Twas Brillig

(To preface this remarkably bizarre post, I feel that I need to tell you that three years ago, I went with my sisters to a David Cassidy concert. It was quite possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. At 25 years old, I was decades younger than anyone else in the audience, and certainly the only person dressed like I was at a concert. It was SO funny. But it was also a blast. And for some reason, it made a deep impact on who I am today. Okay, not at all… But still. Dear David has lingered with me…)

Hahahahahahahahaha

The following song is based on, nay, INSPIRED by David Cassidy’s “I Think I Love You.”

(Point is, there are a lot of newly added blogs in my blogroll. Go check them out! And if, peradventure, I missed you… it was inadvertant. I’ve been going through my bookmarks and my comments, etc. but I do have mommy-brain after all. Please don’t hesitate to point out the lack of your link. If you’re too shy to say it in my comments, email me. Or tell your friends to email me. Or something. Or just be offended and never come back. NO! I’m KIDDING!! Don’t do that!!! Holy crap, this is a long parenthetical. Time to quite. And now I’m done. Bye.)

Welcome to Flashback Friday!!

When Hubby was a boy, his parents bought him a gorgeous yellow lab who he named Dusty. Dusty was a dear friend and confidant for Hubby.

As Hubby got older, Dusty had to be left behind at his parents’ house as Hubby went off on life’s various adventures, like college and, well, marrying me. Our first home was a dark, dank, dismal basement apartment and dogs weren’t exactly, um, allowed.

So Dusty lived with Hubby’s parents. But Dusty was still very much Hubby’s dog. Hubby would go and visit him all the time, and did as much as he could to take care of the dog, though of course much of the burden of care was with his parents.

One day, Hubby went to visit Dusty, and Dusty wasn’t there. Hubby’s parents had decided that Dusty was too old and uncomfortable and it was time to put him down. No one ever got permission from Hubby or even mentioned it to him. Hubby had to find out after the fact. He’d never gotten to say goodbye to his dear old friend.

It was very painful for my sweet Hubby.

It’s a sad story, to be sure. But here’s where it hits so close to home:

Now that I’M living with Hubby’s parents, is Hubby gonna come home from work one day and discover that they’ve euthanized ME?

Gentle Readers, today I’m off to house-hunt. All day long. Aren’t you jealous?

It means that I won’t be around to read, comment, or post much. Instead, I’m bringing you something from my archives.

WAIT!! Don’t GO!!!

This was one of my first stories about life with my kiddos. It was back before anyone (besides Butrfly and Kateastrophe–hi girls!) was actually reading this blog.

It has been slightly reworked…

AND THEN SHE FOUND A ROCK AND HID UNDER IT FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY…

My darling hubsters called me on his way home from work yesterday to announce that I didn’t need to make dinner because he was taking us all OUT to dinner. In that moment, I really should have called the local mental institution and had him locked up because he was clearly going BATTY. Didn’t he remember how hard it is to go anywhere?

Well, maybe just this once, it would be an exception. And I was actually really excited to not have to cook and serve and clean. And positively in love with Hubby for thinking of me.

So, I got all the kids ready to go and even put on my new sassy jeans. I know. Big stuff.

Well, as it turned out, Hubbadubba was taking us to dinner because he’d been given a gift certificate. Even better! I didn’t need to feel guilty about the unnecessary money-spending that going out usually entails!

The gift certificate was to a Mexican restaurant in Orem, about half an hour away. There are, of course, approximately a billion Mexican restaurants in Utah, so we didn’t think anything of the fact that we’d never HEARD of this particular one. And we’re all big Mexican food lovers, so this was perfect.

We pulled up to the “restaurant” which was a little hole in the wall of a strip mall where everything was in Spanish. Everything.

As we were getting out of the car, Bubba peed his pants. With some pants, you can’t really see the wet spot. Bubba was not in those pants. He was in the pants that reward a little pee with a great big “hi, I just had an accident and now I’m going to sit on your chair” wet spot. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I really had no other option than to take him in to the restaurant, wet spot and all.

We walk into the “restaurant” which had about 6 small tables, 4 of which were fully occupied by very burly, drunk, Hispanic men.

Let me pause here to say that by now you know that I’m am impervious to racial and cultural differences. This is even more the case when it comes to the Latin culture. I have many, many hispanic friends. I’m fluent in Spanish, remember? I have an Argentine sister-in-law. And I lived in South America for a couple of years. Not a big deal.

However, in this situation, my little family of six felt pretty little, very young, and COPIOUSLY white. I expect that my abnormal discomfort came mostly because, of course, we had all eyes glued on us from the moment we walked in the door. Burly drunk men with jaws dropped, gawking at the white people–the white people with magical procreation skills.

The menus? All in Spanish. I had to translate for Hubby and the kiddos. A waiter, who remarkably spoke pretty good English, came over to us and we ordered. It took forever, because Hubby needed to go through all his options (”can I get guacamole instead of rice and then beans with cheese but no red sauce and do the pig’s feet come with mango sauce? I don’t really want them, I’m just curious…”), but eventually our order was in.

(I sound like I’m mocking him. I’m not trying to. He’s such a darling. But see, being a vegetarian and all, my food options are rather limited and I’m pretty dang boring anyway. I scan the menu, see the bean burrito, and go with it. Hubby is much more adventurous than I, and therefore has a lot of questions that need answers.)

In the meantime, the kids were gorging themselves on the free chips and salsa. Scooby was in a high chair with no straps to keep him in.

People. If my child needs a high chair, my child also needs straps. Why is it that the straps are always broken??? For the preservation of your restaurant, and our mutual sanity, FIX THE STUPID STRAPS!!!

Anyway, needless to say, he was climbing all over the table and throwing menus on the floor, etc. I was working so hard to keep everyone and everything under control. I didn’t want to be one of “those moms” who goes to a nice restaurant and sits back while the kids turn it into a disaster area.

Fortunately, this WASN’T a nice restaurant.

Still, I was determined to keep the kids under control. Then the baby started screaming. Hubby picked him up and discovered a total diaper blow out. Again, I had no handy change of clothes, so now I had one pee-soaked child and one screaming poop-soaked baby. And then Scooby, climbing out of his high chair once again, grabbed the salsa and guzzled it. What do you suppose he did next? Well, he screamed his brains out, of course, because the salsa was HOT.

And the burly drunk men stared on at the little smelly excrement-covered white people who were all screaming.

Our waiter walked by, and Hubby decided to ask what he should have asked in the first place, which was, do they take this gift certificate. The waiter looks at it and said, “No.”

WHAT???

They don’t take gift certificates anymore because of gift certificate fraud. Too many copies. (You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. People are making bogus gift certificates to this place? People want to EAT IN THIS PLACE???) Hubby points out all the reasons why this is absolutely a legitimate gift certificate–it had watermarks, security seals, important signatures, etc. The waiter was unimpressed.

“No, we do not take any gift certificates.”

“Well, then we won’t be eating here,” Hubby announces.

The waiter shrugs and says, “okay!”

I nearly died. Really. I think my poor, pathetic life began flashing before my eyes.

So we loaded up the screaming, poopy baby in his carseat, grabbed the screaming Scooby out of his high chair and told Bubba and Fluffy to head to the door. “NO!!!” they yelled, almost (but not quite) in unison.

(I suspect my face was completely purple by now. Not a good look on me…)

“Excuse me?”

And now, in all-out tantrum mode: “NO!!! WE’RE NOT LEAVING!!!! WE’RE SO HUNGRY!!!”

We grabbed them by the hand and yanked them out the door, leaving our blurry-eyed Mexican friends to stare at each other in awe and say, “what in the Giminy Christmas was THAT???”

Indeed. What WAS that?

So, we went through the drive-thru at Taco Bell, where we didn’t look like freaks at all, and ate our tacos in the van as we drove home.

We just got our first offer on our house.

They offered $42,000 less than our already embarrassingly low asking price. Hahahahahahaha.

Hahahahaha.

Hahahahaha.

I’m laughing so that I don’t start bawling…

Hahahaha.

So far, it’s working.

And to think. In our house-hunting, Hubby and I are always embarrassed when we want to offer $10,000 less than the asking price. I guess that I will try to be a bit less embarrassed from now on.

Who wants to track these people down and throw rotten eggs at their house. Anyone?

Hahahahahaha.

It’s no secret that my son Blake has a flair for the dramatic. (Where he gets it, I can’t imagine!)

Just now, my sweet boy came running in to see me. His big blue eyes were shining with tears and his voice quivered.

“Mommy.” He was trying to be so brave, but the little tears trickled down his little pink cheeks. He had my immediate attention. “Mommy, I did something very bad and it’s all my fault.”

“Okay,” I said gently. He’d been causing trouble ALL MORNING and I hadn’t been, um “gentle” about it all. But this seemed different. “Tell me what happened.”

He nestled his face into my chest. “I dropped Daddy’s toothbrush in the sink.”

(What is it with us and toothbrushes?)

“Well, then, take it out of the sink! It’s okay!”

“No, it’s ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SINK. Down the little black hole part.”

His little body was trembling. He was so, so concerned about this.

“Blake, it’ll be okay! I’ll just get it out!”

He grabbed my hand and tugged me out of the room towards the bathroom. Sure enough, he’d taken the drain stopper out and the toothbrush had plunged into the depths of the plumbing. I could just barely see the tip of it. So I brought him upstairs with me to go through Grampa’s tools and found some pin-nosed plyers (don’t be impressed…) which I then wielded mightily and was able to remove the toothbrush from the pipe.

And suddenly I was bowled down by the force of such a little person’s great big hug, and with tears of joy, he exclaimed, “OH MOMMY!!!! YOU’RE A GENIUS!!!!”

That I am, Gentle Readers. That I am.

(And by the way, Hubby gets a new toothbrush now too, since this one came out of the pipe covered in a black goo that I’d really rather ignore than attempt to clean… Good thing I bought extras after our last toothbrush incident.)

And now, a post about comments. And no, Gentle Readers, it’s not me fishing for more comments. Honestly! Just some questions and observations, nothing more.

Do you judge a blog by its comments? Really? I gotta know.

When you click on a new blog, does your eye scan the most recent post and then settle on the number of comments the blogger has received for that particular post?

Do you wonder what’s wrong with the blog that consistently gets one or two comments per post?

Do you feel out of your league when you see a blog that consistently gets thirty+ comments per post?

I have to admit that I judge sometimes. Not always, though. I read a few blogs that rarely get any comments at all, and I think it’s some of the best writing on the internet. And then there are those blogs that seem to get thousands of comments, but are entirely worthless as far as I can see. But there are other times where I have to admit that I judge a blog too soon, good or bad, based simply on the number of comments it receives.

This is a hard thing for me to admit, because I am still a new blogger, so I certainly shouldn’t be talking like a seasoned snob. My little blog is not yet two months old. And so it wasn’t all that long ago that I remember being so excited to get more than three comments on one post–something that didn’t happen all that often at first!

I now average about 18 comments or so per post. I remember the first time I reached that 20 comment milestone and I thought I would die of joy!!! It then became a rather common occurrence to burst through the 20-comment zone. So, when I reached the THIRTY comment milestone, I spit rootbeer all over myself. Seriously. And it was on a post that I NEVER expected to get that kind of response from!!! I remember just sitting down and writing what was on my mind–no overthinking, nothing artsy fartsy, just writing what little was in the ol’ noggin. And then I checked back that night and discovered thirty comments. You can see that I’m still a bit starstruck by that moment, because it’s still the only time I’ve gotten that many comments. haha.

I find that in my own writing, Meme’s or shameless plugs for votes get the least amount of comments. Then the serious, darker stuff gets a similarly small amount of comments, but people continue to comment on them and revisit them over time and eventually the numbers go up. The other stuff, like soap opera sundays, and flashback fridays and just my average daily posts all get a medium amount. And then every once in a while, I’ll write something that will touch people for some reason and my comments will go way up, and when that happens, it’s a big surprise!

I have some amazing bloggy friends–friends that I know, no matter what I write, stupid or poignant, they will comment. They are my security blanket. They are always here, rain or shine.

Others a bit more picky. Sometimes they comment, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes my writing speaks to them, sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s okay! I have multiple personalities here, after all, and I can’t expect everyone to have something to say every time I write something!

And then, I see the lurkers. You might not think so, but I do. I see you. I’ve got sitemeter and google analytics and mybloglog. I see you. You come, you read, you leave. At first it kinda concerned me. Why aren’t you commenting? Don’t you like me? But then I realized that not everyone is a comment-hag like myself. Some are content to just stop in, read a little, and get on with their lives. Why should they have to validate me by leaving a comment? And so, dear lurkers, I welcome you too.

But you know what I’m learning? You just can’t blog for the comments. You can’t take the comments personally. This is what I’m learning, slowly but surely. Sometimes the stuff that I’m most proud of gets the fewest comments. Sometimes the mindless fluff gets the most. If you let the comments control what you write, then it’s not your blog anymore, but everyone else’s. And oh my goodness, I need it to be MY blog, not a popularity contest!

(Don’t get me wrong, though! I love comments! Oh, how I love comments! It makes me feel like there’s someone out there who cares about the crap I want to say! I just won’t write specifically to receive the comments…)

How are you on your blog? Do you feel that you are validated by the number of comments you receive? Do you think one post is better or worse than another, based on the comments each generates?

And how are you at other blogs? Is there a certain kind of post that you are more likely to comment on? Are there blogs that you comment on, no matter what the subject, simply because you love the blog? Are you scrupulous in your comments, commenting only when you actually have something to say? Do you use comments as a form of manipulation, to drive traffic from someone else’s site to your own?

I’m not actually sure that it’s fair to call that “manipulation.” It’s a game we all play and I think it’s fair. If I see a comment that I really like on someone else’s site, I’m gonna click on the commenter’s name, read their blog for the first time, and generally make a new friend. I’d say that I “met” at least half of the people in my bloglist that way.

And I love, love, LOVE to read (at other people’s sites) “I found your site through your comment on Brillig’s blog.” I see people meeting each other–meeting each other through me and I can hardly contain my joy. Let the blog-love abound!!!

Anyway I’m interested in your responses. It seems like there’s an unwritten book of blogging rules, and commenting has a whole section to itself. I’d love to know what others think of these things.

(Do you comment on posts that are way too long and contain too many questions? I guess we’ll see…)

House-Selling Brillig: What the crap is wrong with these buyers? Why isn’t anyone buying our old house? I mean, we’re practically GIVING it away now. It’s almost brand new (built in ‘04), it’s spotlessly clean. It’s bright and airy. Okay, so the layout isn’t perfect. So the master bathroom is the size of a postage stamp. So the counters and floors are the cheapest possible material. This is a great house! Come buy it! At 3200 sq. ft and 5 bedrooms, it’s huge! Enough room for ANY family!

House-Buying Brillig: What the crap is wrong with this seller? Why would I buy this house? The layout sucks and I will never buy a crappy layout again. And what’s with these counter tops? Why wouldn’t they have granite in here? And the master bathroom? Who combines the tub and shower these days? And why is there only one sink and vanity? I need my OWN sink!!! And, in the kitchen, is this… is this pergo???? You have got to be KIDDING me!!! Would it really be that much harder to do hardwood floors? What decade do they think we’re in? And at 3800 sq. ft, this is too small. Way too small. No one is ever gonna buy this house.

And so you see, Gentle Readers, that House-Buying Brillig is a big fat SNOB. And House-Selling Brillig is DISGUSTED with all the snobs.

And neither one of me is having any success whatsoever.

Dearest Gentle Readers,

I’m so, so behind in my blog-rounds. I’ve been wrapped up in my search for the perfect home and in my quest to sell my current home and in, well, being a mom to four very very young children. I’m mostly keeping up on reading your posts thanks to Ye Olde Google Reader, but I’m rarely commenting or responding these last few days.

Basically, I suck. I don’t know how I can even call myself a “blogger.” I know that many of you who voted for me are wishing you could take it back. I wonder if they let you do that…

But WAIT! No! Don’t give up on me!!! I’ll get back on my game, I promise! Look! There’s even a new poll to entertain yourself with in the sidebar until I get back on my bloggy feet, as it were.

I think that if I weren’t so obsessed with blogging, I wouldn’t feel so guilty. If I didn’t love your blogs and your posts and your comments so much, it would be no big deal. But I DO! And I can’t wait to get back to it!

So, to sum up, I think that my not commenting on your blog is hurting me more than it’s hurting you.

*sniff*

Duh! It’s Mother’s Day! There’s no Soap Opera Sunday today!

I’m off to go snuggle with my kids and let them shower me with home made presents, generally consisting of crayon sribbles on scratch paper, and I will pretend to be surprised! And then I will sit them down and have them tell me in great detail what each scribble means and I will savor every second of it! I hope all of you are having a wonderful day today and that you’re making it special for the mothers in your life!

Welcome to yet another installment of Flashback Friday!

My daughter found this picture this morning and said, “oh Mommy! That’s a FUNNY hat!”

And today’s Flashback Friday was born.

Because no, Gentle Readers, it’s not just a funny hat. It’s my gas mask–the gas mask that defined a big chunk of my life.

In the summer of 1990, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded a little oil-rich country called Kuwait. It was an atrocious invasion and the world was up in arms over the oil unfairness of it all.

President Bush (we call him “Papa Bush” around here) gave Hussein an ultimatum: Get out by January 15, 1991, or we will declare war on you. Hussein’s retort went something like this: If you declare war on Iraq, Iraq will bomb Israel to smithereens.

And, wouldn’t you know it, I just happened to be in Israel at the time.

I was already pretty used to a lot of stuff before all of this happened. There was constant gunfire outside my window. I was so used to it that I remember the day I woke up and realized that I could sleep through it now. I watch many riots. I heard many impassioned marches. I even distinctly remember (because it’s not the kind of thing you ever forget) seeing a man get shot and then watching them drag his body through the streets.

That was just part of living in Jerusalem.

Even so, none of us ever believed that insignificant little Hussein would actually go head to head with the US. We absolutely believed that he would pull out of Kuwait long before war would actually be declared. Call it American Bravado or naivte or just a misunderstanding of how crazy the man really was.

However, “just in case,” everyone living in our Center (a scant group of 10 or so–my brother Jeff and I were the only “kids”–I was 12, he was 15)

(here’s a pic of our center–the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a veritable fortress)

went through a training of what to do if suddenly we were being attacked. We learned all the various sirens: Air raid, chemical warfare, all clear, and so on. We were each assigned a gas mask and we learned how to put them on and practiced and practiced to get the process down to just a few seconds. We packed emergency-preparedness bags, and we learned the quickest, safest routes to the on-site bomb shelter, and little tricks like holding up a blanket every time we ran past a window to protect us from shattering glass.

But as I said, we never thought it would happen.

However, on January 15, Hussein still hadn’t pulled out of Kuwait. And so on the morning of January 16, the US began carpet-bombing Baghdad. And on January 17, Hussein’s threatened retaliation became my reality.

I’ll never forget that first air raid siren. It was at about 2:00 a.m. and we had all been sound asleep. I remember waking up in a blur, and casually heading to the bathroom and beginning to brush through my hair. And then I was hit with the sudden realization of what that noise meant and it sent me into a brief panic where I dropped the brush and ran.for.my.life.

It was always to be assumed that chemical warfare was being used, and so our first item of business upon arriving in the bomb shelter was to put on the gas mask–fast. Here I am with my mom and my brother in the bomb shelter:

Left to right: Me, Jeff, and my mom

It was cold and mucky in the bomb shelter and it had a weird smell, but it would have been silly to complain. As I said, we lived in a fortress and we had an on-site bomb shelter. Many, MANY were not so fortunate, no matter what CNN was trying to lead you to believe. People were dying, hospitals were packed, the country is was in a state of devastation.

And here’s where I feel the need to address something that the mighty Gunfighter said to me in my comments of this post and which he may have thought I was “ignoring.” No, friend. I wasn’t ignoring it. He said something like, “our own government lies to us too.” And it hit very, very close to home.

The news was our lives. We had to watch the news in order to know what was going on. We had three main sources of news: The Jordanian (Arabic) news, which we knew would be full of crap, because that’s what their government was giving them. We heard day after day that Jerusalem had been obliterated and that Saddam was marching on to claim victory. But I could see out my own window that that was an absolute lie. Speaking of that, here’s the view from my window. Not much could happen in the main part of Jerusalem without my being able to verify it from my view:

And so, that was the Jordanian news. Not really a source of news, but often a great source of entertainment.

And then we had American news–in the form of clips from CNN. Guess what, Gentle Readers. CNN lied. A lot. Again, I don’t blame CNN, I blame the government and the LOADS OF CRAP that they were feeding to the news stations. This was a VERY bitter pill to swallow. We were the “good guys,” right? Maybe. But we were also big fat liars. And THAT may have been the hardest revelation of this whole thing.

And then there was the Israeli (Hebrew) news. Honest, though perhaps a bit biassed, but always accurate when it came to destruction and death tolls and what was really going on outside my window. They were our most (only!) accurate source of news. And when your life depends on receiving accurate news, it was disheartening to only have one source.

Anyway, the war went on for about two months. Often we would be sent to the bomb shelter many times during the night. Sometimes we would get the night off. Sometimes the air raids didn’t happen at night at all, but during the day. It was hard to lead a normal life, but we did our absolute best. We kept up in our studies, we kept a schedule. We even enjoyed exploring all of the abandoned tourist sites that would normally have been packed but were now left utterly desolate. And as my mother was a resident expert, we always got the best tour possible. We were too adventurous to be diminished by a little bombing.

It wasn’t really terrifying, oddly enough. Very “high-key” and the whole thing kept us very much on our toes. Looking back it scares me more than it actually scared me at the time. The nightmares came AFTER the war, not during it. I’m not sure why that is…

On Purim, the Jewish holiday that celebrates Queen Esther and her liberation of the Hebrews, the war “ended” (though you will all remember that Hussein was left in power… which was, how shall we say, a little teeny tiny mistake. Thanks Papa Bush. You and your son are such a cute team…). Gas masks were returned, bomb shelters were re-sealed, life went back to “normal.” Sort of. We were all eternally changed. And the death threats and bomb threats from neighboring villages didn’t exactly stop… and being Americans, we weren’t exactly considered “friends” by many. But still. The worst of it was over.

But then the nightmares begin and you forget to “key-down” when you’ve been so keyed-up. Any police siren would stop me dead in my tracks for years, because it sounds so much like an air-raid siren. The sounds of gunfire or anything that might resemble it would make my heart race out of control. During the war, I had literally had to ran for my life. For years after, I wanted to run, but I had no reason to run and I had no where to run to.

Anyway, whew! Flashback Friday was so serious today! Hahaha. Thanks for bearing with me!