viva Mexico

this is Dellah and Ruby saying, 'thank you, Papi, for being from Chiapas where they have these awesome dresses.

saturday

Today we had a garage sale (since we don't have a yard). It sounds great when you say that we made 2,860 pesos...it sounds just fine when you say we made $286! Hooray for us.
I have come to the conclusion that I have to come to the conclusion that I will no longer buy so many items of apparel. Some girl comes up to me with a pair of 7 jeans and an unworn shirt from H&M, a banana republic skirt and some turquoise steve Madden pumps and I'm like, "That will be $9". what? what is wrong with me? these pregnant girls were coming in buying entire layettes for their unborn children and well into their toddlerhood...Someone close DI...make it stop. Help me not go to the Gateway mall and to TJ Maxx and Ross. Help me be crafty and make scrapbooks and toll paintings and dinner.

or just go to famous footwear's buy one get one half off sale and get a couple of things...there's always THAT I could do after getting rid of half my garage.

sheesh.

Ruby says, "yeth". Do you want some more food, Ruby? "yeth" "yeth, I want thom mow".
there is hardly anything cuter right now.

ummm...

so when you have small people you're in charge of and they have fevers and mucus and they cough on you for 4 days you get fevers and mucus. note to self.

I would be my friend if I were you. I would go to my blog just to see if I were alive.
is it too much to ask that you just say, 'hey, I came to see if you're alive' cause I would do it for you and I HAVE done it for you and I don't even want to hear the whole, "oh, stop being so dramatic, Erin, you're not that good of a friend to all of us, you don't deserve more than 3 comments (one of them that you actually wrote as a response) to a post in a week!" I thought we agreed I would be fragile during this Mexican innundation and I would need support. I'm not one of those emotionally stable people who's like, "I got this business all wrapped up". I'm one of those folks that's like, "I wish I had this...do I have this?...what do you think"
whatever.

Dad?
are you even reading this Dad?
Mom called me today and it was like this,
E-hey, mom
M- hey, haven't talked to you for a while, thought I'd see what you're doing
E-well I've had a fever and been sick so I've been in my pajamas for a while
M-oh, well I'll let you go
E-no, no, I want to talk, so what are you doing?
m-nothing.
E-oh, well what's new, anything good going on?
M-no, we're just living in the future, not the present, that's all. I've been trying all day to get out of the house but now it's too late (it was 1pm there)
E -chat, chat, chat, the girls, the girls, the girls, encourage, encourage
M-oh kay, well I'll let you go, bye.

I'm basically devoid of blood after that emotional vapirism.
just like you will be at the end of this post! haaaaaahahahahahahahh!
I talked to my friend Amy who said my posts worry her like I'm really sad.
I told her it's a nice place to rant and then move on with my really pretty happy life.
While I'm ranting, I feel so mad when I go to weddings and people get married and they get all these presents and everybody's like, "here let me get you all these presents" and I'm like, "I wish I would have gotten all these presents when I got married" and then I feel mad like my married didn't matter as far as presents go. like, seriously. not even towels or a George foreman grill or anything!

I'm happy.
I'm relatively cued in to what's currently fashionable.
I have a really cute florescent pink Diesel watch.
I had cold stone last night and it didn't make me like a rabid hound out for more cold stone every day for the next 5 months.
Snoasis is set up in the parking lot just ready to open this weekend.
My children like me and the feeling's mutual.

I just gotta get it off my 38C, man. go ahead and get your transfusion now, Dad and Jenny and Cindy and Andi who are my only readers.

have you seen the movie Bella? somebody please tell me what I'm supposed to think happened at the end because I don't even know at all.

viernes en el barrio

Things are good....almost great!*
I was up until I don't even remember when with Dellah who had a fever and was throwing up red jell-o on my new white leather watchband.
good times.
I can't even think of a more beautiful day than this day. Have you looked outside?
rediculously nice.
I've been speaking so much Spanish, my mind is falling apart. Yesterday I was in line at Wal-Mart when I realized that it was the 20 items or less line and I had already put about 35 things on the counter....I still had about 14 more so I just said to the lady, "ai, lo siento, es que no me di cuenta en que fila estaba"....then I realized that the woman's name was Hezapeth and she was so totally middle eastern I just wanted to run and leave the bananas and tortillas for someone else.
lame.
line quantity violator AND capable of racist assumption that brown woman working at Wal Mart was latina...
At least there are oreo cakesters.
At least there's that.
Also Ruby took an antibiotic for a staph infection where the sun doesn't shine and she woke up the next morning with huge red welts on her belly and it kept multiplying and multiplying until her whole body, face, hands, legs, kooch, belly, neck were all covered. The Dr. told us not to do anything except stop taking the meds and it would take a week at least for the things to go away...first, however, they were going to fade from bright red and start to look like dusky bruises.
Now I have a 3 year old child who cries and moans incessantly who looks like she's also a victim of domestic violence...poor little girl. If it's not one thing it's the other with Ruby. Until it's over I guess she just won't wear shorts.

I don't know if I've mentioned before that Gabriel's brother is a dentist and also a professor and also, as of late, one of those 'doctors' who use magnets to cure people of their deadly illnesses and indigestion. He lives in Mexico but now that the parents are here, they have set up an appointment on sunday when we are to bring our magnets (what magnets?!) to Gabriel's brother's house and talk with Kike on Skype so he can show us where to put our magnets (what magnets?) on Ruby so that she no longer has any problems whatsoever and the leading pediatric neurologist in Utah can rest peaceful that the 18 months he's been stumped by her have been miraculously cured with 4 magnets.!!!!!!!!! they could also send someone to receive Ruby's treatment for her vicariously but decided that it was better if Ruby were there watching Kike on skype so we could have her covered in her own magnetics.
I thought we mormons got enough flack for the vicarious idea...
h e l p
at least there's oreo cakesters.
today I am wearing a little white and blue seer-sucker jumper with a little white v-neck t-shirt underneath and my little white leather watch and my little navy blue patent leather flat strappy sandals...
I find if I call my clothing little it makes me feel better about the whole chubby situation I find myself in.
At least I took a shower.
at least there's that.
my husband is so cute it's just crazy.

crime and punishment

I was in Target yesterday picking up a prescription with Ruby while Dellah was at school. This mom in an aisle near me was having a hard time with a screaming kid and she said, "if you do that again, I will wash your mouth out with soap".

I have prayed and fasted and plead with Heaven to help me know what to do to make some kind of impact on my children. They simply don't care about words or tone of voice or loss of toys or time out or silent treatments.

as a totally out of answers to my own life mother, I, personally felt as if Heaven had opened and I had heard a voice of great wisdom speak to my mind....

That's it! Harmless and yet, effective physical punishment.

Yesterday Dellah screamed her out of control scream for the 100th time and I said, that's it...jabon en la boca....I took her to the sink, put a dab of my non-paraban, method soap on my finger and stuck it on her tongue. Silence.
Today I used a one and a two and a three for bad deeds and on the third there was going to be soap.
Dellah 0
Ruby 3
Tomorrow I hope Ruby can remember what it tastes like to have soap in her mouth and respond accordingly.

I'm so happy!

Call family services, I don't even care. This is the best thing that's happened in many, many months here in my household.
some order
some control
some discipline if you will for completely defiant kids who just look at me while they do what they're not supposed to do.
finally a win for my side.
Tomorrow it probably won't work at all but yesterday and today were enough to boost my sense of parental-ness

Cinco de Mayo...what?

I live with a Mexican who has never celebrated Cinco de Mayo in his whole life. He doesn't understand what he would celebrate. Mexican independence day (and most of Central America too) has their 4th of July on the 16th of September. I think Americans invented Cinco de Mayo so they can say things like, 'Tequila' and 'Fiesta' and 'Sombrero'.

That behind me, I would like to inform my vast and far reaching readership (or something) that the 'Disgrace to your Gender' letters of yesteryear live on...only now they are 'Disgrace to your Establishment' letters because I recently wrote the organizer of that one Methodist sale I just sold stuff in and gave her the who and the why and the what for of what she can do with her ridiculous letter telling me that I caused clerical errors with the cashiers because my price tags were unreadably too small so in the future, I need to please use only the template they provide....you know what? I defy anyone on the earth to tell me that I don't know the dimensions of a price tag...I'm legally blind in both my eyes without contacts and I could see them at arm's length! So, anyway, it felt really good to tell her that I was a very intelligent person who had done nothing but print the template SHE SENT ME and fill in the blanks and that if she needed any helpful hints, maybe she could not employ actual blind people over the age of 77 as her cashiers. Also I told her it was bad form to tell anyone that clerical errors were made in your accounting...I did everything but tell her that my husband's a lawyer and I'm going to sue her for being a complete idiot. It was just condescending when I stayed up past 1 am for 3 days to wash and iron and hang and tag 156 items of clothes. It looked like a store. All the same hangars, all the same direction, all the same sized safety pins holing the tags, all shirts, pants, skirts and dresses together in groups. You know me. She told me they had to be in nearly new condition with no frays or loose buttons for this very high quality sale. I didn't send tons of things because they weren't perfect. Then they send me 14 things in my box of stuff that I wanted back if they didn't sell that were never even mine...14 ugly, stained, baby BOY, carter's monstrosities and I'm like.........well, I've already told you what I was like.
She didn't respond funnily enough.
All the boys I ever wrote them to at least responded in some way.
eh..
what ever.
This is reason number 783 why I am nothing like the Lord and would not go to Heaven if I died in a few minutes. Please let me have more time on earth to not feel so happy that I was mean to that pretentious poophead.

I am now going to be like a lighthouse with flags and flares and blinking lights and small glass observatories. I will tell you the code. I will have a secret word for the different stages of misery that I am going to feel when my husband's parents (who dislike me greatly, not that I just think it but that they just said it out loud very loudly to my husband who then hung up on them two years ago) come to visit Utah for t w o m o n t h s. They come on Saturday the 10th and they leave mid July...
I'm just going to let that percolate so you will understand the need for secret codes and combinations. I feel like a Mason. So, when things are OK, I will say 'good' and when things suck I will say, 'great' and when things are about to go off the hook or the balcony or the deep end, I will say 'Fantastic'. This way everyone will think I'm so nice when I talk about the fantastic time I'm having, negating the need for a reason 784... on the outside at least. But you and I will know what I mean. We will laugh secretly in our innermost chambers at the greatness of my adjective-ness and the lameness of my situation-ness. we will laugh a laugh like, mmmmooooaaaahahahahahhhaa. If I ever have to say Magnificent you better just call the local authorities because there will have been some Sanchez splattered somewhere conspicuous up in here if I'm still alive to write 'magnificent' at all.

I watched Kite Runner the other night. so, so good. The guy in it said, "children are not like coloring books, you cannot just put your favorite colors in them, they are themselves". good advice. I tend to walk around with a magenta crayon all up in their faces. I am newly resolved to let them be whatever colors they want.