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...