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.