My Native American and I have plans this afternoon to
make 6 pies (pumpkin and apple),
and laugh our heads off watching Elf.
And then my other darlings will be home
and we're going to eat chicken noodle soup
and 1 pumpkin pie
and laugh our heads off watching Elf again.
Happy Thanksgiving.
sanguinely /adv./ cheerfully optimistically. assuredly. buoyantly. confidently and enthusiastically. expectantly. lively. hopefully. also with reddish or ruddy color, floridly.
sanguinely /adv./ 1. I think perhaps I had a hard time with this word this week, because the word itself doesn't sound sanguine to me at all. The middle syllable in particular sounds like you opened a box of something distasteful and reminds me of dissecting frogs in 7th grade. And so the week did not go sanguinely, at least for me. There were moments spent in the exact opposite way in fact. But we woke to rain this morning, sanguinely pattering on the roof and skylights, dark clouds covering everything, and so I am sanguinely publishing this post and hoping for days and days of rain and turkey and games around our kitchen table.
sanguinely /adv./ 2. Olivia was delighted at her viola lesson this week to be invited to play at the big Christmas recital. Her teacher has been astounded at her progress and believes she's ready to perform. Olivia, of course, sanguinely accepted the invitation, beamed all the way home, and has been madly practicing the can-can ever since.
sanguinely /adv./ 3. Savannah had her second grade "Johnny Appleseed" play this last week. She wanted to memorize her part and spent a good part of the week pacing the house reciting lines about John Chapman's life. She narrated beautifully and did her own share of sanguinely beaming. The highlight of the play, though, came when David cancelled a meeting and surprised her by showing up. He said when he walked up he had never seen such a grin on her face. I am including a video of her part for her grandparents whom, I'm sure, will sanguinely applaud me for doing so. Please notice the scenery that I helped create. David was duly impressed of course.
sanguinely /adv./ 4. Caleb and I spent more hours than I care to think about working on his aerospace project this week. He and his team are sanguinely predicting a big win at the competition next week, but I am nervously worrying about all the "black holes" in our research and plans. But there is little we can do now. We have built and rebuilt and typed and retyped and thought and rethought, plus glued and sawed, and drilled, and mod-podged, and watercolored, and scale drawinged, and made a gazillion trips to Home Depot. All that's left is the bibliography (which is substantial) and securing the solar panels (which are sadly skewampus). Truth be told, I would find an "honorable mention" downright miraculous. I keep telling the boys that this is just a learning experience, but their enthusiasm will not be dampened.
This was the state of my feet on Monday night after a day of helping 11-year-old boys spray paint. They came clean, but my garage floor will never be the same.
sanguinely /adv./ 5. On Saturday we drove down to Tucson to visit Daniel (my cousin) and Carol (his wife) and their lovely girls. We went to watch the BYU vs. Utah game (we don't have any kind of cable) on their large theatre screen and have dinner. The girls disappeared shortly after our arrival, emerged for dinner, and shed a few tears at our leaving. When I announced that it was time to go, they said, "What?!" with utter shock and consternation. BYU lost horribly to their big rivals, but David took it okay. In fact, when we left to drive down he rather un-sanguinely said, "I have a bad feeling about this." (Meaning the game, not the car ride.) They live in near some gorgeous mountains covered in saguaros, and this gorgeous specimen is right in front of their house.
sanguinely /adv./ 6. On Sunday night, David and I attended "Priesthood Preview" with Caleb who will turn 12 this year and receive the Aaronic priesthood. This was, of course, one of those moments that kind of stops in your tracks and you wonder "What just happened here?" In the middle of the meeting they asked the boys to stand together and sing "Called to Serve." Caleb sanguinely belted out his part, regardless of the other quiet, tentative, 11-year-old voices around him. When the other boys looked at the floor or blushed shamefully at each other, Caleb stood up tall, looked straight at us and sang out his testimony. I was busting. I love that he knows who he is.
That's what Olivia hollered as she went out the door this morning.
It's cloudy this morning, which I don't think has happened since like last February or so.
And in honor of that and in case of rain, Olivia wore an extra scarf today in addition to the one she usually wears. You can't be too careful.
In other news, I'm still half-dressed. (You're never fully dressed without at smile, you know.) And the word of the week has failed me, as I have not done anything sanguinely the past week or so. (Just ask David: yesterday he brought me a jamba juice and I growled at him. In my defense though, I asked for 2 inch 6/32" screws., and he brought jamba juice. Jamba juice, though fruity and delicious, cannot hold a leaning space station upright.
But later, if I can get my kitchen floor mopped, and the laundry off the floor and out of the doorway and possibly even folded, and get organized for our space station work meeting this afternoon, then I will publish a sanguine post. Even if it's only about all the darlings in my life who continue to be sanguine even in the face of my frustrated grumpiness. Pray for peace, people everywhere. I had big plans to be ready to do my Thanksgiving grocery run today as well, but I'm not sure I'm quite up to that, emotionally or otherwise. Perhaps that will leave groceries and pie making all for tomorrow, an unprecedented occurrence, but that's about the state of things.
And now for your enjoyment, a diagram of my life:
1. my neglected sewing machine...I see you over there and I miss you.
2. the quilt that used to hang on that bare yellow wall...it was the victim of a sad watercolor incident and so had to be taken down for cleaning and drying. It still has not been rehung.
3. the leaning tower of space stations...it rotates, but it lists to the left. I spent four hours yesterday trying to reinforce and shore it up, to no avail. I'm just going with it now.
4. the worst drill in the entire history of drills...what I wouldn't give for a seriously powerful drill that you could PLUG IN.
5. my missing drill bit...I spent a good thirty minutes looking for it yesterday.
6. the jamba juice David bought me instead of 6/32" screws...I was so ticked off I just let it melt without drinking a bit of it. I'm crazy like that.
7. the dreaded floam...this stuff was supposed to be the regolith in the bottom of the space station but it was just a disaster. Curse the makers of floam and while I'm at it, I also curse Martha's double sided tape. Heaven help me.
8. mod podge...can't have a project without it. David went to the store on Saturday to procure this bottle. He was like, "Mod Podge? What's mod podge?" I said, "Just ask someone." It is a testament to his graciousness that he ran the errand at all.
9. the detritus of the space station project...the inside of my brain looks about the same.
10. a pile of dowels...they are the witnesses and victims of several failed attempts. Someday perhaps they will have a chance to tell their story.
Editor's Note: I wrote this last week (Friday morning) but never published it because I thought it was too ridiculous to share. However, given my current state of distress and emotional instability (who me?), this post sounds downright sensible. Now that's just plain scary.
_________________________________________
Okay, I should just be moving on.
That's what David says. But I'm a fusser. And I fuss the most with myself. And I just can't seem to let things be.
Last night went okay. I'm sure you're all dying to know.
I had several dreams about the talk before the actual talk and in some of them it went okay and in some of them it was not so good and in some of them I was naked.
Last night I did manage to remember my dress.
Although I did forget my slip and perhaps that was the problem right there. It was a half-dressed talk. It could have been worse. Naked definitely would have been worse. But it could have been better.
Yesterday Caleb said, "So are you ready for your talk?"
I said, "Sort of."
He said, "So that means you're done writing it, but you don't like it?"
I looked out the car window and nodded.
He said, "I thought so."
And so I want to know how can a person like me be allowed to raise human beings. I'm only half-dressed myself.
Last night when I came home and tearily explained how it went to David he asked me how long it had been since I had eaten. Seriously, it must by trying to be married to a half-crazy, half-dressed girl with blood sugar issues.
Add all that to a few half-baked ideas about humanure and space station trusses made of buckypaper, and you've really got yourself a mess.
Note: Please be advised that CIM wrote this all by herself. RIM is already telling me that I will regret it in the morning.
Tonight I read that the "representative habitation module" for the space station needs to be "to scale (metric)." I told David, "I have no idea what that means."
So there.
But here's my life by the numbers, metric and otherwise:
In the last 3 weeks
I've been to Home Depot at least 10 times,
and Target only once.
Which is just plain weird.
(Today I thought, "I'll just walk around Home Depot and see if there is anything that might be helpful." Which is also just plain weird. Weirder still, I found what I was looking for. So there.)
I have 1
30-40 minute talk to give tomorrow night
and 0 idea of what to say.
I do know that Caleb's space station designed for 100 people
is 5,090 meters squared
and will need about 2 billion liters of air
and 8,030 kilograms of potatoes,
but still 0 idea of what information might be useful to a roomful of faithful women.
So there.
(Those last two lines just took the wind out of my sails. I've lost my belligerence. When I started this post I had a good head of steam going. But now I'm just feeling small and scared.)
But I'm going to rally. Here goes:
The good news is that the 83 cm-in-diameter space station
is actually now rotating at 2 rpms all by itself,
and I have 36 hours before I have to think about it again.
And also (in regards to the talk and not the space station),
that the Lord has never, not once,
left me alone.
So there.
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.
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.
(First a word to Claude: This post contains secret birthday stuff, so you'll have to hide it from Mom 'til Wednesday.)
My gorgeous mother-in-law's birthday is on Wednesday, and so I had all the kids write her a birthday wish this morning before they left for school.
(Let's just ignore the fact that I'm late, late, late in getting this done and am going to have to overnight these little birthday wishes, plus the girls are still wanting to make a "doll fashion spread" and send it along with their cards. I'm not sure what that entails, but they were busy with the camera and accessories all yesterday afternoon. I know, for instance, that there's a page about "What to wear when you have nothing to wear" that involves a shower cap and some terry cloth.)
But I digress.
So I gathered all the cards up and we hurried our way through pancakes and hair do's and sorting the Monday laundry and finding the scarves (!!) (It's supposed to be 80-something today...scarf weather for sure. Heaven help us.) and shuttling them off to their bus stops with kisses and well wishes.
And then I sneaked a peek at their birthday wishes. I couldn't help it.
There were lots of "so, so, so muches" from the girls and a delicious picture from Ethan involving a birthday hat.
And from Caleb there was this:
"The thing that I like about you so much is your laughter. We could use some in the house right now. We're all worried about school..."
And that hit me like a ton of bricks. Which feels a lot like heartache by the way.
Oh my boy.
Sometimes I just forget about childhood.
And so I've changed my plans for the week. This week I have only one thing to do. Laugh. A lot.
And make sure my kids do their fair share of it as well.
I guess we could use some in the house right now.
David is making us cinnamon rolls (from a tube) and a couple of cups of hot chocolate.
(He's a peach.)
And I am breathing a sigh of relief.
I just finished speaking at Stake Standards Night. After weeks of thinking and praying, and days of nerves (even RIM was starting to sound crazy!), I am so happy to have it done.
I said, "Let's eat some pie. We need to celebrate."
But there was no pie, so we're making do.
I love my husband.
He has put up with my fussing for days. I've been restlessly rolling around our bed for the last couple of mornings, nudging him awake with my nervous energy. And this morning at church I buried my head in his shoulder and bit him I was so nervous. He didn't even flinch. At any of it.
As for the reviews:
David said it was "so good." And he's the only one I care about anyway. I like to imagine him sitting out there in the congregation thinking how lucky he is, "Hmmm, cute and clever. I totally scored."
Or something like that.
Actually, his grin at the end was really just that...a grin for the end...of this particular "crisis." Bless him, a thousand times over.
Now just one more speaking assignment and a miniature space station to create and power, and I will be back to "normal."
Ha. RIM is heartily scoffing at that.
ascribe /vt./ to credit or assign, as to a cause or source. to attribute or think of as belonging, as a quality or characteristic. accredit. credit. impute. hang on. pin on.
ascribe /vt./ 1. The appearance of this post can only be ascribed to Rachel, who when I told her I was going to put the word-of-the-week on hold for the rest of the year, gasped out loud in horror. Bless you, Rara. This one is for you.
ascribe /vt./ 2. The word "ascribed" has been pounding through my head, ever since we sang this line at church last week (and a little): "To Him ascribed be, Honor and majesty, Thru all eternity, Worthy the Lamb!" (I especially like the exclamation point, don't you?) I like the way ascribe sounds, especially in the past tense, when you say it in three syllables...a.scrib.ed. If my life were a musical, that's how I would say it all the time.
ascribe /vt./ 3. My absence from all things blog can be ascribed mostly to the pace of my life and the length of my list these days. To be honest, there is no actual list, just a wheel in my head that turns around and around saying, "What about this..." "Don't forget this..." "You better start on..." (This wheel sounds suspiciously like RIM, while CIM just thinks its a good idea to take Tuesday afternoon off and play Monopoly with my boys. Ethan creamed us by the way. He kept saying "Nope, that's too expensive," and only bought Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues, while I bought everything I landed on. I ended up going bankrupt and selling most everything to him in the end. It was a little too frighteningly close to my actual life.)
ascribe /vt./ 4. It seems like most of the week was taken up by the election. The first part spent in nervous anticipation and after Tuesday, taken up with a bit of consolation pie and what can only be described as quiet, resigned acceptance. But by Thursday, we had all recovered for the most part and life went on. I can only ascribe this to the magic of pie.
ascribe /vt./ 5. On Wednesday afternoon I took Savannah to get a haircut (which was badly needed and long overdue, and finally accomplishing it can only be ascribed to her constant prodding.) It turned out darling and she said, "When you put this on your blog, you need to put an exclamation point by the 'after.'" Indeed. When David saw it he said, "I'm not sure if it makes her look older or younger." As for me, I feel like I got my little girl back.
ascribe /vt./ 6. We had a big aerospace work party on Friday afternoon and evening. The other boys in Caleb's group rode the bus home with Caleb and we worked until eight o' clock, when one of the boys said, "I'm really tired." And they were. Exhausted. The most exciting part of the night happened when I hooked up about 9 volts too much power to our little motor and blew up two batteries. After we got over the little scare this mini-explosion caused, the boys all said that was about the coolest thing ever. All the progress we made this week can only be ascribed to the brilliance of my mother (who I called for consultation on physical layout...she's a genius with graph paper) and my cousin, Daniel (who I called in for help on the motor dilemma), and the guy at home depot who flirted with me shamelessly when I consulted him about belts and tubing and free plywood. And in the meantime, my quilt room has been turned into ground zero for the project. For the record, I am much better with fabric than I am with copper wire.
ascribe /vt./ 7. On Saturday, my cousin, Daniel, and his family came from Tucson for a short visit. They brought their bikes and we took our first bike ride of the season. It was glorious.
The weather was beautiful and we rode about 4 miles with a stop in the middle at the frozen yogurt shop. The kids played and we had dinner and dessert before they headed for home, but not before my girls tried to talk them all into spending the night. It was delightful to see them all again. David was one of Daniel's roommates at BYU, and I still ascribe all the happiness of my life to that (not so) "random" housing assignment.
ascribe /vt./ 8. I taught the lesson in gospel doctrine on Sunday and finally felt good about it. Of course there were a few small moments where CIM started talking, but I was able to course correct pretty quickly and recover. I can only ascribe this success to the advice I got from my dad and my brother, Matt, a few weeks ago. (More on this in my 52 blessing post.)
ascribe /vt./ 9. David is over the oncology program at his hospital, and they hosted their first annual Mustang Car Show/Prostate Cancer Screening Event on Saturday morning at the hospital. When David told me about this, I just grinned. I know you're all sorry you missed it. And while Caleb and I did not need our prostates screened we went with David to check out the car show and show our support. There is no end (no pun intended) to the variety of projects David's job entails. But the success of this event has to be completely ascribed to Patricia DeBruhl, who is just about the best hire David has ever made. She is a wonder. I'm going to have to add this to our list of minor holidays.
