Wherein I wax philosophical, and if you don’t like it that’s too damn bad

 Family, Photo, Vacation  2 Responses »
Jan 162006
 

Last week we embarked on the extremely daunting adventure that is a family vacation that involved airplane rides, hotels, restaurants, and other kid unfriendly activities. And the fun part was that it wasn’t just our little family, but Chris’ entire family which includes: four siblings and their spouses, 10 children under the age of 9, and two happily hands-off grandparents. I assumed, as anyone would, that this combination of events and family would leave me with a goldmine of funny quotes and stories, and there are a few. But what I was really left with was something very different, something I didn’t expect.

When Chris and I were first married we lived near the ocean, and really I couldn’t have cared less. We were working minimum wage jobs with no health insurance, living in what would be politely termed a shack, making barely enough money to cover our monthly expenses and budget that limited us to about one meal a day. I didn’t have the time or energy to enjoy the aesthetics of the ocean or the paradise that I kept hearing people talk about.

That is why I was shocked when I stood on the beach with my children and looked out at the beauty and vastness of the ocean and I was overcome with emotions. I was amazed at how small I felt. I was profoundly aware that the Earth was full of forces that were greater than mankind, because I was face to face with something that man didn’t create and couldn’t destroy. Something that gave life and also took it away. I felt the fingers of belief in God wrapping themselves around my heart. I felt that I was supposed to learn something from this, but hell if I knew what that was.

A few days later as we traveled down a highway, three little boys in the back of the car yelled out that they had to go to the bathroom. Because we desperately wanted to avoid incurring any more cleaning fees on the rental car than necessary, we pulled over to the side of the road for them to pee. Leo’s two cousins and I hopped out first, and I stood there and assured them that I was blocking them from the view of traffic. Leo stood in the doorway, looking at his cousins nervously beginning to take down their pants and yelled, “Come on boys, you’re not getting any younger!” And then I knew that was it, that was what I was supposed to learn.

Life is short, and we should live, love, and be happy because we are, in fact, not getting any younger. The world is big, and our spheres of influence are for the most part very small so we should make that sphere the best place place it can be. We should be understanding and tolerant. We should be at peace. It’s a simple and silly lesson, but it’s what I learned from my vacation, and you can take it or leave it.


 Posted by Danica at 8:13 am

Love

 Family, Photo  No Responses »
Jan 052006
 
Leo, Badger, and Sunny
or
A Prayer to The God of Television and Nintendo

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 Posted by Danica at 10:46 am

He melted an hour later

 Family, Photo  2 Responses »
Dec 302005
 
Frosty the Snowman or What My Kids and Their Cousins Spent 2 Hours Making One Day

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 Posted by Danica at 10:25 am

Some days are diamonds, and some days just suck

 Family, Parenting, Shumpy  2 Responses »
Dec 202005
 

Sunday night my sister and her family stopped at my house to stay overnight on their way to the Pacific Northwest for Christmas. Overnight turned into one fun filled day and two wild nights because of some weather concerns and the need to run an errand. I didn’t mind though. I really enjoy my sister and her rather large family. They do a wonderful job entertaining my children, and we do a wonderful job of being bad examples to them, so it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

On Sunday night I overheard my brother-in-law say that he was going to take my nephew to Happy Valley for the aforementioned errand at 7 o’clock the next morning. For those of you who are blissfully ignorant of the geography in Utah, I will supply a quick lesson. I live in the Salt Lake Valley, home of Salt Lake City and most anything that is remotely cool about Utah (outside of Park City of course, which isn’t in the Salt Lake Valley, and totally rocks, but you have to be rich to go there. Sorry.) Directly south is what’s known as “Happy Valley”, home of Provo, and BYU, and almost everything that is uptight and Mormon about Utah. So as far as I understood my brother-in-law and nephew were going to Happy Valley bright and early in the morning and would be back whenever Brigham Young allowed them to return.

I woke up Monday morning and helped all the kiddies get some breakfast. They played inside for a while, and then the half inch of snow left on the ground became too hard for them to resist, and they wanted to go out and play. I helped them all get in snow clothes, and sent them outside and promised to make them hot chocolate when they came back in. I am so in the running for Mother-Of-The-Year! There was no sign of my sister, and I just figured she was sleeping in and loving it because it’s a luxury she doesn’t usually get. Taking care of her two little girls was a bit of extra work, but wasn’t bad, and anyway she would wake up and be upstairs any minute, right?

The phone rang just as I put the hot chocolate on the stove. When I answered and it was my sister on the other end I actually thought: What is she doing calling me from downstairs? And I’m seriously embarrassed to admit this people, but it wasn’t until half way through the conversation that I realized she wasn’t downstairs AT ALL. She had, in fact, gone to Happy Valley with her husband and son, and I was ALONE in my responsibility for ALL HER CHILDREN PLUS MY OWN.

It was unreal (and I mean UNREAL!) how quickly everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) spiraled out of control once I made this realization. Badger ran inside and peed all over the bathroom floor. The hot chocolate boiled over on the stove while I was cleaning the pee. There was a snowball to the face injury, and an incident involving soggy dog poop on a snow boot tracked onto the kitchen floor. Then there was a near-starvation crisis, wherein five little children were going to die if they didn’t get lunch RIGHT NOW. That crisis was thankfully narrowly averted with crackers, cheese, turkey, and peanut butter. All this in the span of about 4 minutes.

I still don’t get what happened. How everything was so blissful when I thought my sister was downstairs, and how everything turned to shit when I found out she was not. I do know one thing though, I am most likely NOT in the running for Mother-Of-The-Year. Damn.

 Posted by Danica at 9:09 am

Subjected to random impulse mental images

 Family, Mormonism  6 Responses »
Dec 142005
 

My mother-in-law was up visiting us last week. I’m sure its no surprise to you that I don’t always see eye to eye with her. Really, not ever at all. We are VERY different people, but that fact notwithstanding, I understand the important role she plays in the life of my children. When she has time for them anyway. But really people, I’m not here to complain about my mother-in-law per say. I’m here to complain about the fact that she is brainwashed by a crazy religion.

I felt we had a really nice visit with her and frankly I was relieved. But as she was about to leave, she told Chris and I that she wanted to speak to us privately. She then proceeded to tell us about a dream she had the first night she was here, wherein we were all miserable in the afterlife because we weren’t Mormon anymore. This dream was so troubling to her that she awoke after startled and was unable to get back to sleep for hours. She went on to explain that she was racked with guilt that perhaps she had done something wrong that had lead Chris away from the church.

I probably don’t need to tell you that I was pretty pissed off and sad. Not at my mother-in-law, but at this church for making her live this way. She is a good person, she doesn’t deserve to feel fear and guilt and be haunted by dreams. I wanted so badly to tell her that she doesn’t have to live that way, that it’s all for the glorification of a long dead, horny, opportunistic, megalomaniac and she needs to be free of it. But instead I didn’t say anything, and Chris just said something about how it wasn’t for us, and she was on her way.

I really wish this would mark the end of our families trying to get us to go back, but that’s just too much to hope for. I know there will be more scenes like this one for us in the future. More heartfelt pleas for us to quit stumbling around in darkness and return to the fold of the one true church. Something good did come out of this crazy dream episode for me though, it reminded me why I left in the first place.

 Posted by Danica at 10:20 am

Seven days in my life: a summary

 Family, Parenting  1 Response »
Dec 082005
 

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but my children are actually growing up, and in the last week this fact has become shockingly apparent to me. Shockingly! It’s something like the time my mother finally said she was sorry for telling everyone that called me in high school that I couldn’t come to the phone because I was, in fact, glued to the toilet with a bad case of diarrhea. I just didn’t think it would ever happen, the sorry and the growing up.

Sunny’s new favorite phrase is “Don’t know, don’t care.” , and she says it in that God awful teenagerish way. Imagine I say: “Sunny, where are your shoes?” and she answers: “Don’t know, don’t care.” Or she says to me: “I can’t eat the school lunch hot dogs, because they give me a headache.” and I say: “Why do they give you a headache?” and she answers with the magic phrase. I no longer warrant an explanation. I am the enemy.

Then there was Leo’s first parent teacher conference last week. Frankly I was braced for the worst. Leo is, to put it nicely, a very independent kid. He doesn’t listen or take direction well. I had to actually take him out of preschool because of this. Twice. That’s two separate years, people, he enrolled and went to preschool, and was such a problem that the school asked me not to bring him back. You can see why I was worried. However, after repeatedly checking, just to make sure, that she was talking about our son Leo and not some other kid, his teacher assured us he was doing wonderfully. Whew. That’s all I can say about that, whew.

And Badger, sweet Baby Badger, is pretty much potty trained now. He just woke up the other day and decided he was going to do it, and he did. What am I going to do with all the free time I will have now that I’m not changing diapers? Not to mention the extra money. Oh the luxury and frivolity in store for me! And hilarity, we can’t forget that, because yesterday as Badger and I were flushing a load of poo and pee down the toilet, I called out: “Goodbye poop and pee!” then Badger corrected me by saying: “You forgot to say ‘you bastards’ mom. It’s supposed to be, ‘Goodbye poop and pee, YOU BASTARDS!’.”

Aye, that it is Badger, that it is.

 Posted by Danica at 9:04 am

Who’s to say where the wind will take you

 Depression, Family, Shumpy  1 Response »
Nov 222005
 

My oldest brother, Scott, was always a little different. He was born 11 years before me so our relationship was not a very close one, and much of what I know of his early years I have learned from others. I know that even as a small child he suffered from anxiety and depression. He was very young when he did the math from my parents anniversary to his birthday and found out it was only 6 months. I don’t think that knowledge would have been a big deal at all if my parents hadn’t hated each other. Our house was a war zone every day of every week of every year that I can remember. They couldn’t stop fighting, and they wouldn’t do the decent thing and get divorced, because Families Are For Fucking Ever, and you can’t get divorced just because you hate your spouse and expect to get into the Celestial Kingdom. My brother bore all the guilt of their broken marriage, because the math told him that they wouldn’t have even gotten married if it weren’t for him. I can’t even imagine how hard that was.

He had a very hard time relating to and interacting with the rest of our family. He spent lots of time alone in his room. He always struggled in school both academically and socially, until high school, when he found his niche in debate and politics. He worked in politics at the local, state, and national levels after high school graduation. I believe he did very well, and really enjoyed this work. He went to college off and on, but never could quite pull it together to get a degree. He got married and divorced within the same year. In general his successes in life were few and far between.

People always ask me when it was that Scott started to act strange and get sick. I can’t really say though, because he ALWAYS acted strange that I can remember. What I know is that he was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia first in May of 2002. He had been hearing voices and having delusions constantly for at least 18 months before that. He had had several ‘psychotic episodes’, that went undiagnosed, during the 10 years before that. He was unable to work and lived with my parents.

He was prescribed one medication after another, with the hope that he could find something to get his symptoms under control. Nothing worked. And I didn’t get it. It’s the biggest regret that I have in my life, I just didn’t get it. It’s very difficult to understand mental illness, and I was frightened by my brother and the way he behaved. I was afraid to have my kids around him, because he was so unpredictable. I spent too much time blaming him for being sick. ‘If he hadn’t done this, or if he would try that, then he would be able to have a normal life’ was the sound bite I played in my head. It kept me away from him during what I should have known were his last years on earth. What a fucking waste. Twice he attempted suicide by taking too much medicine, and I should have known that one day he would succeed. I think there is a very hot corner in Hell reserved for me and my flawed and unsympathetic attitude toward my brother. Or there would be if I believed in such a thing.

Two years ago today my parents found Scott dead in a hotel room. He had overdosed on pain medication by taking somewhere around 100 pills. His mind was broken, he lived in constant fear, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. I can’t blame him. About a month before he had called me and asked if he could come up and stay with me for a little while sometime. I had said that of course he could, any time. Thank God I didn’t tell him what I was really thinking, because that was the last time I ever talked to my brother. It’s what I have, to help me through this, the hope that my brother knew I loved him when he died because I was kind to him in our last conversation. It’s not much, but its all I’ve got.

I wanted to share this with you, in the hope that you would never let something like this happen to you and someone you love. I hope that all of you are smarter than I am. I hope all of you know better than to act the way I did, so I don’t really have to say to you: please, don’t be as fucking stupid as I was. I’m hoping I don’t need to say: please love your family every day, EVEN THE CRAZY ONES, because they might be gone tomorrow and all you will have left is sadness, guilt, and regret if you don’t. Maybe I’m hoping to help even one person change their mind and attitude, to gain some sort of absolution for myself, even though I’m pretty sure the only complete idiot in the world is me.

 Posted by Danica at 8:00 am

A post about the phone and poop, where I use the word "really" WAY too much

 Chris, Family, Parenting, Shumpy  1 Response »
Nov 072005
 

Of all the things in the world that I dread, and there are a lot of things that I dread, really, A LOT, one that I really dread is the call from the neighborhood kids mom. You know the call I’m talking about. The one where the mom has a concern regarding their child and something that happened to them at your house. The one where your parenting/supervisory skills are seriously being called into question. The call where you are made to feel like a TOTAL AND COMPLETE IDIOT, over something that really wasn’t your fault, only kind of your fault.

It started out innocently enough, some time last week all the neighborhood kids were over, per usual, and one of those charming children unloaded three huge logs of shit in the kids toilet and then unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper on top of it. I know you people can imagine how truly and utterly, and because I’m on a roll here people, really disgusting this was. This shit/toilet paper combo created an unflushable bomb, a kid-made beaver dam, or some other indestructible third thing, that wasn’t going anywhere without a fight.

I think this mass of paper and feces sat there for a few days before I noticed it, because I don’t use the kids bathroom very often and of course no one bothered to mention it to me. Needless to say it was RANK by the time I stumbled across it. I attempted to flush it several times with no success and then I did the only thing I can in this type of situation, I waited for Chris to get home and take care of it for me. He plunged it without complaint and only almost vomited, then he made an attempt to get to the bottom(pun totally intended) of who had made this mess. Because people, is it really necessary to use an whole roll of toilet paper to wipe your ass? I believe the child who created the bomb should have and, in fact, DID know better. Chris interrogated all the children that were present in the house at that time, but none of them would admit to doing it or knowing who did it. And with the plunging experience fresh in his mind, Chris told our kids and all the kids over here that they couldn’t play at our house for a week, because of the inappropriate use of toilet paper.

In hind sight, it was probably a knee jerk reaction, that taken out of context seems infantile and foolish. I mean really, are we those kinds of parents, the kind that ban sweet innocent children from our house over something as silly as a clogged toilet? Are we that uptight? No we are nice people, but you should have seen it, really, because it was sick and gross, and worst of all, looked INTENTIONAL! We did the only thing we could think of, we freaked out. And when I got THE call, I was immediately sorry.

Today the girl down the street came over to play, and I let her right in, having seriously forgotten all about the toilet incident and subsequent friend ban, because it happened three days ago and that is really like 2.5 days past the statute of limitations my memory has on this kind of thing. She had been here about 10 minutes when the phone rang. It was her mother. The conversation went something like this:

“Is it ok for my daughter to be playing over there right now?”

“Yes, of course.” (with genuine surprise, really)

“Because she told me she wasn’t allowed to play over there this week”

“Really?” (I almost choke on the phone that has fallen into my gaping mouth)

“Yes. Something about a clogged toilet?”

“Oh, I don’t know anything about it, maybe Chris said that.” (I start playing stupid and blaming the husband, out of sheer horror because the way she said ‘clogged toilet‘ made me feel like I was about 4 years old)

“Well, I just wanted to make sure she was okay playing over there today.”

“Yes, she is fine. I’ll have to talk to Chris about this toilet thing. Thanks.” (because of course I never communicate with my husband so I’m totally in the dark, and thank you for clueing me in, really. And CAN I DIE NOW, PLEASE.)

I guess my point to this whole story is really pretty simple: When you allow every kid in the neighborhood to play at your house, you pretty much have to expect to get some shit clogged in your toilet, and some shit on the telephone too.

 Posted by Danica at 5:06 pm

Oh Thank Heaven

 Family, Mormonism  1 Response »
Nov 012005
 

I spent the weekend with my family and I’m still recovering people, really. I love my parents and my sister and my sisters gaggle of children very much. Even though a full 95% of what they talk about is the Mormon Church, and the other 5% are church related topics, I still love them because they are very nice people and they are very good to me and the kiddies. One, just one little one, of the highlights of the weekend was when my mother went on for a full 5 minutes about my nephews seemingly super human ability to use chop sticks. And my poor nephew, I could just see from his eyes that he was dying inside during the entire conversation, because it’s just chop sticks, people, chop sticks! But my mother is so sweet that she needs to make him feel special for every little accomplishment up to and including the use of chop sticks. How could you not love people like that? Really, how? I’m going to miss them, to be sure, but it will be somewhat nice to return to my areligious, cynical world where the use of chop sticks is really no big deal.

 Posted by Danica at 10:37 am

Sick, sick, and sicker

 Family, Parenting  1 Response »
Oct 242005
 

Public school should have a big disclaimer attached to it, a Surgeon Generals warning, a statement from the CDC, or something stronger than the annual blurb on the evening news, that says “WARNING, sending your children to school is like throwing them into a MASSIVE BACTERIA CESSPOOL. They will get sick every other week for the entire year, and will subsequently infect every non-school going person in your household. Learn to deal with it.”

Not that a warning would really make the task of nursing sick children any easier. Its a constant stream of nose wiping and forcing medicine down their throats. There is no sleep for anyone either, because you lay awake listening to them cough and when you finally do get to sleep one of them comes and wakes you up because they need more medicine and a drink of water. And its every day worrying and wondering if its just a cold or something more, and should you take them to the doctor. You hold your breath and wait for your own nose to start plugging up and your throat to feel sore.

I think my immune system has become used to all these germs, and now I only get sick about every third time the kiddies do, and Chris maybe one in ten times. But poor Elliott, our friend who moved in with us six months ago, he gets it pretty much every time. I’m hoping his immune system will adjust soon, before he decides he needs to find a less germy place to live and harbors ill will against us forever.

The good news is that Leo seems to be getting better, and he was the first to come down with this latest sickness about a week ago. So its possible the end is in sight. Then I just hold my breath until it happens again.

 Posted by Danica at 11:36 am
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