house is mine when you come for cider and homemade biscuits.....

leavin' on a jet-ta

That's right folks. Light your candles and say your prayers. 5 thirty year olds are going on a road trip!
we'll see what happens.
I'm so excited to already be there but not the 6 hours to get there....that and it's 85 degrees there right now.
hugs and loves till I return sunday.

coulda woulda shoulda

woah, have you ever looked at the words coulda woulda shoulda and seen how they absolutely don't look right? weird.

I had this idea for being awesome which went something like this.

1. I wake up in the morning and take a shower (or not because I took one yesterday and I'm still relatively fresh)

2. Go downstairs and administer grape nuts and honey bunches of oats to my children.

3. eat grape nuts at the same time

4. Go back upstairs and try to see the carpet again in my closet by hanging up 45 items that are piled there and try to arrange my two drawers in the bathroom so that they close AND open.

5. Tell my children to stop playing inside games and walk them over to the new play structure we have 1.1 minutes from our front door.

6. Let them play there until they get all sweaty and smell like outside instead of suave vanilla bean shampoo.

7. Have them think I am awesome because I do things like take them to the play structure.

8. Come back home and eat lunch from all the food groups.

9. Put Ruby down for a nap

10. Accept the fact that Dellah no longer takes naps.

11. take a nap

12. put on tights and go to dance rehearsal where some talented people are.

The plan seems relatively easy, benign, even run of the mill.

amazing how you just find 7 or 8 other things to do besides eat, ruby nap, me nap and put on tights...

I think I am still pretty awesome. I totally thought of a plan and I totally had every intention of actually doing the plan. Just because I didn't doesn't empty the glass...

this is me being like, yeah..

I'm totally tired and no, I don't do drugs.

I'm totally behind. I sense a travel log comin' on

I'll try not to go that route. I'll try to give feelings on a variety of different subjects so as not to make any reader feel their time catching up was in vain.
So, I'm one of the 8 maids a milking, just so you know...you know, 12 days of christmas and the audition I thought I sucked at? I still really sucked still but she decided not to do the toy soldier dance I sucked at and I was redeemed with my country ho-down cum swiss miss rendition of Carol Iwasaki's milking maid steps....so that's good. I'm 'a milking.

Also, I think I'm pretty behind and I really don't care what political party he's part of, Does Al Gore really deserve a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE? WHAT THE....
I don't know, one year he's this totally boring idiot that tries to go on MTV to get some votes and everyone's making fun of him and now he's an academy award winning, nobel peace prize winning celebrity? I am now completely and utterly positive that I should start stating the obvious things about the world and life and see where it gets me. They sky's the limit.
Did you know that when you're walking down your sidewalk to go visiting teaching at 10am and there is a used condom lying in your path and you try desperately to focus her attention on the airplane overhead, that your 3 year old WILL mention the fact that there is a long balloon in the street?
Did you know that after you give birth twice in 10 months that your stomach actually rests on the top of your legs even when you sit up straight and do sit ups....THIS IS AN OUTRAGE PEOPLE! Polar bears slipping off of ice caps is one thing and crashing into the wall of the irreversible tide of sagginess is another...i mean come on...
whatever.
DID YOU KNOW that when you wake up in the morning and you wish you didn't have to and you don't feel too happy about much of anything and you feel all like, 'yeah, whatever, I'm just going to be mad and cry and stuff' that you can actually go to Dr. George Van Komen and he will give you a little extra 100 mg. pill of wellbutrin to take with your morning dose and it's just that easy? I bet you did not know that.
Furthermore, did you know that when you go through the line at wal-mart buying some gum and pez just so you can get $10 cash back and you get to the end where you choose cash back and they only give increments of $20 so you say, forget it and that you don't want the items, that the person will then tell you to go to customer service and return your big red and pez variety pack because she went ahead pressing buttons without your consent?
Did you know that when she says this you can go to the customer service desk and throw the bag at them and say, 'I don't need this..give me a break!"? because you would rather lose $1.50 than ever stand in line to return gum and pez.... It's a really pretty secret fact actually so pay attention, people.
I'm not sure if you've been apprised of the fact that I am going to turn 31 on monday the 29th of October and that 31 is not only the ugliest number, but it actually evokes no emotion in the birthday girl at all. If I weren't going to Las Vegas to H&M the weekend before, I might forget all together that 31 years had passed since genesis.
Also, I'm not sure if you've discovered that if you stop washing your hair every other day or even every 3rd day that your hair actually says, "ok, sure...I can roll with that." and you actually feel like you have day 2 hair on day 4?
This just in!...did you know that when your husband comes home at 9:30pm after leaving at 7am and you DON'T completely go ballistic and pout and act like you've just survived an all out nuclear attack on your home and sanity by crawling through a mud trench for 5 miles alone, that he actually brings you flowers and some apple turnovers?
REVELATIONS, people....revelations.
Did you know that when you have a sinus cold that you can actually feel near death pain by sneezing? that it is that painful?
Did you know that when superior water comes to your house and says they will give you a free trial of their water softener that it actually does stop the soap scum from building on the glass in your shower and your dishes actually are cleaner but the water itself is so unbearable to drink even after passing through your GE profile filter that you say, 'get on outa here wid dat mess, boy! cause we ain't havin' none of it....'
also, when you are preparing your child for preschool and you can't get a ponytail where there used to be one, and you then realize that she has made herself a stereotypical lesbian mullet on just one side of her head using scissors that you didn't even know she knew existed....when you tell that child that this is unacceptable and that only mommy uses scissors for hair and scissors are only for paper and that you're not mad but you don't want this to happen again that the child will then tell you that they have also cut their sister's hair, the build a bear workshop winnie the pooh and the ikea sheepskin.....?
bring on the awards, people....all that's missing is power point I suppose but that has to be at least as many little known, disconcerting and highly disputable facts as Mr. G....
I am neglecting at least 3 essential responsibilities here writing this so I'll adjourn.

sick, sick

Last night I went to see Elizabeth the Golden Age with my friend Cindy. It was right up there on the list of most beautiful movies ever made and so good to be with Cindy. On the way home I started to feel the life draining out of me. My throat hurt. My body hurt. My hairs on my arms hurt. This morning I have a fever and I can't seem to wake up. I am sick.
Tonight was my other friend Suzanne's wedding reception right down the road from here where everyone I know is going to be and I don't get to go. Tomorrow night is Young Women in Excellence and I don't get to go....I know myself. I know this is around for another couple of days at least.
I'm sorry, Cindy, if the sharing of your twizzlers in the dark has infected you with my aches and pains. I just didn't know.
more later when the bacteria depart.

good help is so hard

Josefina is the name of this woman from Michoacan Mexico that Gabriel's friend Jared's entire family uses to clean their houses. Apparently, Josefina is a master of domestic sprucing and she can be had for a song twice a month. I knew when I married Gabriel that utter spotlessness was his norm and he knew that cleanliness was next to godliness and I was most always close to godliness but was prone to lapse into not hanging up the days undirtied clothes immediately when I take them off. We have met somewhere in the middle of the to dust or not to dust spectrum but when Gabriel heard of this Josefina phenom, well, he said, 'where do I sign up'. He told me this after he had talked to her and asked her to come and see our house and meet us and blah blah. So, she's one of those folks that wears elastic waistband pants and a t-shirt and wears nylons underneath all of that for some inexplicable reason but she's pleasant enough and probably just 40ish years old.
As a girl, you don't want some other girl cleaning your house. You especially don't want some girl cleaning your house while she walks around thinking "I'm cleaning this stupid gringa's house and she's an incapable slob because Mexicans know how to clean houses and Erin Sanchez does not." You know that's what she would be thinking. So I stay gone all the live long afternoon on Tuesday, far beyond the point of no return for naps and pleasantness with the toddlers and I walk in to my house, expecting to be greeted by the fresh smell of anti-bacterial spotlessness and need sunglasses to handle the glare of godliness......eh....whatever. So she washed the mirrors and vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the shower (which wasn't even really that clean) and then she left a note "I need soft scrub".....
Oh, YOU NEED SOFT SCRUB? WILL THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE, JOSEFINA WHO WE PAY TO COME AND CLEAN?
the whole thing is a little over the top. Gabriel says, the point is that the vacuuming got done and the mirrors are clean and the tiles are mopped and neither one of us had to do it...he says there are more important things in life than worrying about cleaning the house (since when, I wonder) but my main problem is that when I clean the house, it looks better than when she cleans the house. Is it worth it for a non-perfectionist latina to come and clean my house just so I don't have to do it or should I just do it and be completely satisfied, albeit tired. She doesn't do laundry or fold or iron and she didn't make our beds so we're just talking horizontal surfaces here.
anyway.
Last night was this rehearsal for the tabernacle choir Christmas concert which I found out about at almost 4pm....it started at 5:45. It took me an hour to go 15 minutes down the road and I was late so i was number 58 at yet another audition for this thing. I can't believe this. I am yet to go to one rehearsal where we don't have to have a number and do more things to be more whittled down and more 'chosen'. The first little while was fine. Then the last hour was this toy soldier dance which was like military training meets riverdance and I was still fine. She split us into groups of 8 and, being number 58, it was a lot of groups of 8 go before it was my go. I stood in the back of the stake center gym and did the routine with every single group of 8 before me while the 10th graders in my group gossiped and chatted and didn't practice at all. Then the next practice was starting after ours and all the people for that one were sitting around the walls (about 75 people) and all 75 people from my practice had already finished so they were all standing around too and, right before we're supposed to go, the choreographer says, "oh, Erin, the lines are uneven, can you go to the other side of the gym. Lines were coming in from both directions and I had practiced the entire thing a gajillion times, from MY SIDE! You don't just do this to someone like me. You don't just say, "oh, do you think you could go to the other side and deal with your huge anxiety and inadequacies of being the oldest, fattest, sweatiest, out of shape person in the room and then CHANGE EVERY DIRECTION AND EVERY LEFT TO A RIGHT AND BACK TO A FRONT AND LET'S START.....NOW!!! 5,6,7,8.....
it was a disaster.
I found myself just standing there for 2 hours or 2 seconds completely lost and my mind was swimming and I was a complete disaster...I was a failure.
My therapist used to say that trying something is the most important thing and that failing is part of life and you have to just keep trying but I got my bag and walked out and walked down 2nd avenue and then state street and then south temple and then main street completely weeping. then all the way home on the tracks the same thing. How can it be that I have spent more than 20 years of my life learning this stupid skill and when it comes right down to it I blow? Who am I fooling? No one looks at me and thinks, oh, yeah, her? she's a ballerina....
whatever....I'm a housewife with kids and a mortgage and 6 passenger vehicle and a Mexican housekeeper (who isn't my husband) when I can't afford name brand pancake syrup. One of these days I will have to tell myself that I'm not a dancer....I just can't do that...I just can't say it. All I can do is tell my girls never to get involved with that jerky, abusive man which is ballet....it just treats you like poop and makes you look at yourself in a mirror the whole time and have bruises and pain and you STILL KEEP GOING BACK!
play soccer girls.
play the flute.
play the field.
just don't dance.

I have perspective. At least I have blood cells of both colors. My mom doesn't have white or red or new. She can't go in public or touch anything dirty or she could go from zero to sepsis in 5 hours. Life is fine for me, I just had a weird night.

I'm going to H&M.
Strike up the band.

tuesday in the hood

Lately I've been noticing that a lot of people including myself say things like, "I really like being a mom, but...." or "don't get me wrong, I love so and so dearly, but....". I have decided to repent of this because I think that the child will grow up, not feeling the love first but the 'but'. Like Elder Holland said last year in conference about comparing children. If you say Susie is smart and Mary is pretty, Mary will only remember that she isn't smart and Susie that she wasn't pretty. Perhaps the solution is to say something like, "I really don't like my kid...listen to what they did this time" or "I really hate being a mother and here's why".
I actually do like being an offspring-er to my offspring-ees so I'll cut the negativity as much as I can.
After having this wonderful get together with friends of Friday night and spending the night at Andi's to avoid driving home at 3:30am in the rain, I woke up Saturday morning slightly sore. By Saturday night, I had to call Gabriel home from priesthood conference because I couldn't move and my children needed things and I kept yelping in agony from the hurt. I tried heating pads for hours at a time and bengay and icy hot and Codine and, finally, yes....Codine really can cut the hurt enough to go to sleep but not completely. Gabriel had to lower me into my spot in bed like a crane and then shove me gently from one side to the other all night while I needed to switch sides but was unable. My shoulders were actually on two very different planes...my neck actually looked like an 's'....extremely disconcerting. S for Sanchez, while altruistic and noble, is not the letter I would prefer for a neck. We had invited these great people from our ward over on Sunday between conferences about two weeks ago and had already cancelled once so we needed to do it....I'm trying the best I can to walk normally and hide the fact that I can neither look up nor down and I can't raise my arms above shoulder height. The food was really bad...I'm sad because I'm usually pretty spot on when it comes to fajitas....shame. The Roans are super though...at least they ate but what else could they do.
Gabriel stayed home from work to help on Monday and today, Tuesday, I think I can look left to right enough to take Dellah to school. I can sit up alone so that's progress. I wonder if this is some karmic thing...maybe I wasn't sympathetic enough to Dellah last week when she gave herself whiplash standing on her head....I thought I was but maybe I wasn't. I sure will be next time cause ain't nothin worse than tryin to live neckless in an all neck world.
I'm writing this post with Ruby sitting on top of my arms with a giant wire toy where you can slide colored beads all around the twists and turns. I'm glad I took typing enough to feel what I'm doing. She keeps asking me something and I keep saying, "uh, huh...si..." and apparently, that's not the right answer but I can't reach the Rubi-hona to decipher right now.
I spent all day yesterday trying to sort through the kids clothes I have amassed mindlessly in the last 3 years and finally admit that my toddlers can no longer wear the newborn socks woven like ballet shoes. They never wore the stupid stuff that was a dollar and all wrong and I knew it from the moment I bought them but now we have a concise, while overflowing, closet for fall/winter '07..... I wish I could say the same for myself. I look in my closet and there are so many things that are beautiful and wonderful 'ideas' but I have never worn them and will never wear them and have nothing to actually wear right now in reality with my current corporal situation. Literally. I had one pair of jeans that I left at the sleepover on Friday so who knows when I'll see them again and that's about it. Now's the time for some fast thinkin'. Right now I'm wearing a nightgown and and sweatpants...
The nightgown was the worst thing I have ever done to myself. It started when I had the two year pregnancy experience and they were the only thing that was comfortable or even feasible. Now, when I wear pajama bottoms and a t-shirt I feel strangely constricted. The Hondurans have their little daughters get one school uniform skirt with a huge hem when they're 9 or so and then, literally, they wear that skirt for years and years and just let out the hem....there is no secret as to why the whole 'latina' physique is enviable....those tiny waists are cultivated and what's below has no choice but to go out from there....at least in Honduras....I am the opposite...when you are wearing a wal-mart nightgown that starts at the shoulders and hangs forever tentlike to your ankles, your waist has no accountability for itself....in fact it can go missing completely and the nightgown wearer is none the wiser....until they go to put on normal people clothes and realize that pants are expected to button and whatnot.
enough.
Phonics are so hilarious. Dellah knows all the letters and sounds and little consonant clusters and everywhere we go she's telling me what they are as if I am the illiterate son of a sharecropper or something....thank you again, Dellah for your tutelage. One day I hope you realize that I actually am bilingual too and I learned my letters and read books and squoze you out of me rather painfully giving me just a smidge more life experience than you at the advanced age of 3 years and 4 months.

who knows what day it is

I have been amazed since I got married 4 years ago how fast time seems to have gone. Before I got married, somehow it seemed really slow and like you could be in one moment for a week. Probably that's because I went to sleep at 2am and woke up at noon if I were being consciencious...1:30 if I were being lazy. Seriously, I don't get it. I wonder if it's these last days that are actually speeding up as we plummit ever closer to the sun and our eternal burning.
Anyway, I feel like I was just coming home from church and now it's going to be friday again.
I took my 3 year old girl to preschool on tuesday and again today. It was two hours both times and the normal errands were, oddly, not any easier without her around. This leads me to my sneaking conclusion that until Ruby is also in some form of outside education, most every outing will suck in some form. I find myself thinking....when is this two hours going to be up so I can go get my sane child who can entertain my basketcase. Ruby, who thinks that Dellah's name is also Ruby (maybe I've mentioned this before?) spends the whole time we're out and about questioning "donde esta Ruby?" I might have thought she was playing hide and seek or being existential unless I was very familiar with the fact that she thinks her sister is herself. "come on, Ruby!...let's play, Ruby!....I want what Ruby has!...where is Ruby?" or from underneath dellah who has tackled her, a muffled, "ROOOOOBEEEEE!". It's straddling the line between creepy and endearing. We'll take endearing.
I went to the park with them yesterday to break up all the monotony and found myself wondering how follow the leader could possibly BE so complex! then we laid down and rolled down grassy knolls and went down a slide shaped like a castle turret 400 times.
I was happy to know that I still slide down slides and can fit between those unforgiving upturned metal sides.
It was so windy outside our voices were going the other direction from our mouths and I returned to the car having realized that severe wind conditions are actually a very effective hair product in my personal case. You just can't bottle that kind of action.
I'm at that place again....the dinner place. clueless. unmotivated....
I'd really like the penne rosa from Noodles and Company but I don't think that'll fly since Gabriel will get home at 7 and these hoodlums go to bed at 8.
It's the proteins that kill me. I just hate cooking meat. It just takes too long.
I got an entire pumpkin for 87 cents yesterday. Have pumpkins always been this cheep?
I looked at myself through squinted eyes today in the mirror and found that I was wearing khaki pants and a really cute pink sweater shirt and a gold necklace with turquoise beads hanging from it and navy blue shoes....I think I should stick with black and it's relatives because when it comes to color, I seriously think they all match and end up looking like a color explosion. Maybe it was the khaki....I don't think I can go there with confidence yet. Preppy is alluring and everything but it's a real commitment. You can see lumps through khaki...

Crik in the neck

Dellah woke up this morning and came to my room where she and Ruby proceeded to bounce around and wallow all over me in my groggy state. She thought it would be a great idea to try and do a head stand using the headboard to support her torso and legs....obviously, she's 3 and she doesn't know how to do a headstand so she collapsed wrong on her head and promptly was rendered incapacitated. She was hysterical basically and spent the whole morning lying on the sesame street placemat shoveling pancakes and eggs in her mouth or lying on the couch with her head turned the one direction it could turn and watching PBS. Around 1pm I decided she just wasn't perking up with the motrin and the therma pad that I stuck to her small little shoulder so I called the doctor and we got an appointment at 3:15. This is a problem for a lot of reasons but mostly because somewhere between 1:30 and 5pm both of those girls take a rather sizeable nap.....
there was no nap.
no nap and x-rays should never mix.
No nap and x-rays and strangers and strange metal x-ray beds should really never go even remotely together.
I have discovered there is a new volume beyond ballistic that I had no idea existed.
trauma.
The whole time we're there she's saying (in english so, of course he understood her), "I don't want Dr. Bancroft...I don't like Dr. Bancroft...I don't want him....no.....nooooooooo......". Then in his wisdom Dr. Bancroft offers Dellah a lollypop. She chose the blueberry cream safe-t pop and Ruby chose the lemon. The whole rest of the afternoon on the way home she kept repeating the mantra, "I love Dr. Bancroft....I love lollypops....Dr. Bancroft is my bes friend...he gives me lollypops..."
note to self....lollypop from the getgo next time around.
Ruby, of course spent 45 minutes wanting the blueberry cream lolly and hating the lemon one until I finally threw it away and she calmed down as if the very presence of the lemon safe-t pop was too much for her. I don't understand how she can be such a lemming. EVERY SINGLE THING that one of them has, the other one has to have it....especially Ruby....
note to self....whatever lollypop dellah chooses, just get the same one for Ruby even if it is the flavor of curdled spleen....

The universe has eaten all of my bobby pins. I don't understand this at all since I have bought, singlehandedly, in my entire life, thousands of bobby pins. All colors, all sizes, all newfangled ways to make them stay in better and not rust and blah blah and I have not even one single bobby pin with which to sweep the hair from my brow.
I was figuring the other day that I have done the wedding hair for about 7 girls and each head of wedding hair probably used at least 50 pins if not more but one of the people was me so that means I should have 50+ bobby pins and I have nill.

I don't know who has heard the Mandy Moore CD that just came out a little bit ago called wild hope....I was completely unprepared to like it so much. I mean, really, she sounds like Shawn Colvin and Beth Orton and the Dixie Chicks all at the same time. I didn't fast forward through any songs and there are about 4 or 5 of them that are just really, really good. Who knew? If you want to hear mine first before you buy it, you can but you should probably just buy it if you like singer/songwritery songs.
Also have you seen that show on Sundance channed called Iconoclasts. Ok, you need to find a way to watch that show. It's two famous people that have been really successful in their own fields and are friends visiting with each other and doing cool things. I was unprepared for how much I was addicted to this show at first viewing. Now that the snoasis snow shack is closed for the next 9 months, I have to do something and I want to watch this show all the time. It's like Eddie Vedder and Laird what's his name who is married to Gabrielle Reece and is a pro surfer and Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alice somebody who is the mother of organic cooking. Quintin Terentino and Fiona Apple.....Michael Stipe and Mario Batalli...
so good.
i mean, really....SO good.

I'm so glad it's friday.
I am seriously so glad it is friday.

Too much pink

You know how in France they're always talking about that vie en rose or however you spell it? I think that's dumb. It's just a place. Am I supposed to actually think that the light in a place is actually pink just to feel even worse about my current location which is not that pink place?

Speaking of Pink, I have been going to DI lately and finding some good things for winter for my Dellah who is much taller than she was last year though she doesn't weigh any more so she looks like a shoe-string with a tennis ball for a head. Anyway, I'm buying these taller clothes for her and they all seem to be sort of pink. This goes against my general philosophy to this point about dressing little girls and it's a smidge disturbing but I don't know what to say other than the fact that other little girl's mothers are buying them all this pink stuff and if I am going to shop at places where those mothers give their discarded pink-ness then I should just be quiet or spend real money on clothes of the color I choose. Of course, the Oilily shirt that I found was green and blue....that's right...Oilily for $1....nice...thank you shopping spirit...

I just went on this trip with my children where the flight was 1 hour and 20 minutes and I am hereby traumatized. It was so good to see my family of which these are the parents (my dad was actually way more thrilled than he appears.) Also we saw my other families which are my brother Nathan and his wife and their boys Cannon and Collin and my sister, Jenny and Kendall and their kids Ethan and Avery. Don't let this picture of Ruby fool you into thinking that she was at all happy the entire trip. she wasn't. I'm glad my family got to witness the mayhem firsthand to understand that it's a little much. She is cute but she packs a punch.

Dellah found quickly that my nephews have most everything you can imagine, not the least of which was a pirate costume which was much too large that she wore everyday for some time. Again, Lewi is a veritable chameleon, extremely adept at hiding his enthusiasm.

For any of those who are familiar with me as a human at all, I hope you are fixating yourself on the fact that I can now post pictures as well as words and are applauding from the rafters at my electronic genius (albeit 10 years behind everyone including my 8 year old nephew). Small steps. little tiny small steps. One of these days I'll get a pay pal account so I can start that business on e-bay. yep...one of these days.

I've been awake since 5:30 when I went to take my Ruby to have another MRI and get sedated and have that creepy sleep where you don't look like you're alive anymore. At least she got a build-a-bear workshop winnie the pooh out of it. Primary Children's is really good at giving toys to their patients who have been brave. I'm so glad the people that donate the toys went to Build a bear workshop and not the dollar store. She actually couldn't walk in a straight line the rest of the day and she kept falling over and crying so hopefully tomorrow she's snapped out of it.

Just for fun, why don't I put another picture on here because I can....let's see...

this is when gabriel and I went to a wedding a little while ago. I look scared but I'm not scared.

And this is my beautiful child that I named Dellah Faye who I really love because she is hilarious among a lot of other things.

And this is my child who I named Ruby Claire who is beautiful and wonderful and hard and worth it.

Now that I can do this picture thing you will see what we look like and love us all even more than you already do...with all your souls....right?

gumby

I think I know my new favorite words. "Hey, Ruby let's blah blah blah blah blah blah together!"
That's what I heard when I lowered them out of their booster seats and wiped the cereal off of them. Then I had what I had heard others talk of and always marveled at. 25 mintues of children playing together. They're back now but I can take it. I've had 25 minutes. Dellah just came up asking to talk to her hijos...I'm not sure if she has any children that I don't know about but whatever, Dellah.
I take the same wellbutrin every day. I only menstruate once a month for a couple of days. I'm absolutely positive that I have had a difficult few weeks sans chemical/hormonal imbalances.
I have learned slowly that I can get to the end of those stretches and be ok later. The last 4 days have been very good. There is still crying and screaming and biting but there always was and I don't expect it to go away. It's the lawlessness that's ceased...the helplessness..
I have extended myself beyond the bounds of previous extension. I have felt the fear and done it anyway. I called a friend from Salt Lake and she came over on monday for lunch with her son. I invited friends over for lunch on Tuesday and we had a total of 10 kids for a few hours. Yesterday I answered the phone every single time it rang except once when i was up in my closet packing for a trip. Tonight I go to a callback for another dance number in the Christmas concert.
I registered Dellah for pre-school yesterday.
All of these things seem simple to pretty much everyone else who lives in normal life but I am only just now, after 30 years of life, realizing that people are not scary. I am taking breaths and putting things in perspective before I do them. I have noticed that my nervous laughing has greatly diminished. I am not the only person in life without a script. THERE IS NO SCRIPT! amazing.
If you feel I am being overly dramatic I will tell you that my entire childhood I never one time invited a friend to come spend the night at my house. I never invited anyone to come and do anything with me for the anxiety of not knowing how it would all turn out or what I would say or do to keep the person entertained the whole time. I think I am a nice person. Why would somebody not want to talk to me if I invited them over? And I haven't had a therapist since February! I know! progress!
Tomorrow we leave to go to San Ramon, CA to visit my brother and his family and my sister and her family and her new baby and my parents. I'm going without spousal accompaniment but I'm going to the dollar store later and I think I'll be fine for tricks.
It'll be the last time I get to see my mom for a long time since, in two weeks, she'll start chemo and not be able to be around germy kids. We'll have to make the best of it. I was talking to my pediatrician, Tim, last night and he said I needed to go to San Francisco to a dance club called Mezzanine while I'm out there. He said they would let me past the velvet ropes. He says all the cute boys would spin me from one dance floor to the other and I would forget my cares and feel like a princess. I think he just wants to live vicariously. He is very cute. go to the artichokes & co. website http://www.artichokesandcompany.com/artichokes/ and click 2007 splendor. He's the one in the brown bathrobe in a kitchen holding a mug. Yeah...that's really him. How often does your pediatrician moonlight as a model and call you to chat? very cute.
I don't think I'll go to a dance club but we'll have fun.
I'm all out of dinner ideas. I don't like making dinner. I thought the gumption and desire to make dinner would come with the whole wedding thing but they elude me. I wish I was Kimora Lee Simmons and had a chef. and a driver. and an assistant. and a clothing line. and an endless budget. Actually I totally don't want to be her but the chef is a thought.

just a couple of things

today is payday. We have 4 diapers left. It's a miracle of potty training. One pack of diapers for two weeks! sunny days are here again....sort of.
Also, I've been thinking of this for a long time now. You know when these famous people go on talk shows or do other interviews and talk about their previous work? The huge majority of these people look completely different 10 years ago than they do now! I don't mean they look more mature or more currently coiffed and dressed, I mean they actually have different teeth, hair, chins, noses and shapes than they used to! It's so appalling. I have no idea how these interviews go on and these people watch these clips of movies and no one even remotely acknowledges the obvious ginormous differences. Are these hosts and interviewers strapped to a gag order/non-disclosure agreement? It boggles my mind. If I were the person doing the interview I do really believe I would be like, "wow....you've really changed since then" or "that didn't even really look like you there!" These people need to be brought to the realization that everyone is not blind and dumb. major cosmetic overhauls do not go unnoticed...even to suburban housewives in townhomes.

Ruby's new thing is the swiffer sweeper. I'm sure you, as an adult have either seen or held a swiffer sweeper and are aware that it is at least four feet in length if not more. This child is about 37 inches tall and she walks around wielding this lance in my narrow hallways and across my line of vision at dangerous distances. It already takes her around 4 or 5 minutes to come up the stairs by herself and she insists on dragging this huge broom up with her now which means you can hear her grunting and struggling a good 10 minutes before you actually see her. I don't know what she thinks, really. She gets really frustrated when it doesn't slide like silk on carpet. she keeps saying it's broken, "se quebo, mami, se quebo". Dellah has these transparent polyester scarves from the 50's or 60's or 70's that ladies would wear over their curlers or when the wind was blowing over their hair. She thinks she can juggle these scarves and is genuinely disturbed when they don't stay in the air long enough for her to situate herself to catch them. she keeps screaming that they're falling, they jus keep on falling....even the actual laws of the universe frustrate this person. The other day she wanted her fingers off her hand...
whatever.
we have Gabriel's friend Jared coming to stay with us this weekend. He's one of those interior re-designer people for a living. That's always a little precarious. I hope we don't get into a scuffle about my decor.

later

some posts like the one this morning need to be written in order to feel lighter on the inside. I acutally buttoned a shirt with the tags still on it that I bought 3 years ago and have never worn after i wrote that post. Necessary evils.
Last year I was in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert as one of the processional dancers. It was pretty neat. I auditioned on tuesday to do it again this year so we'll see if I make it. There are four nights of auditions. I went on the first one because I don't got a whole lot else goin' on. There were only 2 other people out of the 60 there who performed last year. I'm pretty sure the rest of the repeaters will go tonight or next week but if it was just based on tuesday, I'm pretty sure I get my spot back. The funny thing is that apparently, they're using the costumes from last year which are pretty awful but I weighed about 30 pounds more last year than I do now (a pharmacieutical problem) so I'll have to have my own costume altered. At least taken in instead of let out.
Some guy with very sculpted hair from last year was talking to me at dinner before one of the performances and he said, "yeah, I remember you from the auditions....I remember being surprised at how well you moved".....yeah....NOT COOL. Apparently I looked like I had eaten a few more sugarplums than a fairy. If you can dance, you can dance so there. those are the kinds of things that stick with you though, you know? Even when you can button your small shirt from 3 years ago.
The snoasis shaved ice place closes on saturday....I'm trying to prepare early so as not to have a major problem. Maybe I'll go down from an x-large to a large tonight to start weaning.

My advice to anyone contemplating the action of taking apart a car seat to wash the coushins and hardware because they are non-functional due to layers of what-not caked on them is this...1.do not do it and 2. do not do it when you have to be somewhere in 1 1/2 hours. I honestly think it might have been worth $150 to have avoided the whole scene.

My other advice is to watch the motorcycle diaries if you have not. besides the Gael Garcia Bernal quotient, it's pretty amazing. I watched it again for the whateverth time today and was reconverted to communism and latin america....mostly just latin america.

I have a night off tonight. I will do some things in silence for myself. no radio, no talking, no screaming mimis, just the swirling, unorganized train of my thoughts. I'm hoping for some Hall and Oats on the Loud speaker at Ross maybe. Maybe someone cutting me off in traffic. The usual.

raise your hand if you suck

I think that would just be me. I think, if there were a list of mothers in the world who absolutely never thought they would suck so bad, I would be at the top. I think, besides maybe some folks who kill their children, I am the worst parent I have ever met. I think people like Posh Spice and Brittany Spears and blah blah aren't even in the running since they have an army of people raising their children. I am an army of one and sometimes two for a coulple of hours in the afternoons and weekends. I don't like these people sometimes. I yell at them. I hold grudges against a three year old for ruining my house and my clothes and my sanity. The same for a two year old who cries all day and you might think I am exaggerating or trying to sound pathetic until you actually see that she actually does cry 7 or 8 of the hours that she's awake. She spits out her anti-seizure medicine and spills it on the floor and the pharmacy won't refill it early. She scratches herself and throws herself on the hard floor and cries until she turns gray. Even right now my right arm is being yanked and pinched and I can't hear my own thoughts over the screaming. Just one minute. I just need one minute to write down how much I wish I wasn't here right now so that I can go back to being here the rest of the day.
All these scenarios in my mind my whole life. Entire carriculum plans for how to teach dance and colors and art and letters and values and morals to these people who are my charges. All those years of wanting to be their mother and here I sit. 9:32 am on a thursday. no bra. no shower. dirty nightgown. bad posture. Tears.
pathetic. (see title of this post)
Sometimes I am trying to be ironical and cute and right now I am trying to be alive. I hate my life right now this minute on this day. I feel like I am trapped in someone else's idea of adulthood. Some Roald Dahl portrayal of vileness from a child's perspective. I don't know what to do with these people. I don't have any money to do it with anyway. there are no words for how much I hate the park. I hate the park. I hate the stupid park. I just want a nap. I need a nap. I need a shower. I need a hug. I seriously need.
I can't think of really one thing that I hoped to accomplish by the time I was 30 that is actually done. I don't have happy children. I don't have any creativity. I don't have my own money. I don't remember how to be myself and I'm almost 31. A blog is the only thing I've really written in 3 years and I am sedentary.
houses and cars and new appliances do not change the level of one's happiness. I would rather live in a winnebago and have some things figured out while I do whites at the laundrymat.
I do really like my husband and I vaguely remember life for a couple of months without someone else in it between us. All those songs about 'as long as we've got each other' and 'love will conquer all' are wonderful but my daytime marriage is to small people who are ungrateful and uncuddly. I chose Gabriel. I would not have chosen to marry my children. Ironic. By the time my real spouse comes home I have nothing much extra.
I absolutely know I am listening to the voice that would have me be sad. I am yielding to the thought that I am not good enough to be myself. I know these thoughts don't come from God but I am just going to be this way for a while until I have energy for a new thought.
and I even take medicine!
perhaps I up my dosage?
I'll ask a professional.
duty calls.
I don't need responses to a post as gratuitous and indulgent as this one. I just need to silently be heard. I just need to scream in black and white for a change.
............

a trip on the bright side

It struck me when i read Whitney's comment on the last post that It really does sound like lots of stuff is wrong in my life. I will hereby take lines to show that there are good things in my life. I mean really good.
1. My child is potty trained which means that we have enough diapers for an entire pay period without having to go into debt to buy extra diapers.
2. My husband is very, very cute. especially his bottom.
3. I have a car with a DVD player in it which means my children technically don't have to bother me at all only I have this system where they can lose and win privaleges and they have always lost their videos for the day by about 8:15 am. I am just shooting myself in the foot but it's this or actually appear on the supernanny.
4. I know that if I am good now, I will get to live with Heavenly Father and all these folks that either do or do not drive me insane daily and that is comforting in and of itself but also because I will have no midriff fat or strange red scar on the side of my nose or really bad temper or ADD or need Wellbutrin or Prevacid.
5. I really have wonderful friends that make my life better without waking up in the morning to think that they are going to make my life better.
6. My husband gives me time to go and do things by myself because he knows it makes me more able to cope even though he doesn't go and do things by himself besides work and other work.
7. My parents are super nice people.
8. Dellah comes to me more than once a day and says things like, "wow, mommy, you a great cooker." or "wow, Mom, You da bes painter of my room!" or, dillusionally, "Mami, you look beautiful!".
9. I have the recipe memorized for small round cookies that are dipped in powdered sugar so that if I am ever accidentally trapped on an island with a grocery store and cash and an oven, I can totally make them without the cookbook.
10. When Ruby cries, after you get over the initial blood boiling anger at the fact that she never stops crying, she actually has the cutest cry face I've ever really seen. She actually looks like a small something or other that I can't describe but I guess if you're going to cry your whole life, you might as well be cute at it. (unlike claire daines who is the ugliest crier on the sphere.)
11. I am actually reading three sort of rediculous books right now that actually are three really different places to be during the day if things get really rough.
12. I have a separate trash can outside on the back patio for dirty diapers.
13. I don't have a serious malloclusion orthodontially speaking.
14. I have health insurance.
15. I live exactly beside a wal mart, a lowes, a cafe rio, a subway, an italian restaurant, a yogurt shop, a day spa, a kinkos/fed ex and about 50 other unbuilt stores.
16.I have the internet.
17. My blog actually defied the odds of murphy's law and came back after a year of strange disappearance from existance and it hadn't lost any of it's information...now that I think of it, perhaps aliens have something to do with an abduction of this nature.
17 a. My life is interesting enough to have obviously drawn the attention of cyber aliens.
18. My metabolism, while sloth-like, is not altogether non-existant which, after watching the world's largest man on TLC, is, indeed, a blessing.
19. From 8pm on, there is silence to be had in my home until at least 7:30 the next morning.
20. I have recently acquired various GUESS accessories sporting the letter G which actually looks like I'm wearing my husband's initial on purpose like a shiny dangling representation of my undying affections.
21. My life will never end like 'Finding Jane' or 'Once' because, come on....why do I pay money to go and see all that lovey lovey and leave feeling like fecal matter?
22. Whitney told me last night that Sherri Dew got married.
23. Gabriel got a raise at his work that starts next year.
24. I actually just saw gas for 2.54 in west jordan.

there, I think that about does it. My mind hurts. Next time it'll just be regular old mixed bag of tricks around here but I wanted an exercise in positivity at least. I think I am the kind of person that actually would just say, the glass is filled to the middle, to avoid any undue pidgeon hole-ing as a pessimist or otherwise.

dear diary

there is a certain amount of freedom associated with knowing that I am the only person reading these posts. I am the annonymous blogger. So, I guess I should just say that I did a good job painting the girl's room yesterday but I have way more to do. It has these scallops around the top of the wall that i traced with a pizza pan so it looks like a circus tent a little with the white of the wall scalloped against the pink of the lower wall....very girl.
Dellah finally took a nap yesterday and i got to be with Ruby for a while before she woke up. That is a really cute little girl. She talks so much more now that she's on this anti-seizure medicine. I hope there's a correlation because I'm sure she's so tired of being behind.

I have officially called 4 strangers in the last 2 days to plan visiting teaching for tonight. I really hate calling people on the phone. I'm no good on the phone. I need visual contact. I'm surprised at how calm I sound to myself while I'm talking though...very strange.
I'm supposed to be teaching the Laurels on sunday and I haven't spoken with the YWP and I don't have a manual. I hope this doesn't result in another phone call to strangers.
Our neighbors brought us cookies last night. There are nice people here.

My mom is very sick with a very big ugly word disease and I feel like all I do is cry when I get spare time. I'm trying to paint rooms and bake cakes and do art projects with toddlers and buy things at stores not to think about it but it's always there. I can't understand why she has to be so far away so I can't help her as much as I wish I could. again, the stupid phone....that's all I've got to convey myself and it's not good enough.

I watched the nanny diaries last night. I don't know why they called it the nanny diaries since it had about 2 things from the book with the same title. whatever. I don't know what the big deal about scarlett johanson is. I thought Laura Linney was gorgeous.

Maybe we'll trade in the pacifica for a station wagon of some sort....audi, volkswagon, volvo....I think the pacifica is just too big for me. you know my fear of big things...it is a really good looking car, that's for sure but what if we don't have 4 kids? what do we need all that car for? I'm a luxury station wagon kind of girl...always have been.
poopy diapers smell SO BAD. It's just outside the realm of normally tolerated odors.

from scratch

We had some friends over last night for the husband's birthday which was a week or so ago and his favorite cake is carrot. I decided I would make a carrot cake for him because I'm nice. I didn't realize my fingers would turn orange with all the grating of the carrots and that I maybe should have practiced making a cake for myself before I made one for another....
it stuck to the pan...it was sunken in the middle and I was sad. I stuck it on a plate, arranged the layers back in circles with all their detached parts, and put enough icing (3 inches or so) on it so that it looked like a cake....
it wasn't that bad, actually...but I think I'll let Duncan and Hines make the next one.
I have done the wedding hair for a lot of people that I can think of...and the prom hair and the fancy whatever hair but I have never done the same wedding hair three times until this weekend when Liz Davis had her third wedding related event and I put it up again...apparently 3 really is the charm cause she looked pretty. That was a really fun party...it was chilly at night for the first time in I don't know how long so I can't wait till fall. A chilly night and some Kim and some Emily and some Whitney and some Andi and some lemonade and hard candy....come on, people! good times.
I have the night off tonight...if anyone wants to hang out with me let me know. I guess since I'm the only one that reads this, I should probably just not ask that question to avoid no answers and subsequent disappointment.
I wish I had some cash.
I need some money...
mo money...mo money, biv devo, here we go!!! member that song?
anyway, I need some cash because there is a place called snoasis which Marsha's roommate, Kristen took us to the other night and I have literally missed like two days in three weeks of going there and getting $3.00 of rediculousness....I mean, I cannot hide the addictive behaviors that I try to quell in normal society...I don't care if those people in the little shack see me every single day...and they do....I gotta have it....I neeeeeeed it, I tell you....vanilla with extra cream...it tastes just like the snow cream we used to make when I was little...
anyway...
snoasis. You don't need to know where it is so you don't make the line longer and I have to wait more time.
Ruby is writhing on the floor screaming and wanting to play in the toilet water which I just can't allow...sorry but that's just gross, you go ahead and cry...but no...no, no, no and no!
We went to see Beauty and the Beast in the amphitheatre on friday and dellah got so excited she peed on gabriel's leg....I thought to myself, 'you are a very good father and I love you but I am so glad that that just happened to you because you're around them 1/24th of the time that I am and you need to be made a little uncomfortable because now you know how I feel.'
this is not a christian attitude. I take it back. I did think that but I shouldn't have written it down....
I wish I weren't chubbly. I'm always shocked when I look in the mirror. It's a big blow to realize I don't look like Gweneth Paltrow. I feel I need to ask Heaven why I can't sing and why my body doesn't do what i want it to.
whatever.
there are more important things.
probably.
ah yes....snoasis....
must go sell something to get some cash....

yeah, it's been a year....so!

How strange to be here again. I have had the internet for a week now and pass the computer every day thinking, "yeah...I should write something" and then thinking, "yeah....that's overwhelming" and then keep on walking. I think you pass a certain point where it's just been a real long time and you don't know how to write stuff because there's too much stuff. I decided that I'll just write what's happened recently and the rest will just come out in subsequent posts like a far reaching enema to the past.

It's the screaming I can't handle. The screaming of little girls who inherited my volume and are scared or mad or frustrated or happy about every single thing in their lives. I seriously can't handle any more screaming. Sometimes I cry because I can't handle any more screaming and then my children smile because that is the sign of someone who couldn't care less how someone feels....oh, you're sad....that's funny....oh, I made you sad?.....that's even funnier-er.

that's enough of that. We moved. We live in this new house {in an undisclosed place so that no one comes to steal us} and we are happy.

We made sure we bought blinds for the windows before we moved in so we could have some priviacy but, all in all, we went from 700 sqare feet and three windows to 2100+ square feet and lots of windows which makes things really bright. My children who used to sleep until the 10am or heaven forbid, 9am are now waking up at 7am and, though I know other people wake up that early every day, I don't really know anyone who loves it...if they say they do they really don't. Anyway...hibernation has it's plusses...sometimes I miss the cave we came from. Mostly I miss feeling warm yummy love feelings for my children when I came to get them after sleeping until I could wake myself up. If I have to hear, "enjoy it...it goes by so fast" one more time I'm going to go by them really fast with my fist. It absolutely does not go by very fast in the present. It feels like a recurring out of body trip that is not altogether unpleasant but mostly really loud and messy and unorganized and bad for my sense of self esteem. Enough with your hindsight goes by really fast....sheesh..I love my babies so much it just doesn't go by fast, ok?

So I have a garage and a big trash can that we roll to the edge of the driveway on monday mornings and a door bell and a pantry and all that stuff.

This post is too long.

Yesterday in the wee hours when Dellah came to jump on my bed, I proposed that she should go to school. She said she wanted to go to school and then I said that people who go to school have to be able to go potty in the potty.(she is potty averse and thinks of every excuse never to go to the potty even though she is three years and two months old) To my astonishment she said, "yeah...Imonnagotooda poddy" and she went, sat down and peed. We put her ballet shoe bikini panties on which she calls "tannies" (homophone) and she went about 6 more times before we left for the day and she wore a diaper. We came home and she went more and this morning she comes in the room announcing that she needs to go poddy and wear her heart tannies. No accidents (if it were possible to have any going to the bathroom every 7 minutes just to flush and wash your hands). I have never spoken english to my children even one day in their lives and for some reason, Dellah speaks english 24/7 and thinks Ruby should too so Ruby is all messed up. Dellah says things like "I'm a big girl cause I gotooda poddy like a big girl cause I wear my tannies and I go to da poddy to do pee pee and liddle big poops" and Ruby says things like "yo gonna paper in la basura"...just pick a language already..at least she's talking...that's a huge step....Ruby is so cute it's a crime in a dozen countries.

I just got called to be the Laurel advisor in my ward...that's cool. And we're speaking in church sunday....that's okay.
I got some green flats yesterday...so cute. I mean soooo cute.
love love
erin