Twas Brillig

It’s Flashback Friday, friends!

“So, what do you think of Mom and Dad selling the house and buying a condo?” my brother J asked me when he met me at the airport.  My parents were standing right there, shifting nervously.  Clearly they hadn’t intended for him to bring it up, especially because I knew NOTHING about it.

I’d been studying in Italy all summer while J had been working in Kentucky and my parents had been on some luxury cruise in Tahiti (and yes!  Those destinations describe our three distinct personalities perfectly).  I’d been very lonely in Italy and I was at an age (I’d just turned 15) where my friends and my social life trumped just about everything else.

And this bomb that J had just dropped meant that the friends that I was so excited to come home to were soon going to be miles away.

And plus, it was my house!  My house!!!  It was a great big house with 8 bedrooms, two huge family rooms, a formal living room and a music room.  The backyard was gigantic and had a swimming pool and a full-sized tennis court, along with lots of trees and grass to play in.

And now we were moving to a condo.

To say that I was furious would be an understatement.

J hadn’t been bothered by the news when he’d heard it.  He was off to college in a different state anyway, and then he’d serve a mission.  All of my other siblings were gone by now.  I would be the only one left at home.  It would only affect me.

Which is, perhaps, why I was so angry.  I still had 3 years left at home, and yet my parents were talking about this as their way of retiring and downsizing, as though I wasn’t a part of this picture.  It didn’t seem at all fair that my parents would make this leap without even consulting me.  If I were a baby, I would of course have to go along for the ride.  But at 15, I felt old enough to have my opinion taken into account.  And they’d clearly been sneaky about it.  They’d purposefully NOT told me.

When we got home that night from the airport, Emily (who lived next door) and Matt (who lived across the street) were waiting for me.  We were my bestest of friends–my whole world!–and I’d missed them so desperately.  I told them that the house had sold.  They knew this, of course.  They’d watched it all happen.  We all expressed our sorrow over it.  But as we all talked that night, trying to fall right back into where we’d always been, it was clear that we’d all changed a lot over the summer.  I suppose I had especially changed.   I’d been in Italy all summer, working and studying and indulging in a new culture, a new world.  They had been at home, doing what they did every summer at the same old places with the same old people.  We were all civil and polite, but I found that they couldn’t relate to me and I couldn’t relate to them.  We’d already moved away from each other emotionally.  The physical move wouldn’t be nearly so painful in comparison.
(Matt came back into my life in a huge way a few years later, as many of you who have been reading my blog for a while already know.  But that’s another story for another time.)

When everyone left that night, I knelt by the side of my bed and sobbed.  This was not the homecoming I’d anticipated.  Everything was wrong.

The next day, my parents took me to see the new condo.  I thought it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.  They explained that they were going to remodel this, add a room here and there, change the carpet and the walls, etc.  I tried to grasp their vision, but really I just thought it was ugly.

And the neighborhood?  It was Snob Hill.  Oh, I couldn’t bear it.  I’d spent the last many years mocking Snob Hill and couldn’t imagine living there, among the cheerleaders and jocks who drove BMW’s while snorting their cocaine.  These were the people that made everyone’s life a living hell in high school, and now they were going to be my neighbors.

Flash forward 14 years and here I am, in this very house, babysitting it while my parents are gone.  I’m sitting in my father’s office–now my office– and realizing how very pretty it is.  My parents had real vision as they were recreating it.  They added walls and removed walls and all in all made it a very lovely and functional place.  I love that there’s no yard work, but that there’s a playground right off to the side of us and a community swimming pool and tennis courts just around the corner.  You can hardly call it a “condo”–it’s so much more spacious than I ever think of when people say “condo.”  It only shares one wall and yes, I do hear the neighbors from time to time, but only in one part of the home.  And, frankly, they’re kind of entertaining!

I still keep in touch with most of the friends I met through living here (hi Jewels, Kate, and Hannah!) and it turned out that while yes, most of the people were awful, there were a few amazing people that my soul was just waiting to discover, and my life was never the same once I did.

Living here now is a bit surreal.  It’s like Flashback Friday every day.  I’m surrounded by memories and photos and pieces of my childhood family.  And I’m enjoying it so much.  I’ve been scanning in piles of my dad’s slides and photos and telling my kids the story behind various paintings and other collectibles.  While I don’t want to minimize how painful it was for me to move here back then, I have to acknowledge that my parents moving here all those years ago was the right choice, and all these years later I’m the one who’s reaping the benefits of that choice.

It started as a sore throat a couple of days ago with a bit of a cold, and yesterday the fever hit. Then the diarrhea, of course, because life would be too easy without that. And then, the vomiting began. I was up all night throwing up.

Somewhere during the night, I had the strange and rare pleasure of blowing vomit out my nose.

Gentle Readers, I am sick.

I can barely talk which, frankly, is good news for my children because they’re driving me crazy but I can’t scream at them!

Also, I don’t have my scanner set up here yet, nor do I really have any idea where my pictures are, so rather than Flashback Friday, I’m going to go with a meme that Paige tagged me for. It’s kinda flash-backy, and requires much less effort and thought from me in my thoughtlessness today.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was not quite 19 years old. Oddly enough, I was living in the city that I’ve now just moved to. I was finishing up my freshman year of college, going to summer school and taking my first Spanish class. I had just been thrown out of the Foreign Language Housing and very soon I would be thrown out of BYU all together. Ahhhh, the sweet memories. Hahaha. Oh, and I was making out with everyone. Okay, not everyone. I had two criteria–they had to be male and they had to be hot. Still, there were PLENTY to choose from. Hahahaha.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
One year ago I was 6 months pregnant with Lil’ Dude. I was traipsing all over the place with my little kiddos and my big fat pregnantness.

Five Snacks You Enjoy:

• chocolate
• string cheese
• saltine crackers
• chocolate
• Dr. Pepper

Five Songs That You Know All The Lyrics To:

Um, since I know all the lyrics to pretty much every song I listen to, how ’bout I randomly pick the first five songs from my iTunes–I’ll put it on shuffle.

• Phantom Limb, by The Shins
• I Will, by the Beatles (okay, fine. This one didn’t come up on my iTunes–it’s right where Paige wrote it. Still, it’s one of my favs and I didn’t think I could just delete it… )
• Lonely in your Nightmare, by Duran Duran
• Change Your Mind, by The Killers
• Chocolate, by Snow Patrol

Okay, interesting sampling there… Not entirely indicative of my musical tastes, but still. I DO know every world to each of these!

Five Things You Would Do If You Were a Millionaire:

• Travel–show my kids the world!
• Donate a big chunk to my Church
• Buy a summer home and a winter home
• Buy cool stuff for my summer home and winter home
• liposuction, baby.

Five bad habits:

• I only talk about my good qualities, which leads my readers to erroneously believe that I’m cool
• My writing is full of typos, but I’m always correcting other people’s grammar and punctuation
• I eat too much chocolate
• I drink too much Dr. Pepper
• I scream at my kids

Five Things You Like To Do:

• eat chocolate
• read
• blog/read other people’s blogs
• Snuggle with Hubby
• Take the kids out to play

Five Things You Would Never Wear Again:

• Florescent t-shirts
• floral prints
• skin-tight anything
• a bikini (I’m okay with all my stretch marks, but I don’t have to honor the world with them)
• sleeveless, strapless, too short, too low, etc.

Five Favorite Toys:

• On-demand TV
• digital camera
• All of my kids
• My Blog
• Your Blog

Five people to tag: (apologies if you’ve already done it)

• Unquiet Heart
• Blonde Canary
• The Dead Letters
• Kara
• Omega Mum

Instructions: Remove the blog from the top, move all blogs up one, add yourself to the bottom.

A Beautiful Life
Absolutely Bananas
Smiling Mom
42
Twas Brillig

It’s Flashback Friday and Scooby’s birthday!!

When I was ten days past my due date, I’d had it. This was the longest pregancy ever.

For the first six months of the pregnancy, I puked every single day, multiple times a day. And on top of all the puking, I was spotting. Since I’d already had a handful of miscarriages by this point, I was freaking out. Both the severe dehydration and the bleeding sent me to the Emergency Room on various occasions. And you may have gathered by now that emergency rooms and I don’t exactly get along…

But the hardest part was being so sick while taking care of two very energetic toddlers. Fluffy and Bubba were 3 and almost 2 and were next to impossible. I was almost too sick to keep up with them, which meant that they were causing even more trouble than they would had I been well enough to be more diligent.

And on top of all of that, Hubby was not only working full time, but feverishly working on his Masters Degree. He was gone all day long and well into the night almost every single day.

I was sick, exhausted, hormonal, lonely, and extremely overwhelmed.

So making it to my due date and then going beyond it seemed so completely unfair.

We had decided not to find out the baby’s gender. We already had a boy and a girl, so we were prepared for either one. Still, Hubby and I were both convinced that it was a girl. Her name would be Sophia. I couldn’t wait to cuddle my little girl in my arms.

And so, on this day ten days past my due date, as I was on my way to my prenatal appointment, I decided that I would ask my midwife to break my water. This was a huge thing to me, since I was so completely devoted letting nature take its course…

But, SURPRISE! My water broke on its own on my way to my appointment! There I was, on the freeway in my minivan with Fluffy and Bubba, gushing amniotic fluid. Upon arriving at my midwife’s and looking like I’d been peeing myself, she checked me and announced that I was already dilated to a 7. Since my last labor had only lasted four hours, we expected that this baby would come any second. So I jumped back into my van with my kiddos and my midwife loaded her car with all of her supplies and followed me home, each of us gripping our cell phones, just in case it became necessary to deliver the baby on the side of the road!

Fortunately, we made it all the way to my house and even had time to get the birth tub set up, at which point I sat. And waited. And waited. The house slowly filled up with people–Hubby, my midwife, her two assistants, my mother-in-law, and then randomly two of my sisters-in-law and all of a sudden my FATHER-in-law (who stayed in the kitchen where he couldn’t, um, see stuff…) AND my two children: Fluffy who watched in awe, and Bubba who wanted to get in the birthing tub with me and took off all of his clothes and screamed and screamed and SCREAMED and NO ONE WOULD TAKE CARE OF HIM, though they scolded me when I tried, saying, “oh, don’t worry about him right now! We’re here to take care of him!” And yet… they didn’t. (He wasn’t even supposed to be there, by the way. Babysitter had bailed last minute.) And there I was, post-transition and well into the pushing stage with mass chaos around me. It was so completely nuts. My quiet, tranquil homebirth had turned into a circus. However, I was way too focused to even be bothered about the circus. I had a big job ahead of me, after all.

I pushed for two hours. It was agonizing. I’d been through natural childbirth a couple of times, and it’s NEVER easy, but this was different.

Finally the baby was born.

A boy.

It was Hubby’s job to announce the gender. I nearly died when he said “boy.” I had to look for myself, and then look again!

And, posterior. The last time I’d been checked, he was anterior. Somewhere in there he flipped and came out backwards. Hence the longer-than-expected labor and, well, the AGONY of the delivery!

But oh! how I loved him. Adored him. From the instant he was in my arms, he was the joy of my life–the piece of my soul that had been missing.

He didn’t have a name–he wouldn’t have a name for a couple more weeks! We couldn’t exactly name him Sophia, after all…

After much war with Hubby over names, we finally settled on one. The PERFECT one. (And no, it’s not “Scooby”–that’s a nickname that Fluffy came up with during the nameless-interum.)

And now he’s turning two! He’s rambunctious and hilarious and darling. He’s a little more crazy than his siblings, as evidenced in various trips for emergency x-rays and the like. Still, he keeps me laughing all day long. He’s a middle child, but he never gets lost in the mix. He’s so vibrant and colorful and delightful!

And so, on this very special day, I wish him a happy, HAPPY Birthday!!!!!!

It’s another installment of Flashback Friday, Friends!

(I’m SO gonna end up in Guantanamo for this post. See why I use a nom de plume?)

I was digging through some of my old stuff the other night and came across my passport from when I was a teen. I was 12 when I got it, it expired when I was 17.

This wasn’t just any passport. I’ve had a million passports (okay, probably not QUITE that many…) but this one…

THIS ONE was….

Illegal.

There’s a raised stamp right over my face causing me to look “bumpy”… I just felt like
I needed to clear that up, lest there be any confusion.

Okay, okay. Illegal is perhaps too strong of a word. Technically, it’s against the law to have two active American passports (unless you’re Jason Bourne, apparently) and this was my second passport–I already had one that I was using, and continued to use the whole time I had this second one. My acquiring a second passport was necessary because in order to get into some of the Arab nations surrounding the country of Israel, you aren’t allowed to have ANY HEBREW IN YOUR PASSPORT. Which pretty much SUCKS if, say, you flew into Tel Aviv first and they happened to stamp your passport, as is the norm when you land in any country! Then let’s say you were planning to travel to, say, Amman, Jordan.

Which I did. And I was.

And so in a little American Consulate in East Jerusalem, my shady passport was concocted. I’ve been an unconvicted felon ever since.

*snicker*

Even with the new shiny passport, getting into Jordan was no easy feat. Tensions were so high in the region (imagine that!) that even though Amman is only about an hour’s drive away from Jerusalem, the border was closed. So, naturally, being the adventurous family that we were, we snuck in.

Okay, okay! Again, I’m being a bit over dramatic! We didn’t “sneak” in, in that we weren’t doing anything wrong. The four of us (my older brother, my parents, and I) woke up early in the morning and took a taxi to the southern end of Israel and from there we walked across the border into Egypt. Once in Egypt, we boarded a rickety old bus that took us across the Suez Canal and on to the Red Sea. From there, we took a commuter’s ferry to Aqaba, Jordan where, since we were coming from Egypt and there was no Hebrew in my passport, no one was suspicious that perhaps we’d been in Israel just hours before. And we were let into the country without a scene.

What could have been an hour’s drive was a 24 hour ordeal.

Anyway, the stamps in the passport include Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Austria, Italy, The U.K. (multiple times!), and, of course, the USA.

Not bad, considering the passport was technically illegal.

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?

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!

Welcome to Flashback Friday, friends!

You asked for more Matt (you remember, my gay best friend who would come up with ridiculous things for us to do all the time and somehow I always went along with them?) so here’s more Matt.

So, it was my freshman year of college. Matt comes running into my apartment–by then he never knocked anymore.

“We are going to Cedar City,” he announces.

It was already getting dark outside and I wasn’t sure I was up to the three hour drive.

“What are you talking about?” I ask sleepily, hoping he’d get the hint and leave me alone.

“There is a Shakespeare competition going on and WE are going to go watch it.”

Yeah, a Shakespeare competition for HIGH SCHOOLERS. And not just any high schoolers, but kids from OUR old high school, where we still knew a lot of people. I felt a bit too grown up to go hang out with kids who were still in high school. But I also knew that when Matt had an idea, there was no stopping him.

I probably started packing a bag. “Where are we going to sleep?”

“In my car!” he joyfully proclaimed. (Meaning, his mom’s station wagon.)

“NO NO NO!! Matt, NO! Seriously??? Matthew, we need a better plan than that.” I only called him “Matthew” when I was annoyed…

“I don’t have any money, do you?” No. I didn’t. Fine. We’d sleep in his car. I wanted him to believe that he was asking just too much of me, but my non-stop giggling betrayed me. I was kinda looking forward to an adventure.

So we dashed out the door, with me leaving lame excuses for my roommates (my dorm was part of an exclusive in-depth foreign language study program and we weren’t exactly allowed to leave… I know. It was all sorts of screwed up… I can’t tell you how many times I was “visiting a sick friend” or there was a “family emergency” and so on).

On our way out of town, Matt pulls into the hospital. “Matthew…. what are you doing….?”

“Trust me,” he said with that ridiculous grin that made him so completely UNtrustable. So we got out and walked through the hospital. Suddenly Matt whispers, “Stand guard here in the hallway.” Okay… He dashes into a hospital room and comes back out a minute later, giddy in his joy and laughing too hard to stop and tell me what was going on. He grabs my hand and runs down towards his car, dragging me with him.

We get to his car and he starts pulling things out of his pants and shoes and shirt. Surgical gloves. Piles and piles and piles of surgical gloves. “Here, find a place for these! The glove compartment! Shove them into the glove compartment!!!” So I shoved the gloves into the glove compartment, squeezing them into every nook and cranny and was barely able to close the little door.

We had a very pleasant drive, talking and gossipping and swapping boy stories and laughing till we cried, which was our way. At one point, he looked at me and said, “your eyebrows need help.” Yeah, they did. “Let me work on them tonight, okay?” Now that was one area that I DID trust him in. He could make me beautiful. He always did.

We pulled into Cedar City, but got completely lost. Hard to believe, since there were about four streets all together in Cedar City at the time. But we were lost. And so Matt was pulling all sorts of stunts trying to figure out where we were, including a billion illegal u-turns and running red lights. Finally he pulled over, turned his lights off, and went to ask for directions. He came back a second later, still a bit lost, and headed to turn right, but changed his mind and turned left from the right turn lane on a red light. Through all of this, I was, of course, SHRIEKING!!! And then the sirens joined me. We were being pulled over.

“License and registration, please,” said the friendly cop. Matt goes for his license, and I go for the registration. In the glove compartment. I open the little door, forgetting what I had worked so hard to cram in there, and POOF. Surgical gloves explode out and fill the whole car. The cop just stares on in bewilderment.

“Uh… his dad’s a doctor,” I said, because for some reason it made the whole thing seem a little bit more logical. Because OF COURSE doctors keep surgical gloves stockpiled in their glove compartments. I watched Matt’s face turning purple–he was trying so hard not to laugh. So was I. We were both holding our breath and digging our fingernails into our arms and anything else we could think of.

“Do you know why I pulled you over tonight?” asks copper.

“No, sir,” Matt said with pure innocence.

“I’m pulling you over because you don’t have your lights on.”

And that was it. We both completely lost it. Matt collapsed against the steering wheel and I collapsed against him. Since we’d entered Cedar City, we had done ten thousand illegal things, but we were being pulled over for forgetting to turn the lights back on.

Copper let us go with a warning–forgetting to turn your lights back on wasn’t any big deal. WHY he didn’t impound us for drunk driving, I’ll never know. We weren’t drunk, though I think that spending too much time together should also qualify as intoxication. I mean, really. At this point, I don’t think there was much difference. The symptoms were all the same.

We never did find our “high school friends” that night. Matt pulled into the parking lot at McDonalds and we slept in the back of the station wagon there. SOOOO classy. But before we fell asleep, he said, “your eyebrows.”

“Oh yeah. Okay. Have at ‘em, boy.”

But it was dark and his only instrument of torture was a disposable shaver. It was only a second later that he said, “uh… don’t be mad….”

“WHAT?? WHAT DID YOU DO????”

“Um, I shaved your eyebrows off. Gone. They’re all gone.”

He then attempted to draw them back on. With black eye liner. It didn’t work, but it was the best I had. I looked horrible. And here’s the proof (this pic was taken a few days later, but the eyebrows are drawn with the same black eyeliner. BADLY drawn.)

Matt and I did eventually find our friends the next day. I don’t remember anyone commenting on my eyebrows. Maybe high schoolers were too nice, or perhaps too intimidated at that point, to mock me.

And, before you ask, I NEVER DID FIND OUT what the surgical gloves were for. But, if I know Matt, he didn’t waste them. He put them to a good (though very likely bizarre) use.

Oh, goodness. Today’s Flashback Friday is slightly different in nature. Inspired by Fluffy, though it really has nothing to do with her.

You see, this morning I told the kids that they could watch a movie. So they started going through the video selection, and Fluffy pulled out… NEWSIES.

And suddenly the memories came a-flooding. Because, see, I was 14 when Newsies came out. And like ANY 14-year-old worth her salt, I saw Newsies FIFTEEN times in the theater. (This is not an exaggeration. I really saw it fifteen times in the theater. And I was not a wealthy kid by any means. I just set my priorities. And Newsies was a priority.)

And no, gentle readers, it wasn’t for the story line.

I knew every moment, every look, every sigh, every smile. I knew him so well. I read everything I could find, I knew all sorts of random personal details about him (I STILL think of him on his birthday. HAHAHAHAHA.) Dear Christian Bale. Dear, dear Christian Bale.

I even signed my name with his last name. A lot. My journal is FULL of Brillig Bale. Sigh. Swoon.

Perhaps the funniest part of these memories is that Matt was always with me when I went to Newsies. Always. He, uh, wasn’t “out of the closet” yet, so I didn’t get it. I just thought he really liked to be with me. And so he would therefore sacrifice himself and go to Newsies with me.

(Years later, after the closet-exit, I looked at Matt and said, “Holy Crap. I totally get why you used to go to Newsies with me.” We both died laughing. How it took me so long to realize that whole GAY thing, I’ll never know. But that’s a whole nother story…)

And now I’m 28. And I can’t exactly say that I’m “over” Mr. Bale…

Fluffy started watching Newsies today, but she didn’t really like it much. Give her a few years and then she’ll like it. Oh yes, she will like it very very much. And then I will very likely sit down and watch it with her and we will both swoon incessantly.

Welcome, gentle readers, to our second installment of Flashback Friday!!!

Today’s flashback was inspired by my mother- and father-in-law last night (who we are living with, remember?). Hubby and I went on a walk together, leaving my in-laws home with our sleeping kids. When we got home, we found them both on the phone. They were talking long-distance to their best friends, Spud and Cheryl. From what I understand, the four of them have been bestest buds for years and years. There was much heartbreak when Spud and Cheryl retired and moved to the northwest, but good thing they’ve all got good long-distance phone coverage, right? I thought it was so cute, to watch these 60-year-olds wandering around, each on their own cordless phone, talking to and giggling with their best buddies.

It reminded me of my own best friend, and how years from now I can picture this exact scene with us.

And so today’s Flashback Friday is dedicated to Kate*. You know her better as Walking Kateastrophe.

(*You could also consider it this way: If I’m going down, she’s going down with me.)

Kate and I met in high school. I was a senior and she was a sophomore (which was a little weird, because the people I latched on to had always been older than me). Somehow, despite lots of catfighting around us, we became bestest buds.

The unfortunate part here is that all the really incriminating pictures of her (and, I suppose, of me too) are in her possession, not mine. But! I DO have the date dance pictures.

And an explanation of date dances in our little community is given at Kate’s site, which I am hereby stealing, because I’m too lazy to write the darn thing myself:

You’ll need some background . . . on the planet I grew up in, date dances were much more than just the dance. We had to ask and answer each other in creative ways and we had day activities with our group. So let’s just say that if you didn’t like your date? You were in for a bad, bad day. With all of his or her friends. And it could possibly go on for 15 hours or so, because most people also planned something for AFTER the dance. Oh, and it was INCREDIBLY rude to say no. The first person who asked you was the person you went with. Those were the rules.

And so, I present you with exhibit number one.

(Kate is on the back row with the “red” hair. I’m in the front, sitting daintily upon my date.) What you need to know here is that in preparation for this magnificent date, all three of us girls dyed our hair red–sharing the SAME CHEAP BOTTLE FROM THE GROCERY STORE. Kate’s hair went good and red, the other girl’s hair had a reddish hew, and my black hair remained, well, black. I know. Shocker. And yet, I was early in my hair dying days and I was actually a bit surprised by this. Also interesting to note is that while my date was BY FAR the hottest, he was also about a whole foot shorter than me. Which is, I suppose, why I’m sitting upon him. (And YES my eyebrows were huge, and YES our fashion was freaky, and YES the hair is weird, and YES I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of other unpleasant things to say…) (Oh, and NO I DON’T know what was up with Kate’s date’s pants. And I really, really, really don’t WANT to know…)

Let us now enter exhibit two:

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Kate is on the front row here (and no, I have NO idea what the crap she’s wearing…. you’ll have to take that up with her) and her date was a total and complete psycho. Seriously. He was completely nuts. And obsessed with Kate. And, well, CRAZY. You can tell by the weary expression on her face that this had been a very, very long day already. All she wanted was to go home.

And I am on the back row in the far right corner. DO YOU SEE MY DATE?? Does he remind you of someone? Someone named SATAN??? And, unfortunately, Satan-boy was thoroughly infatuated with me–something I never understood, but his infatuation almost defined my senior year of high school–and some bits of college too.

The moment we got home from that date, Kate and I called each other and talked on the phone for hours over them and their psychotic-ness, and how there really should have been a loop hole in the date dance rules: If a guy is psychotic, messed up, obsessed with you, or Satan, you should be able to refuse to date him, even if he’s the first person to ask you to the dance. Alas, there was no such rule.

But somehow we survived all the dating madness and moved on to the marriage stuff. Here she is as one of my bride’s maids 6 years ago (and 7 years after we first met). I’m obviously the one in the wedding dress and she’s the blondey (it’s not really a flattering angle for any of us, including Hubby who ALWAYS looks good. But my pic pickin’s are slim, okay?):

(Okay, ladies. We’ve had this discussion and some of you have already learned the hard way that drooling over my husband only leads to pain and misfortune and the shorting-out-of-your-computer. And we ALL know that NO ONE wants to blog with a shorting-out-computer.)

I was at her wedding too, of course, but I was massively and gigantically and so UN-gracefully pregnant with my third baby and so she let me be an “honorary” bride’s maid/matron thing. I pray that there are NO pictures of it…

And nowadays, we live very far away from each other. But we IM and call each other and keep tabs on each other pretty much constantly. And I FULLY expect to still be chatting and giggling with her when I’m sixty-four.

Special announcement, gentle readers!

As I’ve been going through all these boxes of old junk for the last few days (years? It so feels like years) I discovered boxes of old photos and piles and piles of old love letters. So.Stinking.Embarrassing. And because I wouldn’t want to waste such treasures, we here at ‘Twas Brillig (okay, there’s no “we” here. It’s just me) have decided to implement Flashback Friday (featuring stories with pictures) and Soap Opera Sunday featuring true and hilarious stories from all the boy drama of my high school and college years. And, oh goodness, there’s a LOT of material there. I chose Sunday, even though I know that actually most of my blogger friends do their blogging while at work and therefore aren’t around much on Sundays, but Sundays are slower days for me around here AND it will give you all something to snicker at (hopefully!) when you tune in on Monday mornings.

And so, let the Friday Flashback begin.

Once upon a time I was in college and my bestest friend was my dear Matt. Matt adored me. He thought I was so beautiful (he’s gay…) and he loved to dress me up and show me off. We had been friends almost our whole lives, minus a couple of awkward years in high school. But when college came, we couldn’t bear to be parted for more than a few hours at a time. Hahaha.

Matt also had some strange power over me. He would come up with these absolutely ridiculous plans and somehow I would always go along with them.

Which brings us to today’s Friday Flashback.

One night, in the middle of the night, Matt came to my dorm to get me. I was in my pajamas, and could I please change first? No. There was no time for that. Sigh. So I threw on some flip-flops and followed him out the door.

He had a very important mission for us, but he would explain it when we got there.

And, where was “there”? Our local grocery store. And the mission? To buy crackers and cheez whiz, sit down at the handy table right there in the grocery store, and invite strangers to come and join us for cheese and crackers and get their pictures taken with us.

Look at me. Don’t I look like a nice girl? NOT like the kind of girl that would be sitting in the grocery store in her pajamas, inviting strangers to come and eat cheez whiz with me? Do you see the pain etched on my face? The pain screaming out to you, begging you to find a way to make the crazy gay man let me go back to my dorm and go to bed?

But really. The craziest part about this whole thing is that people actually sat down to eat cheez whiz and get their pictures taken with us!!!!

Here’s to you, Matt, and all the crazy things you made me do. Matt-stories are bound to become a regular here on Flashback Fridays.
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Oh, and one more bit of news. I was apparently nominated for:

If you like what you see here, like, at all, then click on the logo to vote for me! Yeah, we all know I’m not gonna win the thing, but it sure would be fun not to come in last place!