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.