lunes is monday

I am feeling a little melancholic today. I can't explain it but I think Dr. Oz would say I need some vitamin D. It is very cloudy. I felt I needed to come here and talk to the 'great dear void' and feel better afterward.
Yesterday I did two things that I didn't want to do but I did them anyway. #1 I asked my neighbor who's kids I have taken care of several times if she could take care of Dellah this morning for a little while while I took Ruby for a test. She said yes. It wasn't even that hard and my blood pressure returned to normal pretty much instantly so I think this whole connecting with humans and asking for help/being not able to do every single thing by myself has some merit. #2 Go to church. I wanted to sleep. That sounds so childish I know because I've been going to church every Sunday now for 20+11 years and I know I'm going to go so why do I do this but man, I just really wanted to sleep. Instead I went to referee for an hour, listen for an hour and teach a lesson on "our purpose in life" to a bunch of brooding or sleeping or despondent young women and left feeling glad I went. See, Erin...feel the fear (or dread) and do it anyway. If I didn't have health insurance that covered it, the therapy would totally be worth the money. Look at all I learned.

So I took Ruby to the Jordan School which is a place that looks like an elementary school and it probably could be called that but it's filled with little tiny wheelchairs outside all the classrooms and there are all these special chairs and rooms and equipment because it is for special needs kids. It's where all the therapists that work for the Jordan School District have their offices and where Ruby goes for a little 90 minute class once a week. She had her evaluation for pre-school to see if she was going to be subsidised by the state and be a special needs kid in a pre-school or if she was going to be like Dellah and be a 'non-delayed peer' in a class full of special needs kids. After two hours of watching her match the yellow with the red and the square with the circle and sit motionless when asked to pick up a block and hand it to the lady and not be able to tell the lady what kinds of things 'bark', I was either going to cry really hard or run away or need to drink a mountain dew of epic proportions. She qualified to go to the preschool and be one of the kids that need to be there with a special ed teacher which made me feel glad that she's getting some recognition and help and sad that she needs recognition and help. Sweet little Ruby. You know that poem called Winkyn, Blinkyn and Nod? Maybe not but it's kind of like a poem to read at bedtime about these children who go to fish for stars in the sky in a wooden shoe and it's pretty beautiful actually. Well Ruby knows the entire thing. She can say, "Where are you going and what do you wish, the old moon asked the three...we've come to fish for the herring fish that live in this beautiful sea...nets of silver and gold have we said, winkyn and blinkyn and nod." And she knows the whole thing, like 40 more lines that what I just wrote. Those are not 2 year old words to say and she says them. Things like that are confusing when some things are so good and others are non-existent....She's not rainman, she's totally functional there's just little holes...little frayed parts that make the whole fabric not so strong.
Enough about that.
They've been showing the Girl with the Pearl Earring on IFC every day for some reason and I am completely obsessed with watching it. I have seen it so many times already and I still keep watching it...It's Collin Firth I tell you....good grief. Also I rented the showtime series the Tudors and I was already in love with that time period in history and King Henry and his wives and daughters but the show is pretty amazing. I asked Gabriel if he were interested in paying $40 more a month than we already are so we can get that one channel and he seemed slightly negative on the issue..I guess I can understand that.
Maybe I've mentioned before that Gabriel drives the world's oldest Toyota Corolla which we are told used to be red and is now a very matte, very faded, magenta-ish color. It was $1,700 which is fine but we've had to fix it so much in the last year and it just really sucks so he's getting a new car. A BMW car. Now I'm not exactly sure how the physics of the whole thing works but I wanted to get a different car a while ago because I thought my domestic car was losing value and it was too big....we decided it wasn't a need so we would forgo the new car. Then his car has some legitimate problems I admit but, come on people, '89 Toyota to '02 BMW? Perhaps we can negotiate a little trade.....he used to work at a car dealership and he went back there to visit and they're giving him the car at cost which is actually probably cheaper than a new corolla or even a used one so it's ok....It just sounds so luxurious, right? Gabriel basically IS a BMW though...foreign...beautiful...stylish...efficient... so I suppose it's only right. But does that mean I'm a Pacifica? I think I am an MDX....most definitely.
Mostly I think that the car doesn't mean anything about who you are but be realistic now, if you had a choice, wouldn't you choose a nicer car if it were the same money as a not so nicer car? This means that we have to get rid of our nice Peruvian friend who came twice a month to clean our house which I had to clean when I got home because it really wasn't and take care of our kids by letting them sit in water but not applying soap or shampoo to them. That's ok. I feel better cleaning my own house and whatever else.
I bought myself several see's candies the other day and that was unwise to say the least. That key lime truffle is off the hook and the lemon one is not far behind. Not to mention the butter cream business that I just can't get enough of.
Ah, well....I'm smelling poop all the way in my room from some culprit who was supposed to be napping in theirs so I'll go attend to weightier matters.

offspring

This is Ruby practicing to be either a boy or a gang member. The hat was so that the earphones wouldn't keep falling out. She listened to that song by Rob Thomas that's at the end of "Meet the Robinsons" 26 times. I never thought I would be one of those parent's that's like, 'yeah, lets get my toddler an iphone and a computer but one of those tiny ipod things with 75 songs? Sign me up. Gabriel hopes we get her this item sooner than later so he can have his own ipod back..we wouldn't even need 75 songs we just need the one. That one and 'Bustopher Jones wears white spats' from the musical cats....I've always called her bustopher jones so she thinks it's about her.

And that's Dellah and Ruby last sunday when Dellah gave her talk in church. There were great pictures of smiles and sweetness but no picture depicted their relationship better than this one. "Yes we are holding hands and we are exactly the same size but we are sisters, not friends and not twins and we don't even know if were that stoked about it at all"

This is is my child who has just learned how to smile so big in pictures. This is the tree that she made for christmas that we had hanging on a doorknob for 3 months and Gabriel had had enough...it is now immortalized photographically and in the trash. I tried to preserve every item that she ever touched, drooled on or scribbled with a crayon her whole life and now I'm like, look, I love her, she's right here in front of me...why don't I stop building a shrine to a living kid who's 3-D and start building some kind of memory in her mind of a mom who doesn't obsessively hoard paper goods. Obviously there are things I keep but not everything. Our house isn't big enough. NO one's house is big enough.

those are the people I made. They are cute and weird. They are mine. I am cute and weird. 1+1=2 always.

taggety tag tag

Cindy tagged me all the way from a different country so I guess I'll respond. Andi tagged me all the way from Orem so I guess its samesies for both.

10 years ago I was: if I'm not mistaken, in the worst relationship in the entire world with a person who hated me and I worked at the Baby Gap or had just stopped working there to go home and decide to go on a mission which I decided not to do until 2 years later. ten years ago is the new hell except that I wore a size 6.

5 things on my to do list.
1. laundry
2. write more poems and stories
3. clean out my closet already and get over it.
4. Take a shower cause it's been a while.
5. help Dellah give her first talk in primary tomorrow.

Things I would do if I became a billionaire
-Hire someone to do numbers 1-5 above.
-Have an Acura MDX.
-Buy Honduras so I could help those people have a clue.
-Buy a nice person who would want to let me sleep every day until 11am and take care of my children or even if they didn't want to they would have to because I bought them.
-Buy the supernanny to temporarily come and help me be a better mother.
-Buy a Cold Stone franchise and a Cafe Rio franchise so I would never go hungry again.
-Pay my parents back all the money they ever feel like they wasted on a self absorbed kid.
-Pay to have Otis Redding resurrected to sing 'These arms of mine' and 'Try a little tenderness' in my living room.
-Go and visit the whole world and all the cool places
-Buy a publishing company to publish anything me or my dad ever write so we feel like we got published.
-Tell Gabriel to never go to work and always stay home with me so we can travel and eat cafe Rio and vanilla creme horns from Wal Mart and drive around in our Acura MDX.

3 Bad Habits
I am easily offended when I should just assume that people don't mean to be idiots.
I don't make dinner every night or even most nights.
I think swear words a lot

5 places I've lived
North Carolina (Kinston and Bear Grass)
Washington State (puyallup)
Utah (provo/Salt Lake/Sandy)
Honduras (Monjaras, Langue, Cantarranas, San Lorenzo, Valle de Angeles and Tegucigalpa)
That's all...I've visited more but not lived there.

5 jobs I've had
Sales associate and visual displays at Gap Kids
Temp secretary during summers
English and creative writing teacher at Heritage school
Spanish teacher at MTC
Two children 10 months apart.

Things most don't know about me
-I really am terrified of the Statue of Liberty
-I would trade spanish in if i could speak fluent French
-I wish I was a voice over artist
-I can only eat ketchup if it's already on an assembled fast food hamburger and I don't look at it.
-I can't leave baby dolls thrown around or I feel like they're uncomfortable and I have to make them lay down and feel comfy
-I can't drive a stick shift


That's it, the whole truth.
feliz dia sabado.

Arise and sit down, oh Zion

I must stand and be recognized as a very inconsistant blogger (among other things). My name is Erin and I have undiagnosed ADD and diagnosed OCD and need an MD to figure it all out. The only things that remain constant through all things are mostly my gender and my marriage due mostly to the song "if you could hie to Kolob". Children are not included here because they are not always children but, often, beasts of the field and things that crawl upon the earth. Extremely unnerving how children are there one second and gone the next in the throws of body-snatching heathenistic screams and then back just as quickly to smile and ask for more goldfish cwakahs. I just sit down and take it, I tell you because I don't want to go to jail and I don't want to become a hiss and a byword among these same people in 20 years.
Let me expound for one moment on the gravity and severity of toddler diarreah. I don't even know how to spell it, it's so intensely (bowel) moving. Dellah literally exploded excrement from one corner of my once new home to the other. She would just stand there...just stand in one spot with no intention of moving and burst all over the floor. It finally got to the point where I threw clothes away rather than try and negotiate a way in my mind that I could touch them enough to get them clean. And then there was the throw up. There was throw up on my clothes and in my hair and hers. There was throw up for 3 days and my child only weighed 27 pounds at almost 4 years old before this. I have no idea how she survived unless she morphed into one of the afore mentioned wild animals who only eat like twice a month or something. If that clorox anywhere solid surface spray is just a marketing hoax it totally worked on me and two bottles of it that I used in that many days.
Now it is time to talk about a well known place in a little known neighborhood. DSW. It is a shoe store. It is pretty much like a glorified famous footwear with cute shoes for ok prices but nothing so spectacular you wet yourself. It is normal save the little room in back wherein lies the clearance. Clearance unlike any clearance you have ever seen. 80% off people. Shoes that were 80 pesos are now $16 and shoes that were $39 are $8. When you realize that it's not just the naturalizer square toe pumps and the blue hush puppy sandals with embroidered paislies but the Steve Madden and Tahari and BC and Diesel ones as well......well let me just tell you people...it is religious. Not all of them are 80% off. some are only 70% or 50% off but that doesn't lessen the thrill.
There is a DSW in Midvale very close to me on 7200 south....there is also one (and this is the epiphany)...at Daybreak! Perhaps you know this and you think, oh...it's just like the one in Midvale, I don't need to go.....uh, yes you do. This DSW is beautiful. It has dark carpets and a huge chandelier with little silver shoes hanging from it. It has huge 9 foot mahogany mirrors leaned effortlessly against the walls for admiring yourself and especially your feet parts. Also there is the most tidy Ross I have ever been to. (if you think that sounds impossible, I did too until I saw it myself). I think the goal is actually Gateway-esque out there. There's a Red Robin and the coolest looking Target on the earth and tons of stores that have nothing in them yet because it's new....I have been told that I could sell tampons to the menopausal so don't rush the 8 hours over to Daybreak unless you're already going so far west you can see California over the hill for some reason and you decide to stop by...I just thought I'd share my newest experience consumerally speaking. Four pairs of shoes people...four pars of shoes for $56.
I saw in my absence that I have been tagged by some associates of mine and so I will include the illuminating information about myself that you, I'm sure, have been literally losing sleep for lack of knowing.