Twas Brillig

I’m just waiting for someone to yell, “fire.” I’m ready, my aim is set. The limbo between “aim” and “fire” seems interminable.

I’m pattering around my quiet abode tonight all by myself. Four little darlings lie sleeping in their little beds—they’re so beautiful when they sleep, their long dark eyelashes splashed across their creamy pink faces. Everything is so quiet, so still. So perfectly right.

Brian is five hundred miles away tonight, and will be for a few weeks. It’s only been one day—hardly long enough to even notice that he’s gone. But I feel the distance acutely. I miss him.

He saw our house tonight. Our offer was accepted. I’m already contemplating the placement of our paintings and mirrors and photographs. Which child gets which bedroom. Which tables go where. Which couches I’d really like to give to charity because I don’t think I can stand to look at them anymore… In my mind, I’m decorating a house I’ve never actually seen in person. And yet, I consider it home.

Isaac was diagnosed this last week. No surprises. I’d been calling him “autistic” for a while now. But it’s official now. The psychiatrist who diagnosed him told me that he usually makes moms cry when he issues such a diagnosis. I assured him that I’d already done my crying. “But now I feel empowered,” I told him. “I can finally start getting him some help now.”

Not that I think there will be no more tears. I’m realistic enough to understand that this is going to be a lifelong journey, with ups and downs, tears and laughter and sometimes both combined. Usually both combined.

I’m beginning to look at our stuff. Our junk. Our ridiculous piles of “necessities.” I suppose I get peevish like this every time I move. I’m now looking at our possessions in terms of, “if I pack that now, will I need it before I actually move?” And the answer is almost always no. Goodness, if I’m not going to need it in the next few weeks, do I really need it at all? And yet, into the box it goes.

My gal-pal Charrette (have you checked out her new blog? You must!) and I were laughing about that yesterday at church. Come to think of it, Charrette and I were as irreverent as the children we work with in the Primary—snickering and chattering while someone else was teaching the lesson. Whoops. I’m sure the teacher really loved us yesterday. Anyway, the teacher was telling the story of Lehi to the Primary children. Lehi, Sariah, and family were commanded to leave Jerusalem and to leave all their possessions behind. “Lucky Sariah,” I whispered to Charrette, who readily agreed.

Not that Sariah was lucky. But I DO wonder if, since her plate was so very full and so very much was being asked of her, if God was truly blessing her by telling her she didn’t have to deal with all the stuff.

So, I’m packing, but I’m leaving out some clothes for everyone. Some pants, some t-shirts, and something to wear to church on Sunday. Princess Fluffy’s school uniforms are all left out, because she might as well get as much use out of them now. (When we get to Colorado, she and Bubba will enter that delightful world of… um… public school. Oh, it’ll be fine. But I’ll miss the strict uniforms we’ve had here.) Anyway, if somehow we end up staying here in limbo for longer than we expect, then we’ll each end up wearing the same outfits to church week after week. Isn’t it stupid that that bothers me? For all my talk of disgust with my possessions and my desires to just throw it all in the garbage, the truth is that I can’t bear to part with any of it. In fact, I went to the mall tonight and bought myself yet another new skirt and pair of shoes. Ludicrous.

There’s so much more to say on all of this, but really I’m just rambling. Filling the silence. Missing my sweety. Contemplating my life and the many new twists it’s suddenly taken. I suppose it’s easier to harp on tangible things like possessions than to actually figure out my new reality. Maybe that’s why I bought yet another skirt and pair of shoes…

Come on. Fire, already.

Hey, y’all. Here’s your SOS Mr. Linky for this week. I hope to play at some point today too!

Five years ago today, my handsome little Bubba was born. Last year, for all of my children’s birthdays, I shared their “birth story.” Blake’s is here.  It’s about as dramatic as a Soap Opera Sunday, so if you’re into birth stories, his is definitely one to read.

This year, I’m going to post some of my favorite pics of each kid on their birthday. Alas, with the move, and the other move, and the preparing to move yet again, most of my pics are unaccessible. So Bubba gets the raw end of this deal. Fortunately, though, Bubba was such a gorgeous baby (if I may brag thusly) that pretty much ANY picture I find of him will be beautiful. Oh, how I love this little boy. I’m so grateful that he’s mine. Happy Birthday, dude.

So sweet and tiny!

 His eyes are truly the bluest blue I’ve ever seen.

 Umm… decorating?  Or Terrorizing?

Shouldn’t he be on a Duran Duran album cover from the eighties or something?  Seriously.  He’s SO John Taylor here.

So grown up!

(Okay, so we obviously missed a few years in there—we kinda skipped from age 1 to age 4…—but you get the point. He’s frickin’ darling. And I’m the proudest mama ever.)

Brian specifically asked me to use this as a title for a blog post when I said this to him tonight.

See, we put down an offer on a house.  A house I have never seen in person, though I’ve seen a few pictures on the internet and I’ve read a thorough-enough description of it.  Brian has seen it, but he saw ten thousand other houses that day and so it’s all kinda muddled together in his brain.  He THINKS he remembers liking it a lot.  hahaha.  This is insanity.  The house is bank-owned, and therefore being sold for a pretty good price, considering its size and the neighborhood.  But it also means that we’re dealing with a bank, and they don’t have to follow rules, necessarily, or… um… call you back when they say they’ll call you back.

Brian leaves in a week for Denver.  Permanently.  The kids and I will go out and join him as soon as we’ve closed on a house and have a place to move into.  If we buy the house we’re waiting to hear back on, then we will be able to move quite soon.  If not, we’ll have to start from scratch and it could be well over a month that I live here as a single parent.  With four children.  Four crazy, rambunctious, hyper, stinky children (who I love with all my soul, of course).  Goodness, it could be several months if things don’t go super well in the house-hunt.  My brain will explode if I think about that for too long, so I think I need to get back to my story now.

So, we made an offer on a house.  Then there was a counter offer, sorta.  So then we countered back with our absolute final offer.  We were told that we’d hear back on Monday.

So, every moment today, I’ve been trying NOT to think about the house.  I’ve been trying to distract myself, think about other things, and just stay busy so that I didn’t go CRAZY waiting for that phone call.

And yet, no phone call came, and yes, I DID go crazy.

Then, Brian and I took the kids up to the canyon this afternoon/evening for Family Home Evening and Brian accidentally left his cell phone at home.  Yes, friends.  He left his cell phone at home when we were expecting one of the biggest phone calls of the year.  Now I, of course, have my own cell phone, but Al the Realtor doesn’t call my cell phone, he calls Brian’s.
When we got home tonight, the first item of business was to put the kiddos in bed.  The two that I tucked in went down much faster than the two that Brian tucked in, which meant that he was stuck downstairs while I was free upstairs… with his phone.  A good person would have probably waited for her husband, but fortunately for us, I am NOT a good person.  No, I grabbed his phone and checked the “missed calls” and his voicemail, eager to hear those luxurious words from Al:  “They’ve accepted the offer and the house is yours.”  Except… I didn’t hear those luxurious words, because Al didn’t call, because the bank never got back to him even though he tried to call them today.  Even though they promised to let us know today.

Stupid bank.  Just accept the offer already and give us the house.  Or just reject it already so I can get on with my life.  Either way, just TELL US!

Anyway, the title of my post was said when Brian decided to be clever with me.  After I’d put his phone back where he’d left it and he came upstairs after finally getting Scooby and Bubba to go to bed, he went to his phone and said, “wow, honey!  There are four missed calls from Al!”

“Dork,” replied I.  “There are no calls from Al.  I know.  I already checked.”

After what felt like an hour of watching his over-dramatic attempt at pretending to be shocked, I’d rolled my eyes so far back into my head that I could no longer see anything.  *Gasp* he went on.  “I can’t believe you’d invade my privacy like that.  It’s MY phone.”

And then I snapped.  “I know it’s your phone, but this is my LIFE!”

We both stared at each other, trying to keep our faces straight, until we finally busted up laughing.

“This is my LIFE,” he said in a high-pitched voice, mocking me.

“Dork,” was the eloquence I shot back.

And so you see, Gentle Readers, we truly have gone crazy waiting for this news.

I will now retire to the corner, where I will rock back and forth and twitch, and occasionally yell out things like “butler” and “that’s a fine animal, Mr. Smith” and quite possibly all the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Yeah… hopefully that phone call will come early tomorrow…

(This week’s Mr. Linky of other Soap Opera Sunday participants and a link to the rules is posted below this post.)

One of the very soapiest times of my existence was my first year at BYU, living in the Foreign Language Housing. The Foreign Language Houses were used by a very elite group of students—those who spoke (and were passionate enough about) a foreign language, who wanted to immerse themselves into a place where they were only allowed to speak that language inside. Generally, these were older students—smart, classy, well-traveled. Elite. Men and women lived in separate apartments, though we were all part of the same “house.” Every apartment had one resident whose native language was the “foreign language”—that person was supposed to keep us on track and be our language mentor, while still being a peer and a roommate. There was the Spanish House, the German House, the French House, the Portuguese House, the Arabic House, the Russian House, and the Italian House. Probably others too… Obviously some were much larger and more popular than others. The Spanish House, for instance, had about 6 times as many members as the Arabic House, and even so it was still almost impossible to get into.

As for me, I was passionate about German. I’d been studying German for most of my life by this point. I had spent a summer in a German town having a very in-depth German experience. I’d been president of the German club in high school and was one of very few AP German students to actually pass the AP test (everyone in AP Spanish passes the AP test. But German is by far a more difficult language to grasp—and I can say that because I speak both). Also in high school, I’d taken a standardized test for all third-year German students. I placed number one in the nation and was offered a scholarship and an all-expense paid summer in Berlin (which I turned down, having already made other plans).

What I’m trying to say here as that German was my thing. It was what I was good at. It was where my heart was.

So how on earth did I find myself in the Italian House?

Ahhh. Good question. I really had no aspirations for Foreign Language Housing to begin with. But there was a woman in our neighborhood— a friend of my parents’— who was in charge of all Foreign Language Housing. And she happened to mention to my dad that she was afraid that the women’s Italian House would have to be shut down, because there were so few women who spoke Italian well enough and who were interested enough in living there. I’m not quite sure how the conversation went from there, but I know that my father always thinks more highly of me than I deserve and he turned my very meager knowledge of Italian into a great proficiency. And between the two of them, and without ever asking my permission (because I never would have given it), they worked the whole thing out. I therefore bypassed the application stage, the examinations, the teacher referrals, etc. that everyone else had to go through to live there, because my daddy boasted about me and this friend of his was desperate.

And thus I became one of the Italian Women. Even though I didn’t speak Italian. Even though I did speak German. Even though I never asked to be there and I never wanted to be there. And now, I was there, as a Freshman no less, living among brilliant, fascinating, and dedicated people… It carried clout, and I too looked like I might be brilliant, fascinating, and dedicated. But I wasn’t. Not at all. I didn’t belong there. Oh, and did I mention that I was on a full-ride scholarship, which I ALSO didn’t deserve?

Up to that point in my life, that’s kinda how things had gone. No one ever actually asked me what I wanted, they TOLD me what I wanted. They then handed it to me on a silver platter, and told me how lucky I was to have been given exactly what I wanted (even though I never wanted it). Then when I didn’t make the most of it, I was such a disappointment and a failure and no one knew what to do with me. Obviously, it was also very hard on people who DID want the things I’d been given— people who were working so hard to get into these places, people who were starving students with huge loans just trying to make it through college without going bankrupt. When it was all just simply handed to me, they were resentful and frustrated— especially when I was such a goof-off and so obviously didn’t deserve it all.

In fairness to myself, though, it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t want any of it. It wasn’t my fault that things were always handed to me. I couldn’t make myself want it, I couldn’t make myself care. My motivation was always just to not be too big of a disappointment to my parents, and that can only take you so far.

So, anyway, I found myself in the Italian House. I had three roommates: Giovanna, who was a feisty and insanely gorgeous Sicilian on a dance scholarship; Melissa from California, a Junior with beautiful long dark curly hair and the most perfectly proportioned body that made any man with eyes stop and stare; and Karen from New Jersey, a Sophomore who every one of my guy friends fell instantly in love with for her porcelain doll-like features that stood in contrast to her sassy, street-wise attitude.

These were some of the most beautiful girls I’d ever known. All three were smart, gorgeous, and talented. And soon they weren’t just my roommates, but my best friends.

We had a few things in common. I wish Italian were one of them, but, alas, while the three of them spoke it beautifully, I never did quite catch on. No, the things we had in common were much more trivial. We all had dark hair. We all frequently wore black clothing. We all received more than our fair share of attention from boys.

These three things earned us the nickname of “Italian Witches,” given to us by girls who probably didn’t like us very much. But it was a name we wore with pride. It was an honor to be one of the Italian Witches. There wasn’t a boy in the whole apartment complex who wasn’t in love with at least one of us, and there were only a handful of girls who would still speak to us.

And that, dear readers, sets the scene for the many soap operas that occurred during this time. A couple have already been shared here— remember Chad, the Godfather of soapy stories? Or Weird Internet Waffle Guy? Both of those come from this period of time. But there’s more, so many more.

So, y’all know Kate, my fabulous SOS co-host? Well, she’s in town today! Wheeeee! Anyway, that means that neither of us has exactly been blogging…  So, here’s a Mr. Linky for all you delightful SOS participants, and I’ll link mine up when I get to it. Which I totally will. Sometime today. Seriously. (Find out more about SOS here.)

Yesterday, I had finished shopping at Wal-Mart with the kiddos, and I was naturally tired and frazzled. Four kids at Wal-Mart will do that to you, let me tell ya. Somehow we’d survived the meltdowns (”Mommy! PLEASE can I have a hotwheel? PLEASE! You never buy me ANYTHING!” and “Mommy! A princess blanket! I always wanted a princess blanket! Can I have the princess blanket?!” and the ever-favorite, “Mommy, Scooby just jumped out of the cart and he knocked all the fruit snacks off the shelf.”) and now I was just loading up my kiddos and my loot into the van.

Now, the Mighty Oprah says that we should load our kids and buckle them in before we start on the loot. That way they don’t run off and nobody nabs them while your back is turned or whatever. It’s a great idea, but for someone like me with so many to load up, my back will always be turned to someone. Fortunately, Princess Fluffy (age 6) and Bubba (5 next week!) can get out of the cart and buckle themselves into the car without needing my help now. So I generally grab Scooby (2 3/4), because he’s the one who can cause the most trouble when my back is turned, and he’s the first to get buckled in.

So, my back was turned to Fuzzles (20 months old). He was still in the cart, with all our groceries and junk, while I buckled Scooby in. Scooby resisted and what should have been a two-second ordeal was more like 2-minutes.

2 minutes is a long time to have your back to your autistic baby in the shopping cart.

I turned back around to get Fuzzles…. and he was gone. The cart, the groceries, my purse, and my baby were GONE.

I looked around frantically. There was no sign of him. Anywhere. He was gone.

Now I’m in full panic mode. WHERE’S MY BABY??!!!! I’m racing through the parking lot— yes, leaving my other children unattended— and I’m yelling his name (which is silly— he’s autistic. He doesn’t respond to his name. But it didn’t have to be logical. I was panicking, remember?) and I’m starting to think I’m going crazy. How could he be there and then not be there?

After what seemed like an eternity, a horn suddenly honked at me, breaking through my panicky thought process. A woman in a car shouts to me, “is this yours?” She’s pointing to the far end of the parking lot, where Fuzzles is still happily strapped in to the shopping cart.

“Yes! Thank you!!!” I yell back, and race towards him. Apparently the parking lot is just slightly sloped and somehow the cart had begun to roll and had just kept rolling. But he was safe.  And quite pleased with his adventure, too!  I threw my arms around my tiny dude and pushed the cart back to the van.

It all happened really quickly, but it was a very big experience for me. I think sometimes we need these things to happen to us—to give us a taste of how scary it would be if something happened to one of them. It reminds us how precious they are. That we should cherish them and let them know what they mean to us.

Let’s just say that everyone got extra big hugs last night…

(Yup, it’s Soap Opera Sunday (SOS), folks—even though there’s less than an hour left of Sunday in this time zone. Hey, at least I’m here now, right? The link-list of other participants this week is directly below this post, and more info on SOS is here.)

Due to popular demand, I will now attempt to finish my “Blake” story. The last installment was here, and that was over a month ago. Ooops…

So, we left off our saga when we were officially engaged. I suppose that now would be a good time to tell you that “Blake” was not his first name… but his middle name. His first is Brian. Ah, yes. You know where this is going now, don’t you!

Brian and I had a 6-month engagement, full of all the trauma and drama of two world’s coinciding. Brian’s family was so very different from mine. Heck, Brian and I were so very different! The only thing we had in common was our religion and… The Beatles. That’s right. Those were the only two things we could agree on.

Fortunately, we both enjoyed to debate. (We still do…)

Somehow we made it through those six months without killing each other. There were times when I think his mother wanted to kill me. It’s possible that there were times that I wanted to kill his mother. Hahaha. (I now love her as my own. But planning a wedding with a woman that you barely know and have nothing in common with is… tricky.)

The wedding itself was simple. Very, very simple. As simple as they would let me get away with, anyway. No cake. Please. That was one of my biggest requests. NO CAKE. Don’t ask me to explain that to you. It was just something I felt very strongly about. No professional photographer. Just snapshots, please, if you must. My wedding colors were white and navy, simply because I knew that both my bridesmaids and my mom and mother-in-law all owned elegant navy-colored dresses, and therefore we wouldn’t actually have to buy anything, because how lame would it be to buy bridesmaid and matron dresses that no one would want later? Hahaha. These are just examples of how simple I wanted to keep everything. It wasn’t about money. We could have had the over-the-top, elaborate wedding—there were enough people willing to fund such a thing.  But no, thanks.  I just DID. NOT. WANT TO.

We were married in the Mt. Timpanogos LDS Temple in the dead of winter. It was the happiest day of my life. Brian was mine, I was his. Not “till death do you part,” but “for time and all eternity.”

And now, seven + years later, he’s still the man I long for, the man I adore, the man I want to spend the rest of eternity with. These years have been full of their fair share of soap operas. There have been 7 pregnancies and 4 children. There have been misunderstandings and even the very rare all-out fight. (That’s something that happens when you have, say, an extremely anti-gun woman married to a man who keeps his rifle in their closet… for instance.) Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard I can barely breathe, and other times he inspires me to the verge of tears. Not one single day goes by that we don’t make time to hang out with each other, because we just can’t get enough of each other’s company. We watch movies, we read books, we talk about anything and everything.

Before I met Brian, I had a rather long list of things that I just had to have in a husband. Things I thought would make me happy. Hahahaha. That list has been burned and replaced. How silly I was! Brian is everything I could have ever possibly wanted, but I was too stupid to know it. We often laugh that we’d have never passed one of those compatibility tests (like at match.com or whatever) because on paper we aren’t at all compatible. But what do those tests prove, anyway! Brian was made for me and I for him. I love how different we are. I love the parts of the universe that he’s opened up to me—things I never would have considered before. I love how life with Brian is never, EVER boring!

And that, Gentle Readers, concludes our “Blake” SOS.

(”Blake,” by the way, is a family name on Brian’s side, going back many generations. We even bestowed the name upon one of our offspring… So, yeah. That’s where that came from. I mean, I couldn’t have started this SOS calling him “Brian” now could I?)

5% of you told me to dump it already. You are probably the five percent who didn’t comment, because you didn’t want me to know that it was you. Hahaha. No offense taken, friends. I honestly wanted to know what people thought.

20% said you really didn’t care either way. (Which, by the way, I take as a negative vote… I mean, if you don’t care, then what’s the point?)

The other 75% of you asked me to keep it alive. Some of you sent me emails PLEADING with me not to do away with it. Others of you gave suggestions on the frequency or perhaps a hiatus until my feet hit the ground again. Many have offered to host in my absence or to help in any other way. Most of you, though, said you like reading the soapy links, even though you have no real intentions of playing along. And that’s okay too.

I guess the people have spoken, and the verdict is that SOS will remain a part of the Brillig/Kateastrophe repertoire. Now, Kate and I need to have a pow-wow to discuss possible changes in rules, frequency, and other stuff. For the time being, though, SOS lives on as is. The current rules are here, and we’d love for you to join us. Also, remember the option of posting at the Anonymous Soapiness site, where you can send me or Kate your submissions and we’ll leave your name off—so that you can divulge your soapiness, without your sister reading that it was you who stole her boyfriend. Or whatever.

So, you know the drill. If you’re playing this week, enter your link here. Oh! And MANY apologies to Goofball, who played last week and was never linked to. Sorry darlin’. I’ve entered your link from last week here first, so that no one misses it. And I’ll be playing along too—tomorrow. (I know, Soap Opera Sunday on SUNDAY? What has the world come to?)

(*Fluffy and I watched The Little Mermaid yesterday… the title comes from that. I’m sure you know that. But I had to tell you anyway, just so you didn’t wonder about the weird syntax…)

Tonight, Brian whisked the oldest two kids away for a little vacation up at a cabin in Park City— rented by his sister for her birthday, and where the entire clan of in-laws will be festejando for a few days.

I stayed home because I know that neither Fuzzles nor Scooby can sleep anywhere but their own beds. So the plan is for me to stay here tonight with the little dudes and tomorrow, after their naps, I’ll head up there to parTAY.

All of Brian’s family is there. His three sisters, their spouses, and a plethora of children, and his brother and sister-in-law and their rambunctious little one. And his parents. That’s a LOT of Brian-ites.

And the scheduled activities are very Brian-ite too. There will be hiking and swimming and even a family talent show. (I’m gonna have Scooby sing Linkin Park. Seriously. He can. Or perhaps I’ll have Scooby and Bubba act out this YouTube clip. They can do it perfectly. “Don’t tase me, Bro!” “What did I doooooooo!?”) There will be meals prepared, there will be presents opened, there will be 4-wheeling and hiking and kite-flying. There will be lots of talk about politics—before I arrive, that is. They don’t talk about politics with me because I’m A: Smart, and B: a heathen democrat who therefore must be a gay mexican abortionist on welfare who is GOING TO HELL. (Hmmmm, I wonder if they don’t talk politics with me because I’m snippy and sarcastic? Nah, couldn’t be.)

All in all, it should be very fun. Especially if you’re into 4-wheeling and hiking and wearing swimsuits, all of which I’m really… not into. But I love all the people involved, so it will be fun anyway! And my kids and hubbylicious will be in heaven—they don’t get many opportunities to do fun stuff like this, so it’s great for them to live it up every once in a while.

Anyway, ALL of that is besides the point. The point is, Brian and the eldest two of our offspring are gone and the littlest two are fast asleep and I have drunk enough Diet Coke tonight to stay awake until June. I was looking forward to a long, fruitful night on the internet, catching up on all my blogginesses (because I haven’t read any blogs in, like, an entire week. If not longer) and seeing what all my dear ones are up to.

And then? Betrayal of all betrayals. My internet DIED. Ka-POWEEEE. I couldn’t get it to connect. I gasped. I pouted. I cursed Comcast. I sat staring at the computer, thinking that maybe if I stared long enough it would magically repair itself. But nooooo.

Finally, I gave in to my fate: my internet-less night. I was left with several options: I could work on my book, because I don’t need the internet to type a word document. And I’ve been complaining forever about having this great story in my head but not having time to actually write it out. So, naturally, that’s what I did, right? Wrong. No, instead, I went over to my bed and shoved the clean laundry (the stuff I should have been folding) that was strewn all over it onto one side, grabbed some serious junk-food that I wasn’t hungry for but ate anyway, and plopped down to allow the television to entertain me into oblivion.

Except… there was nothing on. NOTHING! And, I’m a TV junkie. I’m so easily entertained. Still, there was nothing. So I went to the On-Demand options (no longer cursing Comcast, but adoring them with every fiber of my being) and found that I could watch a preview of the new Season 2 of Robin Hood. (Those of you in the UK will SHUT YOUR MOUTHS now. I KNOW you got this months ago, but BBC America won’t start showing them on this side of the pond until the end of this month.) And OH! How I was dying to gaze upon Jonas Armstrong these new episodes.

Unfortunately, it was very unsatisfactory. It only showed half of the first episode. WHAT am I supposed to do with half of the first episode?

So, I came back to my computer. To write my book. And yet, I’ve ended up here, babbling on my blog, even though I can’t actually publish this babble because my internet connection went out AGAIN. (And… she’s back to cursing Comcast.)

Which proves a point. I think. Yes, I think it’s possible that I have a point here. See, I hear people talk about how productive they would be if they stopped wasting time on the internet. But! I have proven tonight that I can waste time and be entirely unproductive even WITHOUT the internet! It’s a remarkable talent, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

Look! Look! I got a connection! I’m now going to publish this utter nonsense. Wheeeeee!!!