If it weren't for the bitter...

It is seriously hard for us to get a babysitter. The biggest obstacle is ourselves. First we have to convince ourselves that asking someone to do what we do for a few hours isn't taking advantage of some poor unsuspecting, unqualified greenie. Next obstacle: the wallet. How much is our childrens' care worth? Yikes, maybe we'll just bring them along. But how much is some time alone worth on our anniversary? Hmm. Maybe just this once. Obstacle 3: Finding someone who can a. keep all the kids safe, clean, fed, and happy; b. keep quiet when they are sleeping; c. love us in spite of our overabundance of carpet-covering toys and weird ghost-smells of diapers and dinners past.

We finally found a sitter for our anniversary. Our lovely new friends have offered to do sitting trades despite the fact that there is a hugely unfair kid ratio of three to one. I had no idea what Zach was planning, but I knew it was non-refundable, and I knew it cost too much in the first place by the way he freaked out when our new babysitting friends got sick. Insert horrified scream here. When I finally exhausted all my bright ideas of people I hadn't tried calling in the first place, Zach pulled out the bug guns and moved to PLAN B. Mass e-mail everyone in his med school class.

During his first year, every student and teacher who saw the girls' picture told him they seriously wanted to babysit. So we thought there might be some takers. There was one. A girl named Amy. Poor, poor Amy.

She came fifteen minutes before we had to leave, and we let the girls see her before we put them down for their nap so they wouldn't be scared when they woke up. The twins went down fine as usual. Mia decided there was no way she was sleeping now that her new friend had come to play. It was a little soon for her to be going down, so we told her she could try again in a half hour or so. When we got home Amy was kneeling in front of the twins, who were covered in sweet potatoes. Mia had refused to nap.

Off we went. Ten minutes later I saw the marquee and my eyes popped open, "Are you serious?!" We found our seats and quickly found my legs were too long to fit straight behind the seats in front of us. The theater was built in the twenties, back when "tall" people were 5'5". So I sat at an angle dreading the arrival of the occupant of the seat my knees were jutting into. A family arrived with two little boys and I almost jumped for joy. I asked the mom if she would mind putting someone small by me, since I was obviously having trouble fitting into the square foot of space our X amount of dollars had rented for the next few hours. She laughed and said that would be fine, and motioned to one of her boys to come to the other side of her.

Then we met the man with the smallest mind in the universe. The lady's husband. He said, "No, why don't you sit there," to his wife. And then he thought again. "No- you sit here, I'll sit there," he said, motioning to the empty seat behind the space-theiving knees trying unsuccessfully to hook over the ears of their owner. I was trapped in a position closely resembling an emergency toilet situation, and Zach and I looked at each other dumbfounded. Then he got a bright idea, and we asked the dad if we could sit on the other end of his family. Extremely reluctantly, he agreed to let his family act like normal people and a couple minutes later my knees were halfway into the aisle instead. Get this. After intermission, he came up and said the kids were having a hard time seeing, so they wanted their seats back. They weren't letting kids sit in the aisle, and we all knew trading seats would be absoultely no benefit to them. But his tone of voice wasn't asking, it was saying "I paid #$%^&*! bucks for these @&#*$*@! seats, so move it." I tried to feel sympathetic as I headed toward our original seats, but his surprised wife shushed him, and told us that they were fine. Yikes! Fun to be her...

It was actually kind of a nice reminder of what a truly, uniquely awesome husband I ended up with.

And not only awesome, but on the same brainwave.
The cards we surprised each other with:

PS. Zach wants me to say "The Lion King was incredibly awesome." It was incredible! Zach cried. Hee hee. Okay- so I did, too. Brainwaves...

Sweet Sixth

In honor of our 6th wedding anniversary, I've decided to blog about what led up to the wedding in the first place.

Late November 1998, two years after I graduated from Alta High, I did not meet Zach.
I did, however, see this...



My little sister's highschool musical, Lil' Abner. Zach was Abner. I was really impressed with his singing voice, and thought he was cute for a little highschool kid. Then I forgot all about him.

7 tumultuous months later, I broke up with my best/boy friend of four years and found myself quite distanced from any other people I could hang out with. I decided to make new friends doing a Sandy City musical, "The Best of Broadway with Robert Peterson," and was just lonely enough to condescend to speak to a guy a whole year younger than me. He sat next to me on a bench while we were waiting to go into another room, and said something about his boss killing him for missing work. I recognized him from Lil' Abner and thought I had seen the play two years before, and that he had already been on his mission.

We got a little more familiar with each other during rehearsals. There was one "Hello Dolly" number involving all of the guys marching around, and as I sat watching and laughing at the song, I noticed him watching me smiling. Okay, so really, at first I was flirting with the guy next to him. But that dude didn't notice me, and Zach did. So I switched guys, (yes, I was horrible) and ended up just smiling at Zach every night, while he smiled back.

One night at the end of rehearsal he was talking about how he had freaked himself out by watching "Sixth Sense" alone while his family was out of town. He mentioned not wanting to go home yet, and so I said I didn't either. So we got a bright idea and I followed his car to Golden Swirl on State and 106th, where we sat on the lawn out front. We chatted while I weaved grass into his leg hair. (Something I did back then, I guess.)

I had been trying to figure out how old he was since the day we first talked, and asked his birthday.
"May.."
I inhaled in surprise. He was a whole year younger!
"You're birthday is in May, too?"
I nodded.
"Twenty..."
I did it again- did we have the same birthday?
"First."
"Ohhh," I said disappointed. "Mine's the 25th." Why I thought we needed to have the same birthday, I don't know.
But then we got around to the year, and I wasn't thinking the day seemed quite so important anymore. "Wait, so how old are you?" I was kind of nervous.
"18. How old are you?"
Three years younger?!!! He wasn't a return missionary! He had just barely graduated!! I wanted to rewind the evening and let the poor little 18-year-old go home alone.
But, in a fraction of a second, I made up my mind that he was way too nice to be embarrassed about. At least we'd be good friends during the play.
"I'm 21." I wonder if I said it like I think I said it. Like a disappointed door closing.

Every night as we ran off the stage, he'd find me and tickle/grab my waist. Every night I shrieked in surprise. When the cast was called into the green room before our first performance, he came in late and I waved him over to the only chair in the jam-packed room, thinking we'd share it. We didn't fit, and I ended up on his lap. But we were just friends. Got that??? Juuuust frieeeends.

We joined an audition choir at SLCC when the play was over. Because we both had this hankering to wake up, drive 20 minutes and sing (as friends) at 6:00 every morning.

The year before, I had been planning to go to New York with my ex-boyfriend, and decided I was still going without him. Zach got permission to go with me and my cousin; permission granted because we were "just friends." And honestly, we still had ourselves fooled.

Before the trip, Zach invited me to stay with his family in their Fairview cabin during General Conference. We drove up alone. Together. As friends. Zach mentioned that his hands were cold, and I bragged about having ice hands. Being the competitive people we are, we felt each other's hands to see who's were coldest. As we sat "feeling" each other's hands I talked about how awkward it had always been for me to hold hands, and how it was totally comfortable for some people, blah blah. We even commented that now we were holding hands and had a conversation about it. As friends.

Between sessions we went upstairs with his guitar and he played a song he had been writing for weeks. I admiringly asked him how one goes about writing a song. He got really uncomfortable and said "Well, for this one, I just thought of a story I wanted to tell."
I asked him why it was taking so long to write it.
"Because I don't know the end of the story... yet."
The lyrics started, "Maybe in a diff'rent life, You'd see me in a diff'rent light. We'd walk hand by hand, 'stead of side by side. Maybe in a diff'rent life," and just got more obvious from there.
I asked if the song was about us.

So that was when it turned into a "thing." But we didn't do anything about it because we had a vacation to New York planned and the only reason he had permission to go was because we were "just friends." Well, we held out as long as we could, and our first kiss was barefoot under the stars on the beach of the Atlantic. Romantic. Usually we leave out the part that we both really had to pee, and we were actually on the way to a restroom.

We came back to Utah as a couple. After choir practice, one of the girls noticed us holding hands on our way back to our cars. "Did you guys hook up while you were gone?! That's so sweet!" She then said something weird: "And we were all here to witness it," like she knew this hook-up was going to be blogged about someday.

Both our of parents weren't as convinced. I can't blame them- we were about to spend two years apart. We found out that I had been discreetly left out of Zach's scrapbooks because, well- "we weren't sure if you were always going to be around!" And my mom once interjected while I gushed about my new boyfriend and wondered if I was just rebounding; "Well, he'll make a nice in-betweener."

Sometimes it even seemed to us like a long shot. Zach wasn't too pleased when I was assigned to solo the Saturday's Warrior's "Dear John" song in choir.

May of 2000, 10 months after we met, Zach left for his mission to Monterrey, Mexico. A few weeks later I left for Catania, Italy. But not before spending 4 days in the MTC together (as "friends" again- plphhh.)

Writing letters for two years was good for us, I'm sure. Italians who found out about it went on and on about how romantic it was. But it was hard. We got permission to talk on the phone at Christmas. That conversation was also hard. We were ready to marry each other, and just had a little life to cover first. We didn't want to feel that way while serving, but we did.

I came home December 2001. Zach wasn't resigned to receiving the dreaded "Dear John," but he still worried.


By the time Zach got home in May, I had plans for a wedding dress.

There was a surprise public proposal at the Tuachan planned that didn't go through, because I'm not the kind of person that can jump into something without overanalysing it to death. Then it was Zach's turn to wonder what kind of crazy woman he was thinking of spending eternity with.

Finally, we went to "The Garden" in SLC. He drove us back to the Sandy amphitheater where we had performed the musical that introduced us, had me read his patriarchal blessing, and then we walked down the path we used to walk when we first met. He knelt and popped the question. It was kind of anticlimactic after all we'd been through to get to that point. But just as effective...

September 6, 2002 we were married in the Salt Lake Temple, or- as my grandma says, the "only true temple." ;)

Evolution of a Complimentee

Zach and I came out of Giant Eagle just as two tan little teenage girls walked in. They missed the whistle of the boys driving by the entrance, and it landed on me and my hubby. I appeared to ignore it so the boys wouldn't feel stupid, but for a split second- my heart remembered the feeling it had the last time I was whistled at by strange boys in cars, and I blushed a little.

Happily, during that time I truly did appreciate my "teen prettyness," and never took it for granted. It was a gratitude born from some relatively unique circumstances. I grew up with two parents who didn't do the compliment thing- not to each other, not directly to their kids' faces, or anyone else. I remember a few random remarks of admiration about the way our sister ran so beautifully, or how pretty my friends were. Once my dad said he noticed how patiently I waited for my mom or someone to get off the phone, and for the rest of that month I walked around thinking "I'm patient. I am a patient person." But over-all, it was just not something that they were into.

In elementary school, I got glasses and became the lowest of the lowly nerds. I even had a group of kids chanting the "Freddie Krueger" song at me with my name in his place. It was bad. So, aside from a handful of some very memorable positive comments, compliments were pretty much a foreign language spoken in a country called "Adulthood."

After a few curious encounters with this language in middle school, (I still remember the Jackson twins saying I did a good job singing in 11th grade choir one day. I pretty much thought -and still think- they were the nicest people in the world) highschool rolled around. People actually talked with me, and I was thrilled. Boys flirted, and I was thrilleder. I dreaded the end of highschool when all of the nice people I had met would go lead lives without me. But it wasn't so bad. Graduation brought in a new era of employment and dating; and it thrust me unsuspectingly into the world of compliments.

My eduaction in Complementese started with my first dates. Of course, you're going to be complimented by your date... it's just polite. But I wasn't used to it. At all. Had absolutely no idea how to react. Usually, I just plain disagreed with whatever I didn't believe. Which was pretty much anything subjective. I appreciated and understood compliments about my artwork, or things I had worked on- but if it was about the color of my eyes, or my smile or something- they might as well have said "I think you are like a pair of utility scissors."

Finally, someone I'd been dating awhile said, exasperated, "Just say 'Thank you!' Don't you realize how frustrating it is when you don't just take a compliment? I want to give it to you. So take it!" That sunk deep. And not because I now believed all compliments. I simply now realized, embarrassed, how annoying it was for someone to go to the trouble to take a second to make me feel a bit happier, and me turning it into a minute. So after that I really tried to shorten my reply to "Thanks."

But I still found myself unable to restrain the inclination to explain compliments away. If someone said they liked my hair, I'd say "Thanks! It doesn't actually grow this color, though." My cute outfit wasn't picked out by me, being thin was only a side-effect of being tall, being tall was okay- at least I could reach things for people, if you thought my eyes were blue, you should see my sister's.

Unfortunately the explain-away inclination was still in full effect when I received what I fondly recall as my favorite compliment.

Picture it: Sicily.. 1923. Okay- no that's Golden Girls.

Picture it: Salt Lake City 1997. I'm working at JayLynn Studio, and today I curled my hair and wore my favorite dress from Haroon's. You know the kind they had that was made with layers of light- fluttery material? With wildflowers on them? You'll see a video of it in a future post I've been working on. Anyway. There was a customer waiting alone at the front counter, and getting impatient. I came out of the back room as soon as I could and saw a guy in his mid-thirties and a suit with a frown on his face. He didn't hear me coming, and turned in my direction to come find someone. I startled him. His jaw dropped as he looked me up and down and stammered accusingly, "Y-Y- You're beautiful!" then proceeded to almost literally stick his foot in his mouth and try to get back to business- as if he couldn't believe he had just said that out loud. Ha! And what did I do? I said "Thanks! It's probably just this new dress."

Plphhh!

Thanks to the kindness of many people who did do "the compliment thing," over the years I have had practice reacting more and more normally to an originally almost painful situation. Although it started rather awkwardly, I even learned how to give compliments. And then found myself thinking effortlessly of more and more compliments to give. Maybe the evolution is complete. Maybe I've a little way to go, yet. We'll have to try it out:

You've made it to the end of this completely self-absorbed post! What a great blog-reader you are!

How did that compliment come across? Awkward?

Pulling up roots and getting grass

Today we've been in Ohio for a year.

We were out back watching the girls splash in the pool and I was thinking there was no way I could have pictured this last year. When we first moved here, we thought we were trapped into a year lease at Jefferson Chase. After realizing they had no play area, the pool was disgusting, and the grass around the pond was covered in goose poop until it was too cold to go to the pond anyway. Mia wasn't two yet, the babies were three months. And we were all pretty unhappy in our dark, malfunctioning townhome.

I thought we'd have spent another spring and summer there by now- but we got out of the lease six months early! To think we almost didn't even ask. We couldn't have paid a fee for breaking the contract. But they had just gotten a new manager, and somehow their policy allowed us to leave because we had signed up just before they changed it.

And so we've spent every warm day this year in our own house on our own lawn. I had no idea a backyard would mean so much.

Create a Free Slideshow

A Little More Grateful

During our last trip to the library all three girls gravitated to the pull-apart sofa chairs in the Young Adult section. So while they couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to be on them or off them, I gazed nostalgically at the titles I loved just a decade and a half ago. (When I put it that way, I don't feel quite as immature telling you this next part.) I came across "Little House on the Prairie" and two of my other "Little" favorites and checked them out.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867. She wrote her first published book when she was 65, and lived until 1957, after witnessing the success of her writing.

Over Christmas vacation I read one of her books- I think "Little House in the Big Woods"- and fell in love with them all over again. (I actually cried while reading Laura's thoughts on the founding of the United States.) Stuffed with Christmas food and chocolate, I felt so grateful and aware of what I take for granted, reading how, after missing it all winter, fresh fruit and meat were practically treated as delicacies. But what really draws me to her beautiful writing is between the experiences- the picture she illustrates of the love she and her family had for all good things and for each other. It's wholesomeness really resonates with me.

I just started re-reading "Prairie," and just can't believe that this woman is writing from actual experiences. They leave forever their extended family on the East coast simply because "Pa" likes it better where there aren't as many people. Sell their property, pack everything they own "except the beds and table and chairs... because Pa could always make new ones," into their wagon and head out. Just like that.

It sticks in my head all day as I'm sweeping the linoleum on my kitchen floor. Loading dishes into a dishwasher and walking away. Turning the TV off and cringing at how loudly Mia objects. Trying to keep up with piles and piles of laundry that I didn't have to sew or wash myself. But mostly, I just feel kind of grateful. I squish my babies and smooch their chubby cheeks and agree with Laura.


"I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." -Laura Ingalls Wilder

You Make a Difference

Oops- I just checked the link, and it went to the wrong movie. The one I saw was just as cheesy, not quite as long. Uh- sorry. I changed it.

I liked this.

I'm so grateful to all the people in my life who have taken the time and effort to build me up instead of tear me down.

And I'm grateful for all the people who have put up with my complete lack of self-esteem, have taken the crap I've dished out (and, if history repeats itself, will probably dish again) and stuck around long enough for an apology. (More apologies will also be dished- hopefully someday, I'll match the number of apologies with the number of hurts I've been responsible for.)

What a blessing humble examples have been in my life. I want you to know I'm trying to be like you. Because you truly make a difference.

Serendipity?

Monday I saw an important ad in the online classifieds. I’ve been checking the baby section every day looking for good deals. Someone put an ad in for an apartment lease. I read it for no reason, other than it was funny that someone put it in "baby items" and it hadn’t been reported and moved yet. 4 bedroom, free internet, a pool and gym, granite countertops and tile floors: $610 a month.
When I realized what an incredible deal it was I started thinking how nice it would be to move there instead of my parents’ house. (We have to sell our current home, and I'm too pregnant to keep it clean while we're showing it.) The amazing thing about it- the lease ends in July and you can’t renew the contract, I found out later it is because the complex is really student housing, and when it was first built, they opened it temporarily to families at that great rate. The catch was- they got kicked out after two years. So this family found a house and it closed really fast. They have to move at the end of this month.
Just for the fun of it, I calculated the difference we would pay, once we got rid of our internet. $100 a month. Hmm. Just for a little more fun, I called the gal who placed the ad. She said all the offers she got wanted to renew the lease past July- which they couldn’t do. I called Zach, who surprised me by sounding optimistic. I looked for the ad an hour later, and it had been deleted. If I hadn't called her, I wouldn't have her number. We went and looked at the apartment that night, applied for it the next day, and today, Thursday, we signed the lease! Crazy!