Ginger, Cardamom, and a Miracle

My house smelled like graduate school last night.

Ginger and cumin.  Cardamom and garlic and coriander.  They used to seep through the walls of married student housing.  We were the only white couple in the building sitting down to spaghetti or stroganoff or chicken noodle soup.

When I was pregnant with Caleb, I couldn't keep anything down.  I worked next to a grad student from China who brought me ginger to calm my stomach.  When she handed it to me, I took one smell and promptly vomited.  She patted my back and shook her head.  She didn't have any other suggestions.  It was the year of the ox after all, and my "morning sickness" was strong, steady and stubborn. 

We gave up on cream of wheat and plain rice and toast without butter, and ate with our fingers last night.  Dipping our naan into the chicken tikka masala and licking our fingers when it was gone.  (If I had known my former neighbors were eating this good, I would have found more excuses to visit around dinner time.)

Between the licking and the smacking, the conversation went like this:

David always starts.  (I'm too busy getting my blood sugar up to a reasonable level. I'm quite near desperate by the time we pray.)

"So how was everyone's day?"

Mouths full, everyone grunts.

Then Ethan pipes up, "Mom almost burned down the house."

David looks at me.  I look at my plate and work purposefully on my blood sugar.

And Olivia adds, "Yeah, but Heavenly Father saved us."

David looks questioningly at all of us and swallows his food. Just as he is about to ask for the whole story, Savannah gives it in a nutshell.

"We had to take dinner to the missionaries, but first mom had to take me to Kenzi's house and so we were in a big hurry because the missionaries have to eat at five o'clock and that's it, so Mom forgot to turn off the oven,"

Caleb interrupts, "Stove."

Savannah shoots him a look.

"Stove."

"What?"

"It was the stove.  Not the oven."

Olivia finally prompts, "Anyway..."

"Okay, mom forgot to turn off the stove (another meaningful look at Caleb) and there was a hotpad on it and when we came home a while later..."

Olivia interrupts, "It was like an hour."

Caleb corrects, "It was longer than that."  He is dismayed at my carelessness.

"Anyway, when we got home the hotpad was all black and burned but the house was not!"

And then Ethan says solemnly, "And so we said a prayer."

David is all amazement by now and his hands have stopped moving to his mouth.

Olivia adds sagely, "We all knelt down and said a prayer.  Right then.  It's important to say thank you when Heavenly Father saves your house."

By this time my eyes are welling over and I'm still staring at my plate.  Eventually I look up at David and say equally apologetically and wonderingly,

"At the very least the house should have been full of smoke." 

But it wasn't.  It was full of ginger and cinnamon and cardamom, and the most fragrant basmati rice you've ever smelled.  I can spot a miracle a mile away.  (I was trained in my youth.)

The only other time I almost burned something down was during graduate school, when I came really close to burning down our church building.  I was making dinner for a crowd and got distracted socializing.  (Who, me?)  The missionaries showed up just in time for dinner and just in time to tell me the kitchen was full of smoke.

I have been saved twice now, by feeding the missionaries.  I am inclined to think that's more than luck.

Nursemaid to One

David stopped breathing this morning at five o'clock and it woke me up.  And then there was a gasp and all kinds of wheezing coming from his side of the bed.

I got up and found the nebulizer and fixed him a fresh batch of albuterol cocktail.

He and Caleb are supposed to be going on a Klondike campout tonight.

He said between wheezes, "I'm going to die in that tent tonight."

I told him that in all likelihood he probably wouldn't die, but that it may, indeed, be a very long night.  Regardless of his imminent demise, he has plans to put on his tie and blearily sit through some meetings today.  Even now he is simultaneously puffing away on the nebulizer and putting his blackberry through its paces.

When Caleb came to ask what was for breakfast, he quietly added that he had thought he had a cold.  He does.  His whole face was running.  (Truth be told, I am just relieved that it's not E.coli.  I've been on high-alert ever since our little live cultures were delivered.)  I tried (hard) to talk him into staying home, but he said he had two tests.  I sighed and told him to call me after they were over. 

However, Ethan was still in his pajamas at breakfast, where he announced that he was too sick to go to school. 

"My neck hurts."

"Inside or out?"

"Inside."

He is staying home.  No cajoling needed.  Letter G can wait.  I snuggled him back into bed, with promises of soup and apple juice and a Home Alone marathon when he wakes up.

I propped David and Caleb up with day-time cold medicine and resignedly sent them on their way.  But, I'm thinking now that I should have switched the dosage to the night-time stuff when they weren't looking, because my patient-load should really be three.

Padding My Resume

I'm not sure of the reason for my blogger's block.  Lots going on, and no way to link it all together in one clever post.  I put a lot of stock in cleverness.

That being said, there isn't going to be any in this post.  So you can go ahead and lower your expectations.  Soothe yourself by just being happy there is a new post.

After a brief lull after the holidays, real life has returned hot and heavy, as evidenced by the fact that my sewing room has once again been turned into ground zero for Caleb's new science project (by the way, throw out your hand sanitizers people, that's just a pandemic waiting to happen) and the stacks of current projects I have piled everywhere else.  

Here is my life by the numbers:

This weekend we celebrated the 95th birthday of this lovely lady (my grandmother)

and travelled 427 miles from home to watch her blow out her candles.

On the drive, David helped me work on the address list for our

1st annual "Garden of Hope Spring Tea Luncheon,"

to raise money for the 1,800 cancer patients at David's hospital who will be diagnosed this year,

and which will be held on May 9, 2009. 

Mark your calendars, though you may be lucky enough to get one

of the 500 save-the-date cards we are mailing out.

(I told David this week that he was a very lucky man to have such a wife.  I mean look at my community outreach and charity work.  I need to update my resume.  He replied by using "affinity" and "opine" in a sentence and I got all giddy and forgot about the fact that he really owes me one.)

I have spent most of the last week working on the aforementioned invitations, as they should have been at the printer's 2 days ago,

and when I wasn't, I was working on a 94 inch square quilt that will be auctioned at our event,

and helping Caleb swab 10 petri dishes with E.coli (you read that right)

and washing my hands with soap and water 100 times afterwards.

Quilt retreat is only 56 days away,

so I have also been madly working on my round robin projects (I'm only behind one rotation now)

and making a couple of trips to the quilt store and the post office.

And when I was on one of these trips to the quilt store

I found the perfect fabric for the boys' room and decided to make a few pillows for their beds,

which made me think of making a 50 inch matching cornice box for their window.

(I know that sounds ridiculous, but I couldn't help myself, and I told David that very thing, besides which you'd be amazed at what I can do with 18 inches of styrofoam and some liquid nails.)

And just because I know you are wondering, Olivia and I started Anne of Green Gables

and we are on chapter nine.

CIM Takes Matters Into Her Own Hands

It's time I posted.  Past time, really.

David listed my neglected and missing posts last night in bed.

Surprisingly, I wasn't feeling too amorous after that.  And I may have said something rude.  (I'm not saying one way or another.)

And then this morning RIM and CIM got into an argument about what to post and what not to post, and in what order.  Like that matters.  Obviously, CIM won because here I am telling you all this.  She always wins when I'm tired or haven't eaten recently or I've said something rude to my husband and am therefore feeling out-of-sorts.  (Let's be honest, after all that there is really very little place in my life for RIM.)

And so yes, there are other things to talk about.  Like our date to Othello with my parents (it was brilliant, by the way),

David's new car (no pictures yet),

the word-of-the-week and my SPT (in which I am teaching my kids a *new* game and *trying something new by letting the laundry and the mopping wait in favor of a couple of good games of croquet*),

not to mention the girls' Saturday sewing class with my mom,

 

a talk by Elder Bednar,

an inauguration, and the 100th day of school (which happened on the same day).

But instead,

here is a movie about why it is great to live in Arizona in January even if your bicycle-built-for-two gets a flat tire and it's so warm that you have to run the air conditioner for an hour before bed.

Word of the Week: Detritus

detritus  /n./  rock in small particles or other material worn or broken away from a mass, as by the action of water or glacial ice.  any disintegrated material.  debris.  fragments.  garbage or waste.  matter.  rubbish.  scree.  silt.  tuff.  rubble.  shavings.  leavings.

detritus  /n./  1.  I have always loved this word.  The letters themselves, put together in this combination, sound like the leftover sand and rocks rolling around in the bottom of a beach bag.  And in addition to that, it is my constant companion.  Detritus and entropy dog me ceaselessly.

detritus  /n./  2.  I have to admit I almost discontinued "word-of-the-week."  It felt almost like the detritus of another time, and that maybe I ought go in a different direction with my blog this year.  But then I realized I had only posted once between my last two SPT's.  Apparently, I need more reasons to post, not less.

detritus  /n./  3.  Last week was rough.  Re-entry into regular life after two weeks vacation with my darlings was harsh and shocking.  It always is.  When I commented just that, David only said resignedly, "I knew it would be."  Last Monday, when I found myself surrounded on all sides by detritus of every kind (laundry, holiday decorations, suitcases and boxes from our trip to Michigan, ashes in the fireplace, and new toys with no "home") and simultaneously deserted by everyone I live with, a small rebellion ensued.  Not to mention a hearty resentment stew boiling away in my hard heart.  There was enough there to last more than a few days.  But eventually, I cleaned up both the detritus and my heart (you can guess which one took longer), and by Saturday night, it was livable here again.

 detritus  /n./  4.  By the end of last year, working (blogging and editing pictures) on our home computer was just about impossible.  There is so much detritus on there from programs the kids have uploaded and downloaded and generally unloaded on there, that it has brought it to an almost excruciating standstill when you're trying to do anything requiring even the least bit of memory.  David, seeing my plight, bought me a brand new Dell laptop for Christmas.  And in particular, a red one.  He was very specific about that last point.  I was so shocked and confused when I opened it (I thought it was an electric skillet?) I started bawling from the surprise.  (I'm sure that will shock most of you, considering my decidedly un-lachrymose nature.  Last night I did start bawling while I was making hamburgers, but my blood sugar was low, so there.)  Anyway, I am feeling extremely blessed to be using it.  In addition to all this, David spent a good two and a half hours on the phone and on the computer getting my wireless internet hooked up on Thursday night.  I know how lucky I am.  (Especially considering everything in the paragraph above.) 

detritus  /n./  5.  It seems we barely put away the detritus of the space station project, and Caleb is already nudging me to help him start his science project.  He told me yesterday, "Mom, I really think we need to order those petri dishes today."  I really think Target should have a petri dish section.

detritus  /n./  6.  In an effort to clear up some of the detritus leftover from last year and "start fresh," we finished reading the Book of Mormon this past week.  We read the last chapter of Moroni together on Tuesday night and then ate cake.  We believe in celebration around here. 

The Other Shoe and Semester's End

I had to take our only working car into the shop yesterday.

My eyes watered when I saw the bill.

The car guy said, "It could have been worse."

I raised my eyebrows skeptically. 

I know he was thinking, "I had one guy in here last week who has to get a whole new car."

And I was thinking, "I know.  That was my husband.  Ironic, no?"

Thankfully, RIM kept CIM from bursting into tears.  But it was close.

The good news is that school is out tomorrow.  August seems like an absolute lifetime ago.  But our holiday begins tomorrow afternoon.  Well deserved, I say.  And in two sure signs that the semester is winding down, Caleb had his violin Christmas concert on Monday night  

and this morning I went to the school to help Ethan decorate a graham-cracker house.  

And just so I don't give you any false impressions about my crafting abilities (that last post may have been misleading) I am including this picture Ethan took of me and my shredded wheat reindeer.  In my defense, I think it would have worked if the royal icing had dried faster.

Word of the Week: Reticent

reticent  /adj./  habitually silent or uncommunicative, disinclined to speak readily.  reserved.  taciturn. having a restrained, quiet, or understated quality.  bashful.  hesitant or shy.  tight-lipped.  clammed up.

reticent  /adj./  1.  Not being a reticent person myself, it might surprise you to know how much I really like this word.  That first syllable is so quiet you hardly know what's coming before it's already upon you, and then the last syllable bashfully quiets the word back down, as if it's sorry it spoke at all.

reticent  /adj./  2.  For whatever reason, I've been reticent to talk about last week, as I don't know how to capture it accurately.  In many ways it was just a dumb week, with a number of wasted days thrown in the mix.  But last night at dinner, David said something like, "We need to post those pictures of..." by which he meant I need to post those pictures.  And this only made me even more reticent to share any of it because its my blog after all, etc.  But here I am, reticently repenting. 

Maybe one reason I'm so disinclined to be reticent is that I look just plain weird with my mouth closed.  I need more lip to cover my teeth properly.

reticent  /adj./  3.  We had our family picture taken on Monday and Tuesday this week.  Yeah, that's right, it was a two-day affair.  I will only say that this was not by design.  (I will not say why...I am determined to stay reticent on this point.)  But this felt like a couple of wasted days because of all the prep it takes to get us looking presentable.  It's a job, believe me.  Our last good family picture was taken when Ethan was one and I was bound and determined this year to get a real live, official family picture taken.  Now we are anxiously awaiting the proofs.  I am two parts gleeful anticipation and one-and-a-half parts fearful trepidation.  I wanted it to be colorful...and it was.  David is quietly concerned about this and would have preferred us to all match.  Luckily for me, in our whole married life he has never once said, "I told you so."  (Even though he could have about a million times.)

reticent  /adj./  4.  The kids had Tuesday off school and so we went to the drive-in movie after our almost-family-picture on Monday night.  We blew up an air mattress for the back of the car and let the kids lay on that, while David and I sat on camp chairs outside and were, surprisingly, plenty cold by the end of the show.  (Though I'm reticent to complain about the cold because we've waited so long for it to arrive.  In fact, we're back to hot again today and I was boiling in bed last night.  It's not beginning to feel anything like Christmas.  The flannel sheets are going on the beds in a week...we're all going to have to sleep naked.)

 

reticent  /adj./  5.   Tuesday was spent family picturing (again) and playing games (it was a minor holiday).  Wednesday I had to go to the school to help with scenery for the upcoming 2nd grade play and the rest of the day was eaten up with mothering interruptions.  By Thursday I was starting to panic about my upcoming talk and the state of my house.  (My usual cleaning day is Monday, so by Thursday even RIM couldn't think straight.)  I am reticent to admit that I am pretty much a non-functioning human being when my house is a mess, or even (dare I admit it) when I "feel" like it is dirty.  So I scrubbed my way to sanity and then spent the next couple of days working on my talk for stake standards night on Sunday evening.  And my kids asked several times, "Aren't you done with that yet?" (I told you it was a dumb week.)

reticent  /adj./  6.  On Friday night we went to the Fall Festival at Caleb's school.  It's mostly a fundraiser, but they have dinner and a few carnival-like games.  We didn't stay for long, but the kids had a good time and got their fill of cotton candy and snow cones, which has to last them until the Lehi Rodeo in the spring.  Savannah asked David to hold her cotton candy while she frosted a cupcake at one of the booths, and he was reticent to admit that it was significantly smaller when he handed it back to her.  There was a gorgeous full moon that night and on the way home I pointed it out, to which Olivia said, "That's a perfect moon for running away."  What the?  Just when I was planning to ask her if she was happy at home she followed it with, "If I was an Indian that would be a perfect running-away moon."  I have no idea what happens inside her mind.

reticent  /adj./  7.  For a post on reticent, this certainly isn't very, is it?  I won't be a bit offended, if you stopped reading at number 3. 

Passing Notes in Bed and Other Nonsense

My whole house was slow getting up this morning.  Except for David, who kissed me goodbye at 6:40 and I said, "Oh, it's late."

The girls were especially slow, and bleary-eyed on top of that.

I guess they had a late night. 

Last night, I finally said, "Girls.  Stop talking.  (In my firmest voice.)  If I hear one more sound from this room, I'm going to have your dolls come sleep in my room."  (That does it every time.)

But they found a way around me.

I found this in under Savannah's bed this morning.

 

And then I discovered this in the corner.

 

Apparently there was a late-night party in the southwest bedroom last night.  I'm not sure at what point in the night they had two ginormous bowls of popcorn.  But there you go: evidence of my expert parenting skills.

For the record, I didn't hear one more sound from their room.

In other news,

look what Ethan and I found today:  the raw materials of a space station.  We've been looking for the perfect tubing for weeks and so we were pretty triumphant at our find.

We were giggling pretty hard in Ace Hardware using this tubing as a telephone.  No one else thought we were funny.  Apparently hardware is serious business.

When Your Husband's Team Loses

The gorgeous (I mean it!) apple pie I baked became a

consolation pie

and it came in handy.

In the end we decided to cut our losses and really celebrate the passing of all the propositions about marriage between a man and a woman.  Best campaign work I did all season.

Other things in my life right now include:

1.  I have continued to have a string of very bad dreams.  Last night was the fifth one in a row.  David suggested maybe it is something I'm eating.  So I'm swearing off chocolate...luckily we are down to the dregs of the Halloween candy.  Just a few tootsie rolls and smarties and milk duds in the bottom of the bowl now.

2.  In the last week, two people have called and asked me to speak in their wards or stakes in November.  My mind is now busily pondering in all my quiet moments.  You should hear the sermons CIM can preach during a good bathroom cleaning.  These invitations also make me wish (again) that I had a direct pipeline to heaven, and wish (again and again) that I was better at receiving revelation.

3.  We are still slogging through the aerospace project.  Are you sick of hearing about that yet?  We've come down now to the write-up and building the actual model.  Yeah, that's all.  Sheesh.  I'm trying to figure out a way to create a little motor to rotate our space station, but since my hobbies include reading and quilting and not battery power or combustible engines, I'm coming up blank.  Shocking, no?  Just building the model to scale is enough to make me itchy. 

4.  My aunt Jill sent me the cutest thank you gift ever and I'm going to post a picture of it soon.  But when I was in Houston I left my book, my phone charger, and my camera battery charger in the room.  Good night.  So they are sending them to me.  Slowly, apparently.  I only have a sliver of battery left and I'm saving it for the darling haircut Savannah is getting this afternoon. 

(I guess that will do for now.  My kids are coming in the door.  They are mine again.)

Wow, this was random.  Perhaps last night's loss dealt more of a blow than I thought.

Word of the Week: Passel

passel  /n./  an indeterminately great amount or number. a lot. multiplicity. a great deal. abundance. profusion. jillion. ream. heap. peck.

passel  /n./  1.  I have a passel of posts in my head.  I told David that I might as well just give up.  He told me it's only been four days since my last post, that I can't be that far behind.  He has (luckily) never been inside my mind.  He'd be shocked at how much my brain can produce in four days time.  And most of it crazy.

passel  /n./  2.  This week I had my one year blogiversary.  (I meant to do a whole post on it, but I had a peck of things to catch-up on after returning from Houston and Halloween stole the rest of the week.)  There are so many things I love about this milestone, not the least of which is the passel of daily, seemingly ordinary moments that make up my life, now real and recorded, forever.  Because of this blog I have more photos, I am more introspective, I am more kind (even to myself), I am more aware of my present, and I have fewer regrets.  That's a passel of reasons to keep going.

passel  /n./  3.  I had a great time at Quilt Market with my aunt and my mom and felt (above all) extremely useful, which is, occasionally, a really nice feeling to have.  I came home with a passel of new projects and ideas and handmade Christmas gift ideas.  Now I just need a passel of free hours to get to them.    

passel  /n./  4.  My favorite moment of the Halloween festivities this week came on Wednesday when Ethan and I went hunting for four perfect pumpkins among the passels of them at our local farmer's market.  We had a little carving party on Thursday night.  My parents came for dinner, and as payment we required them help one of the kids clean out and carve their pumpkin.  Divide and conquer, as it were.  My mom wondered out loud how she did it with nine of us.  I always wonder that.  No matter the subject.  We had pumpkin pie for dessert (Ethan's idea) which turned out to be the perfect ending.

passel /n./  5.  My children celebrated Halloween this week (a separate post altogether), and I celebrated it being over.  Now I just have a passel of candy that I need to discretely get rid of.  Usually I just let my kids eat themselves sick for two days and have done with it, but this year they got so much, we've still got a giant bowl full.  I'm already tired of the wrappers, the smashed-in goo, and the chocolate fingerprints around my house.  Really, I just don't get the point of it at all.  Boo.

passel  /n./  6.  David and I have been sick for the last couple of days.  Nothing serious.  Just complete fatigue, sore throats, headaches.  But feeling bad enough to require a passel of naps.  I was in and out of consciousness all afternoon yesterday.  During these naps I had a passel of disconcertingly bad dreams, one yesterday that is still haunting me and may have been the worst I've ever had, and one today which was all about the word "ascribed."  (Yes, really.)  I'm finally feeling a bit better, (David thinks this is all due to the medicine he force fed me) but I'm now filled with dread and that slightly panicky feeling that I've lost more hours than I'll ever be able to make up.