Twas Brillig

Did I mention (no, I didn’t, verbally, but you may have seen it in my sidebar) that I’m going to THE kickinest party tomorrow night?

Uh… yeah.  This thing’s gonna be HUGE.  They say that even the Cre8buzz boys are gonna be there.  I know, right?  I’ve had kind of a school-girl crush on these guys ever since I joined Cre8buzz over a year ago (wait— haven’t you joined?  Why not?).  I’m using mantras and aroma-hypno-therapy candles, chanting to myself, “I will NOT make a complete fool of myself in the presence of such coolness” over and over again.  Let’s hope it works….   And the groovy chicks from Mile High Mamas will be there too!  And then all the political bloggers who happen to be in the area (which are many, of course, since we ARE the home of the DNC) will be there too.  Apparently there will be live blogging during Obama’s speech.  Yes, folks.  Live blogging.  It just isn’t a party without the live blogging.

Okay, so I probably won’t be blogging during Obama’s speech, unless it’s to tell you that the appetizers are good, or that everyone besides me and Amber are drunk, or that Mr. Lady really IS wearing the fishnets she promised she would.  Otherwise, no.  No live blogging from me.

In anticipation of the occasion, I bought myself some new make-up.  The goal is for this make-up to make me look younger, smarter, and fifty pounds lighter…  That way, I can fool everyone into thinking I’m… well… more than just a fat housewife.  Unfortunately, I am, in fact, just a fat housewife.  So, yeah.  Wish me luck with that.

Also, my husband’s sister and her friend are coming out to visit us tomorrow (and yes, I’m dragging them to this blogger bash.  They wanted to see the “Denver Night Life”— uh, are we talking about the same Denver?— and I didn’t want to have to explore the intricacies of Public Transit all by myself.  Everyone wins).  They’ll be staying with us, in my guest room, until Monday night.  And where, oh where, do you suppose my computer is?  Ahhh, yes.  My guest room.  I think that we can safely say, then, that my online time will be greatly diminished over the next few days.  So if you don’t hear from me, don’t think that it’s because one of the crazy DNC protestors has eaten me.  (Dude.  I totally hope that one of the protestors DOES eat me.  That would make an awesome blogpost.)

Fret not, though.  I will somehow find a way for Soap Opera Sunday to be hosted here this weekend.  (Speaking of that, I’m looking for a theme and a host for September.  I’m just throwin’ that out there.)

Okay, off I go.  Tomorrow’s a big day!  I gotta get my beauty sleep!  (Read:  I gotta stay up all night cleaning so that my sister-in-law doesn’t think we’re pigs…)

Wordless Wednesday

…but there are pictures.  Of me.  In my pajamas.  Over on Gunfighter’s blog.

A member of the bishopric called me in on Sunday morning, right before church was about to start.  Now, anyone who’s been in the church for more than a month knows that when the bishopric randomly call you in, it’s because you are about to be given an assignment.  I braced myself, knowing that they might stick me in nursery (two of my own children are in the nursery, so while I suppose it would be “fair” it would also mean that the two hours a week that I DON’T take care of them would be taken away from me).  Or maybe they would ask me to lead some music in one meeting or another— I’ve often had those callings and I enjoy them.   Or maybe I would FINALLY luck out and get that assignment to teach Sunday School.  That’s the one I’ve been pining for, and I’d heard that there were a couple of openings.

So when he said, “boy scouts,” I nearly had a heart attack.  My poor, pathetic life flashed before my eyes.  *cough*cough*cough* Excuse me?  Boy scouts?  REALLY?  Have you MET me?

When he asked me if I would accept the assignment, I said, “yes,” because that’s what I do— even though everything within me was screaming, “NO!  Please NO!  For the love of all that is holy, NOOOOOOOOOO!”

Brian was waiting out in the hallway, having whisked the kids off to their various church classes, eager to hear my news.  When I told him, he let out a stream of laughter.  Then when I told him I needed to buy myself a scout uniform and wear it to all the meetings, I thought he might burst a blood vessel in his face from the force of his guffawing.

Now, Brian’s an Eagle Scout, so he’s been through all these programs before.  Once he got his manic laughter under control, I asked him what exactly I needed to do— what was expected of me?  How hard was this really going to be?

Then he smiled and said, “I have ONE memory from Boy Scouts.  My scout leader was a woman about your age.”  Aww, he was going to share a heartwarming story with me!  Yay!  Maybe I really COULD make a difference!  He went on, “I remember one time, she bent over, and I could see STRAIGHT DOWN HER SHIRT!!!!”  He grinned the biggest school boy grin you can imagine.  I just stared at him, blinking.

That was it.  That was the one thing he remembered from scouts.

Note to self:  wear a high-necked T-shirt under my scout uniform.

“You’re a hard worker.  One of the best employees we’ve ever had.  With your knowledge, work ethic, and skill set, you will have no problem getting a job at another hospital.”

Kind as they are, these are not the words that a man who just uprooted his whole family and moved them to a new state wants to hear.  A man who just bought a new house, who just signed his kids up for ballet, swimming, and piano lessons.  A man whose family is finally out of limbo and settled for the first time in over a year.  A man whose “special needs” child is finally starting to get some help.

The program that he is implementing here, which they begged him to come and implement, takes about three years to get up and running.  That’s no secret.  And it’s worth it.  He can take a hospital from archaic to highly functional in three years and then he can maintain the processes and keep everything running smoothly.  Hospitals who don’t have a similar program are falling way behind the curve and won’t be able to catch up.  Unfortunately, he’s a computer geek working among non-computer people and while they want the program, they don’t understand that these things take time.  Apparently, even though they were informed of the time table from the beginning, they are getting antsy.  They want things up and running… NOW.

It’s been three months.

They’re ready to pull the funding and shut down the department all together.  But they haven’t… yet.  Right now they’re just threatening.  Constantly threatening.  And while Brian and team are making progress, they simply can’t shave two-and-a-half years off this three-year process.  He’s killing himself and receiving only criticism in return.  You can only imagine the pain and stress that this is causing him.

Brian puts in long hours and comes home tired and empty, like his life has been sucked out of him.  The sparkle and wit that define his personality are all but extinguished.  He’s too thin, too pale, too tired.  He can’t sleep, he hardly eats.  And he’s all but stopped talking to me— not because he’s mad at me or I at him, but because it would just be the same conversation every day.  Things aren’t going well.  I guess there’s really nothing left to say.

I don’t know how to help him, though I’m dying to.  I know how hard this is.  I know the immense pressure he’s under.  Four kids, one wife, a house, some cars, loads of medical bills.  He’s crumbling.

It’s so easy to glance behind, like Lot’s wife.  Brian left behind his dream job when he left Utah.  He loved the hospital system there.  He loved his coworkers.  He was working hard and having fun and loving every minute of it.  He was valued.  Adored.  It was a huge sacrifice for him when that powerful intangible something told us to leave.  But he knew it was the right thing, and he did it.  He did it for God, he did it for me, and, mostly, he did it for our son.

Sometimes, just because you do the right thing for all the right reasons, it doesn’t mean that everything magically works itself out.  Or, maybe, it does.  But things don’t always work out the way you thought they should.

Deep breaths.  Just keep taking deep breaths.   We know that this was where we are supposed to be.   We didn’t come on a whim.  Much prayer and soul-searching and research were done before we chose this job among the others that were being offered at the time.  We are going to be just fine.

But the “what-ifs” are constantly beckoning, begging for attention.  What if we’d stayed in Utah?  What if we’d chosen the job in Chicago?  What if…

Wordless Wednesday

This post is just BEGGING to be in list form.  So, here goes.

1.  So, the other day, as I was making my blogrounds, lo and behold, I stumbled on a post by my dear friend Ramblin’ Red of Ramblings of a Red-Headed Step-child who had, astonishingly enough, given me this award:

I guess that makes it official, folks! My blog? Is BRILLIANT! (Or brillante, but… whatever).  Because Red says so. Specifically, this post. Now, I suppose that the tradition with these things is that when one is awarded, one passes it on. Hmmmm, this is starting to sound an awful lot like a Meme— and I have made no secret about how I feel about Memes. I don’t like them. I don’t want to be tagged with them. I don’t want to tag other people with them. And yet… this one feels just a tiny bit more special. I mean, the word BRILLANTE was used!!! So, I’m going to pass it on. And I pass it on to my real life AND bloggy gal-pal Charrette for her post, “Lifetime Vigils.”  If you haven’t already, go over there and read it and you’ll see why I would give it such an award.

2.  My blogroll is officially UP AND RUNNING.  It’s complete, as far as I know, so please go and look at it and make sure that your link appears as you’d like it to (and that it works…).  If you’re not on my blogroll, it’s your own darn fault.   And what I mean by that is, just let me know and I’ll add you.  Go on.  Don’t be shy.  Someone recently described my blogroll as “Free Linking! It is like the 70’s era of free love, but in the blog world.  Thanks for the free love…”  Exactly, folks.  Free Bloglove.  That’s what I’m all about.  Of course… it never hurts if you… um… return the favor…

3.  Who here hasn’t heard of BloggersAnnex yet?

It’s this new site, dedicated to publishing the best of the best posts from Bloglandia.  The idea is that everyone who is the least bit inclined can join and then  can submit a post or two or ten thousand to be published.  But here’s the catch:  only one post makes the cut per day.  Hahaha.  Wicked, isn’t it.  This way, it’s an honor to be published there.  And also, readers always know that when they land on that site, there will ALWAYS be something worth reading.  AND GUESS WHAT!!!  The post that was chosen today? is ONE OF MINE!!!  So… I beg you.  Go over there and read my post.  It’s short.  And then comment there, so I don’t feel like an utter fool.  That would be awesome.  And then, read the other posts that have been published (there are only two or three others so far, all of which are far more brilliant than mine), and then join BloggersAnnex and submit YOUR stuff!  EVERYONE has something lurking in their archives that they’re just dying to repost and give more traffic to.  The more the merrier, right?

Okay, dudes.  A list of just 3 things.  Wow.  I really limited myself today.  Impressed, aren’t you!  Of course, they all have homework attached to them.

As for me, I’m off to go finish reading Breaking Dawn.  I’m a bit more than halfway done.  And this is all I have to say:  “RENESMEE?”  Are you frickin’ brackin’ KIDDING ME????  I’m pretty sure I’m stupider for having read just this much.  And yes, I’m going to go finish it. 

Ahhh, come on.  You know how I hate to be left out of a good party.  If everyone else is talking about Stephanie Meyer’s fourth and last installment to the Twilight series, then I really have to also.

Okay, that’s a lie.  The truth is, it’s the sort of thing I never would have read if I’d heard the hype first.  Fortunately for me, I happened to be in a bit of a bubble and I’d really never heard of the books.  My dear friend Kate, who is NEVER in a bubble, came to town (back when I was a Utahn, doncha know) and handed me a pile of books and said, “read these.”  And since I pretty much do whatever Kate tells me to, I did.

All three in 32 hours.

THEN I heard the hype.  THEN I realized that I was the biggest cliche in the whole world.  Understand that this is something I fight against all the time.  I mean, I am yet to allow a Harry Potter book into my home.  The Lord of the Rings movies will never be watched in this house.  And no, Princess Fluffy, you CAN’T have a Camp Rock t-shirt.  But apparently, I’d just finished reading (and obsessing over) the biggest trilogy ever to hit the literate (and even quasi-literate) female population as a whole.  And I agonized over the fact that I’d not only read them, but I’d liked them.

Now, let’s face it.  Stephanie Meyer is a fun story teller, but she’s not a brilliant writer.  Catchy, yes.  She was able to concoct an amazing chemistry between characters who you really shouldn’t like and yet…  you can’t help it.  You care about what happens to this whiny girl and her 17-year-old vampire boyfriend.  Obviously she’s done SOMETHING right.  And yet, come on.  Her books look completely out-of-place on my shelf full of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Poe, Neruda, and even M. Catherine Thomas.  Still… there they sit.

And then, this weekend, my nieces who are 12 and 14 (and seriously the most gorgeous teenagers you’ve ever heard of) were here in Colorado (along with their four other siblings and their mom who is, in fact, my sister— not this sister or this sister, but this sister — so many stories to tell from the weekend, but this parenthetical is probably NOT the place…) and of course they, like every other teenager in America (and more especially, like every MORMON teenager in America) were also counting down… to midnight… and the sale of that certain book.  I half-heartedly suggested to Amy (my sister, their mom) that she let me take her girls to the local bookstore for the countdown to midnight to buy the book.  But we were all tired, and since the girls weren’t even going to be allowed to read the book yet until another responsible adult had read it first and approved it, it was silly to go.

But, the next day, I did sneak the girls out to go shopping (not really— their parents were fully aware that I was taking them, PLUS they needed shoes desperately and Amy wasn’t real keen on going shoe shopping, but I WAS) with me and Princess Fluffy at THE. MALL.  And lo and behold, we passed a Borders.  So I went in, with squealing girls in tow, and bought Breaking Dawn.  Yup.  On THE DAY it was released, I bought it.  And I’m feeling, um, rather sheepish about admitting that.  I’d love to blame it on Gwen and Kathryn, but… it was all me.

When we got home (back to my house, that is) I sorta pushed my new book towards Gwen, who sorta cracked open the cover, and then sorta started to read the book… for about 2 hours until her parents noticed and announced that she needed to be done.  (I’m such a bad influence.  They were probably so relieved to get their precious girls away from me!)

What this means is that I haven’t actually read the book yet, though it’s been in my possession for about 36 hours.  I’m actually rather proud of my restraint (but don’t ask me tomorrow— my restraint will most certainly have gone out the window by then).

All of this leads me to my point:

Online Surveys & Market Research

And, if you HAVE bought it, have you already finished it?

Are my readers as silly as I am? And are you willing to admit it?

My three year old son Scooby is obsessed with vienna sausages.  Seriously.  He wants them for every meal every day.

He is also in the midst of being potty-trained.  This means that he is generally walking around in the buff while eating his vienna sausages.

You can imagine the snickers that this produces from his devoted mother.

That is all.