lo que pasa aqui en el barrio

Well, helooooo

2011-10-01T14:08:00.000-06:00

the heir apparent

2010-05-23T21:29:00.004-06:00

On May 4th at 10:34 a.m. I had this baby.....Theo Gabriel Sanchez

I'm pretty much all the way in love with this baby. He weighed 7 pounds and 8 ounces and was 20 in. long. He was actually due yesterday, the 22nd but my water broke at 1am on the 4th and that was that....my first experience not being induced and I did surprisingly well not controlling the entire world for a few minutes. Look at that baby!!! please....another blond, white, blue eyed morsel for me to nibble. stop it...

he's one of those babies who really doesn't want to cry. He'll do it for a few seconds and then he pretty much looks for any excuse to stop. He, of course, at 19 days old, is clearly a genius to anyone observing. He actually smiles when you ask him to....he laughs when the girls are joking around and he has rolled over 3 times from his tummy to his back....yeah....Doogie Howser, step aside.

It goes without saying that two five year old girls, which both of mine are right now, and a small male baby who is so cute and living in our house goes something like this......."MOVE, it's my turn to stand beside him...."....stop, he doesn't like it when you do that! You have to do THIS!" "We have the cutest baby in the whole world, mom....everyone else's baby isn't so cute....isn't he the sweetest cutest baby of all the babies, mom?" "Hi, Theo, do you want to play with this...look!...it's my bear! Can he tell it's me mom? Can he see me? Why is he always sleeping?" "This is my baby brother, his name is Theo, he has a lot of hair doesn't he? He's so cute, isn't he....he smiles when things are funny!" "Mom, can Theo see our house? Does he like our pink walls? Does he know us? When I'm 8 will Theo still be a baby? Because when I'm 8 I want to hold him standing up instead of sitting down"......

sheesh....

Mostly I appreciate his lack of estrogen and all the accompanying tears, words, emotions and drama that go therewith...

I had quite forgotten the sweetness of baby's breath and fingers and the softness of their hair and cheeks and the explosiveness of their poop....It is such a pleasure for me to remember them with this little muchacho....I always knew I wanted a boy so that theoretically I could have a boy and whatever else that meant but the reality of him is just so totally delicious I wish I were less tired so I could look at him all the time. I'm noticing the lack of sleep unraveling my mind just a smidge but what's new....hopefully I can sleep one of these weeks and start my ascent to life and responsibilities again. So there you are....Everyone this is Theo....Theo, meet everyone....

registery

2010-03-09T16:28:00.002-07:00

So I have been convinced by my mom and sister that having a baby shower for your third kid is fine since it's going to be a boy and I've only had girls....I'm just going to be ok with that.

Today I went to Babies R Us to register for whatnot and thingamajiggers and it was so hard!

I'm not really one for asking for stuff from people be it help or sticks of butter so it was more difficult than I expected. I kept finding myself thinking..."i hope people don't think I actually expect them to buy this swing, I just have to ask for everything, right? is this a good bottle namebrand? I should have done more research....where am i going to put THAT? I definitely shouldn't get that!...what if no one comes to my shower and I look like a presumptuous dork for asking for anything?"....

imagine that. me overthinking something....

anyway after an hour and 45 minutes i get to the counter to return my ray gun and the girl says, "ok...this was a good start but you're going to want to come back at least one if not 2 more times to add to this because you've only registered for 38 items and we recommend 88 to 120 items...."

WHAT? all that internal drama for 38 items?

Everyone knows I don't need clothes. I'm not padding the list with things I don't need so I don't know what else to do....maybe I'll go back tomorrow and click 25 more packs of diapers or something....

i don't think I told you that Ruby fell on her face about a month ago on my parent's tile floor and her tooth got hit and 2 1/2 weeks later I look at her and her tooth is dark....really dark....

the dentist said the root wasn't dead or broken and it was a bruise.....

this sunday I looked at her again and her tooth is white! imagine that...I never expected a tooth to heal like that. I always thought once brown, always brown...what a pleasant surprise.

i have started a strange awakening....i will always be a DI first type of girl but, recently, I have started thinking, perhaps there isn't anything wrong with buying cute clothes from retail stores for my children to pair with great things from DI. When I saw the look on Dellah's face this morning when she put on her new Naartjie pants and they looked so cute and she felt so cute I was convinced. I have saved thousands of dollars on clothes. it's alright for the poor mites to feel shiny and new every so often.

unfortunately the type of person I am requires restraint in all things or excess is soon to follow...

I must be on guard. I must not get too comfortable with retail...

30 weeks pregnant.

must eat at least 1 drumstick ice cream cone per day.

have not worn maternity clothes yet because everything I had was basically maternity wear anyway.

need to pee once an hour.

need to cry once an hour.

need to yell once an hour.

need to stop.

you know what this means, right?

2010-02-05T14:34:00.002-07:00

So we go to the Jordan Child Development Center so Ruby can be evaluated again by these professional people with the school district and it's special services. These were their words after an hour and a half with Ruby........."Man....she's a hard one. This is a tricky one..."

ya think?

A kid who's been raised exclusively in Spanish who speaks exclusively in English who has all these charming social skills and knows a lot of stuff and figures out that Heavenly Father can give us hugs because he has bones and confirms that Satan cannot give us cigarettes because he's a ghost with no bones. This same kid today points to brown when asked to find gray; brown when asked to find black and gray when asked to find brown. She never has never ever known the name of the color yellow calling it gween or owange every time she's asked. Today, where's yellow? oh, there it is.....on the yellow dot. what? She doesn't know over from under or what her ankle is called but she can jump on one foot and skip, both of which are kindergarten age skills.

so you know what this means...
yeah, she has another appointment to meet with other folks to sort out her "red flags" as it were, but not till the end of march because that's how they roll....

Gabriel works so hard. He comes home late at night and goes in early in the morning every single day and never complains. He gets paychecks and doesn't spend any of them on himself. He really is that one Bryan Adams song about everything I do, I do it for you and so forth. So, 5 months ago when Mexico gets drawn to play the first match in the world cup against South Africa, IN South Africa and he applied for tickets online, I was fully supportive of his excitement that he might get to go.

today he found out.

he got the tickets.

ok.

I'm happy for him.

......I have a baby on May 22 and he flies to the farthest continent from here on June 5th spending thousands of dollars on airfare and etc, being gone for 10 days.....

you know what this means, right?......

I get whatever stroller I want......I mean WHATEVER stroller I want.....I mean money is no object, my manchild will be strolled in whateverthehell stroller I want....that's what that means.

Today we were having our after school snack of nachos during the time of day when the girls both have come unhinged from fatigue and punch drunkenness and there is usually uncontrolled laughing and yelling and disregard for parental utterance.
Friday is the only day of the week we can have quiet time because it's a short day at kindergarten so Dellah gets out at 1:55 instead of 3:35. Knowing that there is a possibility that I could rest makes me anxious to get the show on the road already but, as part of my new and improved zen parenting movement, I show great restraint giving calm warnings and speaking rationally while being met with utter deafness and escalating mayhem...Seven tortilla chips with cheese on them, people...not even the big triangle ones, but the little scoopy ones and they've both got 3 left after 20 minutes? i don't think so. I could feel the tea pot starting that boil where you can almost hear the whistle but not quite and I didn't yell. I didn't physically harm them. The crazy got to it's apex and i calmly took their plates and put them by the sink informing them that they must be out of their minds if they think I'm letting them sit there and waste any more time....yes, i said, 'you must be out of your MINDS!'

as per a prior post, you well know that Dellah then launches in to her "Mom, I'm going to STARVE! I'm going to starve and throw UP!" in her most defiant tone, a preview of 10 years from now in technicolor, to which I replied, "I am giving you a swat on the bottom (which i did). You NEVER speak to me like that....EVER." All with the utmost love and sternness.
I grabbed their hands and walked them both upstairs explaining that consequences cannot be avoided and I'm very sorry they chose to disobey but I have to be a good mom and this is what good moms do.

In 5 minutes they were both lying down in their respective quiet time spots giving me kisses and saying 'night, night' with nary a thought of nachos to be had.

you know what this means, right?

something.

knock, knock, who's there?

2010-01-28T17:00:00.003-07:00

So I woke up this morning with my same resolve to be a better parent and the girls seemed to be cooperating so I was glad. I've mentioned before that Ruby isn't quite sure of any of the abc's or shapes or colors, etc and any effort to try and have her focus on them ends in a prompt search for something/anything else for her to focus on....After breakfast, Ruby brings this big preschool preparedness book over and says she wants to 'wite innit'. This happens about once a week that Ruby wants to feel like she has assignments like Dellah and I get to patiently sit with her while she just scribbles all over the book. There's a page for each letter to practice writing it and those are just a joke normally but today I was feeling full of the essence of good will toward all so I said, "would you like to learn about 'R's since your name starts with R?

She said yes so we started tracing R's and then it was time to freehand it and I braced myself......and then she drew a vertical line.....and then a fat belly to the mid line.......and then a diagonal line from the belly to the bottom line......by golly it was an R!

I had such a big cow of overjoyment that she felt compelled to learn u's as well.....and then b's and y's.....at the conclusion of this exercise in larynx weakening cheers and sighs over her motivation to excel at something/anything, i asked Dellah (who was making it clear the entire time how good she already is at writing these letters, needing me to say, 'you're right, you are such a big, smart girl and now you can help teach Ruby!') to go get a piece of white paper so I could see if it were possible to put this all together.

the child wrote RUBY.

she just wrote it. The girl who can't find the shirt she just took off and can't switch from house to car or car to other place or even living room to bedroom without an extreme show of inability to calm down and stop screaming. The girl who called her own sister Wooby for over 3 years and can't figure out the intricate mystery that is 'putting on your socks', learned to write and wrote her name 10 minutes.

the lights are on and someone's home!! these are the moments i have to savor because tomorrow, chances are, she'll act like it never happened.

there's this part in Mansfield Park where Fanny and Edmund are in the carriage after a long separation and Edmund says, "I should think you and I are beyond words when words so clearly are not enough......and then he puts his hand down on the seat and she puts her hand down beside his and then he inches his hand over hers and later he falls asleep and leans on her shoulder as she looks down at him....."
that's all.
I'm in love with that movie.

i used the crock pot today. We're having chicken toastadas and beans and I'm very domesticated. I've even done 3 loads of laundry
.....now who's going to fold them? I miss Josefina and how she used to come and clean our house. I used to think she wasn't very thorough and now I wonder what I was thinking....

did I mention we sold our Chrysler Pacifica a couple of weeks ago? I know! I'm so excited.....you know what this means, don't you? This means that an acura mdx is going to come and live with us and we can love it and pat it and squeeze it and call it George. the auction is in Vegas next friday.....hopefully Gabriel can find something good and bring it hither so I can stop driving his car and picking him up at the traxx every afternoon. can you really get a baby and an mdx in the same year? I wanted both of these things for years and now they're coming like magic.....belated, delicious magic....I feel like the dread pirate roberts with nothing to do now that i've had my revenge....
maybe I'll fold laundry......
or take a nap......or a shower.....or a break...

my chemical romance

2010-01-27T20:45:00.004-07:00

I think about bi-annually I become aware that I cannot stop taking Wellbutrin and still be normal. This is, in itself, pretty depressing, not even considering the actual depression necessitating the medication.
Do you ever feel like you just have a broken part in your life? Mine seems to be my inability to be Claire Huckstable and my children's inability to stop bossing each other around and speaking to each other like poop and crying those tantrum fits I've now been enduring for 4 years and 10 months from Ruby.
Yesterday I had to lock myself in my room and tell them I didn't want to look at them right now. Tonight I had to have that 'come to Jesus' speech I feel like I have about bi-annually (directly correlating to my attempts at lowering my milligrams and flying solo) where I laid down the fact that I can no longer live with no peace in my house.

I have this sinking feeling that I have irreparably damaged my children. I have this sneaking suspicion that without the super nannycoming to my house in her british taxi I may have no hope of surviving. I wish I were even kind of kidding but I'm not. I wake up every day and I think 'today is the day I'm not going to lose my cool and I'm going to be the version of myself I most want to be and I adore my children and I'm going to make sure they feel warm and smooshy inside every time I look at them'. Then by like time to leave for school I have already been a dork about putting on shoes at .2 miles per hour or ruby has had a cow about taking off her shirt and not being able to find it.....in the spot where she just put it....and she screams for 25 minutes without stopping about 10 different things before she stops or Dellah has just used 5 year old sarcasm when I say to her calmly, 'if you're not done with your cereal in 3 minutes we're going to have to leave it unfinished' and she replies "OH SO YOU JUST WANT ME TO DIE? IF I DON'T EAT I'LL DIE, MOM! I CAN'T JUST HURRY, I'M CHEWING..."

yesterday at DI with my 4 and 5 year olds both screaming at the tippy top of their capacity like 2 year olds, i said to myself outloud....'i am in hell...i actually am in hell and this is actually my life'.
what am I doing wrong?
I'm like crippled by feeling that my kids are going to hate me or that they already do or they are scared of me or I'm going to hell or something.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

There actually are lots of things to be happy about, I just have this creepy 'you're the absolute worst parent on the planet or your kids wouldn't be so horrid' feeling....
I just gotta get some perspective. sorry for the downer. i love you dear void.

victorious

2010-01-25T21:26:00.002-07:00

Water flowing on the rocks, people. Erosion. That's what I am....water.....or maybe acid. i wore him down. My dear husband has decided that my name is, indeed, quite a good name contrary to former disdain for the same.

Theo Gabriel Sanchez

yes.
i am in one of those false senses of reality where you actually DO get what you want from life if you're a big enough stubborn jerk about it....

it's just the right name. Theo. It works. I'm content. If you hate it keep your mouth on the downclosed cause i don't need no hateration during my gestation.

hooray for me and my small little mister who kicks my bladder and makes me incontinent.

current food cravings: orange dream machine from Jamba juice and life cereal.

current happiness at finding Kate and Leopold, AND Mansfield park on DVD at DI today....immeasurable.

it's a man child

2010-01-04T22:06:00.003-07:00

that's right people...the sanchezes are making a boy...as we speak. What we will name said boy is a hurdle. girl names are just better than boy names but I'll work it out. It doesn't help that Gabriel hates the name I have arrived at after having my 10 year name of choice used twice in the last 6 months...he seems to think that he has a right to name his child or something....
i object.
if you can't push the baby out, you can't have final say in what the baby is called. I don't negotiate. You know how many times a mom says the name of her kid on average per day? It has to be upwards of 500 times. I went to Ross today and must have called Dellah 75 times. then in DI i think i easily said Ruby's name 168 times....when they're both together, let's say in Target I spend the ENTIRE TIME saying some form of, 'Dellah y Ruby! vengan por favor....ahorita....Dellah y Ruby...me estan escuchando?"

yeah, when you get home at 7pm 5 days a week, and you think you're gonna decide the name of MY kid that I get to call 437 times while you're gone, you've GOT to be kidding me.
If only we could agree.
If only Gabriel didn't like the name....nevermind....perhaps some of you like the names he likes too but we gotta work this out, people.

three words: Sherlock Holmes
two words: Robert Downey Jr.
one word: yessssssss

other word: Avatar
something else: pretty amazing how much it makes you want to have a tail and no nose to speak of after 3 hours of 3-d glasses

current food cravings...chili cheese fritos
current need to go to the bathroom....urgent

WHERE AM I??????

2009-11-27T01:43:00.002-07:00

PREGNANT!!!!!

anyone who knows me knows how happy this makes me after 2 years of trying and those same people also know how being pregnant makes me sick. really, really sick. I'm trying my best to answer the phone and be normal but I just can't all the time. I'm craving really weird things like Jalapeno poppers from Arby's and vegetable coconut kurma where I used to want cinnamon toast and cold cereal with the girls........perhaps this means we get a small mister sanchez....that would be nice if for no other reason than the fact that I have no fewer than 6 giant rubbermaid bins full of boy clothes.....but girls are welcomed too since I have 10 bins of little girl clothes.....also having children is not about clothes by any means but this is how I gage my obsession....apparrelly speaking.
So I'm about 15 1/2 weeks or 16 (I can't keep numbers in my brain) and I'm due middle-ish of May.
It feels so weird that this is actually for real and I look at my giant sweet girls who know how to brush their teeth and pour cereal and tie shoes and I think...."what in the crap have I DONE??" Gabriel says we're too old for infants....
speak for yourself old man....
pregnant in your thirties does feel a little different however than it did in the 20's but I'll live.

so that's that.

hiatus explained.

it's 2am on black friday and I can't sleep so I'm waiting till 3:30 so I can go to Wal Mart and walk around for an hour and a half before I can buy sheets and pajamas and the battleship/connect 4 gift pack at 5am.
I will then be coming back home and sleeping until some as yet undetermined hour of the pm...
kisses...
xoxo

hm.

2009-10-09T16:43:00.002-06:00

Every single time I buy nice things for people and think I'm very thoughtful for remembering their special days or whatever, I always negate the niceness of it by never sending the thing in any kind of timely fashion. It's kind of a joke how I can send a birthday gift in october to someone who had a birthday in July...

same with blogging.

what's the point when everything you say is belated or serrated or retarded or bloated a month after it happened....

nonetheless...

I persist.

I blog retrospectively to spite myself.

There are a few things that happen in your life that make you feel like you're really alive. Like your skin fits you and your mind can't think of anything more to be happy.

I saw the Killers.

live.

that's all I'm going to say about that because nobody really cares but, MAN!

THE BEST concert I've ever seen IN MY LIFE!

there might have been a small puddle on the cement below me....I'm just saying.

thank you my friend Jenny for letting us come with you guys!

mmmm.......glee. I'm all the way in love with Glee.

Also Rachel Zoe and Root Beer.

and also Zots and Pop Rocks and those Rock Candy lolly pops and Big Red gum.

september, september....

2009-09-14T22:55:00.002-06:00

Seriously, I have no idea how this keeps happening....how do these months keep flying away like this? it's insane.

My little Dellah went to kindergarden and I was a disaster. It's 2 hours and 45 minutes a day and I was like I was putting her on a plane bound for Mongolia......She reads. She's so cute. I love that girl.

Ruby started preschool and keeps asking the poor teacher for homework so she can be like Dellah...I keep trying to tell her that she needs to chill out in demanding things from new teachers and that I will be happy to give her some enrichment activities in the house when she returns....

she remains unmoved.

I got this eye shadow that's royal blue and another that's shimmery chartreuse....they kind of changed my life...I find I look far more awesome when wearing blue and green eye shadow.

Help me because my children have seen the Hannah Montana movie against all of my better judgement and now are obsessed with the theme song and have to hear it 47 times in a row every day. They've never seen the tv show and never seen high school musical and never seen anything with real people in it who don't later turn to cartoons (ie Enchanted) so I thought I was safe......but I'm not.....it's that SONG! ........It's getting to me, people....I find it harder and harder to distract them with Metro Station and miscellaneous Latin artists.....

eek.

it's black, it's white

2009-08-06T13:33:00.002-06:00

I went to the NPS store yesterday in need of everything and nothing in particular...they had tons and tons.

I have this little entry room as you come in from the garage and before you go up some stairs to the main front door entrance of my house. This little space has been a thorn in my heel since moving to my house and not knowing what to do with it or how to make it look good and be useful and whatnot. It's had so many incarnations until yesterday when, unbeknownst to my little vestibule, it was about to be forever altered by coolness.

turns out the NPS store has wall paper.

I've been looking for a wall paper solution for one of the walls down there for a long time and was working my way up to paying $75 a roll for some good paper....turns out the wallpaper in NPS is a buck......you heard me...ONE DOLLAR! except when you get this huge roll of adhesive wall paper in black and white awesomeness for $1.99 to cure all your blahness and need of something newness.

It's temporary wallpaper that just sticks like a sticker to your wall until you're done and leaves no glue behind.

It was the only one like it and the only adhesive wallpaper in the whole place.

I would like to express in words how huge the difference was but I cannot. I would like to express in words how grateful I am for the shopping spirit leading me to greatness once again. I will have to take a picture and show you my little wall with the big giant white and black patterned radness.

note: when wallpapering any kind of thing please have a partner that is over the age of 5 and knows not to take the adhesive backing off of entire large sections at a time while you're up on a ladder so the result is a sticky stuck together mess leaving you completely without extra in case you mess up which you will so you send your assistant to a shoe closet for a dum dum lolipop where she bumps a table moved out of the way for the wallpapering and breaks one of your prized turquoise sun moon and stars glasswares.......please

...and please bless that we can play with our guns...

2009-07-28T13:30:00.002-06:00

this was what Ruby prayed for last night in family prayer....please bless dat we can play with owah guns tomowwow...

water guns.

they're new.

it's really hot.

buy some money

2009-07-14T13:02:00.004-06:00

today i was awakened by an all dressed and ready for the day Ruby who said, "oh, man....why does papi hava goda wowk evwy day tho he can buy thom money?...." she was disappointed that it was only me in my bed and not Gabriel....

a little later we were in the throws of a giant tantrum 30 minutes after a time out for throwing a sharp edged book in a small room. I was shop vac-ing the garage and she was easily screaming louder than the echoing vacuum noise.....(so that explains that to anyone living in a 2 mile radius). We went back upstairs and Ruby informed me that she needed me to take her to gwamma's house because she needed a 'bwake.....you know, like YOU always take a bwake?'
a. i don't ALWAYS take a bwake or i would be way thinner and well adjusted.
b. who takes a break at 10am....it's 10:20 in the morning!!!
c.. what on earth do people who eat cheetos and drink juice out of princess cups while they wear tulle and satin and watch animated things need with a bwake? a bwake from what? from the lap of luxury?
she informed me that i should take her to my parents' and then dellah and i should go somewhere and then come back and pick her up....
'ruby, is this because grandma and grandpa give you whatever you want while you're at their house?' i asked her.
'yes'.

nice.
she needs a break from the lap of luxury for a first class ticket to neverland where the word 'no' doesn't exist..........
DON'T WE ALL?

so here we are at sharon and lewi's while my children sit downstairs in their underwear under soft blankets watching beauty and the beast and eating copious amounts of skittles and edible necklaces....
maybe if I could buy some money i would purchase someone to listen to their drama at my house and then I would just come here to grandma's where every body's thrilled to be alive as long as there's skittles and yeses.....

smile like you mean it

2009-07-08T10:54:00.002-06:00

I was watching an interview with the Killers one time and they were saying, 'you know, we're just really blessed because we're really good at writing songs.' They're right. I've tried to find any song I didn't wish I myself had written and it's pretty difficult....those Killers....they're so inspirational.....and that Katy Perry girl?.....stop it....so good.

Anyhoo, my hiatus this month has been due to my extensive research and field analysis of parenting. One time a boy wanted to kiss me and I spent like an hour acting like an idiot over analyzing the whole thing and making a big deal out of it and totally made him want to run away from me and my weirdness. i cringe in retrospective horror at myself. Then I have this thing where I sit at home and take pictures of myself in outfits before I leave the house so I see how I'm going to be perceived visually when I get where I'm going and I google things and research things before I do them ad nauseum.....I play bunco....i know........but I do...I play bunco and I LOVE IT but the first time I went I was a wreck, like rolling those dice was seriously going to be so hard that I had to get that bloated, anxious feeling in my stomach that makes you have to go to the bathroom and not be able to eat or breathe properly (like during and after most dates I ever went on). now it's going to be my turn to host bunco in august at my house and I'm already losing sleep over the prizes and food and redecoration of my house..... the point is, and I wish I could figure out how to do the biggest typeface in the universe here..........

WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME ALREADY??? I'M SENDING MYSELF TO HELL ON EARTH WORRYING SO MUCH ABOUT EVERY SINGLE LITTLE TINY MINUTE RIDICULOUS TRITE INSIGNIFICANT DETAIL OF EVERYTHING AND I'M SICK OF MYSELF!!!!!! DID YOU HEAR ME????? S I C K O F E R I N !!! YOU'RE THIRTY T W O YEARS OLD YOU BIG FREAK! JUST BE NORMAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIFE ISN'T PERFECT AND NEITHER ARE YOU AND NEITHER ARE YOUR CHILDREN OR YOUR HOUSE OR YOUR REACTIONS OR YOUR ACTIONS!!!!! NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU DO OR HOW YOU DO IT....!!! AAARRRRGGHGHGHGGH!

every now and again I get these little glimpses into the world of unplanned, uncontrolled within an inch of it's life life and I find it quite diverting......then I go home and over analyze so i feel more comfortable.....

the point is that my poor children are so great and they deserve someone to be with 24/7 who has this crap figured out so they can get out from under all the sheesh and not be basketcases in cute outfits....
I've been reading this book called positive discipline for preschoolers and realizing that by the time someone is five they have got their emotional life and ideas and pre-conceived notions firmly in place......hm....well, better late then never.....I've learned many things about them and me and I have also been reading things written by people long, long ago also known as scriptures where one of my favorite little lines is 'when ye are weary He waketh morning by morning'....and also I remember in women's conference one of the speakers saying that a quiet voice came to her mom while praying abouy being a mom which said, "this is a process.....and the Lord values the process." I never think of anything as a process. I'm either it's perfect already or it's not but the evolution of myself as a parent is valued by the Lord? foreign territory. I have to believe that there will be some mercy extended to them and me strictly based on the fact that the Lord looketh on the heart, you know? I mean well and sometimes I even do well but I also gotta get my overreactions and need to be in control and uberstress out of the way....

we have a rule that once we close the bedroom door at nap or bedtime there is no more exchange between us and them....Ruby always.....and I mean every single time I shut the door even if she was perfectly content before i shut it....keeps talking and saying, 'night night'.....'night night'.....'night niiiiiiiiight, mamiiiiii!!!!!' until she works herself into a hissy fit and I have to barge back in and say, 'you know the rules!!!' and other stuff.....anyway, yesterday, i left her in there for quiet time and she started her 'bye, bye, mami' 'i love you mami'.....night night mami'....maaaammiiiiii!... ....and I went to my zen place, people....i just stood by the window and looked out of it and you know what......
she stopped.
she knew it was wrong and she stopped. no freakouts necessary. BECAUSE i have been less reactive and more patient...no power struggle necessary....

today dellah was sitting at breakfast and said, 'look we have some little ant families there.....'
I look over by the back door which is in my kitchen and saw a sizeable pile of tortilla chip pieces COVERED in little black ants with little black ant search parties further out looking for more tortilla chips......
i breathed.
then i breathed again
then one more time for luck and I said, 'dellah, that was so nice of you to want to feed those little ants, what about if next time you want to feed them you put their food on the back porch since houses are for people and not ants' kiss kiss 'go eat your yogurt....' but i still got that itchy i've seen too many ants feeling...

I'm getting there. I want happy children who love life and themselves and me (and Gabriel but me more) so recognition is 9/10ths of the law. I'm working on it.

in other news, we're having a yard sale on saturday morning at 8 along with the rest of our neighborhood so I gotta lotta work 2 do because once you start down the yard sale path and you have as much stuff as me, you start to not like any of your stuff and want to sell it all....even the stuff you thought you liked before the whole yard sale thing......because you remember that stuff is just stuff and it doesn't matter so you want to sell it all so you can have money to go and buy............better stuff...

stop the clock wouldja?

2009-06-09T10:24:00.010-06:00

Good grief, I can't believe I'm so behind AGAIN with this chronicle.....let's see.....where to begin....ugly orange shirt lady in target trying to parent my child whilst I become irate?.....no...too bitter......ummm construction workers directly behind my house for the last nine months shaking my house and making noise at all hours?.....again....too bitter.....ummm..Dellah turned 5?.....BINGO....I'll elaborate...this girl was the first fruit of my womb and has been an actual joy to have around. While she doesn't have a real 'childlike' air about her, there is a certain appeal to 3 1/2 feet tall adults, right, or TLC would be bankrupt...

I went to this good toy store here in Sandy and got nice toys for her that I knew she would like and while we were there she became attached to this pink stuffed cat.....I told her we needed to leave it there and we could see it again another day......she said that was fine but she was going to get it for her birthday and this is how she was going to hold it while she petted it like this and this is what she was going to call it and this is how much she would love it.......when she got it for her birthday......My budget had been reached but I caved and went with her on her birthday to rescue the pink kitty from the red balloon toy store. She was called muffet and then muffin and then olivia and then custard and then ginger....i think it's still ginger. so we went to noodles and company for the usual mac and cheese and then came home so they could go swimming. Sadly I don't have a swim suit at present so I had to forgo the blissful event and watch from a chair.it was 50 degrees outside and the heater in the pool was broken. It was cloudy and windy and I don't know why they had so much fun but they did.......we then came back in the house for wardrobe change number 3 for the day and opened presents.....this little fountain has real water and a swan that swims around and a unicorn and flowers and a king and queen....I got her a couple of fairies with wings and wands that i thought could live there too and a storybook set that playmobil has of snow white.....with glass coffin and poison apples and magic mirror....great, mom but what did grandma give me because it's always better than what you give me......grandma gave her a wedding dress with a veiland a mermaid costume with fluffy tulle tail at the bottom.......beats european plastic toys any day...ruby got to be the bride while dellah frolicked like a fish....she got the special summer plasma car from target that ruby got for her birthday to make sure that absolutely no sharing would be necessary on any level since we know how impossible it is to share with your sister....six or seven months ago dellah told me of the elaborate scene she wanted on top of her birthday cake when it was time for her birthday.....being in love with all Miyazaki movies with their androgynous boys that look more like girls than the girls do, she 'needed' to have herself and Haku from spirited away on the cake, both smiling (which if you've seen it you know is impossible because haku doesn't smile.....ever....) and holding hands......sure, dellah, ok, we'll work that out (knowing full well that when the time came she would change to some flowers and butterflies and princesses or whatever).....2 days before the day I asked her what she wanted and, sure enough, she had not deviated in the least from her original conception.....great.

so i went to the world wide web and googled pictures of chihiro and haku (if you think people are obsessed with lord of the rings and elves and whatever you should look at these folks....completely obsessed with animae and all things androgynous boy children....)

I found a pretty good one after a while and then had to start looking for pictures of dellah which i printed out and went to work.....i found one where dellah's head was the same size as chihiro's and started to cut and trace and paste because photoshop is for people smarter than me.....the finished product after hard plastic lamination looked like this...
never underestimate the power of seeing your own face on a fictional character.....dellah was mesmerized and ruby was jealous that dellah was with haku and she wasn't.....good grief.

Anyway, my baby turned 5 and she knows all kinds of things and says all kinds of things and is tall and big and i can't wrap my brain around the concept that she's on that fast slope toward bigness when she won't want me to really be around.....i always ask her those desperate pathetic parent questions 'dellah will you always love me?' 'even when you're big, dellah, will you always love me so so so so so much?' 'yes, mami,' she says, 'i'll even love you when I'm 10.' i'll take it.

at least 1000 words

2009-05-14T14:00:00.013-06:00

a long time ago we went to mexico city. apparently i'm THAT behind on my pictures. in mexico the people are very small and to compensate, they have very large things. it was all i could do to stand next to this huge thing.

but then there were these revelatory things like the angel of independence that make you feel like crying

aaaannnnddd another thing that is way too big.

my very favorite part was Frida's house. Her life and her point of view were so modern and inspiring, it was hard to even think she was born 100 years ago! that above us just simply says Frida and Diego lived in this house (she wrote it). kind of an understatement.

that's the main church in the main square of the city....that's me and Gabriel because we are cute.

then there is your friendly neighborhood shrine in a parking garage. we should really try and implement this idea here in America.

you have no idea until you see this flag in person how actually grotesquely gigantic it is....seriously I was transfixed and horrified....so so big. this was like the statue of libery of flags.

more recently like two weeks ago my mom and I went to women's conference where our cups were full and I had a million good ideas of how to be an amazing parent.......and then I came home. We went with my mom's brother's wife Aunt Theresa and my cousin Holly who has six children and lots of patience.

On saturday my mom and I and the girls did the susan g koman race for the cure. we got up at 6:00 and walked 5k downtown. this is my mom the survivor.

it's impossible to be in that environment without crying the whole day so that's what I did....i cried the whole day.

this is my little ruby 10% of the time.

this is her the other 90% of her life. funny how the ten percent somehow makes the 90% tolerable for me (with medication)

this is my little dellah faye. she is pretty.

Ruby claire turned 4 so we took her bowling.

I made her this cake because I like ruby and I like cake.

we had easter at our house. you may be thinking, man, erin looks chubby, maybe she's pregnant? nope. just chubby.

Dellah's little friend had a fairy birthday party a few weeks ago....you know me...i love a theme...

so gabriel had his 35th birthday two weeks ago and I love him dearly but there weren't any good pictures of his cake ceremony. That's about it....I decided there are so many Mexico pictures I'll do a whole post on Mexico because there are some you just have to see.

In other news one of my siblings wrote me a hate text so that's always fun.

My little sister's baby is due on my birthday! hooray scorpios.

snoasis opens in a matter of days and my saliva can hardly stay in my mouth.

sorry for the absence I've just been hanging out and reading some books with my shoulder firmly against the wheel, you know. cause that's how i roll, all stalwart and together and flawless-like.....

progress report 4/9/09

2009-04-09T14:19:00.007-06:00

i just wrote a very clever post and now it is erased. I'm sad.

what glue?

2009-04-02T15:16:00.003-06:00

I have just come unglued at my children. both of them. Simultaneously. Now I have that guilt where I want to chop my face off and pour lemons all over it.
They're just soo.......
so......
ahhhhhhhrrrrggghghhh.

Just humor me.

Dellah now says things to Ruby like, "I wish you were never born" and "if you don't give me that toy I'm leaving you and never coming back".

she's 4.

NOBODY told me preschool and high school produced the same attitude problems.
So then there's Ruby who Heavenly Father actually spoke to before coming to our house and gave her some uncanny ability to care more about others than she does about herself (probly to safeguard her against all the animiocity people feel towards her for crying and whining 90% of her existence). Her mind thinks like this....'dellah is sad...there is something I can do to help her....by jove, I'm going to do whatever it takes to make her happy!' 'dellah wants the Belle paper doll because she just tore the arm off of the Cinderella paper doll that she was pouting about having to play with in the first place and she already has a Belle paper doll but with plastic clothes instead of magnetic ones so I guess she really wants mine...I'll take the Cinderella with one arm like Dellah is telling me to and be happy with that because I am an angel and I worship a false god named Dellah.
'
heartbreaking really.

So, of course, the equality activist that I am does not allow me to watch this injustice 2 feet from me and not make a comment something like, "who in the world do you think you are? if you went to school and acted like this no one would want to be your friend. Ruby is a better friend to you than you are to her and you never ever ever ever ever think of anyone but yourSELF! when Jesus sees things like this He feels so sad because he always thought of others...." that's right, I threw the Jesus card out there. 'what happened to the Dellah that used to be so fun to be around? you're just grumpy and pouty and mean! why are you mean?!"

I just can't understand that much selfishness. It's about everything. snacks, toys, movie choices, pajama choices and Ruby always lets Dellah win. I feel it is my duty to make Dellah understand that nobody else but Ruby will ever be that cowtow-ing to her, especially not me.
Dellah has mad talents and qualities that I admire but this stinky trait almost overpowers them all.
Then of course after I played Ruby's advocate it was time for quiet time so I asked them to help clean up the paper dolls and put them in their respective places. Dellah helped because Dellah always is helpful and Ruby sat and ignored me and sang and played and laughed at me when I told her more firmly (almost yelling but not yet...) to stop wallowing on the carpet and come help clean her mess....
she kept laughing and at that point I did what any prideful, self-important, unhumble, lame parent would do....
"OH NO YOU DI'IN JUST LAUGH IN MY FACE WHILE I'M TRYING TO TALK TO YOU, STAND UP AND GET OVER HER RIIIIGGGHHHTT NOWWWWWW! RUUUUBBYYYY....RIIIIGHHHT NOWWWWW!

i suck. I should know that at 2:30 every day we need to disburse to our own rooms before the carriage is a pumpkin and we all fall apart.
I should get that they are small and they want to see what all they can get away with and let them live and have consequences quietly given to them with a calm, unfeeling voice filled with remorse for their bad choices and what must now come to pass....I should be Claire Huckstable but i am just erin.
I get it.
it's just so hard to doooooooooo!

moving on.
I got $130 of groceries at Albertson's today for $57. I saved something like $70 with coupons and in store promotions. I even got a five dollar shopping voucher for buying 5 boxes of our favorite cereal....
in sane.
there is a high associated with buying cheep food very much akin to the high achieved by finding Oilily or Catimini or Petit Batteau at DI for $1....scarily similar and one might even say, more productive on the whole than buying clothing for children that i so obviously am yet to conceive and probably shouldn't even think about because of the caliber of mom-ness I am currently producing...everyone has to eat, right?
All of this coupon saving has almost inspired me to want to cook things.
at least I have a list of things I would ideally like to cook this next week if all goes well.....which it sometimes doesn't....
now it's on to Target for more funtimesavings and inevitable things for myself that always hop into Target carts unannounced but not uninvited.

"Terrible mother saves big money at the grocery!"

I know that's not gonna fly with saint Peter. i got to pray just to make it to day...please Hammer don't hurt um...

catrachos

2009-04-01T19:32:00.002-06:00

Hondurans are called 'Catrachos' and Costa Ricans are called 'ticos', Guatemalans are called 'Chapines' .....i don't even know why. what are Americans called?....jerky? fat? crass? smelly? we should think of another little charming word that the world can refer to us by.....cantcatchus?, toocuties? or just go the route of the central Americans and have a nonsense word...rarakis?
I ponder these things as I sit in front of my large television beside my husband who is extremely enamored by soccer as per his Mexican-ness. Mexico is playing Honduras. I love me some Honduras so it's a bit of a toss up here. Mother land of my husband or mission land of my corazon....
it's all fun and games until the game actually starts and then it's like, 'there he went....que te vaya bien...you could try to talk to him about something or ask for his help (if you were his child) and he would appear to be in the room with you but he is actually playing soccer on a far away grassy field called 'winding down after work'
Upon sensing that I must have been complaining about his inattention to mountain standard time to the great void, Gabriel just leaned over and gave me a smooch and said, "this shows you how much i love you, Mexico is playing and I am looking at you"
that's over now. Honduras just scored and there were several technical mistakes that now have to be illuminated.....and he thinks their uniforms are not cool because they have an H on them because they are from Honduras....even though H's as a rule are silent and not pronounced at all in Spanish....

moving on.
I have recently begun to think that I should be saving hundreds of dollars a month to spend on myself by becoming undeniably and heartbreakingly frugal and coupon-ish and responsible with the money I get bi-weekly....i have found a new obsession.....clipping along the little dotted lines of the little coupons with some really sharp scissors.....sccccchhhhhp, sccccccchhhhpp......so beautiful....and then there are the little newsprint ones where your scissors slide when they're in that perfect open-ness position and you just feel so efficient....so productive....so frugal!!!
I'm in my pajamas from yesterday at 8pm today and I never left the house and I didn't clean anything although I did make some dinner (in the rice cooker)....
i did clip coupons though, people. I made serious plans to be very financially responsible in the coming days....Barbies are 50% off at KMart and Crayola is buy one get one free at ToysRUs.....you know, just the staples....bare essentials for these hard times....
Nordstrom Rack opens tomorrow 5 minutes from my front door.
there are bright spots in the haze...

I seemed to have remembered that 'Farewell My Concubine' was a pretty, while tragic, film from my days with the International cinema at BYU that was worth the while.....yeah....I'm lucky there weren't any straight razors or revolvers around when that got over. and no it's not naughty you naughty people...that's the name of a famous Peking opera like 'Carmen' or something for us.

The movie that was pretty stunning visually is new to Blockbuster this week called, Azur and Asmar the Prince's Quest...it's animated and rated PG (although there are some animated boobies breastfeeding some animated babies in the beginning but who hasn't seen that in reality?) that was a seriously beautiful little movie.

ummm...it's 2 to 0 and Honduras is ahead so we've changed the channel and I should probably interface with my spouse.

post to cover up the last post i wrote which was probably very unpopular with people who think my life is better than fine so i should just shut up

2009-03-26T00:28:00.006-06:00

When my girls want to taste some of my beverage they ask me if they can have a 'zip'.
'Mami, can i have a zip of your drink?'

My drive to pick up Dellah from school today was very different.

I usually walk around in a sort of uninspired haze like I do things and I'm happy and I feel joy but I'm not thinking anything new, you know? Not feeling myself contributing to a collective intelligence pool in the sky.

Well today I was driving alone (perhaps this is the key to original thought?) because Gabriel was home with Ruby and I got this actual flood of information about a story that I started writing in school 10 years ago. What she was motivated by and how he got there and who were her relatives and why did they matter and what were their relationships like and why and how to explain this or that thing and how the one book should actually be two and this is what they should say.

I started to cry because the feeling of an actual surge of thoughts and ideas was so different and exhilarating compared to my normal life.
I started writing these things down on the back of a wal mart receipt as fast as I could in the pick-up line at preschool and my mind was flying. So many things making sense about this one story that's been dormant for so long. Maybe that little story needs to come out and be a real thing.
i thank the Lord for some small manna to sustain my feelings of having once been a person who was pretty clever. There was as much adrenaline right then as there is after 4 miles on an elliptical machine.

I bet if I were super duper productive I would be very, very thin.

march 25th 10:49am.
original thought = $0

how good my 7-11 hot chocolate and donut tasted after said thought = priceless.

one post to make everyone uncomfortable and wish I hadn't written it

2009-03-26T00:10:00.003-06:00

Do you know what it means every time I start my period....AGAIN!
it means another month of realizing that I'm not pregnant and my baby is going to be 4 in 4 weeks and I feel like the butt of a seriously un-funny joke.
two kids in 5 minutes and then I actually want a baby really, super bad and oops....sorry.....all out.
no babies for you.
I adore my children. I think they are the cutest, funniest, cleverest folks. I guess there's only supposed to be two of them.
there is a weird feeling like I'm not worthy or some crap like I haven't done a good enough job with my two so I don't get three?
teenagers and hyperlame people get babies the way I used to get babies....without even trying. Super nice people also get babies and get to plan their children and say, "I think I want my children 2 years and 3 months apart.....well, looky there....I'm pregnant!"
I love pregnant people. I love children. I love procreation.
I am allowed to have this one little blog where I hate everyone and all people with working reproductive tools.
there are people who can't have even one kid.
I'm not trying to please the world and pretend that I'm not sad for my own isolated experience unrelated to anyone else's experience with infertility/singleness/whatever.
I'm just mad right now that for the 16th month I have woken up on some random day different than the month before and realized that I'm not getting to throw up for 40 weeks and increase my body mass index by 47% and raise my stress level exponentially and be hooked up to an i.v. every so often to replenish my fluids.
i aspire to the sickness that ends in life.

as if there weren't enough things i feel inadequate about. as if it's a bad thing to be married and happy and financially stable and want another kid to teach and protect and love.

whatever, tampax pearl.
bring it on.

seriously

2009-03-17T17:26:00.002-06:00

Who in the world knew that there were so many MORE things to be stressed out about than you first expected when having children. First of all, no one tells you that it really hurts when they take the placenta out of you after your baby comes out of you and no one tells you that the amount of debilitating tiredness after you have your baby makes you not remember anything and be ugly and it kind of never goes away. THEN they don't tell you that you should have appreciated your breasts in all their imperfections before because AFTER the children you are a grim shadow of your former breastness.

Then your children get larger and you're trying to make sure they have the right amounts of vitamins and wardrobe changes and meals and pacifiers that match their wardrobe changes and scriptures read to them every day and proper amounts of spanish pop music and english good music and classical music and wholesome videos and phonics and staying in the lines coloring and classic children's books read to them daily and newer children's books read to them daily and all of those books bought and read in english and spanish and timely potty training and intellectually stimulating toys and frivolous toys that mean nothing and toys that you always wanted as a child that are really for you and not your children and time spent playing on outdoor play structures and frolicking with correct amounts of SPF and positive reinforcement of good behavior and reproving betimes with sharpness and the whole increase of love afterward and preparing them to be kind to others but not so kind that they're wusses and not too mean to have to sit alone at lunch and not say "that man has a really big belly" right in front of 'that man' and kisses and hugs and endearing them to you above all others through whatever shameless methods available......

then you realize they have to go to school and have hobbies?

who is supposed to tell you what school to go to and when you even register a kid for school? Nobody tells people how to do these things. And what are my kids supposed to be good at for THE REST OF THEIR LIVES? and if I don't start them in these things last year preferably they're going to be dreadfully behind.

seriously.
who has time to make sure your children are talented, educated, safe, spiritual, beautiful, clever, quirky, funny, charming, scholarly and popular with other preschoolers? and take a shower?

impossible.
I mostly just sit with the yellow pages and think to myself....."Erin...what would you want to do if you were 3 and insane and unable to pay attention and only liked to whine and, while whining, bounced up and down in an incredibly annoying way? what about if you were 4 and thought you were the most talented person alive and already knew everything about everything and were
only being obedient when compelled by mortal fear of repercussions?"

I'm making light of a thing that haunts me daily. I'm not from Utah you know? I don't know where to take a kid for the best ballet classes or where to go for piano or violin lessons or theater workshops or singing lessons or soccer or whatever the hell else it is that every other person seems to have their children in and I don't.

Does the dad ever worry about these things enough to find out/register/lose sleep?
not in my experience.

mmmm.....the smell of....what IS that smell anyway?

2009-03-07T17:29:00.002-07:00

Nothing smells or anything around here, I just thought I'd pique your interest by making you think something did.
This week I only took a couple of showers so it could very well be me that smells but you know you can never smell yourself the way you are smelled by others. I actually tried sprinkling baby powder on my hair to absorb some of the unshowerdness of it all on Wednesday and I was in a hurry so I didn't realize until later that I looked like one of the British Parliament members. Erin...baby powder is white. Your hair is super dark brown. What are you thinking? invest in a portable mirror already so you don't disgrace yourself further.

I wrote last time about how I was going to go to DI and I was going to write after coming home that day before I got sidetracked that I think Satan lives in DI. I love mormons and I AM a mormon and we obviously abhor Satan and his minions but that beneficent place of global welfare service is filled with things that jump into your cart and make you buy them at small invisible gunpoint. I feel so strong when I'm in the parking lot and then the cryptonite-laden doors open and it's all over. Possessed I tell you. Eeeeeeeviiiilllll.
problematic.

I am on a cash only basis now people. Money is so much harder to spend when it's actually money, you know? I'm like, '5 dollars at Taco Bell! Now i only have a five and a ten left out of that 20 dollar bill!" I have stayed within my budget for two whole months now thanks to my little leather pouch with sections for miscellaneous, food and Costco money.
are you bored yet?
I kind of am.
I'll put you out of your misery now.
there are oreo mcflurries to buy, freeze and then eat while frozen. I'm swamped.

mysterious ways

2009-02-27T12:16:00.005-07:00

The Lord told me not to buy and Acura and to keep my Chrysler Pacifica. What kind of answer is that? If I didn't have such a long history of customer satisfaction with this particular prayer answerer I would file a complaint or try and negotiate. Like, "what do you mean I can't have that luxurious SUV? are you crazy? Do you know that Chrysler is on the short list for financial demise? yes, I understand that I wanted the Chrysler and I should have thought of that first.... Would it help if I said I could settle for the Rdx? NO? seriuosly? maybe I should give you a couple minutes since a few folks are probably in hospitals asking for help and Carrie Underwood is probably about to get in a car wreck and need you to take the wheel? ....no?....."

whatever. I guess I don't need a car that talks to me and cradles me deep in the arms of Japanese engineering while promising endless resale value and good gas mileage.

I'm sure there will be some clarity at a later date.
or something.

My chldren are hiding in a corner between the couch and a chair from some feind who is looking for both Hello Kitty AND that defenseless Corelle baby doll with the pacifier attached to her pink pajama outfit. This is very serious. They're whispering and have decided that the Bob the Builder Jack-in the-box is going to put the potential victims to sleep so they won't be feared for their lives. I don't care if they're playing south american drug cartell personally if it involves this much whispering. I can hear myself think............eh......overrated.

I got paid today for my efforts as a domestical facilitator ie my husbands automatic deposit came through today since tomorrow is the end of the month and it's not a business day tomorrow. I have allotted myself a nice portion and am now sitting here on the couch watching my children whisper and frolic and thinking of all the ways I can spend 90% of it today....Gabriel isn't going to be home until 11pm so I could :

go to DI for a disgusting amount of time and buy unnecessary stuff
Take my children to the movies AND get movie snacks
Go to Ross and (see DI description for the play by play)
Go to TJ Maxx for more of the same
Go to Target where I actually have a $20 gift card to alleviate the receipt total a smidge
Take my children somewhere stimulating and educational that they would love and I would hate
Speak with local political leaders re. Utah's part in the world issues George Clooney is interested in
ummmm....
I think I'll just take it easy and go to DI.
overstretching my expectations only leads to disappointment

just stuff

2009-02-24T21:25:00.003-07:00

Let me just start by saying that I am so glad that I am not hiding from the 'migra' in the desert between america and Mexico...sheesh...hard times, people.

also did you know that Rite Aid is the only store in the continental US that sells the long pink boxes of Lupone Jordan almonds? just so you know. thin shelled, pretty little pastel colors...addicted since 1990.

Dellah and Ruby are seriously annoying. They are also seriously hi-larious.
The other day Dellah said, "Mami, when can we eat? I'm hungry from all that exercising you did."
Ruby is obsessed with Rapunzel. We have the story on CD and we listen to it over and over. I think it has something to do with the fact that she has shorter hair than most little girls or something but at least it's blond. There is a line from the CD, "Rapunzel was blessed with beautiful, long, flowing, blond hair". She says that all the time, 'Mami, can you see my eawings with my longflowingblondhaiw?" and "Mami, lookumee, Mami, I have longflowingblondhaiw when I wun."
They also both self-soothe in tough times with thoughts of christmas and other gifted holidays. It begins with, 'can i have this or that or more of this or that' and the answer is no....after 5 or 10 seconds Ruby then says, "I know, mami, I godda gwate idea...Santa can gimme this for Eestowe...o whaddabout he give it to me fow my happy birthday?" yeah, Ruby...santa can do that...sure....whuuuudever.
Dellah is the same...no is only an acceptable answer if the item is promised for some other holiday by some fictional giftgiver. amazing. I'm just banking on their limited memories at this point

Have you ever felt like you were on the cusp? you know, like you were cusping somehow? I keep having all these thoughts like, "I should be writing something or making something or 'being' something more than I am and I can almost see the window through which I can climb to achieve that....somewhere out in front of me..." like my thoughts are kind of congealing after so long not being able to think about stuff very clearly.
I wish I could just be great, you know? Amazing and productive and inspiring and creative on some other level. I wish I could write something really, really good...
the cusp, people...I'm on it.

another thing i do now is use an elliptical machine and drink 7-11 hot chocolate.

whatever, Madonna....and Vampires...

2009-02-20T17:37:00.002-07:00

I was actually going to write something about how I just read online that Madonna is 50 and she looks 30. Then I decided that it would just make me loose the spirit of extreme good will that I constantly, always, consistently bear toward all human kind....

yeah.
so I knew right after I bit my first oreo cakester that my life would change. I knew when people told me not to eat nutella or I wouldn't ever be able to stop eating it that I should steer clear and I have. I knew when folks told me not to to read the vampire books that I shouldn't do it. I heard they were not well written and used a series of 8 or 9 adjectives at the exclusion of all others (ie, velvety, devastating, statue-like...). I'm all about books so I knew there would be enough to read without jumping heedlessly on the fanat-o-wagon.
Then something happened.
I went to the movie and I was like, "these people are really pale...maybe I'm a vampire?" then I thought that the dad of the vampires was hugely better looking than the main vampire and realized that I was in my 30's.
THEN we sent my car to this dude who straightens out creases in cars (since Gabriel pulled into the garage and scraped the big trash can against the whole driver's side).
When we got the car back there was no crease in the side and a copy of the first twilight book on the passenger seat.
I asked everybody...'did you put this book in my car? how did this book get in my car?" then the inevitable ensued.

i opened it.

I read it on wednesday. Thursday I went to wal mart and bought the 2nd on and read all 563 pages that day.

I now have a problem. People with addictive personalities do not need to eat highly sugared fad foods and they do not need to have the ingredients for mexican wedding cookies on hand at all times and they MOST CERTAINLY do NOT need to start reading highly elusive, poorly written, sink their nails in and hook your mind to them Vampire books!!!

my babies got their ears pierced for valentine's day. Initially I thought that particular part of Mexican culture was barbaric and whatever but now that they look so adorable I have decided any other female offspring will be pierced in infancy....They have these little sparkly rubies and they feel so beautiful....I thought for sure it would change their attitudes somehow or make them better behaved or something but they're just the same folks....accessorized.

Let's let by-gones be by-gones, ok? So I didn't write for 3 1/2 months...
so?
love me anyway!!!

good grief

2008-10-21T14:39:00.005-06:00

Three weeks ago Gabriel comes home telling me that this girl from the Latin American Chamber of Commerce who is originally from Honduras wanted to have us over for Honduran food when she found out I was a missionary there. Ok. Then it began. The creeping fear of meeting strangers and not knowing what to say to them and wanting to not do it and wanting to be told I didn't have to do it. A few weeks went by and Gabriel said he needed to confirm with this girl for friday because she was planning it for us and another couple. I said fine hoping someone would get the flu or something.
Thursday comes along...this past thursday the 16th... and I had had a difficult day feeling under appreciated in my world and wishing that I had a new shiny blackberry like Gabriel and new shiny clothes like my kids and new shiny skin like my kids and time to run on a treadmill like Gabriel and new shiny amazingness like everyone seems to have when you're looking around and not close up enough to realize that everyone isn't blissfully thrilled to be doing what they're doing. Anyway, I had a breakdown lying in my bed after all these random feelings of self-woe and I said to Gabriel, (while weeping) "Please just don't make me go eat pupusas with those peopuuuhuhuhuuulllll!"
Gabriel then promised he would hold my hand the whole time and every minute over 45 that we were there he would give me $10.

as any enterprising young woman would be, I was fine with that.

Friday came and my parents had the girls and we set off to the avenues to meet strangers and pretend we love them and their house and everything they make to eat and say to us like you're supposed to when you meet strangers.
We get out of the car on a dark deserted street and walk up to a dark seemingly deserted house and knock on the door which opens with no one visibly opening it.
Upon crossing the threshold the roaring screams of "SUUURPPRRRIIIISSSSEEEE! happy birthday!!!" fly to my ears....
tears.
tears, people.
tears of relief, tears of happy, tears of glad, tears of how could I not have realized I was outside my friend Marsha's house when we drove up. just tears.
Gabriel is so nice he put together a little thing for my birthday almost two weeks before my birthday thus allaying any suspicion that anyone would be thinking about my birthday at all. I wasn't even thinking about my birthday, only dinner with strangers.
but there they were....my little friends from a window of my life that I loved in college and who continue to be my dearest folks.
There was a chocolate fountain.
There was a replica of the red velvet cake from my wedding 5 years ago that I never tasted due to unforeseen refrigerator malfunctions 5 years ago.
there were presents in happy boxes from anthropologie and conversations and happiness and so on.
I seriously haven't ever really been surprised ...on purpose I guess. I even make appointments to give birth to my children I'm such a control freak....well, it worked! I was surprised. thank you Gabriel and everyone else for playing along.

Speaking of control and the lack thereof....Gabriel left the country yesterday for a week and I thought I would just jaunt over to my parent's house around lunch to see what was going on for a while before nap time here at my house would begin. We got to the garage with both cars to choose from so, of course I picked the smaller, faster one which parks easier than my bigger family one. Sharon and Lewi live 15 seconds from seat belt click in my garage to knock on their door so the girls just hopped in the car with no safety seats etc.
About 10 minutes into my visit there is a knock at the door and the across the street neighbor is telling me that they have just hit the car while backing out of their garage (and reading a note at the same time it turns out).
oh, no, not my domestic fix it anywhere car.
gabriel's car.
the foreign one with the 3 letters and the zeroes in the price any time you want to fix anything.

I park in that exact same spot EVERY SINGLE DAY! I mean every day. People park all along the street in this neighborhood every single day and I always see them....I never hit them. I never read while I back into them.
so now (see social inadequacy above) I am having to talk to strangers and work out a problem that I didn't create and it makes me sick. poor Gabriel hadn't even been gone 4 hours when his little car gets hurt.

life

I'm having a little problem wanting to devour my little Ruby. She is scrumptious. You know what I mean, like you get all anxious just to bite them! just eat them up! If she ever learns to say her r's I'm sure she will still be cute but something about a speech impedement and a pixie haircut and big blue eyes is driving me crazy with cuteness! "Look, mom, what aw dows twees? aw dey deciduous twees? o aw dey evowgween twees?"
good grief.
stop the madness.
so cute.

I am kind of all about minerals. Mineral powder, mineral blush, mineral foundation, minerals, minerals, minerals. so good. Also, I don't know if I've mentioned before that clinical strength deodorant is actually nigh unto a 3-d walking miracle from heaven. i mean it's not that, 'wow, my sweat doesn't smell at all' it's 'OH MY GOODNESS, I DON'T EVEN SWEAT ANYMORE!! sweat? what's that? I don't even sweat. I don't know what you're talking about.'
craziness.
I mean it's called Secret but people, I am yelling it from the rooftops....stop the sweating....MAKE YOURSELF LIKE A PRE-PUBESCENT CHILD AND NEVER SWEAT AGAIN! use it. buy it. follow the instructions and change your life.

forever.

that and these little chocolate dipped Blue bunny Popsicles that come, unfortunately, in a box of 20 and I cannot get enough of them.

that and it's my birthday in 8 days.
and I can't wait till that Tinker Bell movie comes out on the 28th because I'm insane.
And I'm obsessed with Genghis Khan after watching that movie Mongol last night.
adieu, adieu
to yur and yur and yur.

16 more days

2008-10-13T14:24:00.002-06:00

It is 16 more days before I get to the 2nd ugliest age ever invented (31 being the first, 32 being the second). 32? what in the world IS it? It doesn't relate to anything and it sounds bad. there's no symmetry in 32. I'm not saying I'm old because I don't think 32 is old, I'm just saying it's ugly. ugly, ugly.

We just spent the last 9 days with Gabriel's brother and his family who stayed with us while. We are changed Sanchezes. Sarah and Sergio (that's their names) are those people who don't ever yell. I mean never. They don't get that fire of hell look in their eyes when their children whine and act out. NO, Sarah and Sergio don't play that...they fight fire with bubbles and naughtiness with tickling. I admire most everything about them as parents. So far we have quite a few days of not going ballistic on our children and our children are quite happy and, in some cases pleasantly surprised I'm sure, that we have had a live in example of how to be better and we're practicing. I have prayed and prayed for answers to my prayers and I have been frustrated to tears with my inability to see changes or even know what else to do. Thank you, Sarah and Sergio for showing us the way. Sometimes you get feelings and sometimes you get houseguests....they're all answers.

Yesterday was major drama at the primary program. Dellah has had her line memorized for 2 months."the prophet teaches us to be honest and pay our tithing". If you know her you know that she can't stop singing EVER so she knew all the songs too. We get to church early and she's wearing her pretty pretty dress and her magenta tights and her red patent maryjanes and she goes to sit on the stand. The program starts and she's fine. I am a child of God goes off without a hitch. She goes up to do her line with her trademark impeccable e-nun-ci-ationnn and she gets the appreciative giggle that comes when folks see such a small girl with such a clear voice.
Then we get to the rest of the songs and program where it was a cattle drive to the front of the podeum every time there was a song and there was no adult regulation of size order or shoving. Little 30 pound 4 year old Dellah kept getting shoved by these 6 or 7 year old kids and even one kid who's her age and, after 2 songs behind some mean huge kid who only thinks of themselves, she totally lost it up there on the stand. She's crying and saying,'but they're pushing me and I can't see and they're just pushing me and I can't see and they keep on pushing..." you can imagine. Her sweet teacher holds her for the rest of the non-song parts and the kids get the hint, sort of, that they need to ease up on the violence. She didn't sing any songs for all the drama. We are the parents of a Primary program sub-plot in carnate....nice.
I felt this uncontrolled urge to get up and shout, "what is wrong with you people, can't you see that all these big kids are crowding all these tiny little kids who have never done this before and no one can see them?!!!! there was a stinging in my eyes and a saliva building in my mouth from the rage.
Then I decided to ignore it and tell Dellah she did great (because she did) and try to say we should be more like Jesus and forgive people for pushing us when we're 3 1/2 feet tall and they're huge and could be seen easily with no effort BEHIND the tiny kids but they didn't move because they're lame (I mean kids).
Now she says that the next time she has a program she'll wear the same dress and sing all the songs loudly. Here's to missed chances and kids with no social graces.
hip hip hooooorayyy.

down below here I have a post about my sister you should read.

thanks for playing.

genetical bliss

2008-10-13T14:10:00.003-06:00

I have siblings. Today I would focus on the youngest sister who probably benefitted from some heretofore unknown magic available only to last children and only children (who are alpha and omega in one kid). Anyway, there's Jenny Wilson, my little sister who has always just had this no nonsense way of making stuff work. Where I would actually get distracted between getting out my toothbrush and actually brushing my teeth, she would make it all the way to the end of the process quickly and then make some gadget to have it be more aesthetic and efficient for people like me. She majored in family home and personal enrichment education at BYU or whatever they call that major that every single girl wishes she had done after she gets married and has children.
Anyway, she has this blog where you can see how cute she is and how clever and everything else. it's http://www.jwsew.blogspot.com/.
I can do lots of stuff but I can't even figure out how to change the background of this ugly blog or sew a straight line, much less set up a paypal account so you can see why Jenny is once, twice, three times a lady..

you're just brown

2008-10-01T22:53:00.002-06:00

The other Sunday in church Dellah was having a relapse of her puppy/kitten phase and started licking Gabriel's hand in sacrament meeting...Gabriel looks down at her and whispers, 'don't lick my hand, Dellah, it's dirty', to which she replied, 'You're not dirty papi, you're just brown...'
This is the first time I have ever heard her acknowledge that her Papi is not white like she looks from the outside...I wondered for a second if she would be drawn to brown boys just because of her comfort level or if she would feel 'mexican' in some way and express that in some heretofore unknown way...I think it will be fascinating to watch and see what two cultures look like painted on one little girl.
As for Ruby, this is an exact quote, "Mami, do you talk Espanol?"
"Si, Ruby, yo hablo Espanol siempre"
"oh, I talk Espanol tambien, Mami...dus like yuuu"
mmmmhmmm...
well, sort of.

My chubbiness is grossing me out. Something has to happen where I stop eating. Death is not an option since I really appreciate living...
I just wish I had some endorphins to help me want to get some more endorphins by some exercising or something besides watching television and wishing I had endorphins...
whatever.
If food would start tasting like crap it would be a lot easier but I feel so happy when I have yumminess in my tumminess...

Kinley needs to get her big stupid self off of project runway. I can't stand that girl.
I watched the John Adams HBO movie after reading the book and I have to say, I really wish people cared about America the way they used to when it was just an infant that they needed to form and help and protect. Homeboy was ugly but he was inspired.
that's fo sho.

I'm sure you've all cut your hair because you were so sick of your hair and just knew that it would look better if you cut it when all you needed to do was let it keep growing past the ugliness to get even better...
pictures from June haunt me...I should have just LEFT IT ALONE! but noooo, I had to think that I wanted Ruby's little effortless Tinkerbell situation without thinking that I'm 3 feet taller, not a blond and not 3 years old.
evil shears...
stop cutting my hairs when I open you and put you around my hairs and want to cut my hairs thinking I know better than professional hair cutters know about my hairs...turn a blunt ear, dearest shears...leave me alone...help me help myself and not be homely by being homely past the homely stage until my arrival at cute hair...
carpet you can atone for...haircuts you just lament.

On a lighter note, today was a really good day. I was saying things like, "do you need some alone time so that you can stop feeling angry?" and "you know, it hurts my feelings when you yell at me, can you please calm down and talk with words?"
look at me being all educated by nanny 911.
I hope tomorrow goes the same...it's amazing how fun life can be when you don't dislike your offspring!

ps, when there are ugly people in commercials trying to get people to buy things and stay at places by making them think that normal people buy those things and stay at those hotels, it makes me really sick because wouldn't everyone rather believe that fabulously good looking people are making the same choices as them and not that they're on par with really average/ugly people? I don't buy barbies for my children, I say positive things to my children about my own body and theirs and appreciate diversity in life but I would much rather see Brooke Shields selling Colgate than weird looking people staying at Best Western.
that's all.

viernes en el barrio

2008-09-26T10:07:00.002-06:00

When you have not written in your blog for 2 months and you have felt yourself slipping into that gross place where you feel all closed off and separate from people this is what you should do....
BLOG UNTIL YOU FEEL LIKE BLOGGING...
I think a prophet said that or something.

My parents live 10 doors down from me now...I can't remember what I used to do and that's probably a problem because I take Dellah to school and then I go to their house and then I pick Dellah up and then I go to their house and then I take the girls home to rest a while and then I got to their house with dinner ingredients and eat at their house....
seriously, Erin...co dependence is ugly.

I tried to post right when I got home from Mexico City which was pretty wonderful actually and then blogger told me that my pictures couldn't be posted and I just got very discouraged and ignored blogger. When you ignore the blog you are only hurting yourself.

This morning and yesterday morning Dellah has screamed at the top of her shrill little voice that I am a 'BAAAD MAMI! UGLY MAMI!' and when I took her to the place of no return for her behavior (time out) she bit my hand...she BIT me!
what the crap?! It's not every day that you live inside a time worn phrase and live to tell the tale...she actually bit the hand that feeds her.
unconscionable

We have atoned for our bad carpet choices when we built this house 1.5 years ago. We now have squishy, squooshy carpet exactly the color of most kinds of dirt and all kinds of poop.
mmmmooooaaahhhhhaahahaha...you will not sully my surroundings, foul dirt...you have met your DuPont smart strand match!

mmmmmm....what else...there's so much stuff it's just too much to tell. I'll have to do installments. Of course I'm at my parent's house right now so I'll write more at my own house where my pictures are on the computer.
At least I've breached that drafty corridor between me and my blog and found the journey shorter and easier than I had worked it up in my mind to be.

current television obsessions: Lipstick Jungle, Project Runway, Top Design, the Rachel Zoe Project

Currently listening to : Lost Songs by David Gray
Currently obsessively consuming: chocolate milk
currently wearing every single day because I am chubby and nothing else fits me : wide legged trousers from gap and some ultra heinous floral shirt from Kohls
Current amount of time I have been trying to have a baby and can't: 10 months
Current amount of cruelness felt from this ultimate joke played on me and my feelings of complete and utter fertility....incalculable

I went to Cindy's last night for a fun little shin-dig...so happy to have seen dear people I looooove.

adios

2008-07-22T22:53:00.001-06:00

Just leaving to go to Mexico City.
wish me luck.

15,000 heads bobbing

2008-07-20T22:33:00.005-06:00

There's this pretty obscure singer called Sting from this little no name band Called the Police that has had some pretty good songs recorded over the years, some of which have changed the course of my actual life... and then

I SAW THEM LAST NIGHT AND ALMOST WET MY PANTS!!!!!!!!!!!

Cindy called last week and told me she had a little ticket just for me so we went and, after Elvis Costello opened, this dude came out and started ringing this giant gong...
and then he was there.

Sting.

Actual Sting.
Actual Sting in a long sleeved translucent black second skin tight t-shirt and 3 days of stubble and his ancient bass.
Actual sting singing actual 'Message in a bottle' and actual 'Roxanne' and actual 'Don't stand so close to me'.
I just kept thinking to myself....I'm here, I'm here, I'm screaming, 'there's a little black spot on the sun today, it's my soul up there'.... WITH STING!

it was definitely not to be rivaled in the near future or recent past....

it's like somebody put Sting in a bottle in 1993 and he looks exactly the same only with more muscles...
I told Cindy...I just hoped he wouldn't disappoint, you know...like we get all the way there and he sounds all old and lame live or something.

yeah.
not so much.

pretty much perfect.
We had such a good time.

Thanks so much Cindy. there's no one with whom I would rather observe overly drunk people and almost run out of gas and eat a 3 foot long bag of kettle corn with than you.

the eyes have it

2008-07-19T10:45:00.003-06:00

ahhh, ocular apparati...don't get me wrong, I'm totally glad I can see, it's just the madness of the whole thing that gets me.
Yesterday I'm standing in line at snoasis (shut up naysayers) and some teenage girl was in line ahead of me with her friend and her brother and she was pretty loud and vocal saying, "OH MY GOODNESS, YOU HAVE THE COOLEST EYES! YOUR EYES ARE AMAZING! LOOK AT HER EYES!"
I'm not one to turn down compliments in any form but this was a smidge embarrassing for some reason. Maybe I thought I liked being the center of attention and I actually don't. Maybe It's just when I'm the center of breaking the sound barrier adolescent attention that gets me.
This past Christmas when I was in the Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert, people came up to me every day saying, "what's wrong with your eyes? are you alright? have you been crying? I have some visine if you want..."

that pendulum swings and swings people. sometimes you're up, and mostly you're down or falling downward.

I went to the eye doctor this week and was telling him how frustrated I am by the redness of my eyes and the dryness (of my eyes) and the overall wishing I didn't have to be at the eye doctor and that I could have laser surgery already (on my eyes).
After lots of 'which is better, 1 or 2, 2 or 3, 3 or 2...what's the smallest line you can read?', he gave me information I had long suspected and now am positive of....I am a freak.
He's pulls out a pad of pre-printed eyes on paper so he can show me the position of every other human being's eyelids and then tells me, "you see how the lid normally covers a little part of the colored circle on the top and the bottom?....well yours don't...your colored circle is totally all exposed to the air at all times which would definitely cause them to be dryer than normal."

The word normal was used twice in that sentence to describe what I am NOT.

awesome.
question 513 in my life list of questions. "why is it impossible to take a good picture without looking like someone's coming at me on a secluded road at night with their brights on?"
mystery solved.
I can't imagine that there are any of you who have failed to notice this anomaly but feel free to stare next time you see me to gain your own witness.
As if being legally blind and unable to live or function without contacts or glasses wasn't enough...

NOW I'LL NEVER BE A TEEN MODEL!!!
the humanity.

My one consolation is that my offspring seem to have gotten nicely hued eyes minus the side-show factor...Gabriel has just informed me that if he were writing about his eyes he would do it in two words, 'round and brown' and that I seem to be writing an awful lot...he thinks he's such a poet..so funny. hilarious.
men.

So I'm going to Mexico City on Wednesday with my husband who is exceedingly handsome with his new erinsanchezcutsmyhair haircut. He has business for half of one day and then we're staying 5 more days to have a celebration of the fact that we have been married for five years (on the 26th).
My parents who are so nice are coming to take care of the girls and, whereas last year I got all squirmy to leave them when we went to Puerta Vallarta (again for Gabriel's work but pretty convenient for vacating), this year I feel a strong sense of the get on the plane and look forward toward rest and mental health vibe.

I'll say hi to Frida and Diego for you and make a sacrifice at the Aztec temple on your behalf...don't even think I'm joking.

the shopping spirit

2008-07-09T14:09:00.004-06:00

many times he has led me, many times I have had success...very seldom do I actually achieve shopping nirvana like I did this early afternoon at the Sandy DI.
If you couldn't care less about this you probably shouldn't read on cause that's all I'm going to talk about.
Perhaps I was worthy of my prizes because I had just taken my sullen, bored children to the park like a good mother where they walked around like they had no idea what to do with themselves and all the play equipment and beauty bark. Finally after 40 minutes Dellah said, "mami, why's the park gotta be so hot?". My reply was that there is no roof on the park and the sun can just touch you everywhere. she decided that heat was not conducive to whining at full wattage so we left so she could whine in air conditioned peace about how she smelled like 'sunthing' (screen).

Then we went across 94th south to DI. At first it was like every other time...the attic-y, fluorescent light, children screaming vibe. Then I walked down the toy isle and saw a Fisher Price Little People Tudor style house..hm, ok..I already know the one I played with as a kid is at my parent's house so I just thought i would get it to have one more thing to add to our Ferris wheel, our parking garage and our sesame street clubhouse (all vintage fisher price) We don't however have any of the little round bodied folks that go in the toys or any of the cars for the garage but the girls like putting other stuff around to play with them...

then what to my wondering eyes should appear but a piece of clear packing tape from the front to the rear (of the little Tudor house). and what was that tape holding the house together for? you ask...
oh, I don't know, MAYBE A GALLON SIZED ZIPLOC BAG OF LITTLE PEOPLE AND CARS AND HOME FURNISHINGS!!!!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS.

i don't know if you've ever looked on e-bay or in stores for little people toys but they are weirdly expensive and you can hardly find the people....and here they were...in all their plastic no arms, no legs glory inside the Tudor house for $3.

I will let that sink in.

three dollars.

the price of a large snoasis with extra cream.

12 quarters.

I have looked for 4 years and here they are.
feelings like this seldom come but they are so so energizing.

Then I proceeded over to the clothes where I found (among other, less illustrious finds) a $2 Catimini Dress that is brand new and a $3 juicy couture hoodie for Dellah that is also not even used..
Look it up if you wonder what the big deal is about that...just look it up.

So, then, people, I went to get a large coconut snoasis with extra cream and my girls got their xs snoasises and we came home at 1pm.

It is now 2:28 in the afternoon (two minutes before quiet time) and my girls have been playing downstairs with their little people and all their accouterments and locations FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF!

THANK YOU SHOPPING SPIRIT!** no, seriously, thank you so much. seriously.

**( i mean no disrespect to actual Deity as i know a real shopping spirit cannot exist in the realm of Mormon theology, nor does the actual Spirit of Mormon theology participate in shopping excursions. but, I think in ancient Egypt they could have wrangled up a creature to represent uncanny consumer experiences, therefore my tongue is in my cheek and I am not unbelieving, inactive, blasphemous or lightminded, ok? ok.)

!viva el espiritu de compras!!! ai, yai,yai,yai!

That fresh feeling...

2008-07-01T12:00:00.003-06:00

You know that song by the eels, 'fresh feeling'? I'm minorly addicted to that song at this moment and also Leona Lewis. Ruby's always saying, 'mami, I wan beeting lub'
I put on 'bleeding love' and then when it's over we repeat it 47 times until I'm allowed to listen to the fresh feeling song again. The other song my girls like is 'irreplaceable' by Beyonce. I have to say that watching very very small people sing, 'you must not know 'bout me, you must not know 'bout me, I could have another you in a minute, matter fact, he'll be here in a minute, baby' at the top of their lungs is at once disturbing an hilarious. You know what? They'll be fine. At least it's not that one week where they were hooked on All American Rejects, 'I'll keep you my dirty little secret' and Dellah sang it in Sacrament meeting...

It's one of those times when it's been so long since I've written I might as well just ignore following up on any of the past and start with a fresh feeling as it were.
that said, I should say we haven't heard back from the neurologist about Ruby's test and my in-laws are leaving in 6 days and coming back here for two of those bringing our grand total up to 29 days of them in my house....There are so many bricks in my mansion in heaven by now I could probably move right in...or maybe there are just holes in my tongue from biting it for 2 months.

what EVER!!!!!

moving on to blatant and shameless consumerism:
yesterday I went to target and spent some ridiculous sum of money on whatever the blank I felt like buying. I mean I bought necklaces and earrings and ribbon and cool buttons to make little girl hair clips out of and Boggle and Sorry and an eco-friendly un-lined journal printed on recycled paper and illustrated with vegetable dyes and etcetera and so forth. Before that I went to DSW and bought some chocolate brown above the ankle Michael Khors riding boots for 80% off of $168. After that we met Gabriel at Noodles and Company and ate pasta and After that I went to Snoasis and got a large coconut with extra cream and ate it and ate it and ate it some more.

I have to say that there is a strange feeling that the actual universe owes me something lately. I'm not proud of it but I just think, 'There are 7 or 9 things about my life right now that totally suck and I'm doing my best and I'm pretty sure I deserve material possessions which I will never be able to take to Heaven if I make it so I'm just going to recognize myself for all of my efforts to keep it together.
Is that spoiled and entitled enough for everyone?
OK, moving on.
We have this big hardbound Disney princess treasury in Spanish that Ruby carries around like it doesn't weigh 5 pounds by the front cover and throws it off of high places to watch it splat on the floor. I got out my glue gun (which I had never opened in 3 years) on Sunday night to fix the cover of that poor book which had given up and fallen away from the pages and the cover of my 'Memoirs of Cleopatra' by Margaret George and then I thought to myself, "why don't I just fix that one hair clip while I'm at it?"
That was all it took. Erin-obsessively-find-something-basically-useless-to-expend-most-of-your-energy-and-time-on Sanchez was then enlisted in the making of hair clips for my children. I had a box of metal clips from Sally's and there was just no end to the things I was gluing to those poor clips. How liberating to put clothes on your child and think, "I don't have a hair accessory to match this" and then think, "stop the press! LET'S JUST MAKE ONE!" Now if only my hair didn't look like I have a penchant for denim jumpers and square toed pumps.
That about sums up my weekend.
I'm back.

would you like to donate a dollar to Primary Children's today?

2008-06-13T19:44:00.003-06:00

I always do that when they ask me in the store...mostly just because I feel like Me and mine seem to be at Pimary Children's quite a bit. I always put Ruby's name on the little hot air balloon that they have connected and draped all over Ross or Wal Mart or wherever. So today my dollars are paying for Ruby to be here with stuff glued to her head and me sleeping on a vinyl couch with a bag of potato chips and some vitamin water. I stopped on the way here to get a gynormous snoasis. vanilla with extra cream...I think I should work my way up to gynormous in the future. I feel a little sick.
My in laws are still at my house. still.
they'll be there for another week I think...
vinyl bed and potato chips = small price to pay for night away.

I have had company in town for almost 4 weeks in a row...that's a little taxing on the soul. I need one of those nights when I get to go out and do nothing except frivolous things that only I want to do. I wonder when that will happen.

Ruby's watching Enchanted for the 7millionth time since Easter. I gotta go watch so I can somehow stay awake until it's time for bed.

love and kisses and affectionate batting of the eyelashes,
erin

Mi Dellita Querida

2008-06-05T00:42:00.011-06:00

My little Dellah Faye turned 4 today. (I think it's technically Thursday the 5th but I haven't been to sleep since it was Wednesday the 4th). You know, you only ever get one of the 4 on the 4th or the 29 on the 29ths. Everyone in our family has had theirs now except for Ruby who has to wait 22 more years...I'm a little relieved every time we exit that two month period where both of my children are the same age...now we have a three and a four. It's not so 'side show' that way.

So, today was her day and we went to the dollar movie to see Horton Hears a Who and then to the restaurant of choice for the children in my house, Noodles and Company. My mom is visiting with us so Dellah got to spend lots of time with her favorite person, my mom!

This is the cake I made after being told that it had to have flowers, ladybugs, butterflies and sunshine. The ladybugs are buttons. I think it turned out rather well, actually

She ate all of her macaroni. And then we went home to eat cake and open presents.

From the first minute I saw Dellah I absolutely knew I was in love with her like every mom is with her baby. she seemed older than one of those newborn folks. She took up so much 'room' from the very beginning. Our house seemed full of somebody big and she was so small.

She has proceeded to be the absolute joy of my life. She is seriously hilarious. (and bossy and stubborn and melodramatic) and her little squeaky voice never stops saying so much STUFF it's unbelievable..who even knows what most of it's about. There is something hugely 'me' about her and then something of Gabriel and then there's that thing that everybody comes with that genetics just doesn't do.
She didn't know (or maybe she did) that she would only get a few weeks with a mom who wasn't pregnant and sick and couldn't get out of bed for months. She just lay there beside me on the bed and slept and cooed and played quietly. She didn't know maybe that she would still be in a rear facing car seat and not even walking yet when her sister would come with a whole bag of drama and take the spotlight off of her exclusively. She did, however spend the first two months of her life looking fixedly at the ceiling and smiling. Only Dellah could have been Ruby's sister and live to tell the tale.

Dellah is the lightening bug in darkness.
She seriously drives me insane.
she does things that I fully remember doing as a really small child but it's just too weird to see them done all over again and realize you can't even get mad because you empathize with her mindset. poor girl. I guess there are worse things that having your mother's neuroses but she probably won't think so.

I love this little girl. It feels like so much longer than 4 years. I don't remember what the world was like without her. Maybe the world doesn't remember either.

Tu eres mi luz, mi amorcita bonita banana. Mi amor. Mi vida. mi preciosa. mi princesa.

viva Mexico

2008-05-27T17:24:00.001-06:00

this is Dellah and Ruby saying, 'thank you, Papi, for being from Chiapas where they have these awesome dresses.

saturday

2008-05-24T21:47:00.002-06:00

Today we had a garage sale (since we don't have a yard). It sounds great when you say that we made 2,860 pesos...it sounds just fine when you say we made $286! Hooray for us.
I have come to the conclusion that I have to come to the conclusion that I will no longer buy so many items of apparel. Some girl comes up to me with a pair of 7 jeans and an unworn shirt from H&M, a banana republic skirt and some turquoise steve Madden pumps and I'm like, "That will be $9". what? what is wrong with me? these pregnant girls were coming in buying entire layettes for their unborn children and well into their toddlerhood...Someone close DI...make it stop. Help me not go to the Gateway mall and to TJ Maxx and Ross. Help me be crafty and make scrapbooks and toll paintings and dinner.

or just go to famous footwear's buy one get one half off sale and get a couple of things...there's always THAT I could do after getting rid of half my garage.

sheesh.

Ruby says, "yeth". Do you want some more food, Ruby? "yeth" "yeth, I want thom mow".
there is hardly anything cuter right now.

ummm...

2008-05-23T15:51:00.002-06:00

so when you have small people you're in charge of and they have fevers and mucus and they cough on you for 4 days you get fevers and mucus. note to self.

I would be my friend if I were you. I would go to my blog just to see if I were alive.
is it too much to ask that you just say, 'hey, I came to see if you're alive' cause I would do it for you and I HAVE done it for you and I don't even want to hear the whole, "oh, stop being so dramatic, Erin, you're not that good of a friend to all of us, you don't deserve more than 3 comments (one of them that you actually wrote as a response) to a post in a week!" I thought we agreed I would be fragile during this Mexican innundation and I would need support. I'm not one of those emotionally stable people who's like, "I got this business all wrapped up". I'm one of those folks that's like, "I wish I had this...do I have this?...what do you think"
whatever.

Dad?
are you even reading this Dad?
Mom called me today and it was like this,
E-hey, mom
M- hey, haven't talked to you for a while, thought I'd see what you're doing
E-well I've had a fever and been sick so I've been in my pajamas for a while
M-oh, well I'll let you go
E-no, no, I want to talk, so what are you doing?
m-nothing.
E-oh, well what's new, anything good going on?
M-no, we're just living in the future, not the present, that's all. I've been trying all day to get out of the house but now it's too late (it was 1pm there)
E -chat, chat, chat, the girls, the girls, the girls, encourage, encourage
M-oh kay, well I'll let you go, bye.

I'm basically devoid of blood after that emotional vapirism.
just like you will be at the end of this post! haaaaaahahahahahahahh!
I talked to my friend Amy who said my posts worry her like I'm really sad.
I told her it's a nice place to rant and then move on with my really pretty happy life.
While I'm ranting, I feel so mad when I go to weddings and people get married and they get all these presents and everybody's like, "here let me get you all these presents" and I'm like, "I wish I would have gotten all these presents when I got married" and then I feel mad like my married didn't matter as far as presents go. like, seriously. not even towels or a George foreman grill or anything!

I'm happy.
I'm relatively cued in to what's currently fashionable.
I have a really cute florescent pink Diesel watch.
I had cold stone last night and it didn't make me like a rabid hound out for more cold stone every day for the next 5 months.
Snoasis is set up in the parking lot just ready to open this weekend.
My children like me and the feeling's mutual.

I just gotta get it off my 38C, man. go ahead and get your transfusion now, Dad and Jenny and Cindy and Andi who are my only readers.

have you seen the movie Bella? somebody please tell me what I'm supposed to think happened at the end because I don't even know at all.

viernes en el barrio

2008-05-16T11:12:00.002-06:00

Things are good....almost great!*
I was up until I don't even remember when with Dellah who had a fever and was throwing up red jell-o on my new white leather watchband.
good times.
I can't even think of a more beautiful day than this day. Have you looked outside?
rediculously nice.
I've been speaking so much Spanish, my mind is falling apart. Yesterday I was in line at Wal-Mart when I realized that it was the 20 items or less line and I had already put about 35 things on the counter....I still had about 14 more so I just said to the lady, "ai, lo siento, es que no me di cuenta en que fila estaba"....then I realized that the woman's name was Hezapeth and she was so totally middle eastern I just wanted to run and leave the bananas and tortillas for someone else.
lame.
line quantity violator AND capable of racist assumption that brown woman working at Wal Mart was latina...
At least there are oreo cakesters.
At least there's that.
Also Ruby took an antibiotic for a staph infection where the sun doesn't shine and she woke up the next morning with huge red welts on her belly and it kept multiplying and multiplying until her whole body, face, hands, legs, kooch, belly, neck were all covered. The Dr. told us not to do anything except stop taking the meds and it would take a week at least for the things to go away...first, however, they were going to fade from bright red and start to look like dusky bruises.
Now I have a 3 year old child who cries and moans incessantly who looks like she's also a victim of domestic violence...poor little girl. If it's not one thing it's the other with Ruby. Until it's over I guess she just won't wear shorts.

I don't know if I've mentioned before that Gabriel's brother is a dentist and also a professor and also, as of late, one of those 'doctors' who use magnets to cure people of their deadly illnesses and indigestion. He lives in Mexico but now that the parents are here, they have set up an appointment on sunday when we are to bring our magnets (what magnets?!) to Gabriel's brother's house and talk with Kike on Skype so he can show us where to put our magnets (what magnets?) on Ruby so that she no longer has any problems whatsoever and the leading pediatric neurologist in Utah can rest peaceful that the 18 months he's been stumped by her have been miraculously cured with 4 magnets.!!!!!!!!! they could also send someone to receive Ruby's treatment for her vicariously but decided that it was better if Ruby were there watching Kike on skype so we could have her covered in her own magnetics.
I thought we mormons got enough flack for the vicarious idea...
h e l p
at least there's oreo cakesters.
today I am wearing a little white and blue seer-sucker jumper with a little white v-neck t-shirt underneath and my little white leather watch and my little navy blue patent leather flat strappy sandals...
I find if I call my clothing little it makes me feel better about the whole chubby situation I find myself in.
At least I took a shower.
at least there's that.
my husband is so cute it's just crazy.

crime and punishment

2008-05-08T00:59:00.003-06:00

I was in Target yesterday picking up a prescription with Ruby while Dellah was at school. This mom in an aisle near me was having a hard time with a screaming kid and she said, "if you do that again, I will wash your mouth out with soap".

I have prayed and fasted and plead with Heaven to help me know what to do to make some kind of impact on my children. They simply don't care about words or tone of voice or loss of toys or time out or silent treatments.

as a totally out of answers to my own life mother, I, personally felt as if Heaven had opened and I had heard a voice of great wisdom speak to my mind....

That's it! Harmless and yet, effective physical punishment.

Yesterday Dellah screamed her out of control scream for the 100th time and I said, that's it...jabon en la boca....I took her to the sink, put a dab of my non-paraban, method soap on my finger and stuck it on her tongue. Silence.
Today I used a one and a two and a three for bad deeds and on the third there was going to be soap.
Dellah 0
Ruby 3
Tomorrow I hope Ruby can remember what it tastes like to have soap in her mouth and respond accordingly.

I'm so happy!

Call family services, I don't even care. This is the best thing that's happened in many, many months here in my household.
some order
some control
some discipline if you will for completely defiant kids who just look at me while they do what they're not supposed to do.
finally a win for my side.
Tomorrow it probably won't work at all but yesterday and today were enough to boost my sense of parental-ness

Cinco de Mayo...what?

2008-05-05T15:07:00.004-06:00

I live with a Mexican who has never celebrated Cinco de Mayo in his whole life. He doesn't understand what he would celebrate. Mexican independence day (and most of Central America too) has their 4th of July on the 16th of September. I think Americans invented Cinco de Mayo so they can say things like, 'Tequila' and 'Fiesta' and 'Sombrero'.

That behind me, I would like to inform my vast and far reaching readership (or something) that the 'Disgrace to your Gender' letters of yesteryear live on...only now they are 'Disgrace to your Establishment' letters because I recently wrote the organizer of that one Methodist sale I just sold stuff in and gave her the who and the why and the what for of what she can do with her ridiculous letter telling me that I caused clerical errors with the cashiers because my price tags were unreadably too small so in the future, I need to please use only the template they provide....you know what? I defy anyone on the earth to tell me that I don't know the dimensions of a price tag...I'm legally blind in both my eyes without contacts and I could see them at arm's length! So, anyway, it felt really good to tell her that I was a very intelligent person who had done nothing but print the template SHE SENT ME and fill in the blanks and that if she needed any helpful hints, maybe she could not employ actual blind people over the age of 77 as her cashiers. Also I told her it was bad form to tell anyone that clerical errors were made in your accounting...I did everything but tell her that my husband's a lawyer and I'm going to sue her for being a complete idiot. It was just condescending when I stayed up past 1 am for 3 days to wash and iron and hang and tag 156 items of clothes. It looked like a store. All the same hangars, all the same direction, all the same sized safety pins holing the tags, all shirts, pants, skirts and dresses together in groups. You know me. She told me they had to be in nearly new condition with no frays or loose buttons for this very high quality sale. I didn't send tons of things because they weren't perfect. Then they send me 14 things in my box of stuff that I wanted back if they didn't sell that were never even mine...14 ugly, stained, baby BOY, carter's monstrosities and I'm like.........well, I've already told you what I was like.
She didn't respond funnily enough.
All the boys I ever wrote them to at least responded in some way.
eh..
what ever.
This is reason number 783 why I am nothing like the Lord and would not go to Heaven if I died in a few minutes. Please let me have more time on earth to not feel so happy that I was mean to that pretentious poophead.

I am now going to be like a lighthouse with flags and flares and blinking lights and small glass observatories. I will tell you the code. I will have a secret word for the different stages of misery that I am going to feel when my husband's parents (who dislike me greatly, not that I just think it but that they just said it out loud very loudly to my husband who then hung up on them two years ago) come to visit Utah for t w o m o n t h s. They come on Saturday the 10th and they leave mid July...
I'm just going to let that percolate so you will understand the need for secret codes and combinations. I feel like a Mason. So, when things are OK, I will say 'good' and when things suck I will say, 'great' and when things are about to go off the hook or the balcony or the deep end, I will say 'Fantastic'. This way everyone will think I'm so nice when I talk about the fantastic time I'm having, negating the need for a reason 784... on the outside at least. But you and I will know what I mean. We will laugh secretly in our innermost chambers at the greatness of my adjective-ness and the lameness of my situation-ness. we will laugh a laugh like, mmmmooooaaaahahahahahhhaa. If I ever have to say Magnificent you better just call the local authorities because there will have been some Sanchez splattered somewhere conspicuous up in here if I'm still alive to write 'magnificent' at all.

I watched Kite Runner the other night. so, so good. The guy in it said, "children are not like coloring books, you cannot just put your favorite colors in them, they are themselves". good advice. I tend to walk around with a magenta crayon all up in their faces. I am newly resolved to let them be whatever colors they want.

Feliz Cumpleanos, Amorcito

2008-04-30T08:31:00.003-06:00

This is (Carlos) Gabriel Sanchez (Manchinelly) who I love and am married to.

Today he is 34 years old.
He's done so much to make me happy in the 5 years that I've known him; Things like, he's really good looking and I like to look at him. Also things like he likes to go out to dinner and so do I so that's helpful. He wakes up super early every single day to go and win our loaf of bread and he never complains (except some Sundays) that he's really tired. He buys insurance policies for everything we own so that we're safe and taken care of. He puts the new registration sticker on my license plate a week after the other one expired because I would never have remembered it. He's cheerful and fun to be around and, while it's possible for us to fight about everything from Scrabble to piano moving to immigration laws, we're mostly happy because he is so great and not because life is so so easy for him or us.

He is inherently social and everyone likes him. I mean EVERYONE. It's a little ridiculous sometimes for me to think about but he also really likes himself (in one of those healthy ways). I guess that's what other people respond to. He's comfortable to be himself wherever he goes and talking on the phone doesn't scare him at all. Neither does the Statue of Liberty. As you can gather, that makes him perfect for me. He is stubborn and opinionated but so am I, and more than him so that also makes him wonderful...to be able to live with me and still want to keep living with me.

My family would vote unanimously that Gabriel saved me from certain aimless floating and failed relationships with poets and lead singers and introverted artists. I didn't really need saving in those ways or any way but Gabriel just IS what I am not. He is brown and I am not, he is a boy and I am not, he is disciplined,not me, extremely put together, takes a daily shower, nope, not me, hardworking, organized, productive, forgiving, nuh-uh, obedient, He's even a better mother than me if that's possible. I have him on imagination and bargain shopping, frivolity and overeating but other than that, the man changed the trajectory of who I might have become if left to my own devices. Basically I celebrate Gabriel today because it is the anniversary of his birth. I thank Maria Elena Manchinelly de Sanchez for putting him in the world. My whole daily life is a celebration of sorts that I get to be with him forever and, really, truly be so happy about that. Feliz cumpleanos, mi amor y que tengas mil anos mas, llenos de felicidad y besos y carne roja.

Te amo para siempre jamas.

3squared

2008-04-28T10:31:00.011-06:00

My little baby is three years old. (incidentally, my big baby is also three years old until June but I just won't go there right now). On Friday the 25th of April we had Ruby Claire's birthday. She started out wearing what I wanted her to and then, mid-morning she insisted on putting her nightgown back on and putting a lacy, swirly DI dress over the top of her pajamas. So that is what she looked like the rest of the day...pajamas with a dress on top. There are so many things I care about more than this (relatively) unphotogenic aspect of her life so that's fine. you
Wear whatever you please, Ruby, you know you're going to whether anybody 'lets' you or not.
There isn't anything about life that I love more than my little Booby Claire Sanchez. There are, roughly, 50 minutes a day when she is so sparkly and funny and happy and sweet and somehow, in my mom-mindedness, that's enough. the rest of the time she's just confused about life and her place in it I think. Why nothing works like she thinks it should. Why she can't do things as fast as she wishes she could. Why I don't understand what she's saying when she's being so emphatically clear. Why she came here to these morons who are probably ruining her and her potential to be a top accountant with their focus on frivolity and songs and mental instability.

This was the cake I made after she said she wanted a flower cake. Kind of conceptual I'm afraid but it was colorful and had three little fires on top for a while so that was enough. We decorated the cake in the morning

This is Ruby doing her part to preserve the sanitary nature of the project.

Then my dad who was still in town took the girls on a walk down to his house to have a last look around before he left later that day. My children love my parents. All they have to do is say, 'oh, let's not cry' and they just don't! what is up with that? This was a kind and happy thing for him to do and, amazingly, 30 minutes by myself with music very loud was very therapeutic. I like to think of it as a preview of sorts to future quiet times with my parents down the street.

Then we took my dad to the airport and went to get Gabriel at work downtown on our way home. We took Ruby to eat 'macaronis' at Noodles and Company where they sell really good macaroni for small people and big people and then Ruby wanted the gum out of Gabriel's mouth. gross.

At home we put them down for a nap which they didn't take so we sang and ate cake and opened her gifts. My mom and dad got her a strawberry shortcake book with a little musical thing and a wooden tool box and a puzzle. Of course she loved these things. A lot. I got Ruby a lovely princess dress that was all long and floaty and sparkly and...she hated it. Didn't want to wear it, didn't want to touch it, didn't love it. Then I tried to see if Dellah wanted to wear it to get the jealousy thing going for Ruby so Dellah put it on and wanted it removed immediately. Tough crowd. Grandparents 100% Parents O...

It was a good day. Pretty relaxed. No party bags and kids and carpool. I'm not ready for that. Not until she asks for it.
I like remembering when Ruby came to join us. It feels like a really long time ago and not just 3 years because she has had such a slow evolution to be who she is now. The birth certificate says 2005 so I guess it's just 3 years.
Ruby has taught me what it means to be a mother. Dellah was first but Dellah was easy and I knew what to do somehow. All her problems were solvable. All her crying stopped eventually. like they say in a League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard...it's the hard that makes it good". So I thank you, Ruby Claire. Without you my life would be too easy to deserve my mansion in Heaven. You are a precious girl to us.
As I tucked them in to bed that night and stood in the doorway while Dellah told her usual 5 minute story about yellow dinosaurs with blue mountains on their backs and the 3 little pigs and huffing and puffing and blowing everything over, I was going to leave when Ruby said, "Mami, I wan to tewl yu sometin"....she was obviously thinking very hard for something meaningful or coherent and after a few seconds she said, "um, lolipops aw beaudifow". Yes they are, Ruby...And so are you sweet baby girl.

elementary school

2008-04-23T14:10:00.003-06:00

My parents were in town this past weekend to bring a few of their belongings to their new house that I showed in the previous post. My dad drove with my brother in a moving truck because my brother is so nice that he flies to WA to drive with my dad and then stays the night he arrives here to UT and then leaves the next day to fly home to CA. I don't think, never mind, I know I'm not that nice.
My mom was all skeptical about her house like, oh, I don't know if it's big enough, I don't know if it's a mistake and then my brother shows up (whom she worships) and she's like all, "so, here's the house and here's the built in mantle and here's the metal balustrade and, I just think it's going to work great". My brother's in the building business so I guess she needed his approval which he wholeheartedly gave because her house is nice and doesn't suck. I apologize for the middle child angst.
I know it's there.
I'm self actualized.
I got it, okay?
So, anyway my parents brought some boxes unearthed from their current garage and in one of them were some of my personal papers (or stuff that I wrote when I was in elementary school. One of them was a story about some friends and a girl who has a crush on some boy and gets all nervous around him. Story of my life.
The other was a paper entitled "Twenty Four" only with just the numbers like "24"

I will now quote myself from my 4th grade delusions:

If I could be any age I wanted, I would be 24. One reason why I chose this age is because I would be out of college and then I could be what I have always dreamed of being, a dancer. I love my beautiful, talented dance teacher so much I want to be just like her. I think of all the fun it would be to teach people ballet. That is the career for me. The second reason why I would love to be 24 is so I could get married to a handsome man out of medical school that would take care of me and have a stable job so I would not have to work except to be a dancer. Having a checkbook and credit cards is my third reason. I have always dreamed of writing a check for the clothes I buy or saying to the lady at the counter in the Limited to 'Charge it'. I would absolutely love to be 24.

There are so many things wrong with that little paper I can't even begin to list them but I was just kind of struck by the fact that I must have thought 13 years in the future was just so far distant that all of those things would magically happen.
20 years in the future now at 31 I can safely look back and see that not even one of those things actually happened (except that I do have a checkbook that I use to pay my child's monthly tuition to a pre-school and tithing to my religion and I have a visa to take money from a checking account to buy food and the occasional frivolity). I think I finally passed math 97 and got my diploma when I was 29.
I broke my leg 8 years after that paper was written and pretty much sealed my dancing fate instantly. I was lumbering around the dirty streets of Honduras in a flowered dress from Costco when I was 24 speaking bad Spanish and hating my Guatemalan companion (I mean having many differences of opinion with her, of course not hatred right?) I did marry someone who has a good profession and provides well for the family. I guess that's the most important of all the things so it's not that bad but what a colossal DORK I was.
I love how I said "the Lady at the Limited" because to me she was a lady and not a girl because I was a girl...she was this old lady with a job and a checkbook...
amazing. the girls in stores are so young looking now.

I just spent the morning being the mom on Little House on the Prairie. She always had this basket of 'mending' to do whenever she sat down.
I had 2 princess dresses, a sweater and a little purse to fix while we watched the Swan Princess this morning.
A productive way to sit and do nothing while actually doing something.
Also my dad brought the piano that I played all growing up so I could have it in my house now. That made for a nice family home evening when I could play the piano to our standard fare 'as I have loved you' and 'twinkle, twinkle' and 'I am a Child of God'
I wish I had oreo cakesters.
or maybe I wish I had never tasted them at all...

a.m. woe

2008-04-09T14:34:00.004-06:00

it is a scientific fact that blog posts with pictures sell more than those without. there are pictures in this post...wait for it...

I am very tired. I have what is commonly known as a child in morning preschool. It starts at 9 which isn't actually very early but then there is the 30 minutes to eat 1/2 cup of cereal with milk and the 20 minutes of picking out, putting on or not putting on and then crying about it of the shoes. Then, this morning the plastic juice bottle I make juice in fell on the floor and burst lemonade all over the floor. This means that for a 9am appointment, we have to be awake at LEAST by 7:30 to have it all go correctly...today I was awake at 8:10...this is why things didn't go correctly.

I love sales. I am no respector of sales. Every sale is beautiful in my eyes...a sale at Nordstrom, a sale at DI a sale at Smith's a sale at Family Dollar...well, maybe not Family Dollar...I've tried..it's just gross in there. But the word sale makes me very glad indeed. I saw in the Sandy City paper that there was going to be a women's and children's and maternity sale at the hilltop United Methodist Church to benefit women't charities in the area. Sure, ok, yeah, help people...SELL STUFF!. Anyway so I called these people because I am an equal opportunity multi-religional proponent of sales. I asked them if I could be a 'seller' at their sale and they said, "wait, let me get back to you" and then they said, "yes...you are seller number 387".
i am seller number three hundred and eighty seven out of 150 sellers. I don't know how the Methodists count but there has to be something more to it than numerical order. Anyway, this is so great and I will tell you why.
1. They only take really excellently preserved/almost new clothes which is all we have here since we have too many clothes and we only wear them a little bit and also I have been about 5 sizes in the last 3 years.
2. It is the 14th year of the sale and people come from everywhere to go to it and it has a reputation for being a nice, quality sale....hence, many of my stuffs will be sold because I have nice, quality stuffs.
3. The sellers get 70% and the needy people get 30%. enough said.
You can charge more than a yard sale and you're getting paid and helping people and cleaning closets and, well, let's just say, seller 387 IS READY TO GET PAID!
it is friday and saturday at the hilltop methodist church in Sandy if you want gently used stuff for folks in your life.

that's all about that.

Let's move on to the next thing. This is a picture of me and my (green aura'd) friend Cindy at my wedding. This is a fine picture and everything but I am obsessed with my arms...my arms were thin. Why is it that the arms must betray you so early in life? that and the neck...the neck is a 30 something nemesis too.

This is a picture of the house down the street from me where Sharon and Lewi are moving in a few months to be our candle on the water till every wave is warm and bright and so forth. We like to think that we will be some kind of flicker on the water for them too in some heretofore undiscovered way.

This is what Dellah looks like in the bathroom wearing a yellow feathery shirt which gets feathers all over everything. I don't have a real reason for posting this other than the reason I often use....I am so sick of her right now I'll just admire her all silent and cute in this photo. I'm not even joking...she's on my last nerve. I love Dellah but she makes me confront all my flaws on an hourly basis and it's just too much sometimes.

I have to go and give the little beggars Raisin bran which they won't eat and eat something myself like a cupcake maybe. Also I want to buy that Rosetta Stone language learning software to learn French...Gabriel doesn't quite understand this I don't think...I NEED TO LEARN FRENCH, PEOPLE! I just can't die without knowing it.
I am having tacos for dinner.
last night I had stroganoff.
tomorrow I will have chimichangas.
I'm working on domesticating myself. It hurts.

up and at'em

2008-04-03T20:34:00.006-06:00

I always thought this was up and ADAM but I've recently noticed that it is up and at'em which makes a little more sense. There are a lot of things that I am realizing in this 31st year of my life that have given me clarity. Like the real words to some Journey songs and most people are just as scared of you as you are of them or sometimes even more so which is very enlightening indeed.

MOVIE UPDATE...
I am the last person to see Dan in Real Life on the planet but I loved it. Come on now, Steve Carrell...how does he do it? so endearing.

Martian Child...so cute I cried like 4 1/2 times. Anything where John AND Joan Cusack are cast together is automatically so good.

Note to the secret service...with our cable you have to call the place or go online to buy pay-per-view movies...except at our house where all you have to do is press the button that says 'buy' and you just get it for free...we've gotten a bill and the 3 movies we've pressed buy for haven't shown up...we called one time for a movie and that one showed up....people.
this is a beautiful thing.
when they stop showing We Own the Night and No Country for Old Men it will be even better.
Don't tell anyone we are accidentally stealing movies it just kind of happens.

Today was Dellah's un-birthday at her school because school ends June 3 and her b-day is the 4th. She doesn't understand in the least degree why today with all the singing and gift giving and cupcakes is not her actual birthday and I am totally tempted to go with it and just skip the June one but I have to stand amazed at the contentment level of the Sanchez 3 year olds. They spent 3 days carrying around these little Martha Stewart kids magazines picking out their perfect party colors and cupcake decorations and whatever and then, last night they went to sleep and I made some cupcakes with pink icing and a little lime green swirl in the center and Dellah woke up and was like, "YESSS, I am so happy I made these beautiful pink cupcakes and they are pink and pink is my favorite color and I love these cupcakes mom...mom you are the biggest princess mom ever. You are big and you are a princess." I just did whatever the heck I wanted and she thought she had made the whole thing up and it was perfect. I also needed that other comment, not the one about being big, the one about the princess thing because the other day, while combing her hair too hard, she said, "YOU ARE NOT A VERY GOOD MOMMY AND YOU ARE NOT A PRINCESS!" apparently to her, not being a princess is the worst dis you can throw at someone. She has no idea the tiara collection I had before she was any more than a glimmer in the world...me, not a princess...what a joke...i'm incognito presently..

This is she and Ruby playing musical chairs (or not) in Dellah's class today.

Monday I took my little tiny girl to her first day of real preschool in a real elementary school where she looked like a little key chain trinket among all those big tainted by the world, unwholesome 5 and 8 year olds.

I cried. I don't know why it's that cry thing whenever small people do something for the first time or the last time...
anyway, she's having her 30 day trial in the class to see if the teacher thinks she's 'special needs' enough to be in that special needs class. If not, I'm not sending her to preschool to be devoured by other kids and then pay $150/month for them to do it...we read a lot here in this house. She's bilingual...she's cute...her life won't be so bad if she just goes to kindergarten.

So, anyway, that's that for now.
up and at'em people, up and at'em.

the good thing about the end

2008-03-28T11:40:00.003-06:00

this week is over. It's one of those ones where I didn't accomplish even one thing and it's over before I even got going good. I don't mourn it's passing...que te vaya bien semana fea!
It's probably not over since it's only 11:42 am but I'm over IT...that's more like it.
I have 75 cents in the bank. How does this happen? I think it is called Easter/family over for easter lunch/honey baked hams are $44.
Yesterday I had one of those days where I was like, I'm going to Ross and I'm going to return this dress that I bought for an Easter dress that I didn't wear because it was stupid but I don't have the receipt so i will just have to get something in it's place.
This is one of my favorite scenarios. inevitably the 'thing' that replaces the returned thing is somewhat more monies than the initial purchase....
I don't even care.
I now have 3 maybe four shirts that make me feel cute and I am rebelling against the fact that I only have $1 - 25cents =ridiculously poor for 2 more days! My nemesis, Visa took care of those shirts for me and I'm sure I will hear the recourse heard round the world from my spouse but I'm like...next time put some candy in my easter basket, d**n it! Then maybe I'd have $6 in my account because I didn't have to buy my own rock candy suckers and lindor truffles.
inhale.
exhale.
(whispering) My children are sitting on the floor letting a wind up rabbit bounce across an over sized copy of the Rainbow Fish book and they are collaborating and laughing....I am whisper-typing this so that my contentment vibe doesn't stray far enough from the screen for them to sense it and promptly start fighting AGAIN!
INHALE.
great.
that's really good.
You should really start feeling this in your calves now...
keep it up.
nice.

ode to my orphaned endorphins....I think I will title a collection of poems ode to my orphaned endorphins as a way to somehow explain to myself why I am in a neverending state of chubbiness despite all the frozen hot chocolate and Cinnamon Toast Crunch I eat. Maybe just one poem. Then the collection can be called 'confessions of someone who really likes sugar'.
mysterious.
I am veiled in mystery.
I am one of those girls that leaves a trail of diamond questions and perfumed assumptions about my wonderfulness when I leave the room.
or something.

biting

2008-03-20T09:55:00.003-06:00

how I hate biting. I don't know why children bite. I'm so glad most adults have stopped (Mike Tyson notwithstanding). I don't know when it comes to their mind that biting is going to solve all their woes.
it bites.
Scratching. Another feline quality exposed in smaller humans.
Kicking. Useful in soccer and swimming. Not so much among your peers unless you're a bucking bronco or a little donkey or something.

I just washed my hair in the sink because it was so gross and I just didn't have it in me to immerse myself in the whole shower. It was quite pleasant actually. Have you ever been that close to your sink? I noticed some scratches I didn't see before. Soft Scrub.

Have you ever had a husband who is not from this country and doesn't think easter baskets are important and you are from this country and you want an easter basket? problem.
I am not my own easter bunny people. isn't that just illegal or something?
question.
Have you ever had in-laws from a different country who have expressly in so many words vocalized the fact that they don't approve of you and then announce that they are coming to your state to visit....for TWO MONTHS!!!!?
I sincerely hope not. Especially if you have social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder and need anti-depressants in your everyday normal life with no semi-permanent house guests. Especially if you feel all your cooking powers have left you and everything you make tastes like poop and especially if you will be left alone with them fully expecting you to entertain them (I wish I really wish I were joking or even exaggerating) all day until their son gets home all the while making three meals a day. I don't even know if I am even mentally capable of thinking of three distinct things to eat all day. This is what I eat. Raising Bran. Vitamin water. 100 calorie packs of Sandies. Spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese and if I am really feeling adventurous...grapes. I can repeat these things any number of times during the day. I don't use ingredients. I don't make more than one bowl of multiple dishes in a meal-like array. I AM NOT THAT KIND OF HOUSEWIFE, PEOPLE!!!
help me help me help me help me help me help help help help.............me.
It's not until may 10th.
I have a few more minutes.
My parents have an empty house down the street that they don't yet live in. Escape plan 1.
mostly I just obsess over stuff until it's like apocalyptic and then when it happens it's only mildly apocalyptic.
still.
YOU like me don't you? dear void? YOU think I need an easter basket that I didn't completely stock myself and you think a month in my 3 bedroom house is a lot don't you?
DON'T YOU?
you're my last hope obi wan voidnobi...

It's tuesday...that's martes...here in the neighborhood

2008-03-18T09:42:00.003-06:00

Hard times, people. I feel my patience unraveling. I don't want it to. I totally know it's better to be calm and yet, here I am...Ruby slapping Dellah, Dellah biting her fingernails only to taste the 'no bite' stuff I put on them and be sent over the edge into screaming fits. Ruby's in time out actually kicking my bathroom door and Dellah is spitting on my carpet. Ruby can now come out of time out but she'd rather scream and tell me that now, NO, she doesn't want to leave time out. Only because now I want her too. Language fails them both...they'd rather scream. I'd rather run away. Far.....away. But then I go to jail for abandonment and I really like these people...just not right now. So I put this picture on my blog to remind me that they are not shape shifting monsters posing in human form...they are supposed to be these angel creatures with no guile and no accountability. Lucky them. I'm totally responsible for my feelings of retreat and my salivating wish that I was anywhere else. what are you gonna do, you know?
cheerio.

FYI for those needing their GED

2008-03-16T22:29:00.004-06:00

Movie Reviews

nice. I just tried this an hour ago and it was elementary school so I guess I've gotten more eloquent the last 60 minutes but I'll take it.

mayhem and foolishness on Saturday

2008-03-15T20:42:00.005-06:00

Part one.
Today was the fulfillment of every parent's dream; a reason to bribe and cajole your children for three months into doing what you want them to do. It was the Disney Princess Wishes on Ice. Gabriel was on the traxx after the opening night and saw all these little girls wearing their princess dresses. He said he thought we should get them some dresses so they could feel all special and happy and whatever. I thought about that for quite a while and I browsed the possibilities in every mercantile in my and several other zip codes. I came to the conclusion that I just couldn't do it. Oh, we have dress up clothes coming out the wazoo. We have superman and spiderman and tigers and ladybugs and ladies and turtles and flappers and white gloves and 12 pairs of plastic high heels but not a Disney specific dress in the bunch. And why would you go generic princess to a Disney princess event?
I wouldn't.
And then came the brainwave, halfway between the second target, the third wal mart, the first kid to kid and the only disney outlet store......PAJAMAS!!!!!!!!!
Every kids needs pajamas. Every girl loves princesses. Pajamas are engineered for comfort. Pajamas can be found with Princesses on them.
I don't think I have to say more but let me just tell you.
I had it narrowed down to a chartreuse pair and a pink pair that the girls actually picked and had bought the long sleeved coordinating t's to go underneath since it's not warm out and they were short sleeved. Stay with me.
So I'm milling around wal-mart which is where I finally ended up and after my 11th pass through the baby/kids part I see this lavender revelation....because it had long sleeves and must be put on clearance because we are forced to look at and buy summer things when it's snowing out just because it's March, It wasn't with the regular pajamas. And yet, there it was with the ugly generical onesies and dora the explorer nonsense that no one wanted from christmas.....
FOR FIVE DOLLARS!!!!!
Now they are 18 months size but I am totally and completely ALL about kids wearing stuff until it won't even go over their heads anymore and they can't reach out in front of themselves without ripping a seam. My 3 year olds are wearing 0-3 month pants as capris and 6-9 month dresses as shirts. So there you are. No undershirts needed. Five dollars. Two of the exact same thing so we don't have to hear any of the lip and No toddlers trudging around downtown with plastic high heels and blisters.
So we have these comfy kids and we're riding the traxx which is always fun and we get to the arena and I just want to make it clear to you.....
FOOLISHNESS people........I have never in my life seen such foolishness. I am apologizing here for offending the people who bought the $20 light up wands and the $12 snow cones and the $10 cotton candy but I am not saying a thing to those people who had taken their toddlers to the hair salon and were carrying babies that couldn't even walk yet wearing so much tulle I was having severe discomfort just looking at them not to mention wondering how much money these people had spent while the 300,000th Cinderella with the curled up-do was walking by with a light up wand and a snow cone and a flounder the fish hat and a $5 program while their dad was holding the huge kettle corn and the drink and the ice cream and the twizzlers.
I want you to think I'm joking. That's what makes it such foolishness.
Anyway, we had good seats and like a complete dork I start crying right when the lights turn off and my breath catches in my throat and I'm like, 'I love the arts...I love America....I love Disney Princesses...I love five dollar pajamas.'

This is Jasmine being hurled in the air holding her leg in a split which I don't even understand still. And many more things of that nature happened making the whole thing worth seeing
.
So my children are now in bed wearing their memento of the day (because they can because their cute nightgown shirts are now just nightgowns) without any glowly wandy thing that would have broken on the way home and, actually now that I'm listening...they're totally not asleep...never mind. At least I can't see them.

part two.

I saw Penelope again last night. I should stop. I just can't help the prettiness and there were girls going that I like so I had to. but I really need to stop the Penelope sickness obsession.

Part three

It's a full on blizzard and I just put my orange all-weather Tommy Bahama rug on my back porch...now it's a white, frozen mat of winter and and I can't bring it in or even move it. That b better be all-weather is all I'm saying.
Part Four

I made one of those junior high mix cd's for our pediatrician of all these songs in Spanish that I like a lot and I brought it to Dellah's appointment yesterday like, "HI..here's some music I made for you and a card..." He likes boys so I told him I tried to pick cute boys singing good songs in Spanish in case he wanted to look them up later on the internet. I felt strangely like a weird stalker girl even though he's my friend and then it occured to me that I had never made a mix cd for anyone. It's sort of stressful, right? Whatever you put on it is sort of rating your coolness factor....but Dr. Bancroft doesn't speak Spanish so he'll probably just continue thinking I'm nice. And why do I care because I'm married and he doesn't even like girls!

thanks for the memories...

attention

2008-03-05T14:09:00.003-07:00

I am now going to have a moment of silence for the movie 'Penelope' and James McAvoy in general but especially in the movie 'Penelope' ....

thank you for your participation. There was not even a single thing that I didn't like about the movie Penelop except Christina Ricci who was the star of it. Some people in the theater were like, "oh, she looks cuter with the pig nose" and I was thinking, exactly! That's it! The problem with her is that her nose is disproportionately small for her face.
Enough about that. The room she lives in and the clothes she wore and the town and the comedy that was so subtle and smart and the James McAvoy were all so o.t.h (off the hook)
seriously.
so good. I want a red tree in my room and a swing and a better than Anthropologie wardrobe. Green Mary Janes. Must have them.
I then stayed at the movie theater after the 8:25 Penelope for the 10:15 Other Boleyn Girl.
eh.
I have to say I thought I liked Natalie Portman before but I liked Scarlett Johanson so much more. That girl was so pretty.
I much prefer Jonathon Ryes Meyers any time of the day for Henery the 8th...Eric Bana has this weak chin which makes me not trust him.
unlike James McAvoy.
I love Gabriel very much. Movies are just different fake story like of people. I fake story like James McAvoy mucho.
that's all. I have to wash grapes now for my fruit bats.

I'm like the most handiest person ever.

2008-03-03T12:43:00.002-07:00

First of all, I would like to draw my readership's attention (being full aware that I don't even have a readership so this is mostly just congratulating myself) to the totally long line of linkage there to your right. I DID IT!! How long have I had this blog? Like almost 3 years? And the only 3 little things over there were done by Marsha at a party like 2 years ago. I don't know how to organize them alphabetically but I received a vision the other night of how to make these little links and, like a good Christian, I immediately came to 'template land' and succeeded. I love little visions.
Now that you are dumbfounded by my electronical prowess, let me draw your attention to the fact that I just washed my walls. I don't even know what's wrong with me because I have this huge headache and I'm hungry and I'm walking around with my new Clorox Green Solutions bottle washing all the walls. I washed the little parts of my windows where the window closes and it's always full of sheesh. I used ten thousand hundred paper towels which totally defeats the purpose of buying Clorox Green products but, you know what...eat it. I'm addicted to paper towels.
Also I just played parque (park) with my children which means that a parental figure donates their body to the cause and small children romp around all over me and want me to flip them and throw them and jostle them happily for and hour or something. Mostly I think that fathers need to be the primary bread winning parks because I just have other stuff to do but their little street urchin faces were all anticipatory and their little princess dresses were all cutely disheveled and I caved.
So now I feel as though I have exercised on top of all the other productivity I have produced with many productive products as a result.
There was this epoch in my life where all these people were like, "you look like Milla Jovovich." and I was like...'thanks'
Now she has a line at Target and I use Clorox products and no longer get told that I look anything like her....
'two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both....and that has made all the difference', right Robert? that's what I thought.
They have found me. Crap.
I am now being pulled and hit and pounded with small doctor instruments by Ruby who is yet to even say a single word so I have no idea what she's even on about at all. She's just all screamy and annoying and I thought They didn't know I was up here.
So now I have to be the Doctor because for some reason it's just so much fun when I fake take their temperature and fake listen to their pulse and fake look in their ears with fake plastic doctor paraphernalia....
But wait..
I can add this to my list of accomplishments.
....did not completely go out of my mind all the way yet and it's a whole 12:57pm...
I need seriously really and honestly need a jamba juice. not a very big one. just a jamba juice and a salad from Cafe Rio and a creme horn from Wal Mart....
i totally deserve it.
like totally.

sabado is saturday

2008-03-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

It has been a week filled with the surreal. listed in reverse from most recent they are.
1. I just looked out my bedroom window to see my husband pulling out of the driveway in a white BMW but he had to stop for the other white BMW that was passing to get to its home down the street.
2. I went to Meridian Title Company yesterday and signed the words 'Sharon Tuttle by Erin Elaine Sanchez her attorney in fact' about 5000 times and now my parents are my neighbors.
3. I somehow spent $400 yesterday (which is, by the way just shy of all the money that I have for these two weeks) on food! (and some body wash and that Eckhart Tolley book that everyone's peeing themselves over to see if it's the shiz or not. I'll be the judge of that.
4. I woke up reluctantly on Thursday to find that Gabriel was working from home. Then I got my offspring dressed and we went to take Dellah to pre-school. As we approached the school there was an eerie lack of mile long line of parents in SUV's waiting to pick up their small children. There were no lines. There was no one. There was no school thursday. I would know this if my child were not a hoarder and didn't stuff papers and school calendars and bits of string and hair clips into strange and very small places where i find them weeks or months later which doesn't help me on thursday not to look like an idiot and doesn't help me period in the feeling that I have sufficiently passed OCD to an innocent child who is really alarmingly strange.

I think that's enough. I only got back 3 days and I can't remember wednesday and tuesday and it's all starting to freak me out anyway.
Freaky like the fact that I haven't really ever been a chocolate person at all, I'm more of a hard sugar/rock candy/blow pop person and lately I am completely engulfed in my need to eat see's candy and hershey's kisses. What is going on! I can't even help it. I'm chubby and I can't even help it. I have zits and I can't even stop myself. My hair is so ugly it makes me want to throw up all over the mirror and my pants are tighter and I'm like, BRING ON THE CHOCOLATE!
I have a problem.
Another freaky thing is that I cleaned out all my clothes the other week and got rid of about 123 pounds of clothing and shoes and decided that I would be my own Stacey London and get rid of all my little old navy zip up hoodie things which all happened to be black. And now what am I doing? well, people, now I am wearing my husbands boy zip up hoodie which is navy and too big and I'm wondering why I thought I was never going to ever be casual again with two toddlers and no housekeeper. Again. Self Sabbotage 101. Never expect too much of yourself people...it's just mean when you're cold in your house and you're not wearing your own hoodie. I don't care if navy is the new black, I want my hoodie.
The weather took a turn for the British today it looks like. I hope we get one more little snow and then let that be that. It's all been fine and stuff but when winter is over it's just over and i am over IT. Plus, then Snoasis can reopen and I can begin my warm weather addiction of shaved ice which makes me feel better than chocolate because it's technically just $3 water and you can wear short sleeves.
aaaaannnndddd....now it's raining.
I guess this is what saturdays are for. sitting. waiting for your spouse to return with your bag of easter wrapped hershey kisses because you just ran out of the valentine's wrapped ones and watching rain trickle all over stuff.

lunes is monday

2008-02-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a little melancholic today. I can't explain it but I think Dr. Oz would say I need some vitamin D. It is very cloudy. I felt I needed to come here and talk to the 'great dear void' and feel better afterward.
Yesterday I did two things that I didn't want to do but I did them anyway. #1 I asked my neighbor who's kids I have taken care of several times if she could take care of Dellah this morning for a little while while I took Ruby for a test. She said yes. It wasn't even that hard and my blood pressure returned to normal pretty much instantly so I think this whole connecting with humans and asking for help/being not able to do every single thing by myself has some merit. #2 Go to church. I wanted to sleep. That sounds so childish I know because I've been going to church every Sunday now for 20+11 years and I know I'm going to go so why do I do this but man, I just really wanted to sleep. Instead I went to referee for an hour, listen for an hour and teach a lesson on "our purpose in life" to a bunch of brooding or sleeping or despondent young women and left feeling glad I went. See, Erin...feel the fear (or dread) and do it anyway. If I didn't have health insurance that covered it, the therapy would totally be worth the money. Look at all I learned.

So I took Ruby to the Jordan School which is a place that looks like an elementary school and it probably could be called that but it's filled with little tiny wheelchairs outside all the classrooms and there are all these special chairs and rooms and equipment because it is for special needs kids. It's where all the therapists that work for the Jordan School District have their offices and where Ruby goes for a little 90 minute class once a week. She had her evaluation for pre-school to see if she was going to be subsidised by the state and be a special needs kid in a pre-school or if she was going to be like Dellah and be a 'non-delayed peer' in a class full of special needs kids. After two hours of watching her match the yellow with the red and the square with the circle and sit motionless when asked to pick up a block and hand it to the lady and not be able to tell the lady what kinds of things 'bark', I was either going to cry really hard or run away or need to drink a mountain dew of epic proportions. She qualified to go to the preschool and be one of the kids that need to be there with a special ed teacher which made me feel glad that she's getting some recognition and help and sad that she needs recognition and help. Sweet little Ruby. You know that poem called Winkyn, Blinkyn and Nod? Maybe not but it's kind of like a poem to read at bedtime about these children who go to fish for stars in the sky in a wooden shoe and it's pretty beautiful actually. Well Ruby knows the entire thing. She can say, "Where are you going and what do you wish, the old moon asked the three...we've come to fish for the herring fish that live in this beautiful sea...nets of silver and gold have we said, winkyn and blinkyn and nod." And she knows the whole thing, like 40 more lines that what I just wrote. Those are not 2 year old words to say and she says them. Things like that are confusing when some things are so good and others are non-existent....She's not rainman, she's totally functional there's just little holes...little frayed parts that make the whole fabric not so strong.
Enough about that.
They've been showing the Girl with the Pearl Earring on IFC every day for some reason and I am completely obsessed with watching it. I have seen it so many times already and I still keep watching it...It's Collin Firth I tell you....good grief. Also I rented the showtime series the Tudors and I was already in love with that time period in history and King Henry and his wives and daughters but the show is pretty amazing. I asked Gabriel if he were interested in paying $40 more a month than we already are so we can get that one channel and he seemed slightly negative on the issue..I guess I can understand that.
Maybe I've mentioned before that Gabriel drives the world's oldest Toyota Corolla which we are told used to be red and is now a very matte, very faded, magenta-ish color. It was $1,700 which is fine but we've had to fix it so much in the last year and it just really sucks so he's getting a new car. A BMW car. Now I'm not exactly sure how the physics of the whole thing works but I wanted to get a different car a while ago because I thought my domestic car was losing value and it was too big....we decided it wasn't a need so we would forgo the new car. Then his car has some legitimate problems I admit but, come on people, '89 Toyota to '02 BMW? Perhaps we can negotiate a little trade.....he used to work at a car dealership and he went back there to visit and they're giving him the car at cost which is actually probably cheaper than a new corolla or even a used one so it's ok....It just sounds so luxurious, right? Gabriel basically IS a BMW though...foreign...beautiful...stylish...efficient... so I suppose it's only right. But does that mean I'm a Pacifica? I think I am an MDX....most definitely.
Mostly I think that the car doesn't mean anything about who you are but be realistic now, if you had a choice, wouldn't you choose a nicer car if it were the same money as a not so nicer car? This means that we have to get rid of our nice Peruvian friend who came twice a month to clean our house which I had to clean when I got home because it really wasn't and take care of our kids by letting them sit in water but not applying soap or shampoo to them. That's ok. I feel better cleaning my own house and whatever else.
I bought myself several see's candies the other day and that was unwise to say the least. That key lime truffle is off the hook and the lemon one is not far behind. Not to mention the butter cream business that I just can't get enough of.
Ah, well....I'm smelling poop all the way in my room from some culprit who was supposed to be napping in theirs so I'll go attend to weightier matters.

offspring

2008-02-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

This is Ruby practicing to be either a boy or a gang member. The hat was so that the earphones wouldn't keep falling out. She listened to that song by Rob Thomas that's at the end of "Meet the Robinsons" 26 times. I never thought I would be one of those parent's that's like, 'yeah, lets get my toddler an iphone and a computer but one of those tiny ipod things with 75 songs? Sign me up. Gabriel hopes we get her this item sooner than later so he can have his own ipod back..we wouldn't even need 75 songs we just need the one. That one and 'Bustopher Jones wears white spats' from the musical cats....I've always called her bustopher jones so she thinks it's about her.

And that's Dellah and Ruby last sunday when Dellah gave her talk in church. There were great pictures of smiles and sweetness but no picture depicted their relationship better than this one. "Yes we are holding hands and we are exactly the same size but we are sisters, not friends and not twins and we don't even know if were that stoked about it at all"

This is is my child who has just learned how to smile so big in pictures. This is the tree that she made for christmas that we had hanging on a doorknob for 3 months and Gabriel had had enough...it is now immortalized photographically and in the trash. I tried to preserve every item that she ever touched, drooled on or scribbled with a crayon her whole life and now I'm like, look, I love her, she's right here in front of me...why don't I stop building a shrine to a living kid who's 3-D and start building some kind of memory in her mind of a mom who doesn't obsessively hoard paper goods. Obviously there are things I keep but not everything. Our house isn't big enough. NO one's house is big enough.

those are the people I made. They are cute and weird. They are mine. I am cute and weird. 1+1=2 always.

taggety tag tag

2008-02-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Cindy tagged me all the way from a different country so I guess I'll respond. Andi tagged me all the way from Orem so I guess its samesies for both.

10 years ago I was: if I'm not mistaken, in the worst relationship in the entire world with a person who hated me and I worked at the Baby Gap or had just stopped working there to go home and decide to go on a mission which I decided not to do until 2 years later. ten years ago is the new hell except that I wore a size 6.

5 things on my to do list.
1. laundry
2. write more poems and stories
3. clean out my closet already and get over it.
4. Take a shower cause it's been a while.
5. help Dellah give her first talk in primary tomorrow.

Things I would do if I became a billionaire
-Hire someone to do numbers 1-5 above.
-Have an Acura MDX.
-Buy Honduras so I could help those people have a clue.
-Buy a nice person who would want to let me sleep every day until 11am and take care of my children or even if they didn't want to they would have to because I bought them.
-Buy the supernanny to temporarily come and help me be a better mother.
-Buy a Cold Stone franchise and a Cafe Rio franchise so I would never go hungry again.
-Pay my parents back all the money they ever feel like they wasted on a self absorbed kid.
-Pay to have Otis Redding resurrected to sing 'These arms of mine' and 'Try a little tenderness' in my living room.
-Go and visit the whole world and all the cool places
-Buy a publishing company to publish anything me or my dad ever write so we feel like we got published.
-Tell Gabriel to never go to work and always stay home with me so we can travel and eat cafe Rio and vanilla creme horns from Wal Mart and drive around in our Acura MDX.

3 Bad Habits
I am easily offended when I should just assume that people don't mean to be idiots.
I don't make dinner every night or even most nights.
I think swear words a lot

5 places I've lived
North Carolina (Kinston and Bear Grass)
Washington State (puyallup)
Utah (provo/Salt Lake/Sandy)
Honduras (Monjaras, Langue, Cantarranas, San Lorenzo, Valle de Angeles and Tegucigalpa)
That's all...I've visited more but not lived there.

5 jobs I've had
Sales associate and visual displays at Gap Kids
Temp secretary during summers
English and creative writing teacher at Heritage school
Spanish teacher at MTC
Two children 10 months apart.

Things most don't know about me
-I really am terrified of the Statue of Liberty
-I would trade spanish in if i could speak fluent French
-I wish I was a voice over artist
-I can only eat ketchup if it's already on an assembled fast food hamburger and I don't look at it.
-I can't leave baby dolls thrown around or I feel like they're uncomfortable and I have to make them lay down and feel comfy
-I can't drive a stick shift

That's it, the whole truth.
feliz dia sabado.

Arise and sit down, oh Zion

2008-02-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

I must stand and be recognized as a very inconsistant blogger (among other things). My name is Erin and I have undiagnosed ADD and diagnosed OCD and need an MD to figure it all out. The only things that remain constant through all things are mostly my gender and my marriage due mostly to the song "if you could hie to Kolob". Children are not included here because they are not always children but, often, beasts of the field and things that crawl upon the earth. Extremely unnerving how children are there one second and gone the next in the throws of body-snatching heathenistic screams and then back just as quickly to smile and ask for more goldfish cwakahs. I just sit down and take it, I tell you because I don't want to go to jail and I don't want to become a hiss and a byword among these same people in 20 years.
Let me expound for one moment on the gravity and severity of toddler diarreah. I don't even know how to spell it, it's so intensely (bowel) moving. Dellah literally exploded excrement from one corner of my once new home to the other. She would just stand there...just stand in one spot with no intention of moving and burst all over the floor. It finally got to the point where I threw clothes away rather than try and negotiate a way in my mind that I could touch them enough to get them clean. And then there was the throw up. There was throw up on my clothes and in my hair and hers. There was throw up for 3 days and my child only weighed 27 pounds at almost 4 years old before this. I have no idea how she survived unless she morphed into one of the afore mentioned wild animals who only eat like twice a month or something. If that clorox anywhere solid surface spray is just a marketing hoax it totally worked on me and two bottles of it that I used in that many days.
Now it is time to talk about a well known place in a little known neighborhood. DSW. It is a shoe store. It is pretty much like a glorified famous footwear with cute shoes for ok prices but nothing so spectacular you wet yourself. It is normal save the little room in back wherein lies the clearance. Clearance unlike any clearance you have ever seen. 80% off people. Shoes that were 80 pesos are now $16 and shoes that were $39 are $8. When you realize that it's not just the naturalizer square toe pumps and the blue hush puppy sandals with embroidered paislies but the Steve Madden and Tahari and BC and Diesel ones as well......well let me just tell you people...it is religious. Not all of them are 80% off. some are only 70% or 50% off but that doesn't lessen the thrill.
There is a DSW in Midvale very close to me on 7200 south....there is also one (and this is the epiphany)...at Daybreak! Perhaps you know this and you think, oh...it's just like the one in Midvale, I don't need to go.....uh, yes you do. This DSW is beautiful. It has dark carpets and a huge chandelier with little silver shoes hanging from it. It has huge 9 foot mahogany mirrors leaned effortlessly against the walls for admiring yourself and especially your feet parts. Also there is the most tidy Ross I have ever been to. (if you think that sounds impossible, I did too until I saw it myself). I think the goal is actually Gateway-esque out there. There's a Red Robin and the coolest looking Target on the earth and tons of stores that have nothing in them yet because it's new....I have been told that I could sell tampons to the menopausal so don't rush the 8 hours over to Daybreak unless you're already going so far west you can see California over the hill for some reason and you decide to stop by...I just thought I'd share my newest experience consumerally speaking. Four pairs of shoes people...four pars of shoes for $56.
I saw in my absence that I have been tagged by some associates of mine and so I will include the illuminating information about myself that you, I'm sure, have been literally losing sleep for lack of knowing.

There just has got to be some sun somewhere

2008-01-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

Good Grief, people. I AM SO FREAKING COLD! I always used to think my parents were so lame when I was like, 'i'm cold' and they were like, 'go put on some socks'. I always thought that home was a place where you didn't have to be fully and completely dressed and coverd with an afghan to feel cozy. Now I am living in my own house and I refuse to put on socks because it's just the principle of the thing, isn't it? Home is where the heart and the cold are apparently because no amount of thermostat is warming up this tiled kitchen floor. There is so much snow every single where I look it's just getting old. I'm over it. I'm just ready for two or three layers of clothing instead of 4 or 5. I am ready to have children who don't look like those kids in 'Flowers in the Attic' and can run and frolic in the outside world without their green snot freezing on their small anemic faces.
Ruby calls Dellah Ruby. I know I have mentioned this before but it never ceases to amaze me how her mind works. just when you think she's not the brightest light in the firmament she does these things that let you know that she's really got a lot going on, there just isn't a logical output button.
this happened today...
ruby: Mami, I wan mas gofish cwakahs
me: Ruby, you need to ask Dellah if you can have some of her goldfish crackers
ruby: Ruby puedo tener mas gofish cwakahs?
me: Ruby, her name is Dellah, your name is Ruby...ask Dellah if you can have some crackers and ask her with love.
Ruby: Deyah Ruby, can I haf mas gofish cwakahs?..... porta bort.
Dellah: here, Ruby
Me: Say thank you, Ruby
ruby: Thank you Ruby
me: No, Ruby, tell Dellah thank you..
ruby: Gracias Ruby.

HONESTLY!!! THE INSANITY.

Yesterday I went out to dinner with the girls I visit teach with to the little italian restaurant, Fratelli that was built in our neighborhood. It was fine, you know? We tried to talk about something religious so we could count it as our visiting teaching for the months so we talked about Mitt Romney among other things. They are lovely and nice with sparkly lipgloss and smart and funny and I came home and I was like, 'eh'....you know, I would rather clean toilets with my old friends than go be with new people and be like all, "oh, wow...that's great...what a good deal,......that's so funny...sure, you betcha,...how cute!' and then totally feel like 'eh' when it's over. There is just something to be said for the deep end of the pool you know...you can see to the bottom of the shallow end before you even get in it.

But I came home from that evening (sincerely hoping that it didn't count as my time by myself this week) to find Dellah playing Curious George on the laptop and working the little mouse and so proud of herself. Then she started singing, "Who let the dogs out, woof, woof, ruff, ruff"
I have always hated that song but it was so cute. I tried to ignore that fact that she said she learned it from Miss Jolley, her teacher at school...what happens at Quail Hollow elementary stays there I guess.

SO sunday my parents come to visit this winter wonderland of frozen-ness because they are thinking of buying a house here....I mean here....RIGHT DOWN THE STREET! hallelujah for me. The thought of it makes me feel pretty happy, not just to have some help every now and again but just to have some folks we're related to who care one way or the other. We're talking same ward here, people....same pew at church folks....I totally won the lottery if this happens because any and all future Sanchez people who come out of my belly will immediately be easier to deal with if there are 4 people on the job, you know? My dad could totally be our handy man and some projects could get done (not that Gabriel isn't the love of the century but, you know...handy is another thing altogether, isn't it)

I just saw hairspray....'eh'
i just saw stardust....pretty good because Claire Daines didn't cry that much with the ugly cry face she's perfected
I just saw Live Free or Die hard...awesome
I just saw the Last Legion with Collin Firth and I don't even care who else because it was Collin Firth and ancient rome and merlin the magician....dreamy

I think that's that for now

well, hello two thousand and eight.

2008-01-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is a whole new day, people.
I love headbands. I have now amassed upwards of 11 headbands in the last couple of months. I'm of the opinion that if you don't constantly photograph yourself to plant any seeds that you might not look good in something, you should probably wear a headband every day.
My favorite thing is to wear a headband.
Also my other favorite thing is when Ruby doesn't wear a shirt but she wears pants and she tries to smell the artificial greenery on the banister and asks, 'mom, what it sme-oh yike....oh....limon..que dico'

I had this nice thought yesterday in church. Angels are the ones that write things down in heaven on their very beautiful unlined journals/books of life so that no one will ever forget it and if they do they can read the whole thing when they die. So when you get married and the preacher says we are gathered before God and these witnesses, that's just it. White dress, partner, house, kids, vacations, you die. Then sometimes when you go to other places to get married you hear that you are before God, Angels and witnesses......isn't that just nice? Isn't that almost sublime? white dress, partner, house kids (or not), vacation, then you die and everyone remembers it...it's written down...it always will be...(unless you don't want it to be) and you get to read it again. I thought that was a very happy thought.

I missed story time at the Library. oops. Also I got some amazingly out of my mind idea that, in a last ditch effort to remain sane at 9:45 am, I should get out the rubber stams and ink pads. I suppose it could have been worse or more messy but I'm going to have to think about how. Thank goodness for color wonder products but if you have to have their paper to draw on that gets annoying. Someone needs to tell their friend's cousin to invent the color wonder stamp pad, ok?

I believe that I wrote a long time ago about my bobby pin angst. It's coming back. WHERE THE CRAP ARE ALL MY BOBBY PINS??? arrrrrrggghgghghghgghggh.

We have this thing called 'hora de silencio' every day where you have to go be by yourself and it's your option to rest or not but you have to STAY IN YOUR ROOM! Dellah decided on Saturday that not only would she scream and hit me and insult me and wake up Ruby who wanted to exercise her option to sleep right across the hall, but she would also agree that, oh yes, sure, she could leave 'hora de silencio' but she would also lose ALL her toys and ALL her videos. I can't believe this kid. She followed me around while I, in an absoulte raging, boiling, angry rant, filled three trash bags with toys and 64 children's videos and went to put them ALL in the big green dumpster in the garage. (we all know that I'm not completely stupid so, of course I went back and hid the bags in another spot which Dr. Phil says not to do but he didn't spend $1,000 on videos over 3 years claiming that they were for children when mostly they were for me just to throw them away for real). So she doesn't even really care that she has no toys and I want to scrape my face off because she's a mean, evil wretch. I'm just kidding child and family services, I love her but, come on...what in the world do I do now and why is she so screamy and mad all the time? I told her that for every day she stays in her hora de silencio, she can remember one toy or video and win it back....so far they're all still resting peacefully behind the crib and the Christmas decorations.

I can't find one song on James Morrison's c.d., Undiscovered that I don't absolutely want to listen to all day.
Also I got the recipe from my sister-in-law, Rebecca for the frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity 3's in New York and I make it every sunday which is so incredibly tasty that I can hardly stand it.
also I got this huge red armoire from Downeast Home in their after Christmas sale for $250 and Gabriel had bought this other huge armoire to put the TV in as a surprise for after I got home from my parents' at Christmas and now I feel like I have some substantial pieces of furniture that come closer to the ceiling that my previous tiny tables and apartment stuff.
frivolities.
i gotta go vacuum

8 thousand reasons why I am so glad I'm not famous

2007-12-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks have been a weird haze of activity and amnesia. I feel like eating my honey bunches of oats in the morning was about 3 days ago by 5 pm. every day.
So I was in the tabernacle choir thing from the 12 to the 16th and I mean it was REALLY time consuming. I was living on Vitamin Water and tight leotard energy for about a week.
The plusses included backstage pass around my neck allowing me to park and walk around wherever I wanted and fitting into size 10 pants for the first time in 3 years (6 years ago I would have thought that wasa huge size and now I'm like all, 'look at me, I'm so hot' and whatnot. But I am seriously glad that another DVD for mass distribution in Wal Mart, Deseret Book and beyond will not be recorded with me looking like a swollen toad in the middle of a pond with no lily pad to be found (perplexed frog) EVER AGAIN!!! good grief. wrong business to be in if you're going to reproduce and take the wrong anti-depressant for 2 years thereby thwarting any and all weight loss and enciting the accumulation of MORE weight. I digress. The point is that for those few days I was in show business actually. I had my makeup and hair done by professionals, I had costumes and a special door thorough which I was to enter and exit. I had taping sessions to get enough material for cutting and editing a DVD and I performed before about 80,000 people all together (I find that if I keep saying I you may think it was just me when there were 140 of us and the tabernacle choir with 300 and the King's singers who are world famous and the orchestra and the bell choir thus making me a veritable speck on the surface but in my reality it was 'me' you know?) and we were on live television on sunday morning. so it was a pretty neat thing to do and we got to hang out with the king's singers a lot if you've ever heard of them you'll care, if not, ehh...whatever.
I never thought I would feel this way but, aside from the exhilaration of performing for an audience, I really am not too ennamored with the whole, 'leave your family for hours and days and be around a bunch of folks in tights and too much make-up'. If anything I definitely am more in love with my little Sanchez group than I was before it all started. Families are just so good. It feels so good to have somewhere to go and people who care if you do or not.

So monday afternoon we got on a plane and came to Washington to visit my parents which we didn't know we were going to do until a few days before. My mom just decided she couldn't stand the thought of holidays with no one around, germs or no germs and you know how we aim to please So I came with the girls (Gabriel had to stay home and work and work and work) and here we are. We have had fun (my sister and her kids came too, both of us without spousal support so noise and stress abound). Jenny just left a little while ago and we leave tomorrow morning which is Christmas eve to try and squeeze in love and fun and memories and a batch of cookies for santa with our Popi (my husband) before Christmas. My mom who is currently hairless might be the cutest bald person I have ever seen. I'm not saying I want cancer because I don't but at least I'm not terrified of baldness because she wears it well (underneath a hat).
I'll post pictures of the dance thing and our actual christmas together as a family a little later when stuff stops spinning.

this just in...

2007-12-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

I think I must be the most boring person I know....i actually don't even believe that because I think I would have fun with me if I weren't me but this whole blog thing is enough to make you feel a little wobbly. I just don't understand how there can be thousands and thousands of people on this blog world and no one wants to talk to me except 1 or 2 people?
come on folks. Have you been talking to my in-laws. None of it's true. lies. all of them.
I've given you presents and hugs and baked goods.....GIVE ME COMMENTS!

oK, so I guess in order to give me comments you have to have a post that has something to comment on besides a glittery porch wreath and some toddlers......
ummm...
shooot.
um.
Oh, ok...when I was about 7 or 8 or 9 or something I used to ride the school bus and it let me out about 1/4 of a mile from my house along side a highway called 17. The road was lined with corn crops but there was a wide dirt path that ran between the asphalt and the corn. That is where I walked. The problem was that every single day it seemed I had this amazing need to pee when I got off the school bus. I don't remember her name very well but I know that she was the grandma of my older sibling's friends and she lived in this two story house that was mint green on the south corner of the bus dropoff. She had shrubs. I peed in them. Now I don't know if it's just my personality or my astrological sign or my mental illness but I think that if I wanted to, I could probably be pretty secretive and sneaky. I think I can figure things out pretty well and that I'm pretty smart.

I had a mission companion who used to walk down the street and poop her pants and grab her crotch while she peed and when she let go her whole dress would be wet and I was like, um, hermana Lunn....you take the next adobe shack? what? I don't think so. I was like, ok missy, step your smelly self aside while I do the work for two people and try to fix this first impression we've just made of being homeless, unattractive, white cotton sock wearing incontinent American Mormons. Anyway, this girl who was completely off the deep end crazy was talking to me one night and she was like, "the problem is that I'm just really, really intelligent and that's why I don't have very many friends. I was always the best in school and could learn extrememly fast." It was in this moment that I thought to myself, "am I the Hermana Lunn of my own life?" am I dillusional? Do I look homeless and smell like poop and move like a sloth in the fast lane?
Well, it turned out that I was dillusional because one day, Sharon (who is my mom) comes to me and she's like, "Erin, miss what's her face down the road called me and told me that you've been peeing in her bushes. you have to stop that." okey-dokey...that was awkward. How could this be? How did she know since I'm this amazingly clever 7 year old scorpio, fire dragon ,future social anxiety suffering welbutrin popping genius?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

I seem to be figuring this out a little at a time here. I actually am not all that. I am actually not the smartest person or the cutest person or the most talented person or the person who deserves things just because I was born. Did you all know this the whole time and you never told me? This is a hard truth people.....some might say it's even inconvenient...the truth of this. I am just a girl. It's not a huge mystery why I never had a boyfriend until I was 18 and he was a dork. I had that amazingly gigantic wake up call at age 7 and another chance in a steamy, pee smelling missionary room to realize that folks can figure me out! CRAP! I ACTUALLY AM DILLUSIONAL!
this is very bad.

I hereby promise that I will not pee in any of your bushes and I will not have an underlying notion that I am the shiz any more. Wait! This is not a sad moment. This is a moment of clarity. So far I'm about 24 years behind so by the time my kids are married I will be a good mom and by the time my husband is bald and blind I will be a good eternal companion (at least eternity will be a little closer by then).
So that's the skinny folks. That can go safely in your list of reasons why you always knew I was totally and competely normal (in a not normal but not extraordinary either kind of a way)
happy holidays.

'tis the season

2007-12-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

It looks like it's going to snow. We have a Christmas tree. We have these little white candles in our windows at night. We have a lighted garland with christmas ornaments hanging on it going up our stairs. We have two little christmas trees in urns on either side of our door with little white lights on them. We have a sparkly wreath on our door. Now there are two parts of me. There is the part that's like, come on, Erin...think outside the holiday gift box a little and do something creative with your decorations...your whole downstairs is pink for goodness' sake..... and then there's the part that's like, "look....this is my house and it's so simple and traditional and sparkly, hooray!" ....
rock and roll band boys or dead poet's society boys....this was always my quandry....and I ended up with the preppy responsible extremely cute and good boy....
maybe that explains the house.

It happens about once a year that the feelings of disgust start creeping up for the amount of stuff that we (I) have accumulated (namely clothing for small children). If you only could fathom the sheer volume of things I have for a little boy you would be embarrassed for me...
I SO don't have a little boy and my husband doesn't even want to reproduce again so I'll just be this freaky Norman Bates lady dressing up all the neighborhood kids like the boy I never had.
I just find it hard to give up on the whole 'at least two more kids' thing even though most of the time I am crap at parenting. There's just something about little folks that I love. Like Ruby standing on the stairs right now saying , "Mami, hep me, I need hep... I tot-ing da sky, look!"
So, anyway, I'm cleaning out the nooks and crannies and making 20 boxes into 4 reasonable ones. Some would call this consolidation. I prefer to call it 'way to make me feel like I've accomplished something and help prevent me from shopping for kids clothes.'

It's time to go to preschool now so I must adjourn. we're all wearing various renditions of the pajama and that needs to be fixed before we go.
feliz dia jueves.
erin

flashes of clarity

2007-11-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

I am so not a morning person as my parents can painfully recall I'm sure. I have homicidal tendencies when awakened by someone that isn't myself exactly when I want to wake up. This has posed a problem in parenthood and then I heard some life changing advice from that sage counselor, that learn-ed man....Steve Young. He said, after the BYU game on Saturday which I still get a little tingly thinking about...anyway, he said in response to that annoying sports interviewer who asked him, "what have you learned from being a parent of little kids?"...he said "selflessness...you better figure out how to get selfless really quick and your life will be so much better". Genius. It sounds so basic and is so hard to practice. I don't know a whole lot of folks who enjoy putting most all of their needs and wants and druthers aside all day every day. I'm working on it so when I hear the pitter patter of small people invading my otherwise peaceful, it's snowing outside so it's not even light in the room, perfect temperature and so much space now that Gabriel is gone to work sleep...I immediately start praying not to have a cow. So far there have been no cow births.

I woke up at 4:45 the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping with some girls here on my street. We went to Wal Mart, Target, Old Navy, Toys R Us, Shopko, Downeast Home and another Shopko and Starbucks for some hot chocolate and pastry. I basically had all my Christmas shopping done for the girls so I bought about 9 movies, a red crock pot, a dust buster and some stocking hangers.....all these other people were totally trying to make others happy at 5 in the morning and I'm like...what can I buy for myself....then later on, Gabriel, feeling much the same sentiment as I did, drove us all to Sears where we bought a television larger than our children so that they can be even more frightened of Scar on the Lion King than they already are. good times.

Remember Josefina? Yeah, she's gone. We now have Ruth who is from Peru and is in our ward. She lives here with her 22 year old daughter who is seriously like this tiny little insanely beautiful wood sprite and her 15 year old who is mentally handicapped. Her husband is in Peru and they're getting a divorce and she lost her job as a nanny recently so Cinthia (the 22 year old) works like 20 hours every two weeks at $9/hr and that is what they live on besides the baby-sitting that Ruth does and the Medicaid that Nathalie gets. So sad. And you know the saddest part....that amazingly intelligent and beautiful girl has never been on a DATE! out of control. She spends her whole life with her mom and sister and had to stop studying at college so she can help pay for their life. It's enough to make me want to call Ty Pennington if they had a house to redo. Anyway, in order to help a smidge and have her feel like she is also working, we have Ruth come to clean one week and babysit the next, then clean, then babysit. For $100 every 2 weeks we have a date and clean showers. Also, she is actually the kind of person who genuinely is in love with little kids. She speaks this really fast, really slurry Spanish in a baby voice and they just think she is the best thing ever. This morning I heard Dellah asking Gabriel after tiptoe-ing in my room if that was Hermana Carbajal in my bed....no, he said....that's your mom....like always. I could hear their disappointment....THEY LIKE HER MORE THAN ME!
whatever. I like her more than me too.

So I've started playing primary music on CD while my children eat breakfast to try and squelch potential fights and then read them the little comic book Book of Mormon from the 70's to try and give them some perspective. I'm pretty sure every little bit of spirituality that you try to have counts somehow even if you don't see any changes immediately. Monday I taught Family Home evening about the commandment to love and honor your parents....we listened to "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey" about 400 times until they knew it by heart. That made it easier 5 minutes later when they were ignoring my pleas and pulling each other's hair and kicking. At least they're making an informed choice to break the commandments. Knowledge is power people.

I have a practice tonight in the Conference Center for the Christmas concert and, from the looks of it, It's not going to stop snowing any time soon....nice...life-threatening feats to be one of 140 people dressed exactly the same and one of 8 maids a milking (we have two buckets by the way, did I mention that I am dancing with a wooden bucket in each hand?...yeah...awesome)
I'm teaching a Spanish class for the Relief Society on Thursday night....tell me actually and without too many jokes what you would want to learn from a Spanish class like that. So far we don't have a second one scheduled so it might be the only one.
te amo. adios.
I just realized how many times I have said the word 'I ' in this post and it's a little nauseating. just so you know I know.

Dia de accion de gracias

2007-11-22T23:25:00.001-07:00

In Spanish this day is called, not just thanksgiving, but 'day of the action of thanks'. I've thought about what the actions of thanks are and how I don't really do any of them and that probably means that I suck on a lot of levels but I am actually very grateful for how nice my life is. I think that to some, my life would seem ideal and even idyllic. I think that if I take an inventory and list all the bad (which I will right now) I will still probably come up grateful....let's try.
bad:
1. I used to be a good writer and have all kinds of creativity coming and going from my mind. Now I am a blank because I am depleted mentally most of the time.
2. I can't wear my cutest clothes because my body is my enemy.
3. I have probably always been totally messed up but I have never taken medicine every morning and night, reaffirming to myself that I am flawed and un-whole and less somehow because my brain doesn't make norepinephrin.
4. My mom has cancer and chemo and no hair and no energy and I feel like I'm looking in a mirror of the future every time I talk to her or about her and that scares me.
5. My baby has epilepsy and has seizures every time she sleeps and isn't the same as other kids her age and I feel when I am all by myself that it is somehow my fault for taking prevacid while I was pregnant or getting pregnant so soon after Dellah (even thought it was an accident) or falling on a staircase in remote Mexico at 26 weeks.
6. I have to make my life fit around therapy sessions for Ruby and Neurologist appointments for Ruby and make sure that Ruby takes her 2.5 mL of Keppra twice a day and make sure that I walk the line between insanity and love because when she's older she's not going to know how loud she cried and how much it made me want to hide....she'll just remember if I did hide...so I don't.
7. I don't contribute in any way to my own financial life. I haven't had a job in 4 years. I don't particularly want to go to a job every day but there is a sense of agility and freedom that come with knowing you can do it yourself...or at least some of it. I looked at my resume the other day and tried to imagine actually giving it to an employer right now...absolutely no one would think I could do anything except dress mannequins at Baby gap or teach Mormon missionaries.
8. I live in the same state with my sister who I haven't spoken to since my birthday in October and before that since last Christmas and that just feels like a small version of a lesser degree of glory.
9. That same sister lives 15 minutes from her husband's family and my little sister lives 5 minutes from her in laws and an hour from her husband's grandparents and my brother lives 30 minutes from my sister-in-law's parents. All of these people can go and do things and go on trips and have help that they don't have to pay or bribe and I don't have anyone.
10. I have hemorrhoids. bad ones. it's gross.
11. I feel like I should have another baby and Gabriel doesn't want to go through 40 weeks of sickness just to have no sleep and more crying kids....I'm pretty sure Heavenly Father is more on my side.
12. I can't see. I'm on the last contacts that you can have before you have to wear glasses over contacts for more correction and everything is still all blurry.
13. I can't find my necklace with the block of wood on the chain.

As you can tell, there are some cons. Every life has cons but I think, basically, I would probably, in most cases choose my own crap back out of a pile of every one's all together.
My children are happy and have all their limbs. They make me laugh and I can't even stand how cute they are sometimes. My husband is just unbelievably good. I mean, really. Every day I'm positive there's got to be a catch. I have a warm house. I have a new house. I have a good car. My mom and dad are alive and I can talk to them whenever they answer the phone. I am one of the 8 maids a milking in a PBS Christmas special....I just found the Charlie Brown Christmas movie in another effort to make sure that my children have every single toy and book and experience that I ever had as a child which they will totally need therapy for and I seem to revel quite a bit.
I love the scriptures. I love the gospel. I am truly positive that Heavenly Father answers prayers and I am always happiest when I do what he wants.
I have wonderful and brilliant friends who inspire me. I have good teeth. My body hair is blond. I don't have cochlear implants. I speak a foreign language and I always know when Latinos are making fun of me. I have a $90 sweater from Urban Outfitters that is the only thing I have ever spent that much money on and it makes me feel happy. My dove deodorant doesn't leave white marks on my clothes just like the commercial says. I made sweet potato souffle today for part of Thanksgiving and it was magically delicious. We went to see Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium this morning with the girls and we didn't have to leave for anyone screaming uncontrollably or wetting their pants. I got up and did Pilates this morning in an effort to quell my appetite for later which didn't exactly work but I felt better about it. My hair is growing out to a normal length for someone with my bone to chub ratio. I'm just positive that the Savior really does live to grant us rich supply and I can be the best version of myself if I just try to be more like Him. Yesterday in the car, Ruby said, "Mami, estoy muy feliz" all in one sentence like that...out of the blue...the most unhappy, inconsolable child I have ever met who has spent her life exhausted and wordless told me she was very happy. How in the world can I think that I'm un-happy?
I have practiced the action of gratitude.

oh well

2007-11-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

I was just sitting here up in my house for like a week waiting for something to happen that I could blog about instead of the same old crap like poopy diapers and runny noses and what I either am or am not making for dinner.
The problem we have now is that there actually isn't anything else going on at present so i suppose this post will be extremely short.
Like about this long.

unapologetic travel log

2007-11-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

Hello, it's me, Erin. It's been a while. I'm sure you were all salivating to know what I've been doing and I aim to please. So, it was my birthday road trip which everyone else has already blogged and gotten over it but it all started with a hot juicy burger in Wendy's.

Happy Cindy...

and this was one of the other passengers on the trip who I can neither confirm nor deny being Marsha Ellis in Wendy's who seriously deserved a burger.

now that the pg rated part of the post is over, I can move on to the mostly g-rated version. In short, it was more fun that I have had as a solo entity in the world for at least 5 or 6 years if ever. I love these girls...look how cute Emily is.
I would not recommend eating anything from this particular Chinatown location p.s. and especially don't buy any fish because some of them are floating upside down. It is burned into my brian...that poor little pez. Later in the day, however, I did get, from Hector the smiley Mediterranean waiter, THE MOST FLAVORFUL AND FULFILLING COCA COLA ON THE ENTIRE GLOBE! and several of it's refills.

H&M was slightly disheartening but that didn't stop me from buying some good items (one of my favorites is a black smocky thing that Eric the disfunctional h&m employee forgot to take the magnetic thingy off the bottom of and now I'm not sure what to do except wield a hammer to remove it) alas. I also bought $23 lipstick from Sephora which is devastatingly good and a wonderful knee length cardigan from Urban outfitters which I straight up copied Cindy on but hers is tan and mine is gray. I must also add that I am glad I had spent my money in Vegas because there was this mouth wateringly tempting boutique in a gas station bathroom in Nowheresville. COME ONNN! so funny

We all needed that trip on very different levels. For me it was a validating and almost rediculously emotional thing to feel like I was a friend to these folks who are so smart and pretty and funny and they actually still like me even though I'm a housewife which must mean that all my cool has not yet worn completely off. (I also really love some other girls that weren't on the road trip very very much) So, thank you road trip girls and thank you kind Jetta for delivering us from evil.

This is Cindy proving that she can stuff an entire plate of green jell-o in her mouth at once. Small pleasures. Then I turned 31. Not that exciting. Here I am being 31. I think I look more excited than I am but it could be my pocketed t-shirt or my block of wood on a chain from H&M to thank for the smile.It was a pretty great day. Gabriel stayed home from work and we went to breakfast and on a walk and to Downeast Home to buy this out of control awesome ottoman which is a gint square.

Then we ate pizza and cake and went to bed and two days later was Halloween which looked like this: (ruby's a turtle not a frog)

and this

I am pretty glad that october's done and that Christmas is coming but come on retailers...let's have Thanksgiving first already!!! sheesh.... I bought an autumny wreath and one of those totally domestic metal wreath hanger things to go on my front door so we look all suburban and welcoming. Now I keep fantasizing about all the other wreaths there must be in the world what with my ultra snazzy wreath hanger. I'm not sure I needed one more department to freequent in every store but c'est la vie. Maybe I'll take a picture of my wreath and show you so you'll know which house is mine when you come for cider and homemade biscuits.....

leavin' on a jet-ta

2007-10-26T13:01:00.001-06:00

That's right folks. Light your candles and say your prayers. 5 thirty year olds are going on a road trip!
we'll see what happens.
I'm so excited to already be there but not the 6 hours to get there....that and it's 85 degrees there right now.
hugs and loves till I return sunday.

coulda woulda shoulda

2007-10-24T15:16:00.000-06:00

woah, have you ever looked at the words coulda woulda shoulda and seen how they absolutely don't look right? weird.

I had this idea for being awesome which went something like this.

1. I wake up in the morning and take a shower (or not because I took one yesterday and I'm still relatively fresh)

2. Go downstairs and administer grape nuts and honey bunches of oats to my children.

3. eat grape nuts at the same time

4. Go back upstairs and try to see the carpet again in my closet by hanging up 45 items that are piled there and try to arrange my two drawers in the bathroom so that they close AND open.

5. Tell my children to stop playing inside games and walk them over to the new play structure we have 1.1 minutes from our front door.

6. Let them play there until they get all sweaty and smell like outside instead of suave vanilla bean shampoo.

7. Have them think I am awesome because I do things like take them to the play structure.

8. Come back home and eat lunch from all the food groups.

9. Put Ruby down for a nap

10. Accept the fact that Dellah no longer takes naps.

11. take a nap

12. put on tights and go to dance rehearsal where some talented people are.

The plan seems relatively easy, benign, even run of the mill.

amazing how you just find 7 or 8 other things to do besides eat, ruby nap, me nap and put on tights...

I think I am still pretty awesome. I totally thought of a plan and I totally had every intention of actually doing the plan. Just because I didn't doesn't empty the glass...

this is me being like, yeah..

I'm totally tired and no, I don't do drugs.

I'm totally behind. I sense a travel log comin' on

2007-10-23T17:32:00.000-06:00

I'll try not to go that route. I'll try to give feelings on a variety of different subjects so as not to make any reader feel their time catching up was in vain.
So, I'm one of the 8 maids a milking, just so you know...you know, 12 days of christmas and the audition I thought I sucked at? I still really sucked still but she decided not to do the toy soldier dance I sucked at and I was redeemed with my country ho-down cum swiss miss rendition of Carol Iwasaki's milking maid steps....so that's good. I'm 'a milking.

Also, I think I'm pretty behind and I really don't care what political party he's part of, Does Al Gore really deserve a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE? WHAT THE....
I don't know, one year he's this totally boring idiot that tries to go on MTV to get some votes and everyone's making fun of him and now he's an academy award winning, nobel peace prize winning celebrity? I am now completely and utterly positive that I should start stating the obvious things about the world and life and see where it gets me. They sky's the limit.
Did you know that when you're walking down your sidewalk to go visiting teaching at 10am and there is a used condom lying in your path and you try desperately to focus her attention on the airplane overhead, that your 3 year old WILL mention the fact that there is a long balloon in the street?
Did you know that after you give birth twice in 10 months that your stomach actually rests on the top of your legs even when you sit up straight and do sit ups....THIS IS AN OUTRAGE PEOPLE! Polar bears slipping off of ice caps is one thing and crashing into the wall of the irreversible tide of sagginess is another...i mean come on...
whatever.
DID YOU KNOW that when you wake up in the morning and you wish you didn't have to and you don't feel too happy about much of anything and you feel all like, 'yeah, whatever, I'm just going to be mad and cry and stuff' that you can actually go to Dr. George Van Komen and he will give you a little extra 100 mg. pill of wellbutrin to take with your morning dose and it's just that easy? I bet you did not know that.
Furthermore, did you know that when you go through the line at wal-mart buying some gum and pez just so you can get $10 cash back and you get to the end where you choose cash back and they only give increments of $20 so you say, forget it and that you don't want the items, that the person will then tell you to go to customer service and return your big red and pez variety pack because she went ahead pressing buttons without your consent?
Did you know that when she says this you can go to the customer service desk and throw the bag at them and say, 'I don't need this..give me a break!"? because you would rather lose $1.50 than ever stand in line to return gum and pez.... It's a really pretty secret fact actually so pay attention, people.
I'm not sure if you've been apprised of the fact that I am going to turn 31 on monday the 29th of October and that 31 is not only the ugliest number, but it actually evokes no emotion in the birthday girl at all. If I weren't going to Las Vegas to H&M the weekend before, I might forget all together that 31 years had passed since genesis.
Also, I'm not sure if you've discovered that if you stop washing your hair every other day or even every 3rd day that your hair actually says, "ok, sure...I can roll with that." and you actually feel like you have day 2 hair on day 4?
This just in!...did you know that when your husband comes home at 9:30pm after leaving at 7am and you DON'T completely go ballistic and pout and act like you've just survived an all out nuclear attack on your home and sanity by crawling through a mud trench for 5 miles alone, that he actually brings you flowers and some apple turnovers?
REVELATIONS, people....revelations.
Did you know that when you have a sinus cold that you can actually feel near death pain by sneezing? that it is that painful?
Did you know that when superior water comes to your house and says they will give you a free trial of their water softener that it actually does stop the soap scum from building on the glass in your shower and your dishes actually are cleaner but the water itself is so unbearable to drink even after passing through your GE profile filter that you say, 'get on outa here wid dat mess, boy! cause we ain't havin' none of it....'
also, when you are preparing your child for preschool and you can't get a ponytail where there used to be one, and you then realize that she has made herself a stereotypical lesbian mullet on just one side of her head using scissors that you didn't even know she knew existed....when you tell that child that this is unacceptable and that only mommy uses scissors for hair and scissors are only for paper and that you're not mad but you don't want this to happen again that the child will then tell you that they have also cut their sister's hair, the build a bear workshop winnie the pooh and the ikea sheepskin.....?
bring on the awards, people....all that's missing is power point I suppose but that has to be at least as many little known, disconcerting and highly disputable facts as Mr. G....
I am neglecting at least 3 essential responsibilities here writing this so I'll adjourn.

sick, sick

2007-10-13T19:22:00.000-06:00

Last night I went to see Elizabeth the Golden Age with my friend Cindy. It was right up there on the list of most beautiful movies ever made and so good to be with Cindy. On the way home I started to feel the life draining out of me. My throat hurt. My body hurt. My hairs on my arms hurt. This morning I have a fever and I can't seem to wake up. I am sick.
Tonight was my other friend Suzanne's wedding reception right down the road from here where everyone I know is going to be and I don't get to go. Tomorrow night is Young Women in Excellence and I don't get to go....I know myself. I know this is around for another couple of days at least.
I'm sorry, Cindy, if the sharing of your twizzlers in the dark has infected you with my aches and pains. I just didn't know.
more later when the bacteria depart.

good help is so hard

2007-10-11T10:34:00.000-06:00

Josefina is the name of this woman from Michoacan Mexico that Gabriel's friend Jared's entire family uses to clean their houses. Apparently, Josefina is a master of domestic sprucing and she can be had for a song twice a month. I knew when I married Gabriel that utter spotlessness was his norm and he knew that cleanliness was next to godliness and I was most always close to godliness but was prone to lapse into not hanging up the days undirtied clothes immediately when I take them off. We have met somewhere in the middle of the to dust or not to dust spectrum but when Gabriel heard of this Josefina phenom, well, he said, 'where do I sign up'. He told me this after he had talked to her and asked her to come and see our house and meet us and blah blah. So, she's one of those folks that wears elastic waistband pants and a t-shirt and wears nylons underneath all of that for some inexplicable reason but she's pleasant enough and probably just 40ish years old.
As a girl, you don't want some other girl cleaning your house. You especially don't want some girl cleaning your house while she walks around thinking "I'm cleaning this stupid gringa's house and she's an incapable slob because Mexicans know how to clean houses and Erin Sanchez does not." You know that's what she would be thinking. So I stay gone all the live long afternoon on Tuesday, far beyond the point of no return for naps and pleasantness with the toddlers and I walk in to my house, expecting to be greeted by the fresh smell of anti-bacterial spotlessness and need sunglasses to handle the glare of godliness......eh....whatever. So she washed the mirrors and vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the shower (which wasn't even really that clean) and then she left a note "I need soft scrub".....
Oh, YOU NEED SOFT SCRUB? WILL THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE, JOSEFINA WHO WE PAY TO COME AND CLEAN?
the whole thing is a little over the top. Gabriel says, the point is that the vacuuming got done and the mirrors are clean and the tiles are mopped and neither one of us had to do it...he says there are more important things in life than worrying about cleaning the house (since when, I wonder) but my main problem is that when I clean the house, it looks better than when she cleans the house. Is it worth it for a non-perfectionist latina to come and clean my house just so I don't have to do it or should I just do it and be completely satisfied, albeit tired. She doesn't do laundry or fold or iron and she didn't make our beds so we're just talking horizontal surfaces here.
anyway.
Last night was this rehearsal for the tabernacle choir Christmas concert which I found out about at almost 4pm....it started at 5:45. It took me an hour to go 15 minutes down the road and I was late so i was number 58 at yet another audition for this thing. I can't believe this. I am yet to go to one rehearsal where we don't have to have a number and do more things to be more whittled down and more 'chosen'. The first little while was fine. Then the last hour was this toy soldier dance which was like military training meets riverdance and I was still fine. She split us into groups of 8 and, being number 58, it was a lot of groups of 8 go before it was my go. I stood in the back of the stake center gym and did the routine with every single group of 8 before me while the 10th graders in my group gossiped and chatted and didn't practice at all. Then the next practice was starting after ours and all the people for that one were sitting around the walls (about 75 people) and all 75 people from my practice had already finished so they were all standing around too and, right before we're supposed to go, the choreographer says, "oh, Erin, the lines are uneven, can you go to the other side of the gym. Lines were coming in from both directions and I had practiced the entire thing a gajillion times, from MY SIDE! You don't just do this to someone like me. You don't just say, "oh, do you think you could go to the other side and deal with your huge anxiety and inadequacies of being the oldest, fattest, sweatiest, out of shape person in the room and then CHANGE EVERY DIRECTION AND EVERY LEFT TO A RIGHT AND BACK TO A FRONT AND LET'S START.....NOW!!! 5,6,7,8.....
it was a disaster.
I found myself just standing there for 2 hours or 2 seconds completely lost and my mind was swimming and I was a complete disaster...I was a failure.
My therapist used to say that trying something is the most important thing and that failing is part of life and you have to just keep trying but I got my bag and walked out and walked down 2nd avenue and then state street and then south temple and then main street completely weeping. then all the way home on the tracks the same thing. How can it be that I have spent more than 20 years of my life learning this stupid skill and when it comes right down to it I blow? Who am I fooling? No one looks at me and thinks, oh, yeah, her? she's a ballerina....
whatever....I'm a housewife with kids and a mortgage and 6 passenger vehicle and a Mexican housekeeper (who isn't my husband) when I can't afford name brand pancake syrup. One of these days I will have to tell myself that I'm not a dancer....I just can't do that...I just can't say it. All I can do is tell my girls never to get involved with that jerky, abusive man which is ballet....it just treats you like poop and makes you look at yourself in a mirror the whole time and have bruises and pain and you STILL KEEP GOING BACK!
play soccer girls.
play the flute.
play the field.
just don't dance.

I have perspective. At least I have blood cells of both colors. My mom doesn't have white or red or new. She can't go in public or touch anything dirty or she could go from zero to sepsis in 5 hours. Life is fine for me, I just had a weird night.

I'm going to H&M.
Strike up the band.

tuesday in the hood

2007-10-09T10:32:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been noticing that a lot of people including myself say things like, "I really like being a mom, but...." or "don't get me wrong, I love so and so dearly, but....". I have decided to repent of this because I think that the child will grow up, not feeling the love first but the 'but'. Like Elder Holland said last year in conference about comparing children. If you say Susie is smart and Mary is pretty, Mary will only remember that she isn't smart and Susie that she wasn't pretty. Perhaps the solution is to say something like, "I really don't like my kid...listen to what they did this time" or "I really hate being a mother and here's why".
I actually do like being an offspring-er to my offspring-ees so I'll cut the negativity as much as I can.
After having this wonderful get together with friends of Friday night and spending the night at Andi's to avoid driving home at 3:30am in the rain, I woke up Saturday morning slightly sore. By Saturday night, I had to call Gabriel home from priesthood conference because I couldn't move and my children needed things and I kept yelping in agony from the hurt. I tried heating pads for hours at a time and bengay and icy hot and Codine and, finally, yes....Codine really can cut the hurt enough to go to sleep but not completely. Gabriel had to lower me into my spot in bed like a crane and then shove me gently from one side to the other all night while I needed to switch sides but was unable. My shoulders were actually on two very different planes...my neck actually looked like an 's'....extremely disconcerting. S for Sanchez, while altruistic and noble, is not the letter I would prefer for a neck. We had invited these great people from our ward over on Sunday between conferences about two weeks ago and had already cancelled once so we needed to do it....I'm trying the best I can to walk normally and hide the fact that I can neither look up nor down and I can't raise my arms above shoulder height. The food was really bad...I'm sad because I'm usually pretty spot on when it comes to fajitas....shame. The Roans are super though...at least they ate but what else could they do.
Gabriel stayed home from work to help on Monday and today, Tuesday, I think I can look left to right enough to take Dellah to school. I can sit up alone so that's progress. I wonder if this is some karmic thing...maybe I wasn't sympathetic enough to Dellah last week when she gave herself whiplash standing on her head....I thought I was but maybe I wasn't. I sure will be next time cause ain't nothin worse than tryin to live neckless in an all neck world.
I'm writing this post with Ruby sitting on top of my arms with a giant wire toy where you can slide colored beads all around the twists and turns. I'm glad I took typing enough to feel what I'm doing. She keeps asking me something and I keep saying, "uh, huh...si..." and apparently, that's not the right answer but I can't reach the Rubi-hona to decipher right now.
I spent all day yesterday trying to sort through the kids clothes I have amassed mindlessly in the last 3 years and finally admit that my toddlers can no longer wear the newborn socks woven like ballet shoes. They never wore the stupid stuff that was a dollar and all wrong and I knew it from the moment I bought them but now we have a concise, while overflowing, closet for fall/winter '07..... I wish I could say the same for myself. I look in my closet and there are so many things that are beautiful and wonderful 'ideas' but I have never worn them and will never wear them and have nothing to actually wear right now in reality with my current corporal situation. Literally. I had one pair of jeans that I left at the sleepover on Friday so who knows when I'll see them again and that's about it. Now's the time for some fast thinkin'. Right now I'm wearing a nightgown and and sweatpants...
The nightgown was the worst thing I have ever done to myself. It started when I had the two year pregnancy experience and they were the only thing that was comfortable or even feasible. Now, when I wear pajama bottoms and a t-shirt I feel strangely constricted. The Hondurans have their little daughters get one school uniform skirt with a huge hem when they're 9 or so and then, literally, they wear that skirt for years and years and just let out the hem....there is no secret as to why the whole 'latina' physique is enviable....those tiny waists are cultivated and what's below has no choice but to go out from there....at least in Honduras....I am the opposite...when you are wearing a wal-mart nightgown that starts at the shoulders and hangs forever tentlike to your ankles, your waist has no accountability for itself....in fact it can go missing completely and the nightgown wearer is none the wiser....until they go to put on normal people clothes and realize that pants are expected to button and whatnot.
enough.
Phonics are so hilarious. Dellah knows all the letters and sounds and little consonant clusters and everywhere we go she's telling me what they are as if I am the illiterate son of a sharecropper or something....thank you again, Dellah for your tutelage. One day I hope you realize that I actually am bilingual too and I learned my letters and read books and squoze you out of me rather painfully giving me just a smidge more life experience than you at the advanced age of 3 years and 4 months.

who knows what day it is

2007-10-04T18:04:00.000-06:00

I have been amazed since I got married 4 years ago how fast time seems to have gone. Before I got married, somehow it seemed really slow and like you could be in one moment for a week. Probably that's because I went to sleep at 2am and woke up at noon if I were being consciencious...1:30 if I were being lazy. Seriously, I don't get it. I wonder if it's these last days that are actually speeding up as we plummit ever closer to the sun and our eternal burning.
Anyway, I feel like I was just coming home from church and now it's going to be friday again.
I took my 3 year old girl to preschool on tuesday and again today. It was two hours both times and the normal errands were, oddly, not any easier without her around. This leads me to my sneaking conclusion that until Ruby is also in some form of outside education, most every outing will suck in some form. I find myself thinking....when is this two hours going to be up so I can go get my sane child who can entertain my basketcase. Ruby, who thinks that Dellah's name is also Ruby (maybe I've mentioned this before?) spends the whole time we're out and about questioning "donde esta Ruby?" I might have thought she was playing hide and seek or being existential unless I was very familiar with the fact that she thinks her sister is herself. "come on, Ruby!...let's play, Ruby!....I want what Ruby has!...where is Ruby?" or from underneath dellah who has tackled her, a muffled, "ROOOOOBEEEEE!". It's straddling the line between creepy and endearing. We'll take endearing.
I went to the park with them yesterday to break up all the monotony and found myself wondering how follow the leader could possibly BE so complex! then we laid down and rolled down grassy knolls and went down a slide shaped like a castle turret 400 times.
I was happy to know that I still slide down slides and can fit between those unforgiving upturned metal sides.
It was so windy outside our voices were going the other direction from our mouths and I returned to the car having realized that severe wind conditions are actually a very effective hair product in my personal case. You just can't bottle that kind of action.
I'm at that place again....the dinner place. clueless. unmotivated....
I'd really like the penne rosa from Noodles and Company but I don't think that'll fly since Gabriel will get home at 7 and these hoodlums go to bed at 8.
It's the proteins that kill me. I just hate cooking meat. It just takes too long.
I got an entire pumpkin for 87 cents yesterday. Have pumpkins always been this cheep?
I looked at myself through squinted eyes today in the mirror and found that I was wearing khaki pants and a really cute pink sweater shirt and a gold necklace with turquoise beads hanging from it and navy blue shoes....I think I should stick with black and it's relatives because when it comes to color, I seriously think they all match and end up looking like a color explosion. Maybe it was the khaki....I don't think I can go there with confidence yet. Preppy is alluring and everything but it's a real commitment. You can see lumps through khaki...

Crik in the neck

2007-09-28T23:44:00.000-06:00

Dellah woke up this morning and came to my room where she and Ruby proceeded to bounce around and wallow all over me in my groggy state. She thought it would be a great idea to try and do a head stand using the headboard to support her torso and legs....obviously, she's 3 and she doesn't know how to do a headstand so she collapsed wrong on her head and promptly was rendered incapacitated. She was hysterical basically and spent the whole morning lying on the sesame street placemat shoveling pancakes and eggs in her mouth or lying on the couch with her head turned the one direction it could turn and watching PBS. Around 1pm I decided she just wasn't perking up with the motrin and the therma pad that I stuck to her small little shoulder so I called the doctor and we got an appointment at 3:15. This is a problem for a lot of reasons but mostly because somewhere between 1:30 and 5pm both of those girls take a rather sizeable nap.....
there was no nap.
no nap and x-rays should never mix.
No nap and x-rays and strangers and strange metal x-ray beds should really never go even remotely together.
I have discovered there is a new volume beyond ballistic that I had no idea existed.
trauma.
The whole time we're there she's saying (in english so, of course he understood her), "I don't want Dr. Bancroft...I don't like Dr. Bancroft...I don't want him....no.....nooooooooo......". Then in his wisdom Dr. Bancroft offers Dellah a lollypop. She chose the blueberry cream safe-t pop and Ruby chose the lemon. The whole rest of the afternoon on the way home she kept repeating the mantra, "I love Dr. Bancroft....I love lollypops....Dr. Bancroft is my bes friend...he gives me lollypops..."
note to self....lollypop from the getgo next time around.
Ruby, of course spent 45 minutes wanting the blueberry cream lolly and hating the lemon one until I finally threw it away and she calmed down as if the very presence of the lemon safe-t pop was too much for her. I don't understand how she can be such a lemming. EVERY SINGLE THING that one of them has, the other one has to have it....especially Ruby....
note to self....whatever lollypop dellah chooses, just get the same one for Ruby even if it is the flavor of curdled spleen....

The universe has eaten all of my bobby pins. I don't understand this at all since I have bought, singlehandedly, in my entire life, thousands of bobby pins. All colors, all sizes, all newfangled ways to make them stay in better and not rust and blah blah and I have not even one single bobby pin with which to sweep the hair from my brow.
I was figuring the other day that I have done the wedding hair for about 7 girls and each head of wedding hair probably used at least 50 pins if not more but one of the people was me so that means I should have 50+ bobby pins and I have nill.

I don't know who has heard the Mandy Moore CD that just came out a little bit ago called wild hope....I was completely unprepared to like it so much. I mean, really, she sounds like Shawn Colvin and Beth Orton and the Dixie Chicks all at the same time. I didn't fast forward through any songs and there are about 4 or 5 of them that are just really, really good. Who knew? If you want to hear mine first before you buy it, you can but you should probably just buy it if you like singer/songwritery songs.
Also have you seen that show on Sundance channed called Iconoclasts. Ok, you need to find a way to watch that show. It's two famous people that have been really successful in their own fields and are friends visiting with each other and doing cool things. I was unprepared for how much I was addicted to this show at first viewing. Now that the snoasis snow shack is closed for the next 9 months, I have to do something and I want to watch this show all the time. It's like Eddie Vedder and Laird what's his name who is married to Gabrielle Reece and is a pro surfer and Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alice somebody who is the mother of organic cooking. Quintin Terentino and Fiona Apple.....Michael Stipe and Mario Batalli...
so good.
i mean, really....SO good.

I'm so glad it's friday.
I am seriously so glad it is friday.

Too much pink

2007-09-26T20:14:00.000-06:00

You know how in France they're always talking about that vie en rose or however you spell it? I think that's dumb. It's just a place. Am I supposed to actually think that the light in a place is actually pink just to feel even worse about my current location which is not that pink place?

Speaking of Pink, I have been going to DI lately and finding some good things for winter for my Dellah who is much taller than she was last year though she doesn't weigh any more so she looks like a shoe-string with a tennis ball for a head. Anyway, I'm buying these taller clothes for her and they all seem to be sort of pink. This goes against my general philosophy to this point about dressing little girls and it's a smidge disturbing but I don't know what to say other than the fact that other little girl's mothers are buying them all this pink stuff and if I am going to shop at places where those mothers give their discarded pink-ness then I should just be quiet or spend real money on clothes of the color I choose. Of course, the Oilily shirt that I found was green and blue....that's right...Oilily for $1....nice...thank you shopping spirit...

I just went on this trip with my children where the flight was 1 hour and 20 minutes and I am hereby traumatized. It was so good to see my family of which these are the parents (my dad was actually way more thrilled than he appears.) Also we saw my other families which are my brother Nathan and his wife and their boys Cannon and Collin and my sister, Jenny and Kendall and their kids Ethan and Avery. Don't let this picture of Ruby fool you into thinking that she was at all happy the entire trip. she wasn't. I'm glad my family got to witness the mayhem firsthand to understand that it's a little much. She is cute but she packs a punch.

Dellah found quickly that my nephews have most everything you can imagine, not the least of which was a pirate costume which was much too large that she wore everyday for some time. Again, Lewi is a veritable chameleon, extremely adept at hiding his enthusiasm.

For any of those who are familiar with me as a human at all, I hope you are fixating yourself on the fact that I can now post pictures as well as words and are applauding from the rafters at my electronic genius (albeit 10 years behind everyone including my 8 year old nephew). Small steps. little tiny small steps. One of these days I'll get a pay pal account so I can start that business on e-bay. yep...one of these days.

I've been awake since 5:30 when I went to take my Ruby to have another MRI and get sedated and have that creepy sleep where you don't look like you're alive anymore. At least she got a build-a-bear workshop winnie the pooh out of it. Primary Children's is really good at giving toys to their patients who have been brave. I'm so glad the people that donate the toys went to Build a bear workshop and not the dollar store. She actually couldn't walk in a straight line the rest of the day and she kept falling over and crying so hopefully tomorrow she's snapped out of it.

Just for fun, why don't I put another picture on here because I can....let's see...

this is when gabriel and I went to a wedding a little while ago. I look scared but I'm not scared.

And this is my beautiful child that I named Dellah Faye who I really love because she is hilarious among a lot of other things.

And this is my child who I named Ruby Claire who is beautiful and wonderful and hard and worth it.

Now that I can do this picture thing you will see what we look like and love us all even more than you already do...with all your souls....right?

gumby

2007-09-20T09:37:00.000-06:00

I think I know my new favorite words. "Hey, Ruby let's blah blah blah blah blah blah together!"
That's what I heard when I lowered them out of their booster seats and wiped the cereal off of them. Then I had what I had heard others talk of and always marveled at. 25 mintues of children playing together. They're back now but I can take it. I've had 25 minutes. Dellah just came up asking to talk to her hijos...I'm not sure if she has any children that I don't know about but whatever, Dellah.
I take the same wellbutrin every day. I only menstruate once a month for a couple of days. I'm absolutely positive that I have had a difficult few weeks sans chemical/hormonal imbalances.
I have learned slowly that I can get to the end of those stretches and be ok later. The last 4 days have been very good. There is still crying and screaming and biting but there always was and I don't expect it to go away. It's the lawlessness that's ceased...the helplessness..
I have extended myself beyond the bounds of previous extension. I have felt the fear and done it anyway. I called a friend from Salt Lake and she came over on monday for lunch with her son. I invited friends over for lunch on Tuesday and we had a total of 10 kids for a few hours. Yesterday I answered the phone every single time it rang except once when i was up in my closet packing for a trip. Tonight I go to a callback for another dance number in the Christmas concert.
I registered Dellah for pre-school yesterday.
All of these things seem simple to pretty much everyone else who lives in normal life but I am only just now, after 30 years of life, realizing that people are not scary. I am taking breaths and putting things in perspective before I do them. I have noticed that my nervous laughing has greatly diminished. I am not the only person in life without a script. THERE IS NO SCRIPT! amazing.
If you feel I am being overly dramatic I will tell you that my entire childhood I never one time invited a friend to come spend the night at my house. I never invited anyone to come and do anything with me for the anxiety of not knowing how it would all turn out or what I would say or do to keep the person entertained the whole time. I think I am a nice person. Why would somebody not want to talk to me if I invited them over? And I haven't had a therapist since February! I know! progress!
Tomorrow we leave to go to San Ramon, CA to visit my brother and his family and my sister and her family and her new baby and my parents. I'm going without spousal accompaniment but I'm going to the dollar store later and I think I'll be fine for tricks.
It'll be the last time I get to see my mom for a long time since, in two weeks, she'll start chemo and not be able to be around germy kids. We'll have to make the best of it. I was talking to my pediatrician, Tim, last night and he said I needed to go to San Francisco to a dance club called Mezzanine while I'm out there. He said they would let me past the velvet ropes. He says all the cute boys would spin me from one dance floor to the other and I would forget my cares and feel like a princess. I think he just wants to live vicariously. He is very cute. go to the artichokes & co. website http://www.artichokesandcompany.com/artichokes/ and click 2007 splendor. He's the one in the brown bathrobe in a kitchen holding a mug. Yeah...that's really him. How often does your pediatrician moonlight as a model and call you to chat? very cute.
I don't think I'll go to a dance club but we'll have fun.
I'm all out of dinner ideas. I don't like making dinner. I thought the gumption and desire to make dinner would come with the whole wedding thing but they elude me. I wish I was Kimora Lee Simmons and had a chef. and a driver. and an assistant. and a clothing line. and an endless budget. Actually I totally don't want to be her but the chef is a thought.

just a couple of things

2007-09-14T10:33:00.000-06:00

today is payday. We have 4 diapers left. It's a miracle of potty training. One pack of diapers for two weeks! sunny days are here again....sort of.
Also, I've been thinking of this for a long time now. You know when these famous people go on talk shows or do other interviews and talk about their previous work? The huge majority of these people look completely different 10 years ago than they do now! I don't mean they look more mature or more currently coiffed and dressed, I mean they actually have different teeth, hair, chins, noses and shapes than they used to! It's so appalling. I have no idea how these interviews go on and these people watch these clips of movies and no one even remotely acknowledges the obvious ginormous differences. Are these hosts and interviewers strapped to a gag order/non-disclosure agreement? It boggles my mind. If I were the person doing the interview I do really believe I would be like, "wow....you've really changed since then" or "that didn't even really look like you there!" These people need to be brought to the realization that everyone is not blind and dumb. major cosmetic overhauls do not go unnoticed...even to suburban housewives in townhomes.

Ruby's new thing is the swiffer sweeper. I'm sure you, as an adult have either seen or held a swiffer sweeper and are aware that it is at least four feet in length if not more. This child is about 37 inches tall and she walks around wielding this lance in my narrow hallways and across my line of vision at dangerous distances. It already takes her around 4 or 5 minutes to come up the stairs by herself and she insists on dragging this huge broom up with her now which means you can hear her grunting and struggling a good 10 minutes before you actually see her. I don't know what she thinks, really. She gets really frustrated when it doesn't slide like silk on carpet. she keeps saying it's broken, "se quebo, mami, se quebo". Dellah has these transparent polyester scarves from the 50's or 60's or 70's that ladies would wear over their curlers or when the wind was blowing over their hair. She thinks she can juggle these scarves and is genuinely disturbed when they don't stay in the air long enough for her to situate herself to catch them. she keeps screaming that they're falling, they jus keep on falling....even the actual laws of the universe frustrate this person. The other day she wanted her fingers off her hand...
whatever.
we have Gabriel's friend Jared coming to stay with us this weekend. He's one of those interior re-designer people for a living. That's always a little precarious. I hope we don't get into a scuffle about my decor.

later

2007-09-13T17:02:00.001-06:00

some posts like the one this morning need to be written in order to feel lighter on the inside. I acutally buttoned a shirt with the tags still on it that I bought 3 years ago and have never worn after i wrote that post. Necessary evils.
Last year I was in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert as one of the processional dancers. It was pretty neat. I auditioned on tuesday to do it again this year so we'll see if I make it. There are four nights of auditions. I went on the first one because I don't got a whole lot else goin' on. There were only 2 other people out of the 60 there who performed last year. I'm pretty sure the rest of the repeaters will go tonight or next week but if it was just based on tuesday, I'm pretty sure I get my spot back. The funny thing is that apparently, they're using the costumes from last year which are pretty awful but I weighed about 30 pounds more last year than I do now (a pharmacieutical problem) so I'll have to have my own costume altered. At least taken in instead of let out.
Some guy with very sculpted hair from last year was talking to me at dinner before one of the performances and he said, "yeah, I remember you from the auditions....I remember being surprised at how well you moved".....yeah....NOT COOL. Apparently I looked like I had eaten a few more sugarplums than a fairy. If you can dance, you can dance so there. those are the kinds of things that stick with you though, you know? Even when you can button your small shirt from 3 years ago.
The snoasis shaved ice place closes on saturday....I'm trying to prepare early so as not to have a major problem. Maybe I'll go down from an x-large to a large tonight to start weaning.

My advice to anyone contemplating the action of taking apart a car seat to wash the coushins and hardware because they are non-functional due to layers of what-not caked on them is this...1.do not do it and 2. do not do it when you have to be somewhere in 1 1/2 hours. I honestly think it might have been worth $150 to have avoided the whole scene.

My other advice is to watch the motorcycle diaries if you have not. besides the Gael Garcia Bernal quotient, it's pretty amazing. I watched it again for the whateverth time today and was reconverted to communism and latin america....mostly just latin america.

I have a night off tonight. I will do some things in silence for myself. no radio, no talking, no screaming mimis, just the swirling, unorganized train of my thoughts. I'm hoping for some Hall and Oats on the Loud speaker at Ross maybe. Maybe someone cutting me off in traffic. The usual.

raise your hand if you suck

2007-09-13T09:23:00.001-06:00

I think that would just be me. I think, if there were a list of mothers in the world who absolutely never thought they would suck so bad, I would be at the top. I think, besides maybe some folks who kill their children, I am the worst parent I have ever met. I think people like Posh Spice and Brittany Spears and blah blah aren't even in the running since they have an army of people raising their children. I am an army of one and sometimes two for a coulple of hours in the afternoons and weekends. I don't like these people sometimes. I yell at them. I hold grudges against a three year old for ruining my house and my clothes and my sanity. The same for a two year old who cries all day and you might think I am exaggerating or trying to sound pathetic until you actually see that she actually does cry 7 or 8 of the hours that she's awake. She spits out her anti-seizure medicine and spills it on the floor and the pharmacy won't refill it early. She scratches herself and throws herself on the hard floor and cries until she turns gray. Even right now my right arm is being yanked and pinched and I can't hear my own thoughts over the screaming. Just one minute. I just need one minute to write down how much I wish I wasn't here right now so that I can go back to being here the rest of the day.
All these scenarios in my mind my whole life. Entire carriculum plans for how to teach dance and colors and art and letters and values and morals to these people who are my charges. All those years of wanting to be their mother and here I sit. 9:32 am on a thursday. no bra. no shower. dirty nightgown. bad posture. Tears.
pathetic. (see title of this post)
Sometimes I am trying to be ironical and cute and right now I am trying to be alive. I hate my life right now this minute on this day. I feel like I am trapped in someone else's idea of adulthood. Some Roald Dahl portrayal of vileness from a child's perspective. I don't know what to do with these people. I don't have any money to do it with anyway. there are no words for how much I hate the park. I hate the park. I hate the stupid park. I just want a nap. I need a nap. I need a shower. I need a hug. I seriously need.
I can't think of really one thing that I hoped to accomplish by the time I was 30 that is actually done. I don't have happy children. I don't have any creativity. I don't have my own money. I don't remember how to be myself and I'm almost 31. A blog is the only thing I've really written in 3 years and I am sedentary.
houses and cars and new appliances do not change the level of one's happiness. I would rather live in a winnebago and have some things figured out while I do whites at the laundrymat.
I do really like my husband and I vaguely remember life for a couple of months without someone else in it between us. All those songs about 'as long as we've got each other' and 'love will conquer all' are wonderful but my daytime marriage is to small people who are ungrateful and uncuddly. I chose Gabriel. I would not have chosen to marry my children. Ironic. By the time my real spouse comes home I have nothing much extra.
I absolutely know I am listening to the voice that would have me be sad. I am yielding to the thought that I am not good enough to be myself. I know these thoughts don't come from God but I am just going to be this way for a while until I have energy for a new thought.
and I even take medicine!
perhaps I up my dosage?
I'll ask a professional.
duty calls.
I don't need responses to a post as gratuitous and indulgent as this one. I just need to silently be heard. I just need to scream in black and white for a change.
............

a trip on the bright side

2007-09-05T09:24:00.000-06:00

It struck me when i read Whitney's comment on the last post that It really does sound like lots of stuff is wrong in my life. I will hereby take lines to show that there are good things in my life. I mean really good.
1. My child is potty trained which means that we have enough diapers for an entire pay period without having to go into debt to buy extra diapers.
2. My husband is very, very cute. especially his bottom.
3. I have a car with a DVD player in it which means my children technically don't have to bother me at all only I have this system where they can lose and win privaleges and they have always lost their videos for the day by about 8:15 am. I am just shooting myself in the foot but it's this or actually appear on the supernanny.
4. I know that if I am good now, I will get to live with Heavenly Father and all these folks that either do or do not drive me insane daily and that is comforting in and of itself but also because I will have no midriff fat or strange red scar on the side of my nose or really bad temper or ADD or need Wellbutrin or Prevacid.
5. I really have wonderful friends that make my life better without waking up in the morning to think that they are going to make my life better.
6. My husband gives me time to go and do things by myself because he knows it makes me more able to cope even though he doesn't go and do things by himself besides work and other work.
7. My parents are super nice people.
8. Dellah comes to me more than once a day and says things like, "wow, mommy, you a great cooker." or "wow, Mom, You da bes painter of my room!" or, dillusionally, "Mami, you look beautiful!".
9. I have the recipe memorized for small round cookies that are dipped in powdered sugar so that if I am ever accidentally trapped on an island with a grocery store and cash and an oven, I can totally make them without the cookbook.
10. When Ruby cries, after you get over the initial blood boiling anger at the fact that she never stops crying, she actually has the cutest cry face I've ever really seen. She actually looks like a small something or other that I can't describe but I guess if you're going to cry your whole life, you might as well be cute at it. (unlike claire daines who is the ugliest crier on the sphere.)
11. I am actually reading three sort of rediculous books right now that actually are three really different places to be during the day if things get really rough.
12. I have a separate trash can outside on the back patio for dirty diapers.
13. I don't have a serious malloclusion orthodontially speaking.
14. I have health insurance.
15. I live exactly beside a wal mart, a lowes, a cafe rio, a subway, an italian restaurant, a yogurt shop, a day spa, a kinkos/fed ex and about 50 other unbuilt stores.
16.I have the internet.
17. My blog actually defied the odds of murphy's law and came back after a year of strange disappearance from existance and it hadn't lost any of it's information...now that I think of it, perhaps aliens have something to do with an abduction of this nature.
17 a. My life is interesting enough to have obviously drawn the attention of cyber aliens.
18. My metabolism, while sloth-like, is not altogether non-existant which, after watching the world's largest man on TLC, is, indeed, a blessing.
19. From 8pm on, there is silence to be had in my home until at least 7:30 the next morning.
20. I have recently acquired various GUESS accessories sporting the letter G which actually looks like I'm wearing my husband's initial on purpose like a shiny dangling representation of my undying affections.
21. My life will never end like 'Finding Jane' or 'Once' because, come on....why do I pay money to go and see all that lovey lovey and leave feeling like fecal matter?
22. Whitney told me last night that Sherri Dew got married.
23. Gabriel got a raise at his work that starts next year.
24. I actually just saw gas for 2.54 in west jordan.

there, I think that about does it. My mind hurts. Next time it'll just be regular old mixed bag of tricks around here but I wanted an exercise in positivity at least. I think I am the kind of person that actually would just say, the glass is filled to the middle, to avoid any undue pidgeon hole-ing as a pessimist or otherwise.

dear diary

2007-08-29T08:59:00.000-06:00

there is a certain amount of freedom associated with knowing that I am the only person reading these posts. I am the annonymous blogger. So, I guess I should just say that I did a good job painting the girl's room yesterday but I have way more to do. It has these scallops around the top of the wall that i traced with a pizza pan so it looks like a circus tent a little with the white of the wall scalloped against the pink of the lower wall....very girl.
Dellah finally took a nap yesterday and i got to be with Ruby for a while before she woke up. That is a really cute little girl. She talks so much more now that she's on this anti-seizure medicine. I hope there's a correlation because I'm sure she's so tired of being behind.

I have officially called 4 strangers in the last 2 days to plan visiting teaching for tonight. I really hate calling people on the phone. I'm no good on the phone. I need visual contact. I'm surprised at how calm I sound to myself while I'm talking though...very strange.
I'm supposed to be teaching the Laurels on sunday and I haven't spoken with the YWP and I don't have a manual. I hope this doesn't result in another phone call to strangers.
Our neighbors brought us cookies last night. There are nice people here.

My mom is very sick with a very big ugly word disease and I feel like all I do is cry when I get spare time. I'm trying to paint rooms and bake cakes and do art projects with toddlers and buy things at stores not to think about it but it's always there. I can't understand why she has to be so far away so I can't help her as much as I wish I could. again, the stupid phone....that's all I've got to convey myself and it's not good enough.

I watched the nanny diaries last night. I don't know why they called it the nanny diaries since it had about 2 things from the book with the same title. whatever. I don't know what the big deal about scarlett johanson is. I thought Laura Linney was gorgeous.

Maybe we'll trade in the pacifica for a station wagon of some sort....audi, volkswagon, volvo....I think the pacifica is just too big for me. you know my fear of big things...it is a really good looking car, that's for sure but what if we don't have 4 kids? what do we need all that car for? I'm a luxury station wagon kind of girl...always have been.
poopy diapers smell SO BAD. It's just outside the realm of normally tolerated odors.

from scratch

2007-08-28T10:46:00.001-06:00

We had some friends over last night for the husband's birthday which was a week or so ago and his favorite cake is carrot. I decided I would make a carrot cake for him because I'm nice. I didn't realize my fingers would turn orange with all the grating of the carrots and that I maybe should have practiced making a cake for myself before I made one for another....
it stuck to the pan...it was sunken in the middle and I was sad. I stuck it on a plate, arranged the layers back in circles with all their detached parts, and put enough icing (3 inches or so) on it so that it looked like a cake....
it wasn't that bad, actually...but I think I'll let Duncan and Hines make the next one.
I have done the wedding hair for a lot of people that I can think of...and the prom hair and the fancy whatever hair but I have never done the same wedding hair three times until this weekend when Liz Davis had her third wedding related event and I put it up again...apparently 3 really is the charm cause she looked pretty. That was a really fun party...it was chilly at night for the first time in I don't know how long so I can't wait till fall. A chilly night and some Kim and some Emily and some Whitney and some Andi and some lemonade and hard candy....come on, people! good times.
I have the night off tonight...if anyone wants to hang out with me let me know. I guess since I'm the only one that reads this, I should probably just not ask that question to avoid no answers and subsequent disappointment.
I wish I had some cash.
I need some money...
mo money...mo money, biv devo, here we go!!! member that song?
anyway, I need some cash because there is a place called snoasis which Marsha's roommate, Kristen took us to the other night and I have literally missed like two days in three weeks of going there and getting $3.00 of rediculousness....I mean, I cannot hide the addictive behaviors that I try to quell in normal society...I don't care if those people in the little shack see me every single day...and they do....I gotta have it....I neeeeeeed it, I tell you....vanilla with extra cream...it tastes just like the snow cream we used to make when I was little...
anyway...
snoasis. You don't need to know where it is so you don't make the line longer and I have to wait more time.
Ruby is writhing on the floor screaming and wanting to play in the toilet water which I just can't allow...sorry but that's just gross, you go ahead and cry...but no...no, no, no and no!
We went to see Beauty and the Beast in the amphitheatre on friday and dellah got so excited she peed on gabriel's leg....I thought to myself, 'you are a very good father and I love you but I am so glad that that just happened to you because you're around them 1/24th of the time that I am and you need to be made a little uncomfortable because now you know how I feel.'
this is not a christian attitude. I take it back. I did think that but I shouldn't have written it down....
I wish I weren't chubbly. I'm always shocked when I look in the mirror. It's a big blow to realize I don't look like Gweneth Paltrow. I feel I need to ask Heaven why I can't sing and why my body doesn't do what i want it to.
whatever.
there are more important things.
probably.
ah yes....snoasis....
must go sell something to get some cash....

yeah, it's been a year....so!

2007-08-23T10:13:00.000-06:00

How strange to be here again. I have had the internet for a week now and pass the computer every day thinking, "yeah...I should write something" and then thinking, "yeah....that's overwhelming" and then keep on walking. I think you pass a certain point where it's just been a real long time and you don't know how to write stuff because there's too much stuff. I decided that I'll just write what's happened recently and the rest will just come out in subsequent posts like a far reaching enema to the past.

It's the screaming I can't handle. The screaming of little girls who inherited my volume and are scared or mad or frustrated or happy about every single thing in their lives. I seriously can't handle any more screaming. Sometimes I cry because I can't handle any more screaming and then my children smile because that is the sign of someone who couldn't care less how someone feels....oh, you're sad....that's funny....oh, I made you sad?.....that's even funnier-er.

that's enough of that. We moved. We live in this new house {in an undisclosed place so that no one comes to steal us} and we are happy.

We made sure we bought blinds for the windows before we moved in so we could have some priviacy but, all in all, we went from 700 sqare feet and three windows to 2100+ square feet and lots of windows which makes things really bright. My children who used to sleep until the 10am or heaven forbid, 9am are now waking up at 7am and, though I know other people wake up that early every day, I don't really know anyone who loves it...if they say they do they really don't. Anyway...hibernation has it's plusses...sometimes I miss the cave we came from. Mostly I miss feeling warm yummy love feelings for my children when I came to get them after sleeping until I could wake myself up. If I have to hear, "enjoy it...it goes by so fast" one more time I'm going to go by them really fast with my fist. It absolutely does not go by very fast in the present. It feels like a recurring out of body trip that is not altogether unpleasant but mostly really loud and messy and unorganized and bad for my sense of self esteem. Enough with your hindsight goes by really fast....sheesh..I love my babies so much it just doesn't go by fast, ok?

So I have a garage and a big trash can that we roll to the edge of the driveway on monday mornings and a door bell and a pantry and all that stuff.

This post is too long.

Yesterday in the wee hours when Dellah came to jump on my bed, I proposed that she should go to school. She said she wanted to go to school and then I said that people who go to school have to be able to go potty in the potty.(she is potty averse and thinks of every excuse never to go to the potty even though she is three years and two months old) To my astonishment she said, "yeah...Imonnagotooda poddy" and she went, sat down and peed. We put her ballet shoe bikini panties on which she calls "tannies" (homophone) and she went about 6 more times before we left for the day and she wore a diaper. We came home and she went more and this morning she comes in the room announcing that she needs to go poddy and wear her heart tannies. No accidents (if it were possible to have any going to the bathroom every 7 minutes just to flush and wash your hands). I have never spoken english to my children even one day in their lives and for some reason, Dellah speaks english 24/7 and thinks Ruby should too so Ruby is all messed up. Dellah says things like "I'm a big girl cause I gotooda poddy like a big girl cause I wear my tannies and I go to da poddy to do pee pee and liddle big poops" and Ruby says things like "yo gonna paper in la basura"...just pick a language already..at least she's talking...that's a huge step....Ruby is so cute it's a crime in a dozen countries.

I just got called to be the Laurel advisor in my ward...that's cool. And we're speaking in church sunday....that's okay.
I got some green flats yesterday...so cute. I mean soooo cute.
love love
erin

hi, it's me....

2006-09-19T14:41:00.000-06:00

Man oh man oh man....It's been a frickin' month since I wrote and I seriously don't even know where to start. I'm not very good at chronology anyway so I'll just get started. I was all kinds of fed up with my situation a month ago so I went to the DR. and told him, "look, I'm fat, I'm tired, I'm weak and I'm taking anti-depressants and I don't feel depressed...you have got to do something." He tested my thyroid...negative..and then had me take a pulse oximeter test over a night to see if I may have a sleep problem (apnea etc.)
Two days after that Dr's appt., I had pulled my back out strapping Dellah in her stroller at the Gateway mall and by the next morning it was so bad I couldn't move in my bed. Gabriel had to pull me off the side of the bed and walk me in to go pee...I know...glamorous. Then I took some tylenol and laid back down and my mom came in to say goodbye because she was going to drive back home to Washington after being here for 2 1/2 weeks trying to keep my sister together. A little later all I remember is feeling like something huge was pressing on my chest and I couldn't breathe very well so I grabbed Gabriel's arm and the next thing I know, he's standing over me talking to 911 and I hear the fire truck coming down the street. apparently, I departed the bedroom for a little while and was shaking and making weird noises (those of you in the car that morning after I got my cooch worked on will remember the scenario)...blah blah...anyway, I got taken to the hospital by 5 manly firemen and one manly fire-lady and spent the next 7 hours there getting MRI's, EKG's, EEG's, blood work, urine samples, chest x-rays etc, etc...they even squirted nitroglycerine under my tongue...it was weird. My mom turned around in Ogden and came back to Salt Lake to take care of my kittens for another 2 days which helped a ton. The ER doctors found an arhythmia in my heart or a long QT if that makes more sense (I'm sure it doesn't) so I was really weak and I couldn't breathe very well and that lasted for several days afterward and still happens periodically. I met with the cardiologist and he wanted me to wear a monitor for 2 weeks to see if we could get more info. Long story longer, I wear this rediculous pseudo i-pod looking thing that records my EEG whenever I press the record button that I'm having pain and then I call the office and press another button and all the info reads out on a strip of paper there...I can't tuck my shirt in and that sucks because I have all these wires here and there...
I got a call from the sleep doctor a while ago and they said that I stopped breathing several (like 15 or 20) times an hour and I needed to have an evaluation so I went there yesterday and got one and set up an appointment to go to a sleep lab and get hooked up to a bunch of wires and 'sleep' and spend the whole next day getting tested for narcolepsy by taking like 5 scheduled naps still hooked up to the stuff....I know! I thought only people like Steve had narcolepsy but apparently it doesn't only mean that you fall asleep at the drop of a hat...it's got other symptoms. The sleep doctor was so nice and I really got this glimmer of hope that maybe the sleep apnea thing would answer all of my questions...energy, weight, productivity, heart....we'll see but I'm hopeful.
I went to the homeopathic doctor this past friday and he did his voodoo that he do so well and gave me some enzyme business for my guts to see if it will help the general well-being of my cuerpo. I'm basically leaving no stone unturned until I can get to the bottom of why my heart hurts and my body retains every pound I have gained from 2 pregnancies and I have no ability at all to wake up in the morning. I went off the zoloft because I don't feel depressed, I feel tired and I think they're different. I WAS depressed but now I'm just fat and tired...or sick and tired or fat and sick and tired.
On a really good note, my little Fruby started WALKING this past week on wednesday and now she can stand up by herself and walk 5-10 steps and fall and stand up and walk and fall...it's glorious!
Dellah signed some sort of secret pact with evil 2 year olds in a plot to destroy the patience, christianity and coping mechanisms of their parents. And yet she really is so great...I don't know...she's a gemini...there's two of her.
Jen Holmes came back to North America to have the third Holmes baby so I have seen her a lot and been social with Zendina and Andi and liked the outcome...it feels nice to have friends. We even went to the fair on a blustry day and did the whole 'we take our kids to the fair because we're mothers' thing. Now I just need to see my OTHER friends like Marsha and Emily and Cindy and I will be full of joy...you can't have just some friends without missing all the friends.
We picked out our floor and carpet for our house in Sandy. We also picked our appliances and I am getting the refrigerator of my dreams (not the one with the TV but at least the one with 3 doors and really nice) and the washer and dryer of my dreams too...a really cool blue gray front loader business...
They told us it would be done early in the new year like jan or feb. but they told us late fall before so who knows.
I watched that show on Bravo last night called project Jay about the guy that won project runway the first year and it was seriously so funny. He is creepy smart and he reminded me of marsha (not aesthetically) but the way she's creepy smart and good at everything and has all this potential to take over the universe and likes to swear. Marsha, maybe you should do project runway.
I think that's enough blog today. if you made it this far, you get out of jail free.
xoxo

experimentation

2006-08-11T15:14:00.000-06:00

Today is a day of trying just to see...you know, 'let's just see'...so I'm sitting here in my living room in my favorite chair with my feet up writing on 'the firm's' laptop and trying to be very quiet while I watch my two female offspring entertain themselves with random things around the room....the room which is currently in a state of disrepair but, none-the-less...they're playing with no initiation from me and no talking from me and no video and no music and no nothing....it's like, I think this might be what heaven is like...small people that you're responsible for playing by themselves so that you can do something for yourself and not have to be responsible for them...or something like that. Heaven is probably actually very different because to get to Heaven you probably have to like getting out of your favorite chair to DO something and also like being responsible for people....
oh well...for today it's good. Although Ruby's diaper is beginning to offend from across the room so I'm sure I'll have to step in pretty soon.
I never taught my children to lipsync...I, therefore, have no idea why on earth they do it other than the fact that there's something for everyone but when their little toddler tunes are on, they both just blab their silent mouths in sync to the music instead of actually, audibly singing....very strange...
actually, last night, I think it was, Dellah was up way too late and she started singing the word galleta (cookie) over and over again to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star and then switched to row row row your boat but inserting words about mami and papi and galletas and so forth....there are moments of clarity in life and for me, this was one. I have given birth and am raising someone almost exactly like me. I wonder if spastic-spontaneous-superfluous shows of personality are nature or nurture...ooops.
Ruby has decided that a spoon and her fingers no longer get the food to her mouth fast enough, so, to my alarm, she just sticks her face in her bowl...the whole face...she could drown!! oh well. She'll be one of those skinny people who eat all the time...I hate/envy people like that so I guess this is a nice lesson to learn that skinny people who still eat a lot are people too...
love to all
My oldest sister's life has pretty much fallen down and broken all over the floor. It's hard to see that happen and not know how to help. It's so much worse that I could have imagined for her. And thus we just pray.
Sally the camel has no humps cause Sally is a horse, of course!....those toddler tunes get in the brain and they just don't get out!
I really want to see that movie Step Up in the same voyeristic way that I always wanted to see Dirty Dancing Havanna Nights but never did...I will see Step up though...I'm so glad that dance movies are still being made. I love dance. I love movies. I love dance movies.
I also love Gabriel. I have a hard time thinking of someone cuter than Gabriel. David Beckham is in town and he's pretty darn cute but he likes girls like Posh spice so I could never allow myself to like him...plus he's not Gabriel. Gabriel is seriously my favorite boy.
Dellah is wiggling her head like a bobble head right now and it's so funny because she totally didn't get in the neck line...that little girl has the biggest head and no neck! so cute.
my mom's coming to town today...whoo hooo!!

mechanical bull

2006-08-04T19:12:00.000-06:00

Last night we went to this work thing for the 'Firm' and there was a western theme. Everyone got a bandana of their choice upon entering....there was also a mechanical bull....I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to. I could not deny it.
And then reality hit and I realized that I didn't know these people from Gabriel's work and they were all standing around watching everyone ride and I have never been one to take a public chance unless I'm pretty sure I'll succeed or am surrounded by cheering supporters....Mechanical bulls aren't really up my alley and yet...kind of they are...
Not to mention the fact that when law firms have parties they spend a gagillion dollars on prizes and the prizes for the best femal bull rider were two moves and a cool metal box AND AN IPOD!! That was the clincher. I stood in the line like three times and then turned around and wandered back to Gabriel and the girls pretending I hadn't just stood in line....
then I just decided to do it and I had to sign a waiver on my life and then I mounted the beast....I watched that one move with luke Perry that one time about bull riding so I wrapped my bandana around my hand and squoze my thighs and the rest is history....
bull riding is a lot harder than it looks or than one might think. I pulled a muscle in my bottom. But I was so proud of myself like exceedingly proud in a freekish way because I totally did something I was afraid to do. Then we left before the prizes because Gabriel didn't feel like staying....obviously not as important for him...
We've been to a neurologist, had an EEG and and MRI for Ruby in the last week. I just felt like we had to get to the bottom of all this...it's just too much crying and too little normalcy. Of course all the things were normal and we're waiting on another test but we're pretty much in the dark where Ruby's concerned. At least it's not her brain...everything else is pretty much treatable at least.
The next thing will be another EEG to see if she's having seizures.
fun stuff.
the stuff that dreams are made of.
the nightmare kind of dreams.
My little sister is moving to Arizona in 3 days. I'm sad about it. I don't like the idea one bit but what can I do? Sisters are great things.
Gabriel and I went salsa dancing last weekend and he told me that If I meet my goals for health and fitness (my goal is to lose 40 pounds by Christmas) he'll fly me somewhere with really good shopping and give me money to shop!
I love Gabriel.
Now on to the health and fitness part....

I'm up too late.

2006-07-25T01:29:00.000-06:00

Some people say someone is crazy by saing they're 'up in the night'...hm...interesting. I'm definitely up but I don't see that as incrimination. I didn't say it before but I went and saw the Pirates of the Caribbean the other day and, might I add as a parental aside, I fully buy my children happy meals too often so I can get the toys from the Pirates stuff...have you seen those? It's hilarious. Ruby totally has this red doo rag that velcros in the back and dellah has this actually pretty awesome inflatable sword and this stuffed south park looking Johnny Depp doll...and the box for the happy meal has punch out pirate eye patch and ear ring and medallion! Come on now! It's like too good to be true. Anyway, I went to see the movie and I have to say, I got that giddy !YYESS! feeling several times. I don't remember Captain Jack having quite such obviously fake dread locks in the first one thought which was my only draw back...I kind of liked the stringy, scraggly mess a little better but the voodoo lady in the swamp? Oh my freaking goodness...I full on wanted to BE HER! I noticed the filmmaker tried not to put Orlando Bloom in the same shot with Johnny Depp so as to prolong the generalized assumption that Orlando Bloom is in some way remotely good looking as anything besides an Elf....in reality, Johnny Depp made everyone in the movie look abismally ugly...poor unfortunate mortals. I did find myself not hating Kiera Knightly though and thinking she was cuter than I have before....some of those sword fights were on par with the time Yoda fights in the second new star wars or was it the first...ooops, I don't know.
Today was Pioneer day and we took the progeny to the park to play and I quickly realized that all the other parents were just kind of lying around watching their children play and we're like following ours around and doing everything with them...someone could totally get hurt or stolen or something! what's wrong with those people. If they would have actually been up on the huge play thing they would have noticed that some degenerate smeared an alarmingly poop-like substance all down the twisty slide which could have produced a stain that even Oxy Clean can't get out....
Last night Dellah was sitting in her high chair eating and she just busted out the name "Bonnie Raitt" which is so weird because a really really long time ago, she asked me who was singing on the music at DI and I told her, Bonnie Raitt...a steal trap, I tell you, those small people have minds like steel traps.
man, I can totally picture the scenario when you talk in your family about some taboo issue or person and your kid totally goes and tells everyone or that person what you said....
I watched the movie, 'she's the man' today...why?
I have no words.
Gabriel says he has a surprise for me on friday having to do with our anniversary....I didn't realize before in my life but I'm pretty sure I hate surprises. No control...what IS it!? crap.
Have you heard that Paris Hilton song? what is up with the fact that it's actually not horrible? that girl sold her soul to the darkside...I totally know it.
My dad helped me buy a giselle the other day...the exercise thing from that spasoid with the huge muscles and the fake ponytail...tomorrow is my first day with no company and no Utah holiday to start my road to fitness and fake ponytails. I bought this random dress at DI the other day that I have hung on a hanger as my inspiration....It's not that inspirational in and of itself but I'm pretty sure the right bag and awesome shoes will take it over the top.
her I come no pecan sandies and no coca cola (except on special occasions) and no popcorn balls....
ok, I think I already fell off the wagon there...too many no's.

initiation

2006-07-23T21:00:00.000-06:00

So I am now a real Mexican. I have had visitors in or around my house for 10 days from Mexico City. Gabriel's old mission companion and his wife and their two beasts, I mean, boys, ages 4 and 6 and his wife's mother came to town and we have been out late and eating out and out of money and out of our minds for over a week. I thought Gabriel, the king of order and anti-chaos was going to blow a gasket with those obnoxious children slobbering and putting their feet all over everything we own. They are so nice thought, really. The grandma had me pick yarn so she could make Dellah a sweater and Ruby a blanket and SHE DID! in like two days! It was like bionic knitting! And they totally cooked for us two or three times making enchiladas and mole (pronounced molay and not the actual underground creature fried up in a tortilla) and rice and etc. I suppose for my initiation into latinaism and being fine that anyone at any time comes to stay or visit at your house for however long they want, this was a pretty good one because they actually stayed in our friend's apartment that are out of town right now so we had some space to breathe and our children could sleep in their own beds. All we had to do was have the Coca-Cola free flowing and they were pretty happy.
not to mention that they took a break from spending thousands of dollars on preppy Polo and Tommy Hilfiger clothes to come with me to DI where they dropped a whopping $280 (I didn't even know that was possible because I think my all time high was like $48 and they didn't even buy 'small as is'...just clothes.....amazing.
I think they may have been good luck as I found yet another Oilily item for $3....I uttered an audible YES!
Speaking of three, we will have been married for three years on wednesday the 26th so we're going to leave the babies for longer than five minutes and hope for the best (we'll be gone about 2 1/2 hours.)
Gabriel is talking to a Head Hunter about some other possibilities for us so we might be relocating. That's about all I can say about it without getting sad so I'll stop. Not really sad about a new adventure, I just don't deal very well with change.
I noticed while these visitors who kind of do and don't obey God were in town that it just isn't worth it to me to be blase about the gospel. There are just so many things that have got to be done right if this little life is going to end the way it's going to have to stay forever and ever and it all depends on now....it's just dangerous to play with forever thinking tomorrow is a sure thing. I'm not that brave.

Tomorrow is the Pioneer day parade here in downtown Salt Lake. It's hot as blazes outside and there are these freakshows out there laying on the grass since 7am all up and down the road saving their 'spot' when I'm going to walk out there tomorrow and stand right smack dab beside them. amazing. Amazing. I do think I'll go sleep outside the new IKEA they're building here though because apparently, they give really good things to the first 100 people at an openinig.
You gotta choose your battles man.
Dellah just slammed her cheek into a wooden chair and is holding a small bunny filled with ice on it. It looks like we beat her because she has a huge bruise already. She woke up from her nap today and fully speaks like a grown up. It's eerie because yesterday she didn't do that....even this morning. Ruby has not been informed that she is a baby and has limitations besides just that and that she can't do stuff. She wants to walk around and leave the house and drive the car and fly a plane when she can't even crawl with both legs under her yet. She must not have gotten the memo that she's about two shakes shy of the short bus....She's truly beautiful my little Ruby. I love that baby.
Good thing about Utah is that tomorrow is a holiday and I get my Gabriel all day long. Maybe I'll get a nap!!!!!
just think of it.

rubiferous

2006-07-06T21:21:00.000-06:00

it was the fourth of July when we celebrated independence. Gabriel, Dellah and I but especially Ruby. Ruby crawled for the first time in over 14 months of her life and she did it on freedom day....appropriate.
Now she crawls everywhere and all that crawling has pushed 4 new teeth out of her gums all of a sudden.
amazing.
My mom is 40 miles away on the freeway headed here for a visit. I'm excited to see her.
I had such a good time the other night with my friends Emily Andi and Kirsten. We went to the movies but we didn't see a movie and then we went to dinner and Andi bought us food and then we went back to her house and talked and talked and talked. It was nice to be around folks with no babies in sight.
It was really odd that on my last post there were all these total strangers commenting...
where are my people?
Where are my friends?
do you just not check here anymore because I don't get online as much anymore?
I understand.

so here's the thing

2006-06-30T16:54:00.000-06:00

So here's the thing. I shop at Wal Mart. I shop there and I go there and I like it. I save so much money and I get things I need and I like it. Here's another thing...I don't change my underwear every day and I come down here to the internet room while my children are sleeping sometimes and I'm totally ok with both of those things. Wanna know another thing? Sometimes when I'm out and I'm at the end of my rope and I need a coca-cola product and I don't feel like buying some kiddy orange fruity crap for my children....I pour coca-cola in their sippy cups and watch them chug away....I drink coca-cola and I like it.
yep
I do these things.
You know what else I do? I just chew gum sometimes instead of brushing my teeth because I JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE BRUSHING THEM!
Here's one. The other day I was in DI and some guy looked at me and my crying 2 year old and said, "Good G_D, Why don't you control your child!" to which I responded, "EX-CUUU-SSE ME, SIR? (to which he replied, 'you heard me') (to which I replied) WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU COULD CONTROL A TWO YEAR OLD WHEN THEY'RE CRYING? THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR OPINION! (at the top of my lungs). After which I meandered around the store pretending to look at things while my blood returned to a simmer. You just absolutely SO DO NOT go there with me. I totally went hos on that dude (and no, he was not mentally challenged, however, testicularly remains in question).
I do my best, you know? I don't read fashion magazines because they make me feel bad about myself. I don't hang out with snobby people because they make me feel bad about myself. I don't read trendy parenting magazines telling you what Brad and Angelina's baby eats breakfast in because....you get the picture.
My new house is going to be built in the very same parking lot as a wal-mart....wal mart and lowe's actually and I'm pretty stoked. I can just ride my bike there to get milk at midnight.
and I like it.
you know what else? I totally want the refrigerator with the television in the door so that I can watch meaningless television when I eat cereal or make food. I love television.
I love sugar.
I love saturated fats.
I love carbohydrates in all their forms
I love meat
and I cry when I hear cheesy mormon songs on the Sounds of the Sabath.
I have back fat.
I have front fat.
I have grey hair.
I have mid-digital hair on my ring fingers.
It's possible I have toe fungus.
I only read my scriptures a few times a week.
I hardly ever make it to all three hours of church.
I hardly ever make it through the day without thinking something terrible or mean or cruel and probably saying it after I think it.
I love buying things and returning them and feeling like I have free money to buy something else.
that's the thing.
I just am all of these things and I just kind of always will be until I am like Jesus and that just has to be ok.
Sometimes I feel like people try to be someone they think they should be and I'm just too tired to do that. I'm too tired to make dinner. I'm pretty glad it's friday because I like fridays.
Tonight I am going to the movies with my friends because that's what friends do. Now I am going back upstairs because that's what mothers do.

pushing it

2006-06-19T21:44:00.000-06:00

Today we went with GAbriel to get a CT scan on his head to make sure that his headaches were just migranes and not tumors or something...that was 12:30 and then after an hour or so we dropped him back off and work and went to Draper to look at Downeast Home for some Pottery Barn good at Target prices....then we went to TJ Maxx and then I ran over my stroller because both of my children were screaming and I forgot to put it in the trunk...the stroller is fine...then we went to Sandy to drive past the huge dirt area that rarely changes but we like to call it 'home' and got a happy meal and came back to Salt Lake where we went to the Health Department to pick up my INH prescription (I'm a public health hazard so I have to go to the 'infectious disease' office once a month right next to the HIV office) and then we went to DI where I saw Zendina and then we went to Hires Big H but they didn't have a peanut butter milk shake so we went to pick up Gabriel from work because it was 6. Somewhere between the big plot of dirt in Sandy and seeing Zendina in DI I realized that I was totally pushing it with my children. They were miserable. They were all sticky and dirty and frizzy and wrinkled and I was like, ONE MORE THING...JUST ONE MORE THING....ME, ME, ME....poor things. We go days without leaving the house and then we have these marathon things. moderation.
I wish it was easy for me to understand what has happened to my body. Amazing, really, when you think that I used to prance around life in a leotard and tights and not look that bad and now, well, I look 'that bad'. Blah blah, two kids, blah blah...I don't think that's an excuse when there are people that look teeny and they have 4 kids and I don't even seem to be losing one pound after having Ruby. I feel a strange indignance towards it. I'm so mad, actually. It's a weird feeling to have been something. I read the other day that you can't live in what you were or what you hope you will be...only what you are. I suppose that's true but I'm not throwing out the teeny pants just yet. I just can't do it. In my mind I'm normal...in the mirror i'm dillusional.
Gabriel goes out of town tomorrow AGAIN to Mexico until Friday...that's right robbers and theives...come and get us....
I have this little tin box of solid watercolors that I got in the kids department and I can't stop painting retarded things all the time...I have no idea what I'm doing but I really like it.
Wednesday I have the pleasure of cutting off Zendina's dread locks which are well past her bottom. She's ready to do it and I'm ready to help. It's a new day.
I like the sound of a washing machine and dryer going at the same time. It makes me feel the thrill of productivity with the comfort of slothfulness.
:)

Sunday things

2006-06-11T21:39:00.000-06:00

I was thinking today about how all these love songs talk about Sundays and rainy sundays and sleeping in on sundays and relaxing and movies and whatnot....I think if mormons thought really hard about it, most love songs don't really apply to us.
Today I taught relief society about prayer. That was good since I really like praying and prayer almost to a fault. I think you should pray about pretty much everything and therefore, there is probably a backlog of answers to most of my petitions but I think I'll keep it up.
Then we had a meeting with the stake presidency where they released Gabriel as the second counselor in the bishiopbric.....whew! I finally get my husband back on sunday afternoons, I get to have help going to church, I get to see him on tuesday nights, I get an extra lap to try and juggle babies on in sacrament meeting while they spit raisins on my silk stuff......and then in the next breath they called him to be the FIRST counselor in the Bishopbric....oh well....for that nanosecond, it was nice to be 'released'...now back to the grind.
I stood outside the nursery door today for a while and watched through a little crack how big my Dellah is and how she learns about Jesus and talks and plays....it's surreal. I taught her (since we live next door to the Salt Lake Temple and see it all the time) that the Temple is Jesus' house and now she says "mira mami, templo, casa de Jesus'....cute
I guess I have a few years before she actually goes there and realizes that you don't actually SEE Him in his house (or at least I never have) and thinks I lied...for now it's cute.
Mexico beat Iran in their first game of the world cup...I can't believe I even know that but Gabriel is a little obsessed with the whole thing so VIVA MEXICO!!!
speaking of Mexico...the inlaw thing has simmered down since we got calls from both of his parents yesterday apologizing and we figure it's better to forgive than fester in hatred, racism and terrorism...what?
I got some nice things at Anthropologie the other day because Andi said I should tell Gabriel that getting some nice things at Anthropologie would make up for my current emotional strain...like a business transaction...you buy me this, I forget about THAT!...
I got a nice little bowl made of ceramic leaves and some perfume and a belt...which was too big and I'm taking it back...not big, good, big, bad..
The truth of the matter is, there has GOT TO BE a special corner of Heaven for people who can change some of these diapers I've been changing lately and keep their lunch down...I swear to you!....rancid.
I think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby looks like she's going to be a mouth breather and I think that's pretty funny because she's just a baby, not the shroud or Tourin or something. I love how famous people have babies and all of a sudden it's like famous people invented 'the baby' when I'm pretty sure Eve invented the baby...well, God, but Eve too.

wednesday already

2006-06-07T20:29:00.000-06:00

It's funny how time flies. It seems like it was just sunday and now we're halfway there again! This morning, my little Ruby woke up before Dellah and we had a few minutes alone to eat cereal and chat and she crossed her chubby little arms to say the prayer. When those little firsts happen sometimes out of the blue, I really feel like all is right in the world.
Zendina came over today and we swam in the pool downstairs and chatted about things. It was a very nice visit.
Most of the times, I've noticed that the anxiety of a future event is not nearly comparable to the drama that event actually holds....since I was a little kid I've always been the type to not invite people to have sleepovers (or I suppose the adult equivalent to that would be just a visit) because I would get all stressed out about not having enought fun toys or my house was boring or I just would run out of things to say in my mental scenario. It never ceases to amaze that if I just calm the heck down about hanging out with people, it most always turns out completely normal and low key....seriously, the baggage we all lug around! It's atrocious!
I made a pretty good birthday cake for Dellah's birthday (my first maternal baking experience) and I realized that all the flavors you thought only your mom could create with edible ingredients, actually can be recreated by following a recipe...I would almost prefer that they stay unattainable somehow because that would make the fact that all the other sensations of childhood are more dull now, a little easier to 'swallow' as it were.
hooray for buttercream icing.
Hooray for babies in their diapers playing with water.
Hooray for the way chlorine makes your hair feel like you have product in it.
hooray for inlaws that tell your husband you're a witch and you're the reason he's changed for the worse creating a huge family eruption...
wait.
no.
not hooray for that.
viva mexico and all your antiquated ignorance!!!

Dellah Eve

2006-06-03T16:41:00.000-06:00

tomorrow is my first child's second birthday. Once I get beyond the sheer impossibility that I even HAVE children, the fact that one of them walks and talks and refuses to obey is yet another hurdle to jump...two years old...what a little joy she is...truly the light of my life.
She is getting a wooden puzzle with magnetic fish on it with a wooden fishing pole and a magnet on the end of it. I'm sure it will be stone cold hit. Speaking of cold stone....the other day I went in and asked for the smallest to go pint and they gave me like a half gallon thing and charged me for the small one. We also signed up for the Birthday club so they just sent Dellah her free coupon to let her parents get ice cream on her birthday becuase she doesn't know any better. Viva Cold Stone!!
Tonight is Michelle and Ryan's wedding reception and we are going to see them and any people who may be going to see them as well at the Springville art museum. Long drive but worth it.
Have I mentioned that all systems are go again for the Sanchez townhouse in Sandy this winter! Hooray for the Sanchezes. I can't stop thinking about having my own 2106 square feet to do whatever the bleep I wanna do and have us all sleep in appropriately separate bedrooms and have my parents or any other visitors not have to sleep in Dellahs room and have her glow worm going off at all hours of the night. Two words...stainless steel appliances....ok, three words...ok, one word...whew!!
I have to get myself and small people dressed to go so I'll write more later.

back east

2006-05-16T22:50:00.000-06:00

We're here in merry old Virginia with ourselves and our progeny. We're here with Gabriel's parents also that just got off a Carnival cruise to Puerto Rico...that's a pleasure. Especially when I was cutting his mom's hair this morning and she thought she would tell me that she never had post pardom depression with all six of her kids because the Lord loves her and that I should just 'animate' myself and snap out of it because she didn't have time to have depression (like I'm so lazy depression just landed on my stagnent body in the gutter or something.)...whatever. Never hurt the person's feelings that's holding scissors beside your cerebral cortex.
We had a horrendous plane ride with a reprieve in the Chicago airport when there was a reprieve in the food court with a Dunkin' donuts where I promptly bought half a dozen of these out of control creme puffs that took me straight back to my childhood before fat accumulated anywhere on me. Ruby had a fever...dellah screamed the whole way....Now we're here and we sleep in the same room...all 4 of us...so we've been waking up really early and then I've been sleeping in until noon if I can (take that, mother in law...that's right....noon!!...lazy, lazy me.)
Tomorrow we're going to williamsburg and on the way we're stopping at H&M to find some tender mercies and momentary happiness bought with filthy lucre. YES!! We're going to Busch Gardens on Fridsay...double YEs!
Before we came we went down to Provo to have a yard sale with my sister at Wymount and we made a cool $350 selling whatnots...of course that was gone mostly before we left but the best part of the day (besides the fact that my parents were there and I love to see them so much and have them see my children) was the fact that I got to go and do a girly thing with my friends at Marsha's house for Michelle's bridal shower. It was like manna in the wilderness. All these shiny girls and pretty faces...like wonderful...happy. I didn't get to stay long enough but it was a little sip of juice in a martini glass on a hot day.
Greeting from the east coast. We're sleeping on our niece's bed with the plastic sheet so I guess it's time to go try and be quiet on a crinkley mattress so we don't wake up the whole house.