none of your beeswax

I'm only mostly dead

2012-01-26T10:55:00.002-07:00

Which means, of course, that I am still a little bit alive.
So do not go through my clothes, looking for loose change.

See, you haven't heard from me, but I've been busy, battling the influenza. For nearly two weeks. Whatever I had in my life before and called the flu, wasn't this. This was no getting out of bed for 11 days, with a chaser of sinus and ear infection, and something I can only describe as adult onset asthma. In my spare time, I've been doing a little light reading on the Spanish flu of 1918. (Because I really like disease histories, especially if I am stricken with the disease.) More than half of the millions and millions who died between 1918-1920 from the flu, probably died from pneumonia and other secondary infections that could have been cured by antibiotics.

I love antibiotics. Even more than contact lenses. And that is saying a lot.

Sadly, my dreams of Olympic gold in London this summer have been shattered (cuz now I'm on the 'roids.) But I love the steroids, too. Because I really enjoy breathing.

The highlight of the last two weeks? Sunday nights in bed with Downton Abbey, on Percocet left over from Joey's birth, plus three Advil. I could escape the body aches for a few hours, even though I was worried I would become a drug fiend (I didn't).

Another casualty of the flu: my favorite bra. I neglect her for a couple weeks, and she disappears. So now I have to wear the ones that ride up my back, or have the too-stretchy straps.

And as for flu shots: I am now a zealous convert. Jake got his, slept next to my hacking, feverish, infected self and is still perfectly well. I only hated him a little bit. Mostly I loved him, cuz he kept doing the dishes and taking care of the children I was neglecting.

Also, in the midst of my pain, my eldest child turned 13. Which makes me an anciently old woman. Luckily, he is pretty much the best kid ever. One consolation for getting old is that you get to see your kids turn into really cool people that you want to hang out with and take to Benihana.

I forgot school started. Plus, photos of Pompeii and Venice, to cheer me up.

2012-01-06T13:11:00.006-07:00

So I was thinking about starting my diet on Tuesday, but then I got a call from the big kids' school. They wanted to know why Ross and Jane weren't there in class, with the rest of the children.

That's real, folks. I'm not making it up. We forgot to come back from Christmas break.

They were only like 3.5 hours late.

Both of them were mildly ill.

Jane might have cried all the way there.

It was moderately stressful.

On the way home, I took the three remaining kids to Sam's Club, where I forgot to remember the diet I was supposed to be starting, I had a hot dog with mustard, onions, relish, and kraut. And some of Tommy's blue Icee. And a soft pretzel. I felt better.

So anyway, all this made me remember that I'm not very good at remembering things. And that I've gained 10 pounds since the above photo was taken 3 months ago. In Pompeii.

So now I'm thinking how it would be nice to be skinny(er) and in Italy again. I think I shall relive those heady days, while I eat some of Jake's leftover birthday cake. You should come along.

Jake at the bakery. They didn't have any doughnuts.

So, Pompeii was really fantastic. Before we left, I spent days researching how we should get there and how long to stay. It would have been better to stay in Sorrento and spend a few nights checking out ruins and the Amalfi coast. But we didn't have the time. So I easily spent thrice as long researching as I actually spent visiting Pompeii. Because it seemed like a day trip that could go terribly wrong.

We took the Eurostar train from Rome to Naples. It is more expensive, but faster, and more comfortable. Then, at the Naples train station, we got a taxi who would take us to Pompeii, wait for a few hours, then bring us back to Naples. (If you want to go cheaper, go downstairs in the station and take the Circumvesuviana train to Pompeii. It costs like 3 euros each way, stops approximately 30 times, and you'll likely lose your wallet, but Jen says it's no worse than the NYC subway. Except that there are entertainers on board who play toy keyboards horribly, right in your ear, and won't stop until you pay them to leave. So you'll need to allow room for that in your budget.) (Jason has never been on the subway, and he was mildly traumatized.)

Mom and Dad

Inside Pompeii, we just used the free Rick Steves audio guide we'd downloaded at home, and bought a cool book inside the bookstore with info and plastic overlays to tell us about each house. It was like 12 euro, and we gave it to the kids when we got home, after I removed the kama sutra-style brothel art frescoes. Plus a couple others. Pompeiians had a funny idea of what made good family room art. (I tucked all my censorious bits (and by bits I mean oversized phalluses) under Jake's pillow, to creep him out.) I think what we did would be fine for 98% of all tourists. But my Dad says he wishes we'd had our own guide and stayed longer than two hours. Maybe next time. I was happy with our taxi chauffeur. He was the nicest driver we had in Italy.

Back in Naples, we had him drop us off at the famous Da Michele pizzeria. It is supposed to be the best in Naples, which is the best in Italy. I'd read about it in Rick Steves and Eat, Pray, Love. Apparently everyone else had heard about it, too: There were more than 100 people in line. We went across the street to Pizzeria Trianon. It was delicious. Maybe my favorite meal we had in Italy. The sauce was unbelievable. The crust was unbelievable. The line was unbelievable: there wasn't any.

After lunch, we headed to the Archeological Museum. All the best art and artifacts they dug out of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1800s was brought here by the Naples' king. And now they reside in the museum that time forgot. It is amazing how these priceless items are just open to the elements (there were windows open and it was raining outside), how the displays have faded typewritten cards and dust inside them. I guess in a country full of treasures, there just isn't enough money to go around. But dust bunnies and all, you can't get a real feel for how life looked in Pompeii, without seeing these incredible mosaics, frescoes, metal and glassware.)

From there we headed back to the train station and hopped a Eurostar back to Termini in Rome. Our taxi driver apologized for all the traffic; but, he told us, there have been many manifestations today. (We think he meant government protesters, and not angelic visitors, but who knows?)

The next morning we hopped the train for Venice.

That's me and my backpack and Jake getting our first glimpse of Venice. We got on a vaporetto bound for St. Mark's Square, where our hotel had a free water shuttle out to the Isola di San Clemente.

The hotel was gorgeous, the service wanting. It was fab if you don't want them to feed you at 3:00 p.m., which they will not, under any circumstances, do. It doesn't matter how hungry you are. Although the concierge was nice. I didn't mind staying outside town a little, either. The boat ride to and from the island was relaxing and made me feel like a fancy-lady. I'd recommend San Clemente Palace Hotel, if you can get as great a deal as we did (off season). It doesn't say this anywhere in the literature, but the hotel was an insane asylum for hundreds of years, and became this HUGE fancy resort hotel only recently. So that's mildly creepy. But if, like me, you don't watch horror movies, you'll be okay.

Doge's Palace

St. Mark's Cathedral. Jake and I never got inside. We slept in. Turns out, insane asylums are very restful and quiet.

On a water taxi, headed to Ca' Rezzonico, a grand canal palazzo turned museum of 18th century Venice

See the table I'm parked on? They make those into a walkway, so tourists don't have to wade through a water-logged St. Mark's square during high tide.

Picnicking. Salami, cheese, fresh basil and oregano, and fluffy bread. Focaccia, maybe?

Outside the best gelato place in Venice.

See the top floor? Synagogue.

We spent an afternoon in the Jewish ghetto (world's first ghetto. Or maybe first place in the world to be called a ghetto). Took a fascinating tour of 4 synagogues. You should go, because it looks like they will fall down at any moment. Boys: they've got lender kippot (yarmulkes) if you don't bring your own.

The ghetto had a big square, which held a big market. If you'd been here about 1500, you could have procured some nice used clothing, full of plague infested lice.

Rialto bridge, on Jake's way out of town. Only like two boats, eight trains, a stroll with a kind and helpful housekeeper on mainland Venice, a wild west-style overnight train with a layover with some petty thieves in Bologna (that's pronounced Baloney, I'm pretty sure), some new Turkish lady friends to protect, two buses, a taxi, two airplanes and 30 hours later, he was home in the warm (100 degrees in October) bosom of Gilbert. And I was in Florence.

Did your kids start school?
Did you forget to take them?
Did you try to start a diet?
Is it working?
Do you have another resolution?
I might need some alternative ideas

New Year's Eve: blogging live from my bed

2012-01-01T00:01:00.002-07:00

4:00 This afternoon. Payson Wal-mart with Jake, Joey and Tom to buy junk food and weenie baby pajamas covered in puffy squirrels and monster trucks, since we forgot the bag with all of Joe's clothes at home. I count 11 men with beards 1 foot or longer, 7 of them carrying cases of beer.

5:00 feast begins. Includes chips (both potato and corn), four different sorts of dips, little smokies in BBQ sauce, tiny bagel pizzas and baby quiches (from boxes), fizzy grape juice (red kind), blood orange pop, and bananas for the baby. Who is not really a baby, at 21 months and abnormally large at that, but shhhhhhh. Let's not not speak of it. Is a holiday.

6:00 cards with children. Jake won't play cuz he is reading new Tom Clancy book called Locked On. Try to teach them gin, but sam is trying to multitask. He is kicked out of the game for making duct tape wallets and forgetting rules and his turn. Jane gets frustrated and crabby, and quits soon after. Ross stays on and even lets me try to shoot the moon (we'd moved on to hearts. We always do).

7:00 Joey puts the year to bed early. Jake goes back to Wal-mart to get 9-volt batteries so the smoke alarm won't harass us all the night long. He returns and climbs giant ladder onto dangerous ledge 15 feet in air to replace battery. Changes light bulb while at it.

8:00 children begin to complain of unwell bellies. Tommy writhes around on my bed in his new striped underpants until I get him a bowl to carry around. Apparently they cannot handle their junk food.

9:00 brownie sundaes. Tommy rallied and begged, but was denied. All others begged off voluntarily. Some of them made ramen. Gross.

10:00 tub. With jojoba bath salts and my iPad in a gallon sized ziploc. Re-reading Before Ever After to see if it's appropriate for book club. Can't remember if I skipped over something super-yuck the first time around. It's such an interesting combination of fascinating and not-so-well written. Sort of sucked me in like Twilight (I'm not proud of it, but there it is) but more interesting plot and not as much sexual tension.

11:00 salted caramel hot chocolate. I'm not hungry but I must push through. Coldplay Austin City Limits New Year's show on PBS. It is so good. I love it so much. And all the people in the audience are old and two of the ladies have my same polka-spotted Kate Spade iPhone cover and they are recording Chris Martin while he sings The Scientist. And between the geriatrics and the PBS and how they keep showing Downton Abbey previews, I think I must be old too, and boy do they have my number, those public TV gurus. And I also remember seeing Ke$ha (or however you spell it) on the Ryan Seacrast show last year, and being horrified in the manner of an elderly grandmother, actually saying something like "is this REALLY what the kids are listenng to these days?"

Tickets for Coldplay's Hollywood Bowl shows go on sale next Wednesday. Anybody else coming?

11:35 Jake informs me that South Carlsbad state beach now has free wifi. Who thought they could make San Diego even better? Now they are just showing off.

11:47 us Against the world. Best song on new album.

11:52 okay so now it's time to go get the traditional fizzy white grape juice in the ceramic mugs and welcome a new year. Jake doesn't want to go cuz he's looking at campsites on the beach with the wifi, but I told him he'd better get some cocktails and get back in and kiss me quick.

Jake is currently wearing his "California: you can't afford it" t-shirt, which I find humorous.

11:55 almost there.

Sayonara, 2011.
Aloha, 2012.

12:00 Happy New Year, everybody.
Goodnight from under the duvet.

Hello there friend,

2011-12-14T10:25:00.004-07:00

Hi.

How are you? 

I'll bet you are busy.  

Have you finished your shopping?

Me?

Nah, I'm in big trouble over here. And now it's too late to shop online, so I'm going to have to go into a real store.

The rain? No, I love it. Keep it coming. 

Yeah. I  think Joey's got a sinus infection. We are going to the doctor this  afternoon. We will probably pick up something new and frightful while we  are there. 

What? Don't judge me for not taking him yesterday. I was at Anthropologie with my Mom and Sister. It was cold and wet. It felt a little like we were in New York. But then, we didn't go to Bendel's afterward, or get tea at the Four Seasons. But we did make Mom sit in the backseat with the shopping bags, like we were in a cab. So that was nice. 

Oh yeah? You saw me over on Kari's blog? And our pies? We had a pumpkin pie throwdown and Kari won, because her's wasn't a fiasco. They both tasted good, though. I just need to roll my crust thicker, and remember that I cannot fill the food processor with hot liquids and turn it on high.

Well, I wish I could take you to the QT and buy you hot chocolate today. Because you are a kind, attractive, talented and smart lady. We would fill our cups halfway with cocoa, leaving lots of room for whipped cream. I would get three shots of hazelnut. You'd take yours with a little powdered creamer.  

But sadly,  I can't. I need to go bathe my baby, because he smells like boogers.

I hope you have a really nice day, though.

You deserve it.

Love,

Kelly

Basis Schools

2011-12-07T11:02:00.005-07:00

So I took a gander at my blog stats the other day, and I noticed that many people came here looking for Basis Chandler. This might be because in that post, I actually had information to share, and put important, googlable words in the post title, instead of my usual inside jokes with myself, and my whiny nonsensical wanderings, talking about tasty food and the resulting tight trousers. I'm not planning to change anything. I have a responsibility to my loyal readership (in the double digits daily, thank you all for coming!) to stay true to my self-involved self.

But still, sometimes I could say something. I'm sure you won't mind.

I read this article about Basis Schools published online yesterday. In it, Global Search for Education blogger C.M. Rubin interviews Basis founder Michael Block.

Two of my kids started attending Basis Chandler in August. I knew it was opening, and that the other Basis schools have long waiting lists, so I thought, if we want to try it, here's our shot. I talked to the kids, read them some articles, told them there would be homework and stiff competition. Jane was in at lockers for 5th graders. Ross was worried it would cut into his Mythbusters and SuperScribblenauts time.

So here we are, 4 months along.

What do we like?

You know, this is surprising, but the thing I am most impressed with is that Basis has given my kids responsibility for their own education, and my kids have taken it! With so many classes and teachers, I knew I wouldn't be able to remind them to take their math homework to school, study for the big test, or bug them about the paper due on Monday. I can look in their planners (required to be detailed and up-to-date, and checked at school) to see what is going on, but the kids are in charge. They are still learning to organize themselves and their time, but I am amazed at how well they are doing.

I like that they have awards assemblies at each grading period, giving awards to kids with average grades above 90%, another award to kids in the top 15% of their classes, and another award to the top 5% of the class. In the first grading period, Ross and Jane both got star balloons for being in the '90s club', and in the second, Ross barely made the cut off for the top 15% with an average of 96% (competition is stiff!), but Jane let her Latin grade slip, so she came home balloonless and bereft this time. (She is a smart girl, I'm not worried).

I like that my fair-skinned children are a minority. I grew up attending magnet schools in Los Angeles, and I think making friends from different cultures is a great education in itself.

I like that the teachers are hired based on subject expertise, and not on whether they have teaching credentials. (I spent 2 years in elementary education classes, and I sort of think that teaching teachers to teach is a waste of time.) Ross' physics teacher was an engineer at Intel for 20 years.

I like the curriculum. These people are not messing around with the math and science. For example, Ross is taking chemistry, biology and physics, plus pre-algebra, English, history, rhetoric, art, and his favorite class (although he talks too much and ends up washing desks after school), Spanish. Jane takes two years of Latin before she chooses her language in 7th grade (Spanish, French, or Mandarin).

I like the amount of homework. Both kids average less than an hour a day, and they do it without being prompted by me. I find this flabbergasting. And wonderful.

What don't we like?

I don't like that school is twenty minutes away. I get lots of help with driving (thanks Jake and April!), but twice a day is about all we can do, so the kids haven't really been able to join any after school activities yet. Ross was interested in fencing and ping pong, Jane in musical theater. Maybe if we can find two clubs on the same day?

I don't like that they don't go to school with the neighborhood and Church kids. And I know our neighborhood schools are good, so it makes me wonder if I'm nuts to be driving so far. Our neighborhood high school is one of the best in the state. I figure, at that point they are welcome switch if they want! But in the meantime, Jane's best school friend lives in Ahwatukee, which makes getting together outside school a rough business.

I don't like that they don't have Seminary. They will have to attend an A hour program at a different school, but there are very few LDS kids at Basis, so I suppose it makes sense.

Mostly, though, I'm thrilled with Basis so far.

Now, if only they would build one on my block!

Going to my happy place: a post about gelato

2011-12-05T15:17:00.010-07:00

Reasons one might need to go to her happy place:

1. She is getting a pap smear
2. Her kids are being super horrible, and she needs something to do while she locks herself in the bathroom and hides from them, but she has forgotten her iPad.
3. She has been dilated 9.5 centimeters for like 45 minutes and she forgot to get an epidural.
4. Sacrament meeting has run too long.

My happy place used to be a cabana chair on the beach at the Ritz Cancun, a book in one hand, a Coca Lite in the other, and nice waiters bringing me $20 bowls of guacamole all the day long. (That's where I was during the aforementioned natural labor*).

But now I've got a new happy place. And thanks to Jake, and his surreptitious photo-taking, I can share it with you:

An intimate moment in Venice between me and my panna cotta gelato.

I don't know exactly what panna cotta gelato is, but it includes caramel, and Venice knows how to do it right. Orvieto doesn't.

The deliciousness of Italian gelato cannot be overstated. It is so good, we ate it three times a day. At least.

We got the best gelato in Venice at La Boutique del Gelato (next to the Hotel Bruno, and somewhere in the maze between St. Mark's Square and the Rialto Bridge). I mean, I can't be certain it was the best in Venice, because we only tried like 15 others. (There is an unconfirmed rumor that Jen may have had 9 scoops of gelato, from three different vendors, plus some hot chocolate, all in one 40 minutes period. The stuff of legends). But best or not, it was remarkably good. It was rough, because maps and GPS were almost useless in Venice, and our legs grew very tired, but we managed to find it three different times. I'd recommend the coconut, the pistachio, and a double scoop of nocciola (hazelnut) with chocolate. The best was the grapefruit sorbet. I can't explain to you why it was the best. But it was so good I might have cried a little.

Honorable mention in the sorbet competition goes to the strawberry at Gelateria Carroze, in Florence, right on the Arno, between the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi. You probly won't hate the coconut, either.

And the Tartufo gelato at Tre Scalini in Rome's Piazza Navona was nice, too, in case you were thinking Rome's gelato can't measure up.

Where is your happy place?
Is there ice cream or guacamole there?

* To clarify: I did not actually give birth on the cabana chair in Cancun. Was only there in my mind.

I hate my big, fake Christmas tree, Sting sings country, we drink half and half, I reminisce about my cross-dressing days, and our elf is MIA

2011-11-29T10:31:00.003-07:00

So, it's that time of year again. The time when I drag my big, fake Christmas tree out, set it up, growl and yell like a toddler when half the lights don't work, then spend $50 and 5 hours buying and applying new lights over the top of the old ones. It is also the time of year when I eat pie three times a day, and when the children whine that we've run out of milk, instead of going to the store, I announce "let them drink cream!" in a nasally accent, as if I were on a balcony at Versailles, instead of under my duvet reading In the Garden of Beasts.

Then the kids whine that all the cream is whipped, in aerosol cans, and gone, since I needed it for all the pie. So then we drink half and half. It is very tasty with Rice Krispies.

I know I should just get a real tree, but that requires strapping things to cars, which is stressful, because I'm always sure whatever is bungeed on is sure to fall off in the street (I am told this is an irrational fear, sort of like my fear of swimming with fish, except that, well, stuff DOES fall off cars, and who knows what that fish is planning? He looks fishy to me) and also because a real tree means EVEN MORE lights to apply (at least in theory). So anyhow, for the past 7 years, I've used the fake one, whilst cursing it. Annually. Here I am kvetching in 2007 about the horrors of 2006.

But Thanksgiving was good. Our friends from Utah came bearing about 15 pounds of chocolate, and we went to a Sting concert. Who knew he had like 3 albums I'd never heard, including at least one that is entirely COUNTRY? Do you know how weird country sounds in a British accent? But he looked and sounded great, and if all the songs had been as fantastic as his acoustic Message in a Bottle encore, I might not have nodded off in the middle, somewhere around a song about a western movie crossed with an old Broadway musical. I think Sting is a little out of touch, just sitting over in his castle next to Stonehenge, making all sorts of love and writing songs about barley and foxes. Sometimes it works (the barley, the sex- I'll have to take his word for it), sometimes it doesn't (the foxes weren't my favorite). Either way, he's still hot and rich, so what's it to him? We also watched a movie called Stardust (a little every night, since I kept falling asleep because I am either old or still jet-lagged), which was very good, and we ate Thanksgiving, where I ate so much I almost threw up, but did not (which means I consumed the perfect amount of Thanksgiving), and we went to SAS fabrics (where I became overstimulated sifting though a vat of old patches, but luckily Kari had some hard candies in her purse she keeps for her toddler, and I was ok again after I sat on the floor for a minute while she examined the rickrack), and got doughnuts on the way home (just found an apple fritter I hid from the kids, but it isn't good anymore, dangit. I hate when my food hoarding backfires), then met more friends (actually, relatives) for dinner at Joe's Farm Grill, and afterward we all retired to our living room, where we drank Martinellis from silver flutes, played some Peter Breinholt on the guitars, and talked about how when we all lived at the Riv over to the BYU, we used to dress like men, but also how I dressed the most like a man of everybody. (Even the men? This wasn't clear).

So now I've got to do something about our elf, who is not on the shelf, but is MIA. He didn't show up after Thanksgiving dinner, like he's supposed to, and the children are starting to riot.

So do you loathe Christmas lights as much as I do? Did you know about Sting's country songs? Did you wear men's clothes in the 90's? If you have an extra elf, can you send him here? Thanks in advance.

Rome wasn't blogged in a day

2011-11-16T15:00:00.006-07:00

So, at long last I have accumulated everyone's iphone photos of our trip, and now I shall publish them on the internets, even though in many of them I am wearing very tight, very unflattering pants.

On October 3, we took the overnight British Airways flight from Phoenix to London. This was difficult for me, because although I really like British Airways and the stewardess' retro hats and how they offer you biscuits (that are really just cookies) with their lovely accents, and even how they sometimes serve weird airline curry that stinks everything up for hours, we only had one hour in London. No time for a West End show. No time for even a Cadbury chocolate bar from the Marks & Spencer, or a browse around the Harrod's in the airport, since we were running at top speed for like 4 miles between concourses. And then, to salt the wound, London was sunny and 70, which never happens. But whatever.

So, you probably want to hear about Italy, but first I need to tell you about a miracle. My eyes had been bugging me all night, but about an hour from our destination I decided: INFECTION. So then my Mom produced from her carry-on bag a bottle of prescription antibiotic eye drops. Right there, high above the French Alps! A miracle, I tell you. So then, I didn't have to go see a Roman doctor, or have to look like a 1950s librarian in all my Italy photos (my glasses are horn-rimmed, you'll thank me later). I literally wept with joy (although eyes were also perhaps already moist with infectious ooze).

Bacteria thwarted, we arrived at the Donna Camilla Savelli Hotel. Trastevere is supposed to be gritty and full of real Romans. But the Donna Camilla is also nearby the American John Cabot University, so it is also full of Valley girl accents and even a has place called T-Bone Station that serves (edible but not great) nachos. (I won't tell you how I know this.) Lots of restaurants and enotecas, gelaterias, pizza-by-the-slice type places (I really liked the potato and rosemary pizza).

Via Garibaldi, perhaps 9 p.m. By midnight, when we'd come back from our Rick Steves night walking, the whole street would be full of people, standing outside the restaurants and drinking.

Jake, in the gelato place just outside the hotel. Coconut? Or pistachio?

Some photos I 'borrowed' of the hotel:

Breakfast garden

That's me on the rooftop terrace. This place was built as a convent in the 1640s, and became a hotel two years ago. There are still a few elderly nuns living in one of the wings, who wander around the garden during breakfast, and pray in their impressive chapel just off the lobby entrance. I would have felt bad for taking over their place, but they've got bigger things to worry about, what with rationalizing that vow of poverty with living in a 4 star hotel.

The view from our room:

Anyhow, Rome.
I liked it.

On day two, we hustled over to ground zero: the Forum/Coliseum/Palatine Hill complex. We toured Mamertine Prison (where Peter and maybe Paul were perhaps incarcerated. There is no historical record of them being there written before the 5th century, but pilgrims had already been showing up, and this was the only prison in Rome for a very long time.) They had a super creepy English audio guide that had a lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous voice saying cryptic things about water and tables. Then they made us stand in the dark, before having us watch a weird, equally enigmatic video. Only later, between the Bible and Rick Steves, was I able to figure out what went on there (or didn't).

At Mamertine Prison. Sister Noel and Sister Beeson

Then, we ate some super tasty paninis from a street cart, didn't get food poisoning, then met our tour guide at this little cafe with a great view. Jake is chatting up a waiter.

So here we are in the forum (ancient marketplace turned political and religious center of Rome). I included this photo because my arm looks skinny.

A view of the forum from Palatine Hill. This is where all the ancient Italian movers and shakers lived. They worked down in the Forum. The Curia (Senate house) is the tall building at the top left of the photo. The Vestal Virgins lived in the bottom right. Maybe.

I smell a holiday card

Ryan

So I pretty much loved ancient Rome. It was really hard at first to comprehend how OLD this stuff is. Some of the temples are from the 8th century before Christ. (Although none of the really ancient ones are original, except for the foundations, but have been spruced up or rebuilt, then knocked down again, the new ones only like 2000 years old. Mussolini righted some pillars on the Temple of Vesta. He also built a horrid thoroughfare right down the middle of the Forum, but I think Rome got her (his? Since Rome is probably named for Romulus (Remus' brother) comeuppance with the whole shooting, hanging from a meat hook, stoning thing they did to him in 1945 in near Milan). 800 B.C. That's 1800 years older than Westminster Abbey! 1600 years older than the oldest Pueblo Villages found here in Arizona. 2400 years older than the oldest remaining early American buildings. (Don't look too closely at my maths.)

Tired and hungry, we headed back to Trastevere to change and eat before heading back into town. Jen was hoping to see something that wasn't ruined. She was in luck.

Spanish Steps

Trevi fountain.

Day three began with the Pantheon, built 126 A.D. I'm not sure I've even seen anything in my life cooler than the Pantheon. It was like all the stuff in the Forum, only not sacked by barbarians and looted by medieval Romans.

We met our guide, Jeb, and headed over to the Vatican. Those Catholics have collected and stolen some really great stuff over the past two thousand years.

This huge head, for instance.

The Sistine Chapel didn't do much for me. I wrote that small cuz it's pretty embarrassing. Sure, I appreciate that painting thousands of naked people, contorting and cavorting every which way, all in the throes of something (passion, sin, greed, pain, religious ecstasy, damnation, covetousness) is a tough project, and that until Mike and all his Renaissance posse dug up and copied the Roman copies of the Greek statues, nobody could do that stuff. Maybe I'm a closet pagan, but I found the Pantheon more impressive.

St. Peter's Basilica was something to see. It was like if you could take another cathedral, say, Notre Dame, and inflate it to like twice or three times the size. It was HUGE. It isn't crammed with graves like Westminster, (only saints or popes on their way to sainthood are in the church, the rest go in the crypt) so it looks cleaner, more beautiful, but maybe not as interesting, nook-and-cranny-wise.

So I think I'm getting pretty tired, because I just wrote "nook-and-cranny-wise," and I am planning to leave it as is, and hit publish. So I should probably quit for today.

Next stop: more ruins! Pompeii. And the pizza right across the street from the Eat, Pray, Love pizza. (Very tasty, and no line.)

Does my baby look like James Bond?

2011-11-02T12:58:00.001-07:00

So every time I think of something super important I want to put on my blog, like how the family in the pew behind us at Church said Joey looks like a baby Daniel Craig:

(I'm dying to know what you think),

or how it is only 80 degrees outside, or how I washed down my family room walls this morning because they were covered in kid slime (was mostly dirt, but also snot and food), I think, I should write that down, but first, I should put up some pictures of Italy, so everyone doesn't think I made it all up and really went to Las Vegas to get plastic surgery (I hear that's a thing). But really, I don't like messing with pictures (ones not already on my computer or the internet).

Instead, I'd like to tell you how I saw the movie Anonymous last night, and liked it in spite of poorish reviews, because c'mon, of COURSE I'm going to like it. They had me at everybody being upholstered in brocade. Plus, it starred Spike from Notting Hill. Only I didn't recognize him without his goggles, and with his pants. But Jake did. He says he'd know Spike anywhere.

And Spike was married to Emily, Ross Geller's British second wife, who is still as uptight as ever. I should warn you that the whole thing is completely fabricated. It has no basis in actual history except that Queen Elizabeth had red hair, liked plays, and had a hard time keeping her throne away from her sister Mary and the rest of the Scottish Tudors. Also, since I'm warning you, I should tell you that I was digging in my bag of Halloween candy, trying to tell mini Baby Ruths from mini Milky Way Darks with only the light from my phone, so I can't be sure, but I think William Shakespeare's hiney was in the movie. It might have been hairy.

Have you seen the movie?

Did you like it better than Footloose 2.0 (that was last week's movie)?

Do you think Joey looks like James Bond?

But it's nearly lunch time in Rome

2011-10-17T03:53:00.003-07:00

Home!

I thought I was really beating back this whole jet lag thing (been home more than 24 hours now), but then I decided to take a quick Sunday afternoon power nap. So now I'm up, quite refreshed.

Ready to start my Monday.

It is 3 a.m.

I'm not really sure how Jake kept the kids quiet all evening, but it appears he did.

When I first awoke, I tried to catch up on two weeks worth of what my friends did on Facebook, hoping it would make me sleepy (didn't, you all are very interesting), checking my email to make sure tomorrow isn't picture day (it isn't), finishing a book (The Language of Flowers, quite good), started a new one (super weird, became bored), went to the toilet, then finally tip-toed down the dark hallway, praying my bare foot didn't find an unsuspecting scorpion (already had a near miss in the master bathroom last night), and booted up the old Mac. I'm also pretty hungry. I might need a snack.

Italy was really super great. We saw all kinds of stuff: big stuff, old stuff, Churchy stuff, naked stuff, tasty stuff: even most of the small museums I had on my secret nerdy-history-major-itinerary. It was pretty easy. I'd just be like: Oh, what luck! We just happen to be staying three doors down from this restored medieval house (that I've been checking out on the internet for like three months). We should stop in on our way to lunch. We visited the Forum/Palatine Hill/Coliseum/Mamertine Prison, Vatican/Sistine Chapel/St. Peter's, Pompeii, pizza in Naples; Doge's Palace, shopping at Rialto, Ca' Rezzonico, Jewish Ghetto in Venice (I might have accidentally slept in and missed St. Mark's); Uffizi Gallery, Palazzo Davanzati (the restored medieval home), Pitti Palace, Medici Crypts, Duomo, Accademia to see David in Florence; wandered around Umbrian hill town (Orvieto); headed back to Rome to tour Christian Catacombs and Capucchin Crypt. There were too many Churches, pizzas, and ice cream to name individually.

But it is funny. It turns out that when you give birth to five children, and then leave them to go to a different continent, you begin to miss them. This process takes 9 days, if you are having a really good time. Less, if it is raining or you are a better mother than I am.

On the 10th day, Jake texted me a photo of Joey, sitting in his high chair wearing only his diaper, lovingly clutching his new Italian Fiat police car to his chest (remember, Jake left from Venice, while I went on to Florence. He had a class to teach and a business to run). Joe's rheumy, unblinking blue eyes (it was a photograph, you'll remember) told me that he had come to terms with his abandonment, had been through all the levels of grief, and knew that lots of motherless children go on to lead productive lives. It seemed like, had his limited vocabulary allowed, he might have started singing Annie songs. Tomorrow, Maybe, or It's a Hard Knock Life, but probably not the one one from the movie where Miss Hannigan comes on to Daddy Warbucks. That one doesn't seem appropriate for 18-month-olds. So then I started crying right in front of the leather goods salesman I was dickering with in the covered market on the Via Porta Rossa.

I showed the leather guy the photo, to explain my tears. He nodded in empathy. But when my Mom mentioned that I had four other kids, back at the ranch, the guy checked to make sure there wasn't language confusion, then proceeded to look at me in the same way I look at Michelle Duggar. It didn't help that my mom motioned to my sister's midsection and smiled: number eight!

Which leads me to the first in the series I will call: "weird stuff I noticed in Italy, which may or may not be true, because I was only there 12 days, only talked to a few people, and only speak Italian gelato flavors." (I also know the important universal sign language for "waffle cone, large.")

So the first weird thing is that people are flabbergasted by big families. Like they've never seen or heard of one. I mean, fine. This is Europe. These are cities. I get it. But also, aren't these people Catholic? Or lapsed Catholics? Or related to some Catholics? Cuz I went in about 40 Churches, on like every corner like 7-11s, and all of them were Catholic (except for the three synagogues we visited in Venice.) I fully expect to be a freak in England, France and the Netherlands, but
not Italy. I was so confused, I just googled it. Turns our I was right. Italy's birth rate in 1994 was the second lowest in the Western World, at 1.23 children per woman. Apparently the government is worried there won't be enough young workers to support the aging population in just a few years, and is paying cash bonuses to mothers. And the Pope? He isn't thrilled, either.

Well, enough of that.

So, in my determination to pack light, I brought only a carry-on sized backpack and a small purse (large enough only for lip balm, sunglasses, Rick Steves, and a few euros). We did laundry once. The only thing I regret leaving home? My real camera. I'm not much of a photographer, but still. I wanted it from day 1. The iphone camera just didn't cut it. (Also, I wish I'd brought a jacket with long sleeves. At night, in Venice, my forearms grew chilled.)

Speaking of Rick Steves. He was in Italy with us, and we almost saw him, but didn't. He was in the Piazza Navona, at midnight, only a little bit drunk and filming stuff, either the same night or the night before we were. So we ate the tartufo gelato he recommended at Tre Scalini, approximately 22:00, then headed off toward the Pantheon on his Night Walk Across Rome, like the good Rickites we are. Unfortunately, this put us at the Spanish Steps at midnight, listening to some Italian kid playing acoustic 90s hits on his guitar (very well, I might add), holding hands, kissing, and chatting about the house where Keats died. Little did we know that meanwhile, Rick had got his buzz on and was out on the town with his cell phone video camera, back over by the ice cream and the Four Rivers Fountain (full of marble men with surprisingly muscular buttocks).

So anyhow, maybe sometime when it is light outside and I don't have to risk being stung by creepy lobster insects to get back to my room, I will get the (low-quality) photos off my phone and share a few with you.

Now I will maybe go make my kids some waffles. Since I'm up. I will try not to think about the salami and cheese panini (just off the Piazza Signorina) and fresh strawberry sorbet (from that spot next to the Ponte Vecchio) that somebody is eating for lunch, nine hours ahead but right this minute.

Training for Italian Marathon, Anne Taylor the pants genius, slip and fall, giving up on the Twelve Caesars, shoes and a neck pillow

2011-09-29T11:38:00.004-07:00

So when I got off my treadmill the other night, I announced to Jake: three and a half miles tonight! I am going to be ready for the Italian Marathon. (The Italian marathon includes walking from an enormous Church full of famous dead people and Renaissance art to a pizza place to a museum full of marble nekkid people, to a gelateria, to a big pile of rocks that used to be something really important to a some fellas named Caesar, then taking a taxi to dinner. My apologies to the real Italian marathon, if there is one, and its actual athletes).

So Jake said: great, now get up and do it again at 3 a.m., and it will feel just like Venice.

I'm sure midnight treadmill riding in Phoenix is nothing like Venice. In Venice I plan to ride around in boats while I eat my pizza and ice cream, reclining lazily on crushed velvet cushions. I don't know if there are really any velvet cushions; maybe I've watched too many movies about the 19th Century Grand Tour. Now that I think about it, there might not be any parasols around, either. The good news: I won't have to get my lady's maid to loosen my stays after the pizza and gelato binge. I've bought myself some large and stretchy pants! (Anne Taylor Loft has got a size 12 that will accommodate a slim sumo wrestler. Are even bigger than Banana Republic.)

Moral of this paragraph: You can learn a lot from your Baedeker's,

but you can also learn a lot from Nacho.

So, about a month ago I sprained my ankle.

I was skiing in Switzerland. Totally not embarrassing.

Or, maybe I slipped in the shower, old lady style. As I lay there on the shower floor (shower is weird design that is huge like football locker room, so there is plenty of room for sprawling) and stared up at the etched glass windows with the desert scenes which I hate, but do not include howling coyotes or kachinas, which I could not tolerate, I thought, it has really happened! I've fallen and I can't get up! And I'm soggy, and naked, and already bruising in so many odd and painful places! But after a cursory inspection, I found both my hips still firmly in their sockets, and my head not cracked open.

A silver lining, indeed.

Anyway, so I've been babying the ankle and wearing flat shoes to Church (a real hardship), and when I got on the treadmill the other night, I was afraid I'd mince along for like 15 minutes, then fling myself on to the nearby bed, apply ice and pant for 30 minutes more. But I didn't. Is good news.

Okay, so my Italy reading list might be a little ambitious. I started reading the Lives of the Caesars with Tiberius. I don't think it is the beginning, but he did have to divorce his pregnant wife, who he liked, and marry Augustus' daughter, who was a real tramp, and maybe a shrew. So that was sad and interesting. But I'm not sure I'm really getting the big picture. Might need to read faster, and skim all the parts where they fight the Germanic tribes or murder fellow Senate members.

I also read a Rick Steves' Europe 101: History and Art for the Traveler book I found at D.I. It is from 1985, so it is probly a first edition and worth like ten grand. So it's old, but filled with timeless jokes like this one, about the dawning of the Renaissance, and the labor shortages created by the plague: "Serf's up!"

So hotels are reserved, train tickets bought, and even booked us our own guides at the Vatican and Colosseum/Forum/Palatine Hill. One nice thing about traveling with seven people is getting your own guide is nearly economical. I made us reservations to see the Uffizi and David in Florence. I've got my eye on a social history walking tour about medieval Florentines. But my Dad's got his eye on another about banking and the Medicis, so there might be a walking tour standoff. (I foresee this will end with me and my Dad going to see the bankers, and everyone else going shopping.)

I bought a suitcase and some packing cubes. I know Inkmom recommended the MLC Patagonia, but this one spoke to me (with its cheap price tag). It is the Ebags Mother Lode TLS Weekender Convertible. I bought black, to be practical, even though I really wanted green.

And finally, my friend and travel guru, Kari, who goes all over the world, but never blogs about it, told me that my Joseph Seibel walking shoes (black, but with some tasteful velcro) would not be acceptable in Italy. That Italian women wear stilettos to the toilet in the middle of the night (she might not have said this), so I was going to have to step it up. So I got these, and Kari approved them:

Cole Haan Air Penny Tantivy Driver. There's Nike Air in there!

So anyhow, one Lewis 'n Clark brand original neck pillow (was famous neck pillow they took with them to explore and map the American West), and a few free Italian phrase apps for my ipad (My kids keep yelling things at me in Italian, and they all sound like come-ons, so they must be doing it right), and that's it. I'm ready.

Except for my house.
And my laundry.

I should go do that.
Instead of blogging.

Any last words of advice?

Reading list for Italy?

2011-09-02T12:34:00.002-07:00

I just made my first Listmania list. I don't think I'm going to get through it before I leave for Italy. (Especially if I start with The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in six volumes.) You have anything I should add? Or detract?

(This is what I do instead of booking hotel rooms. )

It's not a dry heat. But that's okay because I'm leaving.

2011-08-30T10:12:00.007-07:00

Last Friday I was out in the heat, doing stuff, as I do. It was a hot heat. A wet heat. The van's brand new air conditioning couldn't make any headway, it was nearly powerless against the brick wall of steam. I was sweating so hard my wet hair was stuck to my wet neck and a moderate stench of mildew was coming off my sopping wet t-shirt (not the sexy sort of wet t-shirt), or perhaps my underwear (do not leave clean clothes in a front loading washer for even an hour in this weather, or you will regret it). I felt defeated. I kept fantasizing about San Diego, and cursing all the people who live there and drive up real estate prices. And I thought, I can't do this for another two months. I will do something criminally insane, and then they will send me to a nice, air conditioned asylum where I can spend the remainder of my days in a Land's End maillot and a microfiber straight jacket. Which doesn't sound bad, except that my children don't brush their teeth enough even when they aren't motherless. The dental and asylum bills will bankrupt us.

So, Friday turned out to be some sort of record: 117 degrees plus all kinds of monsoon humidity. And I felt better, because it validated my concern that people can't and shouldn't live in this kind of heat. Because normally, it is only like 110 with humidity. And if it is 117, it is usually dry.

So maybe I can make it to Halloween. If temperatures return to their normal ranges.

Or maybe, if I take a couple weeks off and go to Italy.

I hear the weather in Italy is a lot like San Diego. Only in Italy, I'm told, they have way better architecture, ancient Roman stuff, pizza, frescoes, huge statues of naked people, and ice cream. At least, that's what I heard from watching my Rick Steves Travels in Europe Italy DVD like 100 times.

I spent most of yesterday on the internet trying to decide if I want to buy Rick's backpack and silk money belt for my trip. Rick says polyester money belts can get very sweaty. And you can imagine, sweaty is the last thing I want to be on my Italian vacation.

Yes, I understand that I sound a little nerdy and a little Rick Steves stalkery. But I swear, it was my sister Jen who googled him yesterday and found out he's divorced his wife and found himself a young Asian girlfriend.

Have you been to Italy? Watched a lot of the Travel Channel? Read A Room With a View? (Or seen the old A Room With a View film, which included a young Bellatrix Lestrange and Minerva McGonagall, and all sorts of surprising dangly bits? Or even the 2006 version, in which Wormtail puts on a good show, but not nearly as good a show as all the 1985 dangly bits, if you know what I mean?) I need your help. Got ideas for what to see and eat and where to sleep in Rome, Venice, Pompeii, or Florence? None of us (except sister Jen) has ever been, so we'll need to be pretty touristy, but also, I will feel a failure if I bring less than ten pounds of pasta and gelato home in my haunches, so we will need to make time for that, too.

Bon voyage to me!
(What? Maybe I need to stop looking at suitcases and start looking at Rosetta Stone Italian?)

Thinking about (other people) having babies. Also thinking about pie.

2011-08-24T13:20:00.004-07:00

I just spent 3.5 hours cleaning my car. I don't normally do this sort of thing, especially when it is 112 degrees outside. Okay, fine, I do it when I am 9 months pregnant. I make the other patrons at the self service vacuum area of the Dolphin Car Wash very uncomfortable as they watch me grunt and wedge myself into the back seat, but I feel DRIVEN to clean.

I am not 9 months pregnant right now.
As far as I know.
Although, it would be pretty great if I were, and had no idea, like those ladies on I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, because hey, I get a baby without nine months of bleeding eyeballs. But honestly, I can't imagine a world in which I didn't know I was pregnant (since I can usually start barfing even before the early pregnancy tests come back positive), and I suspect all those ladies are totally faking it to get on TV.

I'm thinking about babies today because Jake's little sister is in labor with her first baby. And also because my little sister is pregnant with her eighth. EIGHT! (Her fifth pregnancy, she got three kids for free when she got remarried a year ago. Which is cheating, I hope she knows.) And she is so super sick, that looking at her gives me anxiety attacks.

Ross and Jane started school at BASIS Chandler. I like to grill them daily about how everything went. I grill Sam and Tom, too, but Tom refuses to give up any information, even under high pressure interrogation, except that the school day is MUCH too long, and that once he went to P.E., and there was a Frisbee involved. Then he clammed up and looked embarrassed that he'd said too much. Sam just tells me he didn't get into any trouble. Which is probably a lie.

So on the first day, Ross and Jane met some new kids. But, Ross announced, something weird happened. Kids kept coming up to me and saying, Hello! I'm so-and-so. It's nice to meet you. Then, the kid would put out his hand, and want me to shake it! It happened three times. But one kid, Winston, is from India. I think they do things different there.

Jane said, Yeah. That happened to me, too. Shaking hands! Super weird.

I asked Ross if he feels like the work is too hard. He told me:
Well, I think I'm ahead in some subjects, like English and Spanish. But I think I'm behind in science and math. Like, at lunch time, Winston asked George if he knew the sorts of Cretaceous dinosaur birds indigenous to Central America (or something like that. I can't be expected to remember this sort of question). And then, George told Winston he was really sorry, but he was only familiar with the South American varieties.

At lunch one day, Jane was eating Keira's lunch because she'd left her PB&J in Jake's truck. Luckily Keira had the largest and best lunch in the world.

She had an extra Capri Sun, and cherries, and even a tiny pie from England!

Oh? I asked. (The only thing more exciting than a pastry is a British pastry.) Tell me more. Where did she get it?

In England. They just got back this week. But you know what's funny? Divia was sitting with us, and she didn't know what pie was. She's never heard of it, or eaten it. She's from here, but her parents are from Pakistan. She also didn't know what blueberries or bobby pins were, and she has to buy all her meat from a special store.

Are your kids coming home with any good school stories, or do they refuse to talk? .Do you think I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant is for real? Are there other 'reality' shows you feel are suspect?

Retrenchment. Again. Plus, my kids went to school and I spent the day on iTunes.

2011-08-12T13:56:00.006-07:00

Ok, so I went to step class this morning and it was super hard. I haven't been all summer because I've too been busy eating and not moving and gaining ten pounds. About 45 minutes in, right after the 'party track' (is masochistic misnomer), a friend from like 15 years ago says hello, and instead of thinking: is so good to see you! I was thinking: you couldn't have let me know you were right behind me? Had I known, I would have tried harder not to flop around and wheeze like an asthmatic AARP member. And maybe I wouldn't have have lain on my belly while the rest of you were doing that yoga thing.

I'm not proud of myself.

Last week, I started a post about how I don't care a wink about my ill-fitting pants (you'll recall I went to California and ate VG Donuts and Hula Pie and Mr. Frosty dipped cones). I wrote all about the medium-sized purple muumuu I bought myself at Target for my birthday. (Muumuus run large. Is smart thinking by muumuu makers.). And then I prattled on about how muumuus are the best because they keep people wondering: what's going on under there? Is she a lingerie model? Is she great with child? No one can tell, and guess what? It is none of their business how many apple fritters I'm smuggling around in my lovely lady lumps! I got the wearable-pup-tent idea from my sister, who already had the same dress. So since we both wore it almost every day of our vacation, sometimes we went places with all of our combined 12 children, looking like some sort of matchy-matchy Polynesian sister wives.

Anyhow, like I said, that was last week. From the black night of unhealthy (but delicious) denial has dawned a new era of self-denial. Retrenchment. Which started today. And I'm only telling you so I can't wriggle out of it. So now I'm sitting here eating raw carrots with no ranch dressing, still wearing my stinky yoga pants. You can leave your condolences in the comments.

But just because I can't eat anything good doesn't mean I can't buy myself stuff on iTunes, right?

The Decemberists most recent album, The King is Dead, might actually be better than doughnuts. This record sounds like Mary from Peter, Paul, and Mary married Michael Stipe and had lots of bearded children, who then died and formed a choir of hipster angels. (Except for This is Why we Fight, which sounds like the Cranberries.) Listening to them makes me want to get the old band back together (the band being me and my sister, my sister mostly against her will), to sing my original, four-chord dirges, inspired by boys who didn't know I liked them and British Royals of the middle ages. Take a gander at my playlist over right, if you like folk music. (Or Weird Al. Because I bought his album, Alpocalypse, too.)

What else should I buy on iTunes?
What did you do with your first day of school?
What's your favorite doughnut?
(I like buttermilk old-fashioned with chocolate ganache.)

The old 'dead raccoon in my irrigation pipe' metaphor

2011-08-05T09:38:00.005-07:00

Before we start, I would like to point out that in this metaphor, the part of the irrigation pipe will not be played by any section of my lower intestine.

See, it has been nearly a month and half since I've been here. And it isn't for lack of stuff to say. It just got busy, and then we left town, and while we were out of town, I wanted to tell you about doughnuts and fireworks and how I've got a crush on Utah, but I couldn't because then some of you who are sketchy might break into my house and steal my 7 year old Apple computer, or my Tivo that only holds 15 hours of shows, which is barely enough to keep me in House Hunters International and Good Eats.

But now that I'm back, I can't seem to get going again. And it is hard to explain, unless I tell you about the dead raccoon.

See, my friend who lives around the corner, but also out in the country, where everybody has two acres, a goat, and some chickens, went out to water her lawn. Now where I'm from (Los Angeles), and where I live now (around the corner from her and 50 years in the future), we just set our magic boxes and the sprinklers turn on automatically, but she's got some sort of grandfathered-in water rights from like a hundred years ago when her grandfather probably kicked some peace-loving Pima Indian off his land (the Apaches didn't want it, or they would have taken it), and that Pima took it from some long ago (yet mysteriously) vanished Hohokam fella.

What it comes down to is lots of cheap water in the desert, if you're lucky. But you've got to take your turn, even if it is in the middle of the night, or the whole street floods. And then, maybe you go to jail. But probably not, because that's what I thought when I first saw the flooded yards: someone is going to prison! But no one does. In LA, we were more careful with water, and sometimes we weren't even allowed to flush our dirty toilets . If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.

Anyhow, my friend and her husband are out in the backyard at 3:47 a.m., or whenever, and they flip the switch, or turn the faucet, or whatever happens (I'm a city girl, remember), and something goes wrong. Water is coming out, but only a little, and at very high pressure. They get a flashlight and peer into the pipe. Inside is a dead raccoon. He is stiff and wedged sideways across the opening in such a way that he is blocking the flow of water. They try to pry him out but he doesn't budge. Finally her husband gets inside, and grabs the raccoon with both arms and yanks him free. The dammed (not damned) up water shoots out and soaks his red velvet lounging coat and matching slippers, (I wasn't there. But this is how it goes in my head) and he and the raccoon land on the grass in a big soggy pile.

So anyhow, I am hoping that this post about an actual dead raccoon will be my figurative dead raccoon, and now that he's out of my pipes (remember, this has nothing to do with my bowel regularity), pulled from my brain and onto the internets (however stinking, wet, and possibly rabid he might be), the flow of writing to follow will be free and clear and rapid (and probably include some truly original photos of my children clutching shovels and torturing sand crabs on the beach, that don't look anything like the ones of your children at the beach, or the ones you've recently seen on every other blog in the whole world. Here's a little something to wet your whistle:

July 24, 2011. Salt Lake Temple. Happy Pioneer Day!

So, see you soon! I've missed you all!

p.s. I just had my son Ross preview this, and he just said Mom, that's weird. But I like the part about the lounging coat.

If only I had a barn to raise them in.

2011-06-24T17:28:00.005-07:00

Sometimes raising boys is a great pleasure.

Like when little Sam had an imaginary hermaphroditic friend. Kaner got his/her own ornament on the Christmas tree in back in '06.

But then, sometimes it's not as much fun.

Like last week, when I found my five-year-old son using my favorite houseplant as a toilet.

I'm not sure if its now imminent demise can be attributed to the urine, or to the sunscreen he sprayed on it the week before, but either way:

go toward the light, little umbrella plant. I hate to see you suffer so.

I do believe that hearing stories of your children's uncivilized, destructive, immoral, sacrilegious, and possibly feral or felonious behaviors will comfort me at this time.

Please share.

Of Burgers and Bras

2011-06-22T10:38:00.004-07:00

Last night I ate a Kobe burger with sauteed wild mushrooms and Maytag Blue cheese, double truffle fries, and a bananas foster shake for dessert. Zinburger is over at the Biltmore, so you might think it is a long drive for a hamburger. But I used to drive to Las Vegas from Provo just for a Double Double Animal Style, so it doesn't seem like such a sacrifice to me. Plus, it was very delicious, and very near Last Chance (that's where all the stuff from Nordstrom Rack goes to die), and after you spend five times what you normally would on a Big Mac, you might be able to spend a few pleasant minutes sifting through a giant bin of cheap Wacoal bras, purchasing three for less cash than one fancy-pants Japanese-cow burger. And then, when you get home, you might discover, to your pleasure, that two of them even fit.

My dear hermanita Jen, I am going to need like 6 more Fox Concept Restaurants gift cards like the one you gave me for Christmas. We want to go to The Arrogant Butcher (New Orleans), North (Italian), Olive & Ivy (high-heeled lunching lady, goat cheese, free range chicken type food), and the Mexican place at the Borgata. Plus, I'm going to need a couple more Zinburgers. Thanks in advance.

Love,
Kelly

What are you eating lately? Should I be eating it, too?

Breaking every rule of good blogging

2011-06-06T13:03:00.002-07:00

A post, so long it could be a novella, about nothing in particular, but including videos of babies (boring to everyone but the baby's mother), bragging on my oldest child's academic prowess, many extra words and sentences that are mostly in here because I can't edit anything, birthday party photos, and yet another video, this time low quality concert footage of a band that was hip 20 years ago, a bit of misused latin, inserted mostly for the sake of pretention, and finally, a link to swimsuit photos of a mother of five.

Summer vacation. Past eight a.m., and the only person awake is in her robe, blogging and eating tortilla chips (and the salsa she made from her very own roma tomatoes, so is very healthy breakfast. Perhaps even a Wheaties-style breakfast of champions? Should quick email Bruce Jenner to ask, perhaps, but do not want to bother him as he is probably pretty busy cuz the last time I saw him he was holding a live chicken on reality TV and fighting with some Kardashians).

Well, the last few weeks of school got real crazy, I ain't gonna lie. I even started to write about it, but then gave up because I got into a dither about something else. It went like this:

End of school stuff is stressful. I am not good at remembering and coordinating stuff. Is the reason I carried all my books around in my backpack through all of seventh grade, and never used my locker. (The other reason is I was super nerdy.) Is also one of the reasons I changed my major in college from Elementary Education to History. In history classes you've got like three tests and a paper, no hoops to jump through, no meeting three times a day in small groups to discuss the best way to make bulletin board borders, no learning how to call an all-female square dance. (Other reasons I switched my major included not being a very a good teacher and finding out the holiday-themed light-up earrings irritated my lobes.)

So anyway, my May calendar is full, and full in like a 6 point font full, which is like, super full. It takes two parents to get everywhere the five kids need to be, and sometimes one kid is supposed to be in like three places at once (mostly Jane. She's a joiner.) Last Thursday evening, for example, was Jane's ELP invention and balloon popper exhibition, my brother Ryan's Special Needs Institute talent show (literally one of the highlights of the year), and then book club (we read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen). I got home at 1:30 a.m., and was in my step class at 8:30 a.m. (because remember my vow to get bigger pants or a smaller rear? Well, I've opted for both. My rear IS too big, but perhaps my pants are also just unreasonably small?) And I know some of you, with houses full of teenagers, are laughing at me, and you're thinking: just wait, it gets worse. Pretty soon the only way to do it all is to let your 12-year-old start driving carpool. And for heck's sake, lady, take off those 4-inch white suede platform sandals go to Target and get yourself some stretchy jeans! No wonder you can't get anything done. What exactly are you trying to prove?

So anyhow, I am looking forward to summer. Which starts next Thursday! Which is when we (me and Jake and my new bigger shorts) get back from going to visit Kari and Bono in Utah!

So that was May. Tommy turned five, which is a big one, so there was a countdown for like three weeks and then we had a swimming party on the one day in the recorded history of May in Gilbert when it has ever rained, at least since white men started keeping records; but I bet if you check the Hohokam petroglyphs, it will tell you the same thing: you should always be safe having a May swim party in Phoenix. But kids don't really care, so that's good.

Joey learned to walk. And dance.

And we went to the ward campout, which included an Eagle project where we cleaned up the graveyard for the workers who died building Roosevelt Dam (1905-1911). I was too scared to get a picture of the rattlesnake.

School ended and Ross got loads of awards at his 6th grade promotion ceremony (Jake and I were both underachievers, so we aren't used to fancy wooden plaques, crystal apples and the like, and were quite thrilled).

And we went to Utah and loved the concert and our friends and their lovely new house,

and I wore my Doctor Martins that I bought on Carnaby Street in 1994, because they seemed Rock n' Roll, even though I wondered if Bono would approve of my politics,

and I've given up worrying about my rear again (maybe I could muster more excitement for change if my butt was in the front, and I actually had to look at it every day?),

And then we headed to Payson, which was near the boy scout camp where Ross was in situ and Jake was teaching wilderness survival but ironically came down off the rim to stay with us at night in the air conditioning and spent his evenings with me watching Top Gear on BBC and a show called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding which is super duper disturbing but I couldn't stop watching. I mean, 6-year-olds with spray tans? A pink light-up wedding dress with 21 layers of tulle, animatronic butterflies, and someone to walk behind her with a fire extinguisher in case her electrical goes haywire and she starts on fire? You should set your Tivo, if you have a high tolerance for tacky.

We came back just in time to make it to the free Gin Blossoms concert at Kierland Commons, where we sat in the front row and blocked a bunch of little girls. Jane came along, and she knew almost all the songs, even the ones from the new album, No Chocolate Cake, which Jake must be playing for her, because I'm more of a New Miserable Experience purist, even after all these years. And I have no idea who that woman in the video is. The one singing super off-key. You think she sounds just like me? I have no idea what you are talking about.

And now it is 9:30, and all the kids are up, except the baby, who sleeps in only when I'm up early, and Jane, who I couldn't find. But then I remembered she slept over at her cousins' house down the road, and I smiled. Because what says "I've got a laissez faire summer attitude" like forgetting where you put your children?

Oh! And I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a fellow blogger asking me to send her a list of my summer plans along with a photo. I wrote something up and hit send. Immediately, I was filled with remorse: Kelly, did you just send a picture of yourself in a bathing suit for someone to publish on the internets? And I had. I really had. And now it is published, at The Barrel of Blogs, along with some other, fully clothed bloggers with their summer goals. You can find my centerfold on pages 13 and 14.

Women's Conference, a sort of poem mostly concerning my intestinal maladies, plus some pictures of food and cousins and large fowl.

2011-05-04T22:14:00.002-07:00

As it turns out,
when you eat like a 6 course meal over three hours,
including most of your college roommate Kari's vegetable Napoleon plus your own lobster bisque, and three desserts,
then follow that up the next day with a pastrami burger and shakes (two) (only one good),
oh, and that mint brownie,
and that other mint brownie,
it is possible you might feel unwell,
especially if all your pants were too tight when you left your warm home in the desert,
where you can wear knit dresses all the day long,
and you fly to Utah where you are forced to wear pants because it is snowing outside.

You had your yoga pants along,
and you stared at them for awhile,
thinking how you'd like to wear them to the Marriott Center,
(Elder Bednar would have understood, I'm sure),
but then you'd have had to wear flip flops,
and since you were walking,
in forty degrees,
you decided to suffer your angry belly in Justin Timberlake's misogynistic straight-jacket-of-a-jean over possible frostbite.

And then if you go to a concert where somebody's granny kisses David Osmond on the mouth
It's okay! she says into the mike, I've been a widow for 26 years!
(It was not okay. It was super weird),
and then somebody (Kirby Heyborne) writes a song about Sheri Dew that made you snort aloud with mirth and pure joy,
you might forget about your discomforts,
if only for a moment.

Did I actually attend class, or did I spend all my time in line at the creamery sniffing warm waffle cones, and trying to buy a t-shirt in the bookstore that didn't include the word "Jimmer"?
Yes!
Some of my favorites were
Virginia H. Pearce "By Small and Simple Things,"
Dennis and Joyce Ashton "In the Quiet Heart is Hidden",
Julie Beck,
Susan Easton Black "A Small Beginning in a Grove of Trees,"
Gaye Strathearn and Cecilia Peek "Believe in Christ."
We also weaseled our way into the Carl Bloch exhibit at the museum, and checked out the Dorothea Lange stuff downstairs while we were at it.

What's that? Did I take any photos of my great good time over to the BYU?
Nay!
But did I take like a hundred of food, forks, and amorous peacocks.

Pea hens. Apparently there is a chicken/peacock half breed running around the place, but I didn't spot it.

When you start with four forks, you know your gonna have to pace yourself

Mom, Jen

Traci (known her since her diaper days in L.A., I even babysat her on occasion), Kari (college roommate, concert date, willing to drive thru Arby's in hurricane-style monsoon to get apple turnovers, and then when they were delicious, drive thru again 5 minutes later), Cousin Becky (only girl in family who is taller than I am), Jen (wearing fashion forward Sherlock Holmes style cape-let), Mom (thanks for dinner, and making us all laugh so loud we should have been thrown out), me, Cousin Lauri (why do you still look 16? You have a married daughter. Is a mystery).

Ah, Utah!
I love thee.
I shall be back soon
(this month, actually, to see Kari and Bono and his healed back),
and I shall be ready this time
with either
a smaller butt
or bigger pants.

Two things: I've started smoking, and I think Rod Stewart is sexy. (In his song, he called me sugar, and told me just to let him know.)

2011-04-21T14:08:00.004-07:00

So, last Thursday night, round about 7, we ate a roasted chicken for dinner; at 7:30, I tossed her picked over carcass into a pot with some onions and carrots and water (we were out of celery), and then I climbed into bed, where I soon became catatonic, slipped into an Office coma, and then fell asleep. (In my defense, Will Farrell was on).

I began to have vivid dreams full of horrible stenches of all sorts: swamp gas, burning hair, medieval open sewers chock full of cholera. But I did not wake up until nearly 6 a.m., when the chicken was fully cremated (rest in peace, little bird), and every nook and cranny of my entire house was full of smoke.

So I spent the day ventilating, ionizing, febrezing, boiling vinegar on stove (don't recommend), and placing bowls of baking soda in all the bedrooms. My friend Hallie from 5th grade and California came in around 4 o'clock (by way of Albuquerque). She didn't say it, but I'll bet what she was thinking was: I never suspected my Mormon friend's house would smell so much like an airport lounge in the disco era. But what I was thinking, and actually did say, was: it smells like that bus ride I took from London to Edinburgh in 1994, on which everyone chained smoked a variety of tobacky, including cigars, Marlboros, and what I later learned were Turkish cigarettes, with all the windows tightly sealed against the frigid July night (it was Scotland). Only, at my house, we didn't have the perhaps 30 stops, where all the BYU Study Abroaders would lunge out into the clean, sheep-scented night air, and then hurry into the rural petrol stations, which all contained mountains of Cadbury chocolate (gained 20 pounds in two months), and aisle end caps full of Hoff paraphernalia. (Baywatch was in full swing, and the former Knight Rider was an INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR!) Also, my house smelled less like body odor than the bus, and more like hot vinegar. Which makes me hungry for chips.

So anyway, Hallie brought pie with her from some small Arizona hamlet (but not Pietown, which she did not have time to peruse, because we were on a tight schedule), which made me feel much better, because pie does that for you, in much the same way as a Cadbury Flake might.

So then we showered and picked up my brother Ryan, because TONIGHT'S (was) THE NIGHT, and we were gonna take a DOWNTOWN TRAIN, but the light rail takes a long time, so we ended up in the minivan. And we got to the Arena just in time to get our hot dogs and seats and listen to Stevie Nicks flap her arms about dreamily and start in with Rhiannon. Stevie was okay, but I wouldn't pay to see her again. She played a lot of solo stuff that I didn't know, because really, if you've been in Fleetwood Mac, you might as well give up, because you've peaked. (Don't tell this to Paul McCartney.) She looked and sounded okay, except Hallie pointed out that perhaps she was wearing a circa-1850-style bustle under her drapey, glittery black dress?

Jake, Ryan, Kelly

Ryan, Hallie

But let's talk about Rod Stewart, okay? Because Rod blew my mind. I sort of knew he was a ladies man, and that he'd been busy fathering all sorts of children with models and other lovely young things for the past 50 or so years, but I never really understood what the big deal was. Well, I am here to tell you that Rod Stewart has got it. I know, I know, you're wondering, how can he be so old and so sexy at the same time? I don't know. Because it is a mystery. But when he came out in his skinny black pants, patent shoes, and shiny yellow dinner jacket, looking like some sort of crazy-haired 1950s dreamboat, I nearly swooned. Some of the more mature females around us (nearly everyone but us and some well-dressed boys in pairs were card carrying AARP members) were purring like cats. Meowing, I say. And he put on quite a show, complete with other suit-wearing band members, and back-up singers/dancers that looked all 80s in that Price-is-Right-model sort of way. They were so talented they could have put on their own show. But you couldn't look away from Rod for long, because you didn't want to miss him loosen his tie and starting doing lunges (the quads of a 20-year-old, I say!), or kick soccer balls into the stands, or change into the blue shiny jacket, or then into the full purple suit, in which he sang his encore of "Do ya think I'm Sexy?," which had us all on our feet screaming, because yes, Rod, I do think you are sexy. How sexy do I find you? So sexy that I bought this $45 dollar tee shirt to remember our night together:

Afterward, Jake chatted up this back-up singer by the tour buses,

then we went home to our reeking pool-hall-of-a-house,
and then on Monday I went to GATE camp with Sam,

and Jake stayed home and fed the kids fresh fruits and vegetables and such:

then I came home and my house still smells funny one week post chicken-incineration, but more like an ancient Denny's now, which is better, and today is my Dad's birthday and the only idea I've got for a present is to give him some squash, which seems like a lame gift even if it is from the garden.

So that's it. Smoking, Rod Stewart. Squash.

Have you ever had a horrible kitchen accident? Know any old, hot guys? Have idea for my Dad's birthday present?

P.S. I am genius. I needed to get my Dad's present while driving carpool with seven kids in the car, which limited my options. So I went on a drive-thru frozen Custard tour of the east valley, getting him quarts of Culver's, Freddy's, and Neilson's Custard, so he can have himself a taste test. We've been taste testing ice cream since he went to work at Carnation Co. more than 30 years ago.

City Slickers

2011-04-07T09:53:00.006-07:00

While on the hay ride at yesterday's preschool field trip to Superstition Farm:

Charlie, you see those huge, giant, long nipples on that cow right there? That's where the milk comes out.

No way, Tommy, Charlie retorts, pointing in the direction of the uncomfortable-looking heifer, his voice with edged with disdain. It comes out of that hole under his tail.

Tom considers for moment, then replies:
Oh. That makes sense.

I didn't correct them. Is like last week, when Tom was listing all the bugs he'd seen in the garden: a cockroach, a bee, a spider, a bug I didn't know, and three holy molys. When Ross started to speak, I evil eyed him 'til he quit.

Sneaky QT adventure, birthdays, and a tea party

2011-04-05T10:11:00.004-07:00

So last night, after the kids went to bed, Jake and I snuck out. We rode our bikes down the canal over to the Quick Trip, where we returned our Blockbuster Express movie, and I got myself a soda, which sloshed around in my wicker basket all the way home. It was fairly exciting because it was very dark, except for the blinding lights coming from the second floor rooms of homes, so that we couldn't see the ground in front of us and had to be careful not to plunge into the canal.

SO where was I earlier? Ah, yes. March 25!

Pinewood Derby! Sam got the award for fastest truck.

March 22. Joey is 1. Question: Has a happier, more pleasant child ever been born? Answer: seems unlikely, but can't be sure.

March 20. Jane is 10.

March 18. Afternoon tea for 12 10-year-olds and two Grandmothers.

Tom wasn't invited. Jake took the boys out for Mongolian BBQ.

Daffodils $1.29 a bunch at Trader Joe's!

Grandma Taylor's wedding silver and tea cup collection.

Jane with first course of finger sandwiches: Egg salad, ham and Boursin, cucumber with cream cheese and lemon mint.

The girls made their own hats as they arrived

Grandma Gini Beeson

Grandma Mareen Layton. I'm wearing one of the lip gloss rings we used for napkin holders. Those things are very handy.


Second course: Scones, clotted cream, orange curd (I don't have a lemon tree anymore!), and jam.

Third course: coconut macaroons, tangelo shortbread, and tiny eclairs

Guess which were the most popular?

I spent the entire day in the kitchen, but it was so much fun, I want to do it again: this time, for my friends. Who wants to come?

Some thoughts on Elder Bednar's talk

2011-04-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm back, but I shan't get give you the next installment of my March of Dissipation today.

I've been thinking about Elder Bednar's Conference talk. Conference, by the way, was lovely as usual. I gladly trade the usual three hours in the Church building wrestling the youngsters in high heels, for 8 hours in my yoga pants in front of the TV, watching the GAs. (To be clear, I'm the one in the heels, but perhaps if I put the kids in heels and I wore Nikes, everything would be more pleasant and I wouldn't scowl.)

Anyhow, I was talking with my sister not too long ago about how the Spirit works for us personally, and then after that discussion, I started asking the same question of some other friends and family. And I was interested to hear that all of us were being taught somewhat differently. I explained to them how the Spirit works for me: pray, then wait until I feel peace about my way forward. But many times my answer is no answer because the decision doesn't really need to be made yet. I feel sometimes that the Lord is telling me not to plan too far ahead, but to fill this time with what I already know I should be doing, keep my options open, and wait for further instruction, or for new, completely different things to be thrown into my path. Sometimes I feel like there are many ways I can go, and many of them acceptable to the Lord. Sometimes when I finally do get the calm, peaceful feeling I'm waiting for, and move forward, my steps are still tentative. I don't always feel sure until I'm up to my neck in it. The Spirit also tells me when someone speaks truth because I feel tingling and pressure in my head (often I end up in tears). It confirms all truth, whether I am learning spiritual things, walking through some Indian ruins in the Painted Desert, watching a show about black holes on the Discovery Channel, or chatting with a friend. And also, very, very occasionally, I have heard an actual voice inside my head that is not my own, that gives short, meaningful instruction and intense comfort.

As I explained this to one friend, she seemed to think I was being a little laissez-faire, and needed to run a tighter spiritual ship. She said she needs more timely, specific revelation, and she gets it.

Another woman gets very strong spiritual confirmations for many questions she has, answers that leave her without doubt. She even has the Spirit tell her when someone else is struggling, or will soon struggle, many times with deeply personal issues. Sometimes these people are near-strangers. She feels the burden of acting on this knowledge, even though many times she doesn't really know how, because she doesn't know if anyone else will know to help. She said she knows this isn't how it works for most people, that it some sort of spiritual gift, and she hasn't always had it.

Another friend told me she feels a burning in her chest, and thought everyone else did, too.

I don't know what exactly to say about all this, because I already understood that our communication with the Lord is a personal one, and so I shouldn't be surprised at the differing ways the Spirit communicates with us as individuals, but I guess I was...fascinated by the variety. And Elder Bednar's talk further clarified my thoughts. His analogy about light and the Spirit (most of the time the Comforter is slow and nearly imperceptible, like the rising sun, although it is occasionally intense and dramatic, like flipping on a light in a dark room), resonated with me. It reminded me that the voice of the Spirit, for me, and for most people, most of the time, really is still and small.

How does the Holy Ghost speak to you? (Feel free to post anonymously).
Is there a Conference talk you are still thinking about?

March of Dissipation

2011-03-31T15:38:00.013-07:00

So I pretty much haven't sat down since March 11. Which was the last time I was here at Nun-a-ur-beeswax. Can't really remember what happened: it was just like, Ostrich Festival, blur of days and nights that became weeks, and then I woke up this morning with a actual mountain of laundry on my family room couch (is Everest of clothing), four Three Musketeers wrappers on my nightstand (mint flavor), six extra pounds wrangled into my pants, and BANGS. Plus the broccoli and one strawberry in my garden are ready to be harvested, I found a palm sized wolf spider (inside) and a scorpion (outside), and Tommy apparently spent the night in a cowboy costume from two Halloweens ago?

And my phone tells me it will be 97 degrees tomorrow.

And I don't think it is an elaborate April fool's prank. I think it is real. Which means that Spring is over, and I should go get some extra deodorant. Because I will be sweating unceasingly for conservatively 7 months. And I won't be able to pull my hot, damp hair off my face because someone gave me BANGS.

I feel sort of disoriented and nervous, like I missed something important.

This all reminds me of the girls in my freshman dorm, who would come to the study lounge to kvetch and cry about whether they did or didn't the night before:"Whadaya think? I'm pretty sure I was too drunk to have been able to retie this complicated knot in my belt all by myself, but maybe I should go to the Health Center just in case?" Then they'd moan a bit and throw up on the carpet.

But unlike most of the 10 keg frat parties of 1991, there seems to be photographic evidence of my MARCH OF DISSIPATION. Which I will share, because if I get up from the computer, I will be forced to fold clothes.

And just for fun, I think I will go backwards, so that when you see the ostrich chariot racing, you'll know we have reached the beginning: March 11. And don't get antsy. This might take a few days.

Last but not least, we have an explanation for the cowboy get-up:

Friends and family night at the Rockin' R Ranch (is about 100 yards from our house, yet the kids had never been.) So we grabbed some friends and some family and headed over on Monday night. Big Jim and Sweet Mary Robson run the place. They also go to Church with us. It was fun to hear Jim bless the food with his fake cowboy voice. I wish he would pray like that in Sacrament meeting someday.

Snake oil salesman-slash-biscuit maker-slash-outlaw

Mom and my brother Ryan

Saturday night was the prom. Remember how I never went to the prom and this had stunted my emotional growth and might have cost me thousands in therapy if I had remembered to go to therapy? No? Well, Jake finally asked me. And I said yes. And we went to a fake prom thrown by 17 very sensitive thirty-something North Mesa Men (including Jake's sister Jane's husband Todd) for their lucky ladies at one of the fella's airplane hangar at Falcon Field. And we got invited along, too.

I got ready for three hours. Most of that time was spent:

1. Trying to figure out how to make my new bangs only look a little bit like Farrah Fawcett,
2. Making Jake a boutonniere out of plants I found in the backyard (orange blossoms) and black electrical tape,
3. Attempting to get my falsies (eyelashes) to stay in place,
4. Trying to get into the tiny black taffeta I borrowed from my sister (I got it over my head, but then it got stuck at my shoulders. I had to enlist Jake to yank on it for awhile, during which time he grumbled a lot and made rude comments about how the prom date's responsibility is only to get the girl OUT of the dress, not in. And there may also have been some ridicule about triple spanx (but jokes were undeserved, since was only in a single girdle. Plus some tasteful fishnets.)

Jake finally found somewhere to wear this tux he found abandoned in an old rental house. He says it is too big around the middle, but he's willing to grow into it.

So we had a good time, but we didn't get named Prom King and Queen, which was sad because the king and queen got a ride in the helicopter that was parked inside the hangar (along with the airplane, two Harleys, and the adult tricycle, which one woman, in a short white formal, rode around at top speed).

But Jake did get a text from my Mom warning us not to have sex, which was nice. But then she retracted it, saying it was probly too late for such admonitions, because she'd remembered about the five kids we already have.

And I also thought that maybe I should throw my own prom someday. And only play music that they used to play at the ASU Institute dances in the early 90s. This would include: That super annoying 500 miles song by the Proclaimers, and Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes. That's all I've got so far, so it is going to be a short prom if you don't help me out. If you were at an institute dance or perhaps at some club like The Palace or The Edge in Provo during this time, you might be able to help. But not if you were at the University of Arizona Institute. Because that deejay was super old and played Footloose. You Wildcats are all disqualified.

So I haven't gotten very far back into March, but I have to go pick up my children. There is so much left! Pinewood Derby! A tea party complete with clotted cream and orange curd and lots of ten-year-old girls! Jane Eyre! Trips to the optometrist! A really bad hangnail! The baby emptying out my nail polish drawer ten times a day to play with his favorite toy, the PedEgg, which he likes to suck on, even though it sharp and full of revolting bits of dead heel skin!

What did your March of Dissipation hold?
What songs should I add to my prom playlist?

Ostrich festivities! And also, bugs are like Fen-phen.

2011-03-11T10:04:00.001-07:00

So Spring Break has come early to the Beeswax household. Sam and Tom are home today, and two of the caterpillars we agreed to caterpillar-sit for Teacher Jeanne's preschool class have already become chrysalides, and the ladybug pupa are molting, which sounds nearly as gross as it actually is.

So there are lots of bugs on the kitchen counter. I'd spin myself into a cocoon, too, if I were trapped in a plastic cup half-filled with my own feces for two weeks. Once they are all safely wrapped up, we can take them out and safety pin them to the pop-up butterfly habitat, then wait 7-10 days before they emerge, painted lady butterflies, and we can feed them orange slices and take them back to preschool, where they can be ogled and prodded by four-year-olds until they are sickly, but not quite dead, then released in the park. (You know, the life cycle, exactly how God intended it.)

Also, Sam turned eight. We are going to the Chandler Ostrich Festival today to celebrate, because Sam has a serious thing for ostriches. He is excited to shop for ostrich memorabilia and see the ostrich races. We are also cleaning our house, because Sam is getting baptized tomorrow and people are coming over for lunch afterward. This might mean we have to move all the bugs and their excrement/molted skin out of the kitchen, even though I find them an effective appetite suppressant. Proof? There is a bag of mini Snickers bars right next to the caterpillars, and I've only eaten like 10.

What I learned by watching my Mom do my homework

2011-03-08T10:36:00.008-07:00

Yesterday I did a second grade science project. See, when you wait until the very last day to do it, you pretty much have to do it yourself, because you can't really say to your barely-eight-year-old, "well, son, I know your parents haven't actually mentioned any of this to you, but you sort of generally knew you had a science project due, right? I'm gonna slap some love and logic on you real hard tonight and tell you 'Oh, so sad! What are you gonna do about this'?" because it is more than he can do to organize this sort of thing at all, and he certainly can't do it in an afternoon. Heck, it was more than I could do in an afternoon. That's why I started it yesterday morning, right after I dropped him off at school.

So what have I learned from this experience? I mean, besides the fact that no one could tell the difference in taste between regular and low fat string cheese and regular and low fat peanut butter? I have learned that if I want him to do his own work, we cannot procrastinate a la my usual fashion.

But really, an even better question: What has Sam learned?

I pray, enough second grade science that he will be able to do his own childrens' projects, about 20 years from now. It seemed to work for me.

See, doing all this homework has made me reflect on my own education; specifically, how I learned to write. And so I'd like to take this opportunity to send out a special thanks to my Mom, who wrote that Etiquette report for (with, next to, instead of- let's not be picky about our prepositions) me in 5th grade. It was really good and interesting. I mildly revised that thing over and over again, turning it in a total of 5 times. It reached the apex of its career in 1991, when I turned it in to a Pierce College psychology class (which I was taking so I could get out of high school early in the day, to free up my afternoons for eating In-n-Out burgers and watching The People's Court and Days of Our Lives) in 1991, where it received an A+. (It only got a B- in my sociology class at the University of Arizona, and I was afraid to try it out again at BYU, for fear someone would turn me in for honor code violations.)

I'd also like to thank her for the buffalo and crab reports, the Germany project, the three poems that won prizes and were published in the Granada Hills High School Literary Magazine, and the college essay that got me into UCLA (a real tear-jerker about how I desperately wanted to be a teacher. Even though I didn't want to be a teacher.).

At some point, though, our parasitic writing writing relationship became more symbiotic, and then, I learned to actually write for myself. See, sometimes I would procrastinate so long that I was writing my papers at lunch, and they were due 5th period. And I noticed that I got good grades. A literary bird flown the nest. And my Mom almost never writes this blog for me anymore.

So maybe I should have stayed in Education, because I've got this revolutionary theory that doing your kid's schoolwork for them occasionally might actually be good parenting. (Or it might have been my sister's revolutionary theory, but either way, we both graduated from the same Mareen Layton Literary Course.) The theory is this: that watching the process- being involved in the brainstorming, trying out sentences and watching them be revised, spending 15 minutes throwing out words, trying to find just the right one for the third line in the second stanza, realizing how much time and effort it takes to produce good work, in addition to what a quality product really looks like up close- are all skills you don't learn in the classroom.

They are learned by watching your Mom do your homework.
(And maybe you get some of it by reading one trillion books, just for fun. Using time you might have spent going to a party, out on a date, or being a cheerleader, all of which you forgot to do. So you really hope all the books were good for something.)

Do you agree?
Vehemently Disagree?
Are you going to call the cops?

How did you learn to write?

**Update: My my just called to tell me she'd read this, and she only had a couple small changes she wanted made.

78 and sunny.

2011-03-02T14:32:00.008-07:00

Fort Beeswax

200 square feet of veggies (plus some strawberries). I've got lots of dirt under my nails.

Nothing smells better.

Superstitions

Herbs. Say your H, like Martha does. Who doesn't like a pretentious gardener?

Time to get out the ladder

What's better than February in Phoenix?

March!

What's better than March?

Nothing!

(Except maybe November.)

What's your favorite month?

Happy March to you!

Francophilia, frijoles, and white trashery

2011-02-04T11:43:00.006-07:00

How is it that I keep losing entire months? I mean, like today, I get up, get in the shower (hot water heater broken. Again. Dart in towel to other end of house, where water is warmer, hoping no early golfers will see me). Drive to school. Visit teach. Pick oranges and make healthy smoothie for lunch. Wash it down with 2.5 croissants and .25 bag of generic Ruffles. (The oil only a little rancid. Only feel mildly sick.) Croissants remind me to watch rest of Coco Before Chanel, and also remind me that I read that French Women Don't Get Fat book, which I actually really liked, even though some of her ideas are not super applicable in my life, because cannot realistically burn off my croissant calories by doing laps around the the Eiffel Tower or walking up the stairs to my 4th floor flat with the beautiful view of Square Painleve in the 5th arrondissement. I would like to tell you about it sometime soon, but not now. Cannot multitask very well because Coco is French and has subtitles. Ce la vie.

See, so busy! And that's just so far today! What else do I do? I shall make a list for you! What could be more interesting?

1. I answer 100 questions per hour (most from Tom; most about Karate and Jesus:

T:Mom, if I do karate on someone and flip them in the air, will you catch them?

K:Oh, I don't know if I can. They might be coming at me fast and they might be too heavy.

T:No way, you could do it. You are the biggest person in the entire world.

K:Gee, thanks, Tom.

T:No, wait. I think Jesus Christ is the biggest. Do you think he'd catch the people I kung fu?

K:Couldn't hurt to ask.

2. I decide to can pinto beans. And they took too long, but then they tasted so good I tried black beans. And then I had nothing for anyone to eat for dinner, because all the cooked food in the house was sealed up tight in quart jars, and I wasn't opening those because they were way too much work, plus I was irrationally proud of my beans, and I wanted to stare at them longer, and do positive self-talk about how I'm a fantastic homemaker, so I went and got Sonic, which is gross. (But was Wednesday, which is cheap. And good homemakers are frugal.)

3. I go to Love and Logic parenting classes on Tuesday nights (when I ought to be out on a date with Jake. Am becoming resentful student and am only on week three of six).

4. I head out in the desert to set fire to things and getting involved in all sorts of lowbrow behaviors like hot dog eating and allowing my children to put creepy mannequin heads (that were balded and left out in the ravine in what was likely some sort of satanic ritual: I've seen Law and Order) on sticks and carry them about before incinerating them.

Jake, with chips. Tom, with broken windshield wiper he found among the desert detritus.

5. I keep Sam in glasses. He's broken 5 pair since his myopia diagnosis in June.

6. I buy myself boxes of See's candy while at mall getting Sam's glasses.

7. I watch Masterpiece Theater.

(Dear Lady Mary,
Your grandmother, Professor McGonagall, was totally right on. You should have taken up your cousin Matthew on his offer of marriage while you had the chance, cause now your homely sister Edith has outed your one night stand with that lovely Turk who died in your bed, and your rep is trashed. Good luck finding yourself a straight Duke now.
Love,
Kelly

P.S. I cannot wait an entire year for season two of Downton Abbey. Is torture.)

8. I drive up to 10 kids from 3 different households to three different schools in a carefully choreographed dance of carpooling, with help from Ron Burgundy, the 12-passenger Ford. And Jake. When he is not hiking in the Grand Canyon.

9. I take pictures of Legos. Ross is thinking about starting a blog of his creations, perhaps with instructions.

Left to Right: Indiana Jones, 007, and Assassin Pig

10. I keep high score on Rasputin and Wake Me Up Before You Go (Just Dance 2). Is a lot of pressure.

11. I watch cable. When our third $50 digital converter box broke in a year, I snapped. And begged Cox to take me back.

12. I think about going to the gym.

13. I plan trips to Italy. You know, just in case. I even bought Jake the Rick Steves guidebook for his birthday.

What sort of fascinating things are you doing lately?

Too late for Christmas cards?

2011-01-10T12:14:00.005-07:00

We had these pictures taken in November by Wendy Whitacre (Blue Lily Photography).

I finally sent out my cards like a week ago, because that's how I roll. I figure if I'm still working on Christmas, is only right and proper that I should still be eating the chocolate truffles my neighbors brought over. ('Tis the season and all that.)

Wendy does a dang good job. She makes it look cinchy to get three boys who never stop moving, one pouting tweenage girl, and even photoshop a screaming baby into an angelic cherub-type person, whilst somehow refraining from capturing their Mama's angry eyes. Is perhaps more photoshopping? Maybe she has a special button she pushes that says "make this woman look as though she is not possessed by the Devil"?

Wendy is like Houdini of cameras. But does not do any underwater tricks with chains, as far as I know.

She comes to Arizona in the fall.

Layton clan

Cousins

The contents of the boys' pockets

So anyhow, Merry Christmas from the Beeswaxes!
And a happy new year! (even though it is partly over).

Do you have any leftover Christmas business?
Are all your decorations packed away?
Do your kids carry Legos with them everywhere they go?

In the shallow end

2011-01-07T11:47:00.003-07:00

I think it has been so long my blogging muscle is atrophied.

I feel like social mores demand that I cannot just dive back into our normal intimacies without wading in the shallow end for a moment. For this reason, today I shall discuss the weather.

You might remember that every summer (April through October), I whine about the weather. As any self-respecting recovering Southern Californian would do, I curse the hot desert sun, and lament my sweaty armpits and my loud and raucous children who cannot play outside because they might get second degree burns or heatstroke. Now, though, it is chilly, and I would like to point out to all that I HAVE NOT COMPLAINED EVEN ONE TIME ABOUT THE COLD.

That is because I love it.

Last week we had a huge storm coming in, so after I got done watching the TV weather people soil themselves with glee over having something to do and talk about, I packed up all the kids and pestered Jake till he came home from work. (Reluctantly. Jake is from Nebraska and does not enjoy cold weather.) Just before we left for Payson in our minivan of the bald tires, it began to snow! Here, in our backyard! And on the golf course! And at the Costco! And on the palm trees! It was very, very thrilling. Then, we got to Payson, and we almost couldn't get up the hill to the cabin, there was so much snow. And it then it kept snowing, and I kept loving it and not whining! And then I spent New Year's Eve watching a House Hunters International Marathon (no cable at home, you'll remember), where there were ruins to renovate in Portugal, and fixer-uppers in the Casbah, and all the while the fire was burning and the snow was falling and Jake kept bringing me Nestle Drumsticks and fizzy white grape juice to my bed, where I was curled up reading Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires (during commercials). 'Twas a magical holiday.

And now, our highs are about the normal 70, and it is sunny, and our lawn is green and the grapefruits are sweet and pink inside and are falling off the trees. I feel extravagant. Joyful. Full of lovely vitamin D. And C.

And then in June, or maybe some 100 degree October day, instead of shaking my fist at the sky and cursing, I shall come back to read this, to remember why it is we live here in the desert.

Just got back from the spelling bee. I wish I had a valium.

2010-12-10T17:57:00.001-07:00

Jane and cousin Jack were both representing their respective classes at the upper elementary spelling bee this afternoon, so my Mom and sister Jen and I showed up.

Writing about it is bringing on mild PTSD.
Please hold while I procure a paper bag into which I can breathe.

The pronouncer was from somewhere in the Midwest, and kept saying stuff all screwy. And by screwy, I mean, not like they do in Arizona, or in California, or on TV. I'm all for the great American melting pot and the German and Dutch immigrants who influenced the North Midland dialect, but not when nerdy bragging rights are on the line. Not to mention the trip to the regional bee.

What does it matter? Why am I being so small-minded? Well, I'll tell you. The result was a who's-on-first-type-scenario that began in the practice round:

Pronouncer: The word is ADD.
Cousin Jack: ADD?
Pronouncer: No, AaaaaDD.
Cousin Jack: Can you repeat the word?
Pronouncer: Aaaaaaaaaadddd.
Cousin Jack: ODD?
Pronouncer: Nodding... ADD.
Cousin Jack: ODD. O-D-D. ODD
Pronouncer: That is correct.

Kid behind me: She said add. That's odd.

And indeed, it was.

But the real problem? I couldn't deal with the pressure. It was a good thing Jane flubbed up CITIZEN in the 5th round, cause I might have keeled over on the bench from the unhealthful levels of cortisol jetting about my blood stream if it had gone on any longer.

Those poor kids. One slipped syllable and DING! THAT IS INCORRECT! YER OUT!
I have to stop talking about it now because my pits are getting sweaty again.
I think I need a nap.

I jinxed my hollow leg

2010-12-09T09:26:00.001-07:00

by talking about it here on the internets. Either that or I filled it with pastrami and cupcakes.

Curses.

Now I have to go to kids' school to watch oral report on tsunamis, then back home to write pithy, self-deprecating Christmas letter that will warm people's heart cockles and spread Christmas cheer in only one to two paragraphs so no one will be bored. Is too much pressure.

Have you written your Christmas letter yet? Can you please cut and paste it into the comments section, or send it to kellybeeswax@gmail.com, so that I may become inspired by your brilliant writing (i.e. plagiarize)?

Thanks, then, in advance.

P.S. I've only gotten like three cards this year. Is it because we moved a year ago and the post office isn't forwarding anything and I didn't send anything out last year cuz I was pregnant and in a bad mood? Or have I done something to offend everyone I know?

Don't hate me for my tape worm

2010-12-02T10:29:00.002-07:00

So, I haven't read as many books as I normally would this year, what with the infant being born and the four other children under the age of 12 living here at my house, all wanting to be fed and clothed and helped with their oral reports on tsunamis or what have you.

But I did read stuff, I just can't remember what it all was. (Except I just finished Sex with Kings, which was non-fiction and fascinating, and not nearly as dirty as it sounds. Royal bastardry was big business.) So perhaps you can tell me some of your favorite books you've read this year, (or you know, ever), and then I'll remember, HEY, I liked that book, too? And then I can take it to book club tonight, where we will be choosing books for the new year, and eating some holiday groceries (I'm making ganache-dipped macaroons. You should come).

And there I will be in my glory, with all the books and the treats. And I shall eat more than your average book clubber, because with all this nursing of my 22 pound baby,
I have developed the coveted HOLLOW LEG, wherein I can store that oreo sundae from Sonic and then the 1.5 more bowls of ice cream I put away yesterday and still lose 3.5 pounds in one day. Yes, fer reals. I won't even mention the six Thanksgiving dinners I dominated, or that I've had pie for breakfast 10 days running. (I'm just hoping it is a hollow leg and not a tape worm. But if my tape worm is wrong, I don't want to be right. I've lost 50 pounds since April, and am on my way back to medium-foxhood.)

And in Coldplay news:

Yeeesss! Muchos gracias para the cancion de la Navidad, Chris! (And the restofya, too. Whatever.) Lovely. Keep up the good work. And by keep up the good work, I mean, don't go country like your wife (and Jewel), and grow your hair out a little tiny bit. Gracias.

Now perhaps I can entice my kids to watch something other than Don't Shoot Me Santa. Which Jake feels in not appropriate for children. And Jake is no prude. But Brandon Flowers in that sweater con las maracas? Worth a peek, I tell ya.

Now don't forget about the books, just cuz I confused you with all the talk of bastards and parasites and holiday songs that have absolutely nothing to do with the baby Jesus.

What should we read for book club in 2011?

BASIS Chandler

2010-12-01T10:29:00.008-07:00

Have you heard about BASIS? This Tucson (also in Scottsdale and in Oro Valley) charter school has received national attention, was named #1 high school in America by Newsweek, and was listed in U.S. News & World Report's top 20 American high schools. They are opening a school in Chandler (at Cooper and Chandler Blvd.) next fall, and there is an information session tonight at San Tan Learning Center (my son Sam's school) at 6:30.

You might not believe me, maybe since I've never said anything about it before, but I have wasted a lot of time, energy and tears researching public, private, and charter schools here in Phoenix. Some of my kids (the super smarty, high energy, easily distracted boys; Jane seems to do well wherever she is) don't fit easily into a regular classroom, so I've had to find alternative programs (and even consider homeschool. But nobody wants that. There is a reason I changed my major from Elementary Ed to History and became a librarian). At the moment, I've got two kids in a Mesa public school Montessori, and another has just moved into a gifted classroom at a charter school.

I don't know if this BASIS school (which will start in 5th grade and go through high school) will be too intense and high pressure, and I know our public high school (Highland) is one of the best in the state, but I figure, it can't hurt to check it out!

What have you heard? Do you know anyone that attends BASIS?

Maybe I'll see you there tonight?

BASIS Info Night

Wednesday, 12/1

San Tan Learning Center

1475 South Higley Road

Gilbert, AZ 85296

6:30pm - 7:30pm with Q and A to follow

Below is a trailer for a Two Million Minutes documentary about BASIS school.

Cyber Monday Bum

2010-11-29T13:07:00.001-07:00

So, I've been shopping for more than four hours now, and what have I to show for it?
Numb buttocks.
And this album:

It is $1.99 on Amazon today, along with 4 others.

Merry Christmas to me.

Have you found anything good out there on the interweb? Please share.

Love, Kelly

blogging from my bed, day 1

2010-11-26T22:51:00.002-07:00

So tonight, Jake turned on the heater for the first time this season. He must have been pretty cold, because he's been a little jumpy since last year, when he turned on the heater without warning me, and I woke up in the middle of the night, yelling and accusing him of trying to kill me.

Now, I don't remember this episode at all, but still, it sounds completely rational. I don't like all the dust and accumulated crud of the summer (March to November) that blows out of the vents. Plus, I was pregnant and sick (remember the bleeding eye balls?), and it was late. A person might threaten violence and then completely forget about it. Happens all the time on The Mentalist.

That guy has really nice hair.

So anyhow, I'm sitting here filling my lungs with dust mites and probably worse, but I'm totally keeping my cool. Because this year, I'm well and even fit into two whole pairs of my pants.

I've also got some news. I've figured out why I don't blog anymore. It's the ipad. She's my mistress. I used to have to sit down at the computer in the office to check my mail or google stuff, and then I'd check over here for comments, and I'd be stuck, like a spider in a bloggy web. But now I check my mail from my bed, and I check out the new Colin Firth movie- where he plays George VI, a stutterer, so he hires Geoffrey Rush to be his Speech Therapist, but apparently Colin has no problem stumbling over the four letter words cuz it got an R rating for language, dangit- from my boudoir as well. But typing on the ipad is pretty awful, unless I leave out all the capital letters, so I only mentally post things, which isn't very interesting to the five of you who still check in on me from time to time. So tonight I broke out the wireless keyboard. I am blogging from my bed.

It is like a dream come true.

I am also eating Thanksgiving dinner numero three in my bed. It is delicious. My Mom thinks pumpkin pie is baby food but I think it tastes like a holiday in a flaky pastry crust.

Our friends the Westons left for Utah this morning. We were sad to see them go, because they are very nice and like to groan over tasty food like we do, but also because Kari kept cleaning my kitchen. Kari, when we come to visit you in May, you know, if Bono's back is healed properly, I will clean your kitchen very thoroughly.

The kitchen was very slimy with my delicious gravy, since we hosted the festivities yesterday. 53 guests, including 29 children and one small lizard, who is still on the loose in the living room. Jane took a photo. I'll add it when I get near a real computer.

How was your turkey supper? Did you shop today, or did you nap and eat turkey like me? I really want to go to Ikea to check out their Christmas wrapping paper, but I'm afraid of the crowds.

A minivan by any other name would still smell like old fries.

2010-11-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

That's me (and my van)

And sweaty kid, cold greasy tots (from Wacky Wednesdays at Sonic), already-licked grape Tootsie pops, that ham sandwich inside the brown paper lunch sack that is lost under the starboard captain's chair, feet, and a little Johnson's Baby Shampoo, if you're lucky.

Oh. And Febreze. (Lipstick on a pig.)

Unless you are elderly (why do the snowbirds love the minivans?), or obsessive compulsive.

I love my van. I used to promise my college roommates I'd never drive one, but now I'm out and proud. I love every inch of it, even the cracked tail light, from when the lady got hit in the Costco parking lot in Las Vegas before she sold it to us on Ebay.

I have really grown to appreciate my tiny little van, because lately I've been cruising in this:

Yes, that's our school bus. A 12 passenger Ford. We share it with my sister for carpool. It is BIG, and our kids love it. We are planning a road trip to Nebraska in it next summer. So in case you were wondering exactly how how cool the Beeswaxes really were, now you know:

not very.

And now my 1991 Acura Integra is in the car spa (Wes' Auto and Diesel), where Fred (car) got all new suspension and a new distributor, which will cost approximately two-and-a-half times what he is actually worth (which ain't much). It is his 20th birthday gift. I got him new in November 1990, back when I still wasn't cool, but looked it, cuz I had a fantastic car. It even lured my husband to me, and for this reason, we keep it, as a very large, garage-space-hogging symbol of our deep, undying love.

That smells inside like an old boat.
And the ghosts of 2,000 drive-thru In-n-Out burgers. Animal style.

*****

Overheard at book club last night: "If you start talking about the book, then we're leaving." And then they did.

I'd like to spend the wee hours of every Friday morning out in front of the Paradise Bakery chatting about Queen Esther. And, you know, other stuff.

I don't know why I haven't blogged in a month. I miss it. See you soon.

Love, Kelly

Making plans. (A post illustrated with photos I didn't know were on my phone)

2010-10-08T10:33:00.002-07:00

So yesterday afternoon was pretty lazy. I skipped doing laundry and cooking a healthy dinner in favor of lying on the floor in Ross' room and harassing him while he read The Artemis Fowl Files and then book 9 of the 39 Clues. (The kid reads likes 400 pages a day. I feel like someone from the real world needs to check in with him every few hours.)

(And by check in, I mean pester. And sometimes tickle.)

I asked him who he played with at recess today (cousin Jack),

if anything new happened at school today (pizza party because Mrs. Segerson had called kids by the wrong named 40 times since school began),

and what he wanted to be when he grew up. Ross wasn't anxious to answer, but the other kids chimed in.

Tom said:

What do YOU want me to be? Maybe I can drive a plane? Maybe I can be the Home Depot paint mixer guy? Or maybe a Costco helper? Maybe you can be a Costco helper with me? Or no. You should be a motorcycle driver. You'd be good at that.

Sam decided:

Well, there are only two things I'd like to be: A dad, and a teacher of guitar. Oh, and maybe some other stringed instruments. My kids will probly be rock stars. Don't be surprised if they are. (Sam doesn't play the guitar, or has ever, to my knowledge, shown the slightest interest in playing any of the three guitars we have collecting dust in the living room, from back in the day when I was in a fake Indigo Girls style band called Mango Lassi. Which is an Indian yogurt drink.)

Jane interrupted:

A marine biologist, a veterinarian, an animal breeder, a pediatrician, an In-n-Out worker, a lawyer, or a CIA Agent. In that order. Do you want me to write this down?

Me: Yes, please. And you, Ross?

Ross won't even look up from his book:

I don't know. I'll do something, but when I retire I want to randomly blow stuff up. At random.

Me: How about a scientist? Perhaps a...geneticist? (I enjoy the human genome project. I hope someday we will all be able to do our family history with a swab of the inside of our cheeks.)

Ross: That's your dream, not mine. Why can't I have an airsoft gun?

Me: You can.

I'll buy you one when you get your PhD.

And for your viewing pleasure, even more photos from my phone:

(Legos + bendaroos = spideyvillain.)

And the next time I end up with six other people in a two-man tent, I'm leaving my Nanette Lepore heels in the limo.

2010-09-30T12:49:00.002-07:00

So this weekend we went on a scavenger hunt. It was to raise money for House of Refuge, a program that provides transitional housing for homeless families out at the old Williams AFB (now ASU East). It is a great program, and Jake is on the board, so we showed up.

I'm so glad we did.

It was seriously fun.

First we met Mike. He was our driver, and had been on a few of these things before. Plus he knew his way around Tempe. This was very helpful. Especially since the tint on the back windows, which keeps the deadly carcinogenic rays of our desert sun (and the paparazzi) out of the smooth, unblemished faces of the rich and famous during the day, makes it nearly impossible to see out at night.

There we are. The brain trust. The beau monde. Just another Mensa field trip with our good friends Susette and Brent (center), and Susette's brother Elijah and his new bride, Hilaree.

Right out of the gate, Hilaree wins us like 10 points for molesting this crustacean inside a Fry's grocery.
Back in the car, I used my wide, but also deep, knowledge of everything there is to know, to answer trivia questions. (Special thanks to google, and my trusty ipad.)

What? Haven't you ever seen 6 swanky-lookin' Mormons and their limo driver in a two-man tent inside an REI before?

We bought this cute ASU student some dessert and sang to him on his 'birthday'. Since it was Thai food, he had some sort of rice pudding, instead of cake.

Found some ASU fans on their way out of the big game. (5 points). And by big game, I mean, I don't have any idea who they were playing. (Was it UofA? Go Wildcats!)

And then we had to sing with a piano player at a piano (15 points), and since we don't know nearly as much as we should about the inside of bars in Tempe, we headed over to the Institute building. Where we found a nice girl to play us some Billy Joel. But wait, Jake didn't get her in the photo!
Well, he got her, but not us.
Success.
Brent flipped some burgers over to the Chuckbox on University. If you know the Chuckbox, you will not be surprised that they let random people into the kitchen to play with the food. Tasty burgers, though.
The chief let us take some photos on the fire truck, for another 10 points.
And the lady at the front desk at the ER at St. Luke's was kind enough to outfit us with gowns, masks, and gloves for another 15.
Finally, there there was some more dress-up at the Circle K at University and Rural...
Where this photo was taken by a tranny with vitiligo. I'm not lying to you.

Well, we didn't win. I'm not sure how this is possible, with the dream team we'd assembled. But we did get like 6 different kinds of chocolate dessert, which is prize enough for me.

Maybe we'll win the trip next year.

Who's in?

Stop being a wuss, and eat your butter.

2010-09-22T18:08:00.001-07:00

Did you see the time Kelly (of Regis and Kelly) dressed up as Paula Deen for Halloween? You probly didn't, because Regis and Kelly can be very annoying, and you might have turned them off, say, ten years ago. But maybe it was Kathie Lee who was around ten years ago? Well, never mind, cause she was even more annoying. (But now she's back on TV, and every time I flip past, she and Hoda are drinking wine or talking about drinking wine, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and chatting about not eating or not getting plastic surgery. Is a good argument for getting cable TV.)

Which reminds me, I almost called the cable company this week and begged them to hook me up because I just couldn't face the fall season with no CBS, but then Jake went into the attic and fiddled with the antenna, so now I'm back in the game, watching inappropriate shows that waste my life. (At least I'm self-aware).

(I really liked Running Wilde last night.)

But somehow I've gone off-topic before I even got on topic. My topic is butter.

So, it was Halloween, and the Kelly Ripa/Paula was faking a southern accent and saying something like I love me some butter kebabs. (She's waving around a cube of butter impaled on a skewer.) I like to wash down my butter kebabs with a nice cup of warm oil, or put the butter kebab between two doughnuts for a tasty treat. I'd show you the clip, but it's full of Regis cussing it up as Gordon Ramsay. And just because I watch inappropriate TV doesn't mean you do, too.

So on Sunday, when I made this cake, I was channeling Kelly-as-Paula. And as we all know, Paula makes delicious food (I don't fully trust the dishes made by skinny little Giada, who obviously spends more time on the treadmill and buying supportive cleavage-enhancing under-fashions than browning her butter.

No, that's not a figure of speech.

I asked my Mom what sort of birthday cake she wanted, and she told me coconut or chocolate with brown butter frosting. So I made a little of both. In one 9x13 pan. And if I do say so myself, the results were quite good.

Kelly's Coconut Pecan Brown Butter Cake with Brown Butter Frosting.

Ingredients:

Cake

2 1/2 cups flour

1 2/3 cups sugar

2 sticks butter (unsalted), browned and cooled to nearly solid in freezer of refrigerator.

1 cup plus 2 tbsp buttermilk (or add 1 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice 1 cup plus 1 tbsp milk and let stand for 10 minutes)

4 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

1.5 cups chopped pecans

1.5 cups sweetened flaked coconut

Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter, browned and cooled

3 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla

3-5 tbsp milk or cream

pinch salt

Directions:

Melt butter (I used two separate small saucepans, one with two sticks of butter for the cake, one with one stick, for the frosting) over low to medium heat, stirring nearly constantly. The butter will foam up, and become clear, then start to turn color. Once it starts to turn (about 5 minutes, depending on heat), watch it very carefully, because it will burn quickly. When it is a light to medium brown, take it off the heat and put it in the freezer or the refrigerator to re-solidify.

After the butter is cooled, mix all cake ingredients (better if they are at room temperature) in mixer bowl (except coconut and pecans) with paddle attachment on low speed until combined. Then beat on high until well mixed. Add coconut and pecans.

Pour into a greased 9x13 baking dish. Bake 35-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Check the center with a toothpick. The cake is done when the toothpick comes out almost clean. The center will continue to cook as it cools. Don't over-bake or it will be dry!

To make frosting, beat cooled brown butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Add milk or cream a little at a time, until the frosting reaches a spreadable consistency.

Frost cooled cake! Eat it!

It is even better than a butter kebab and doughnut sandwich!

Now, go make it for yourself.

I will not listen to you whine about your lactose intolerance or your vegan ways.

Butter is delicious!

Oh. And Joey is six months old today!

(He gets no cake.)

Capricious

2010-09-15T20:08:00.010-07:00

On Tuesday morning, Tom came out dressed for his third day of preschool in only his Spiderman briefs and his backpack. So I asked him: are you ready for school?

To which he replied:

No. I forgot my gun.

He has lately taken to tantrum-throwing. He was, as recently as last week, a very charming and easy-going child, but things can take a quick turn around here. Too bad my reflexes aren't what they used to be. (Plus I twisted my knee in step class. And yes, I know step class is for old people. I am old people. I recently bought eye cream, because I am 37 now, and for some reason 37 is way, way older than 36, and in my mind 37-year-olds need eye cream. Did anyone know eye cream was so expensive? Do they charge so much because they figure old people have lots of discretionary income?)

Anyhow, after he got over a real doozy of a fit this afternoon, I put my arm around him and asked:

Me: Hey, remember that kid who didn't throw tantrums?

Tom: I didn't throw anything. Well, I threw my night light yesterday. Now the bulb doesn't work.

Me: No, that's just what you say. Throw. But you don't have to actually throw anything for it to be a fit. It's just an idiom.

Tom: Pauses while he looks at me like I'm nuts.

Me: No really, do you remember him? I would ask that kid to pick up the Lincoln Logs and he wouldn't throw himself headlong onto the tile while screaming for justice and kicking the wall?

Tom: Sheepishly grins. Yeah.

Me: What happened to him? Can he come back?

I give him the strict-eye, and the serious-nod, plus a quick tight-grin, and then continue:

Do you know who that kid is, Tom? He's YOU!

Tom: Oh.

He ruminates on this for a moment. Finally, he asks:

Does that kid have a go-cart?

Me: Yes.

Tom: Does that kid wear my pants?

Well, I thought, someone ought. Cuz you don't.

Homeschool fantasies, pantlessness, and Brandon Flowers

2010-09-14T15:20:00.003-07:00

Where have I been?

Idunno.

Beginning of school stuff is always stressful. Someone always refuses to do any work in school, so there are lots of long talks and weeping (mine) and I have to spend lots of time remembering who is banned from the wii, and cajoling people into doing their homework. I also have to remember what time is karate (4:30), and what time is contemporary dance (7). Plus scouts and activity day and chorus. And orchestra. Most of that is Jane's. It feels like that episode of the Brady Bunch where Marcia signs up for every club in high school and ends up covered in goo from Peter's volcano. We haven't started piano yet, so I bought some Coldplay sheet music. Maybe Chris Martin can be their music teacher? (Hey, Ross, you can't ride your go-cart until I hear Clocks ten times.)

We ended up back in the pediatric neuropsychologist's office again last week, only with boy #2 this time (only 2 to go?). This time we only got the WISC, but we might go back for executive functions! If anyone wants to talk about what to do with crazy smart boys with attention issues, email me. I'm nearly out of answers. Right now I'm fantasizing about homeschool, where the teacher won't send me any more discipline notes.

I finally decided that at some time in the future I will need to wear pants, so I stopped eating cookies. Well, not all the cookies, of course. Just most of them. So I lost a few pounds, which is great, but sometimes I get very hungry and eat an entire order of Little Caesar's cheesy bread (last night, por ejemplo), but that's just to be expected. This dearth of cookies makes me grouchy. (Sleep deprivation might also be a contributing factor.) Alas, it is necessary. Don't try to talk me out of it. (But if you want to bring me cookies, I'll eat them. Is only polite behavior!)

I'm sitting here listening to new Brandon Flowers solo album, Flamingo. Only on track 10, but so far I like Jilted lovers & Broken Hearts, Magdalena and Crossfire.

Whatcha think?

Yes, like them. Only with two Cindys. And no Tiger.

2010-08-26T16:41:00.002-07:00

So my sister Jen really did get married! Some people here in real life thought I was kidding, but I was not kidding. It is real! And some of you might be thinking to yourselves that I never mentioned my sister was getting divorced, and isn't that weird? But you see, blogs are funny like that, because all kinds of stuff can be going on all around you that just isn't yours to write. You must know what I mean. But after more than a year and a half of rough times, Jen has found a nice fella by the name of Jason, and they decided, let's do this thing. Then they decided, if we are going to do it, why wait? And since we are going to be in beautiful San Diego, why not do it there instead of the kitty-litter-box-in-Hades that is Phoenix in July?

And so the hotel set up some chairs, flowers and a fantastic brunch. With California Benedict. It has avocados on it. It is good.

I've been holding out for the real photos, taken by the real photograher, cause I saw them online and it turns out mine don't really look like his. Go figure. But they still haven't arrived. (Oh, but some of these are good. Don't be confused. Those are the ones I stole from Facebook. They were taken by Rand LeSueur.)

The whole bunch.

Jen, Sarah, Jane

Ross, Will, Sam

Jack, Jane, Kaitlyn

Charlie

Nope, Jen and Jason aren't runty. This is just what your pictures look like when your officiant used to be in the NBA.

I purposely did not put his last name in this post, so he won't google himself and find this picture I stole off the internets.

Ashlee, don't tell!

Danny, Dad, Jen

THE CAKE.

It was Carlsbad strawberry. It wasn't at all yucky.

(Once I picked off the fondant. Fondant is yucky.)

Chelsea

Claire

Danny, Jake and Tom

Jen's good friend Christina (Full House) made this headband and shipped it over just in time!

Kaitlyn

The cake deserves two pictures, at least.

Mom and Claire

Jen (Cricket and Pip, scroll down for more wedding photos) and Shireen (who went private, probly cuz her kid's too cute and someone would abduct her. Someone like me. )

See?

So anyway, they are off to a good start. I'm not sure the Park Hyatt (neé Four Seasons) Aviara has ever hosted a wedding where a third of the guests were children, but there were only a few moments when we thought we were going to be kicked off the property. Most of them involved Sam.

NEENER

2010-08-18T08:14:00.007-07:00

So I'd like to just send a little NEENER-NEENER out onto the internets, to those of you who haven't yet started school. I know it is cooler to say I cry every morning and wish all the kids were here, tucked under my wing of love and tenderness, but it is 110 degrees outside and 110 percent (approximately) humidity, and it just isn't the best time of year to be at home. They spend all Christmas Break riding their bikes around the neighborhood and having Extreme Nerf Wars and bouncing on the trampoline, whilst I bake them cookies and wear stylish sweaters and accessories from Anthropologie (until about 10 am, when it gets too warm), but right now I just sit here sweating in my t-shirt, typing with one hand while holding a shoe in the other, cause Ross found another scorpion this morning and I am jumpy (the scorpions hibernate in winter. Okay, fine, hibernate might not be the right word. Whatever. I'm not looking it up. U can't make me.)

I do enjoy the monsoon storms though. More than I should, maybe. Last night's was a doozy. I could hear thunder and wind from inside the temple. I haven't been outside yet to check for fallen Mesquite trees.

Tonight is another installment of the Ryan Layton Concert Series: John Mayer with Owl City. (Ryan is my younger brother. He is mentally handicapped, works at Target, and enjoys himself some live music.) Monsoons are welcome: we aren't sitting on the lawn this time.

More of the Ryan Layton Concert Series, for you reading enjoyment:

Billy/Elton

Counting Crows/Maroon 5 and much, much more!

Ok, no time for spell check. Baby is ticked.

Have you seen any good shows lately? Any you wish you'd seen? (Ryan wants to see Paul McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, and Fleetwood Mac. Hey, a boy can dream.) I am waiting for Bono's back to heal so I can go up to see U2 in Salt Lake, I would like to see the Killers, and I wouldn't miss Coldplay. That was a great show. Maybe Ryan will come along next time.

I like Vans. Oh, and we party like it's the first day of school.

2010-08-11T09:10:00.010-07:00

Okay, the wedding post is still in the works. But look! It is only 8:30 am on the first day of school, and here I am, on the internets!

Everyone got up early and decked themselves out in hats and sunglasses from the swap meet, plus some brand new Vans.

I love Vans. I got my first Vans in the third grade. They were blue with checks. I had them custom made, cause at age 8 my feet were a women's 7.5 AAAA. In college I wore black on black suede lace-ups. Now Jake wears his Vans with the flames on the sides when he takes me on dates, cause he knows I can't resist Vans. He's very smart. If he were even smarter, he'd wear his argyle sweater with the Vans. But they don't really match, so he won't. I guess he likes fashion better than kissing girls.

We opened a bottle of Martinelli's for breakfast to toast the new year, and then everyone went outside to sit on the road.

How did Sam end up with Cousin Jack's fedora?

This is real. Not staged. Don't miss the dollar sign necklace. His beat-me-up-at-recess tee was in the wash. What? You don't think he'll need it? That's so rude!

I also told the kids that if they started waving their fingers around all willy-nilly like that at my Junior High in LA, they'd probly end up dead. They didn't believe me.

By 7:30, the baby was back to sleep, and the after-party had begun. (Yes, that's Tom's t-shirt, tucked into his Madagascar briefs.)

Happy first day of school to you and yours. I wish you something other than 110 degrees.

Which sort of shoes do you wish your husband/boyfriend would wear?

Which sort accidently get tossed in the trash bin/DI pile?

Do you even care about a man's shoes?

Do you think I should look only on his heart, and not on his black socks and Birkenstocks (is hypothetical. Jake would rather die)?

Do you think I have some sort of fetish?

Hey! Is that Danny Ainge marrying your sister?

2010-08-03T15:10:00.002-07:00

What? You wouldn't have come over here if you knew this was just gonna be more pictures of my stupid vacation?

Well, actually, Danny Ainge did marry my sister. But my sister didn't marry Danny Ainge. (He's already got a lovely wife and six lovely children, including my friend Ashlee.)

Is like a riddle. A riddle I will answer in my next post. Because the wedding didn't happen 'til the last day of vacation. And I am nothing if not chronological...

So, why is San Diego so much better in every way (except for the crowded freeways and in potential for deadly natural disasters ) than Phoenix? Why don't I live there? Well, for two weeks a year, I pretend I do. And it is lovely.

There is the buffet,

and the beach,

and my birthiversary

(had a Hello Kitty princess luau Twilight fiesta party with cousin Claire, who was turning 5. Jake got us a cake from VG Donuts in Cardiff, which was an appetizer for our romantic dinner at Jake's Del Mar, where we have spent many of our 14 anniversaries),

my buddies since fourth grade, Hallie and Shawna,

and the Battalion.

Have you been to the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center down in Old Town since it was reopened? The kids loved the talking pictures (my great great great Grandma Phoebe Draper Palmer Brown was one of the narrators) and other Disney-ish effects. Above, Ross and Sam were outfitted for service at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. After the tour, the kids panned for gold and washed clothes by hand.

We also did some stuff that didn't start with B, like the Swap Meet. (See Jake below in all his vintage double breasted Hugo Boss glory, probably pawing through these used nighties looking for my anniversary gift.

And Legoland. Where it was too hot.

So we headed back to the beach.

Relaxing is hard. No one can blame you if you fall asleep in your swimsuit, your crack full of sand, shirt backwards and inside out, and your fist full of strawberry Laffy Taffy. It happened to me, too. Tommy just looked cuter in the picture.

Stay tuned for wedding photos...

Don't judge me for my farm

2010-07-28T13:20:00.004-07:00

What? Where have I been?

Maybe I spent a couple weeks lying on the beach in Carlsbad and eating doughnuts.

Or maybe, I got new ipad for my birthiversary, and I've been playing all the apps that have been on my phone for a year (farm story) but seem a lot more interesting LARGE, watching movies I can rent on itunes, breaking into my parents' kindle account (31 new books. Don't hate me cause I got the new Anna Quindlen that had a 50 person wait list at the library), and otherwise becoming completely brainwashed by Steve Jobs and his lovely technology.

Or maybe, both are true.

And to all the people on Facebook I ridiculed for having online farms: I'm so sorry. Sometimes you just can't stop yourself. I see that now. And sometimes it just feels good and very relaxing to get some virtual dirt under your nails? Is like therapy, maybe? And people should just respect that and not make u feel bad if u need to earn money for your grain silo instead of cooking dinner, cause summer is long and five is a lot of kids, especially if they are loud and smart and hyperactive and bored, and it is 115 degrees outside, which is nearly too hot to swim. I really love all of them but school starts two weeks from today. And I'm not sad about it.

More later. I need to go harvest some melons.

What's your therapy?

On heat, America, Flashdance hair, treats, and critters

2010-07-06T23:57:00.002-07:00

So this weekend, we swapped the 112 degree desert for the mountains.

It was a good trade.

We decked out the rhino in her patriotic regalia for the neighborhood parade on Saturday in Payson.

Here I am with my (new) signature Flashdance hair.

Unfortunately, in the above headwear I look less Jennifer Connelly:

and more Slash:

Finally, we all jumped in, and Jake started the engine

We got about 20 feet before it sputtered, and then died. Dead.

The children wailed and gnashed, but then Jake ran back to the cabin for gas while I walked to the end of the parade route with the whiners in tow.

People threw stuff at them, like candy and otter pops.

They soon decided spectating became them.

High on sugar and America, we headed to the pool.

Where Sam had some very specific instructions for the face painting artist.

And Tommy didn't hate the cotton candy and sno cones.

Sunday after Church there was napping, then some eating.

My sister Jen tended bar

while Meg made salsa, and Jello with pretzels

and Jason, with Tom and Charlie, dominated the grill.

Camping is hard work.

I told Ross that roughing it is when you have to use regular yellow instead of deli mustard on your burger.

Fireworks were promptly at nine. But the kids were so excited about the glow swords and hats, I'm not sure they even glanced up.

We returned home last night to find the house infested with scorpions. Jake killed like 15 with the black light and one Converse All-Star basketball shoe, while I did my part by alternately screaming and breathing into a paper bag.

Tonight he found a bunch more, plus a flying beetle the size of a chinchilla.

The beetle's life was spared. It is probly still out on the driveway (shudder).

Switching Teams

2010-06-29T15:53:00.007-07:00

On the phone with Jake just now:

J: Is that Twilight movie tonight?

K: Yes, remember when I told u that, last night?

J: Do you want me to go to the dollar store and get u a TEAM JACOB shirt?

K: No.

J: Why not?

K: I'm TEAM EDWARD.

J: Really?

K: Yes.

J: (LONG PAUSE.) That's very awkward, considering...

K: (ANOTHER LONG PAUSE.)

Oh.

I never thought of it that way.

Team Jacob, then.

So if you see a three-month-postpartum lady at the Chandler Mall Harkins tonight at the 7 pm showing of Eclipse, who has fabulously large Flashdance hair (got my hair cut short and now it is really curly, and who has time for straightening irons this summer?), is eating red velvet cupcakes her friend Shireen snuck in inside her purse, and is wearing an ill-fitting I HEART JACOB t-shirt stretched over her lactating breasts (Jake always gets me small or medium-sized clothing. I think this is a compliment. Like in his mind's eye, I am skinny? Or maybe in his mind's eye, I am wearing a tight t-shirt?), you should know she isn't really rooting for the wolf-boy.

You should also look for a straight-haired woman without a t-shirt, in case I get time for fancy hair and Jake doesn't have time for the dollar store.

Or maybe you should look for a lady wearing the gorilla mask that Jake bought to scare little kids coming to get candy on Halloween? Gorillas are like wolves, right? Then I wouldn't have to brush my hair at all.

Or I could wear those vampire teeth Tommy got at the Chuck E. Cheese?

You should say hi, when you see that lady.

The rest of you, who are judging me for going to see Twilight, can just remember that I am getting cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting, maybe, a new shirt, and three hours away from my kids on a Tuesday night. And I didn't even have to stay up til midnight.

Are you in? You got a shirt? A gorilla mask? Curly hair? Husband named Edward? Long incisors?

Witches, baby of wisdom, Juicy, and poor hygiene

2010-06-17T17:47:00.004-07:00

Jane, poolside, yesterday, as I applied my SPF 70 sunscreen: Mom, you look like a white-faced witch. When she saw my horrified expression, she backpedaled: But you know, not in a bad way. It's the green-faced witches you want to avoid.

Kids like to play a pool game they have named "baby of wisdom." It involves one child holding another in a cradle hold, and then dunking the 'baby' for incorrect answers to trivia questions.

Whenever we get in the car, Tommy yells "Juicy!" and then everyone sings Better than Ezra at the top of their lungs.

At our fancy lunch over to the Peter Piper today, my genetically closest female relative (who will be unnamed, so I don't get beat up) said: See this dress I'm wearing? I slept in it last night. I was pretty impressed, cause she'd paired it with some three inch gold wedge sandals, and was looking pretty fresh. I replied: See this dress I'm wearing? I wore it as a bathing suit cover-up yesterday.

Yeah, she continued, unfazed by my admission. Summer hygiene can get kind of lax.

Which is so true. I find myself sniffing my kids and asking: have you had a bath this week?

What are you letting slide this month?

Hello Mudder, hello Fodder

2010-06-12T08:42:00.004-07:00

So, it seems that five children is a lot. I'm just saying that so in case one of you decides to have five children because "Beeswax made it seem so cinchy on her blog," you can't sue me for something. Like having my pants on fire.

It is fun, though. If you remember that books and blogs and hairbrushing and the kind of vacation where you just sit on the beach and sip Coca Lites (and eat guacamole served by cute beach waiters to your cabana while you read embarrassing chick lit novels and stare at the ocean, and even sometimes get in it because there are no fish that you have an unreasonable fear of because of that lecture on poisonous creatures on the California coast at oceanography camp in the 5th grade) will still be going on in the year 2020 (unless that whole Mayan Calendar thing is for real, and everything will be over sometime next year).

And as we settle into summer, it is feeling less like a frat party and more like a not-very-good summer camp, in which I am the camp counselor who wishes she could sneak into the woods and eat cream puffs, instead of teaching children to make lanyards. Don't get me wrong. I am quite a skillful lanyard-maker. I made one out of green yarn, and hung the pool key from it.

My cousin Melanie had her fifth child last Monday. Baby Abby is fine, but Melanie is still in the hospital with all sorts of complications, so I've been hanging out there when I can.

I think she'd agree with me that five is a lot of kids.

(Who the heck said eight was enough?)

I'm fine with June. But not with scorpions.

2010-06-03T23:00:00.003-07:00

This is my mantra: I'm fine with June.

(Totally stole it from my sister. I think is bad karma to steal mantras?)

Anyhow. It is working, I guess, cuz I am.

Fine.

With June.

Kids have been home a week now. And it feels like a party, all day, every day. Maybe like a frat party. Because there's fun and friends and lots of pool frivolities, certainly, but also fighting sometimes, and drinks flowing like water (because actually is water, and also some lemonade. Is 100 degrees.), and then the house gets really, really wrecked and nobody wants to clean it. Sometimes people pee in the bushes if they can't get to the toilet (most of these people are toddlers), somebody always throws up on me (the baby, mostly), and then we all try to sleep it off in the morning. That's my favorite part. The kids aren't wholly on board with the sleeping part, yet.

I'm super tired. And I never get a moment of peace. You can't normally expect to, at a frat party. Okay, fine, I don't really know anything about frat parties. I went to the University of Arizona for two years, and never attended one. But I heard some stories, people.

(Boy, I don't sound very cool right now. And I wasn't. Instead of the frat parties, I went to Institute dances where they played a lot of Footloose music. And it was the 90s.)

Tonight we went scorpion hunting. We bought a big black light at Walgreens, and sure enough, Jane found one of Hell's own arachnids out by the living room window, fluorescing green and creepy like a Halloween glow stick. She smashed it with Ross' shoe, and she collected her 50 cents. My Mom (who lives just a couple houses down the canal) got stung on Friday, and her finger is still numb, so we are all pretty jumpy. But so far we've been lucky, I guess.

If you think it is lucky that we had a three inch hairy spider on the front porch last night. It was big. And so hairy, he coulda used a haircut, or a side part. It looked like a tarantula. For all I know, it WAS a tarantula. Seriously, I'm not cut out for dealing with desert fauna. Jane squealed and told me I should spray it with hairspray, so I did. That just made it mad. (Perhaps he thought I was attempting to style his very long gray hairs on his enormous bulbous abdomen?) I'm getting the heeby-jeeby-shudders right now, reliving it.

Only thing worse than hairy spiders and scorpions? SNAKES.

My Dad ran into a rattlesnake last week while he was hiking. He was alone and listening to his ipod, so he didn't hear it rattling and striking at him 'til he was nearly upon it. Then he stopped to take photos. Brilliant. He's also seen a giant desert tortoise and a couple of mountain lions this spring. Not bobcats. Mountain lions. Huge. He's lived in Arizona most of his life and never seen one before. And two together is especially rare, cuz they are lone hunters and only seek each other out to mate. So, who knows what he interrupted?

Wink wink.

And that is all I have to say tonight. Just: I'm fine with June, but not with all these critters.

What are you doing this month? You got yourself a mantra?

What kinds of nasty insects/amphibians/reptiles/bugs that look eerily like tiny lobsters but not in a way that makes you want to dip them in clarified butter do you have at your house?

The Gila Valley Temple

2010-05-26T23:34:00.005-07:00

Photo from Gila Valley Temple: Fulfillment of a Prophecy by Marleen Taylor Mott, Meridian Magazine

The Gila Valley Temple is in the Gila Valley.

But more specifically, it is in Central.

Central, Arizona.

Central, Arizona is in southeastern Arizona.

Here, this will help:

Now, Central doesn't seem to me an obvious spot for a temple. Safford or Thatcher, just a few minutes down the road, have many more people. There isn't much in Central: Farms. Livestock. An old post office. Lots and lots of my relatives. Many of them are in the cemetery.

No stop light. No Circle K. If you grow parched while cruising Highway 70 between the Taylor Freeze in Pima and the Sonic in Thatcher, you might need to stop at my Grandma Layton's house. Or maybe at Aunt Lona or Jody's. They are a mite closer to the highway.

When the temple was announced, I asked Grandma:

Wow. Can you believe it? Did you ever think you'd have a temple in your backyard?

Well, sure, she answered. But I always expected they'd put it up on the hill, near the cemetery. A temple, down there, practically on the highway? Very disappointing.

Come again, Grandma?

Honestly, it didn't seem very disappointing to me, but I didn't say so.

So I decided to look it up. And do as much historical sleuthing as I could do from my desk chair, in the five minutes of spare time I have each day. I didn't actually go to a library. Archivists don't like newborns in their reading rooms. (I know cuz I used to be one. An archivist, not a reading room. I know my rear has spread, but golly, that's rude).

So it turns out, as early as 1882, Jesse N. Smith predicted a temple would be built in The Valley, and depending on which vastly reliable source you believe (and one of them is Wikipedia, but both were supposedly quoting Mormon Settlement in Arizona), he predicted it would be built in Thatcher or Pima. That was just a couple of years after the first Mormons arrived, and most of them were still in Pima. And then on Sunday, January 30, 1898, when Apostles John W. Taylor and John Henry Smith came to reorganize the St. Joseph Stake (where, btw, they released my Great-Great-Great Grandfather, Christopher Layton (didya know my maiden name is Layton?), who had been sent by Brigham Young from Utah (Layton, Utah) to be the first Stake President in 1883.)

The new President, Andrew Kimball (President Spencer Kimball's Father) wrote in his journal: “During his visit, Apostle John W. Taylor prophesied that one of the most beautiful temples ever built among the Saints in the Rocky Mountains would be built here in the Gila Valley”.

None of this fully explains why Grandma envisioned a temple on the hill behind her house. So she elucidated: her Grandpa had told her. Her Grandfather, Edsil Myron Allred (my great great grandpa) was the Bishop in Central for 18 years and also served as Patriarch. During his tenure as Patriarch, he gave a talk in Church (this I gathered from my Dad), in which he predicted that a temple would be built in Central.

And it was.

We went to see it.

It really is beautiful. The architecture is similar to other small-but-not-too-tiny temples being built lately, but the interior art is sort of unbelievable. In volume, but also in quality. The mural of the Gila River in the ordinance room is amazing.

I whispered to Sam: look, this whole room is painted by hand!

Oh, he replied. I know what that is called. Graffiti.

No, I told him. Not if it is commissioned.

My Dad couldn't get enough of the original oils. The painting of Ash Creek Falls on Mt. Graham was his favorite (in the assembly room). Does anyone know the artist? Let me know.

After our tour, we headed over to Grandma's (Grandma was walking along the road, she'd been watering Uncle Jake's horses) to change, then to Uncle Chuck's to ride his horses. Chuck and my cousin Brandon rope. I think they are good at it. Maybe a little famous, even. But I don't know. I'm from Los Angeles. When you are a little famous in LA, you have your own sitcom.

Tom, who saw some kids with cookies outside the temple, and asked them: Did Jesus give you those?

Grandpa Ross (my Dad) and little Ross, riding Lloyd and Hidalgo, respectively. That's Mt. Graham behind them. We've got a cabin up there. Here are Dad and the kids on the mountain at the Ladybug Saddle trailhead last summer:

Cousin Jack and Chuck.

Ryan and Uncle Rick

Grandma. And me.

Looking east and north from Chuck and Lona's place.

The Temple was dedicated this Sunday, and was broadcast all over the state. Did you attend? Do you have any Gila Valley relations? Are they the same as mine? In addition to the Laytons and the Allreds, I've got Norton, Porter, Reay, and Webster peeps.

So, like, 60% chance I broke Bono's back

2010-05-21T15:45:00.009-07:00

See, I just bought plane tickets to Salt Lake.

21 May 2010
Following Bono's unexpected back surgery earlier today, Live Nation confirmed that the U2 U2360° tour launch previously scheduled for June 3rd in Salt Lake City has been postponed.

U2 fans with tickets to the June 3rd event are encouraged to retain tickets until updated show information can be provided.

Additional tour information will be forthcoming.

We were gonna go to the show with my college roommate, Kari, who likes me even though she saw my filthy 1994 bedroom. (Dear BYU co-eds, a good trick for keeping that rule about no boys in your bedroom: store all dirty unders on the floor. You will find it easy to make sure guests stay in the living room.) Her husband Craig, my Dad's new BFF, invited us. Dad and Craig have hiked the Grand Canyon TWICE this year. (Dear Craig: please lay off trying to get my Dad up Mount Everest. We like him quite a lot, and we don't want to see his popsicled corpse in an IMAX movie.)

Last time we tried to go to a concert with Kari and Craig, Coldplay cancelled on us. (But then they rescheduled and it was fab. Read all about it here. ) Anyhow, Kari thinks we are cursed, and that the moment I clicked purchase tickets at Southwest.com, somewhere in Germany, Bono's back snapped in two.

Were any of you planning to attend?

Are you very angry with me for ruining your plans?

That's right. He licked it.

2010-05-12T07:22:00.009-07:00

So, school is on it's way out. Projects are due, presentations are being...presented. And what's the old philosophical problem? If an oral report is given at the school and there is no parent there to listen, did it really happen?

And so I go. But getting out of the house is muy dificil. Getting someone to watch Tom (very distracting in classrooms), feeding the baby, dressing everyone and keeping us all relatively barf and feces-free until we are in the car. Urine is fine, since it is clear and not germy. Did I tell you about the time my sister Jen's baby peed on the pediatrician, and when she tried to apologize, the doctor stuck his finger in it and licked it?

That's right. He licked pee.

Because he was making a point? About it being sterile? So I figure, I can wear it, if he can eat it.

Anyhow, just this week:

"Sam" made a popsicle stick model of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, complete with diorama panorama of the Sydney skyline. Those quotation marks were not an accident. In the morning I told Sam to stand next to it while I took his picture. After I snapped it, he asked "Mom, now you get your picture with it." And then Ross pronounced it "wicked awesome." Uh, oh.

Ross made a Powerpoint presentation on deep sea creatures and exploration. He also forgot to tell me about a research paper on Houdini that is due today. So we were up all night printing photos of a 90% naked man in chains and handcuffs.

Jane has her Endangered Species research to present today. Koala Bears a la 10:45.

I joined the gym again. And went to Body Flow (yogalates). My body didn't flow super well. Is a good thing the lights were low. Now I'm sore. Mostly in my feet. Which really isn't my area of concentration.

Then I ate blueberry pie for breakfast. I won't even discuss the chocolate covered cinnamon bears which I find mildly disgusting but are covered in chocolate so they got scarfed.

Oh, and all this with a newborn in tow. And his rash has all but disappeared. I changed detergents and stopped bathing him much. So now he smells less like lavender and vanilla and more like barf, but he doesn't itch so much.

hilarious photos from inside Jake's iphone: part 1

2010-05-05T17:01:00.006-07:00

Er, sorry. When I hit publish, I noticed the photos were way too small, which made them significantly less hilarious. So I'm gonna get Jake to send em straight to iphoto, because the emailed ones just weren't good enough. Stay tuned...

Let's not be rash.

2010-04-28T07:51:00.007-07:00

I was going to tell you about how Tommy just came in and dropped a tiny, homegrown (no, not mine, Gini's) tomato down my robe, and I was too tired to stand up and retrieve it, so it is still somewhere here in the folds of my person, but then the baby started crying. So instead, I have to go feed him and grease his head with Eucerin creme, because he is all rashy (baby eczema), which makes me sad. The internets assure me it will go away before he's five. FIVE! That will be a lot of Eucerin. I don't want him to have a rashy head for 5 years.

Have you had any baby rashes? How long did it last? Any tips to share?

(mmm. Tasty tomato.)

Attention: I am wearing pants.

2010-04-22T15:44:00.005-07:00

Pants with a zipper.

And a button at the top.

And no spandex panel.

How obscenely tight are they, you ask?

Not very!

Today is a red letter day.

I celebrated by taking Joey to the pediatrician for one month check-up, then to Chang's, where I ate fried green beans.

They were delicious.

That's all.

Stating the obvious.

2010-04-15T09:31:00.004-07:00

Tom, just now:

Mom, you didn't get your hair ready.

When you don't get your hair ready, you don't look beautiful.

Just the pep talk I needed this morning.

I am sooo tired. Is it okay to nap at 9:30 am?

p.s. My Mac takes pictures of me. And yes, that is a york peppermint patty. And yes, that is my laundry. In my defense, the basket on the dryer, and the towels on the floor are clean, just not folded.

Cutting the cord. (Not another baby post.)

2010-04-14T09:07:00.004-07:00

(No, really, it is just this one photo. Now I'll stop.)

When we moved, back in October, we left something behind: Cable TV.

It isn't like we went off the grid. The Cox guy still came out and hooked up the high speed internet. And we even got TWO phone lines (one for alarm system.)

So, why, then?

Mostly, it was because of Miley Cyrus. Hannah Montana is full of super snotty attitude, and my daughter started acting like her. (She was also being carefully coached by Zack, Cody, and iCarly. And although it didn't seem to be affecting the boys as much, they all sat around watching inane pre-teen sitcoms for hours at a time, without blinking. I tried to block the channel, but they figured out the password. I tried to set the TIVO so the kids could only watch recorded shows. They figured out how to record iCarly. They are very smart and resourceful children.

So we got rid of cable. Now, they don't watch TV all day. They actually go outside to play, jump on the trampoline, and ride their bikes. But I'll be honest. They fight a lot more, too. Jane is horrible to Sam, and vice versa. It is like living with a super mean Hannah Montana.

I read this article this morning. According to the comments I read, everyone is super thrilled with turning off the cable.

My own feelings are mixed.

What I like:

Kids not becoming drooling coach potatoes.

Not paying tons of money to bring lots of nastiness into home. (Although, plenty of nasty in prime time regular TV.)

Extra PBS channels. I watch them all the time.

New kid station called Qubo. Which kids don't love, so only watch occasionally.

Lots of channels are HD, and look great on our big fancy set Jake got for his birthday.

What I don't like:

CANNOT GET GOOD ENOUGH RECEPTION WITH ANTENNA. I get very irate when I sit down at night to watch my TIVO, only to find the reception wasn't good enough, and my favorite show is just a black screen. Yes, I know there's Hulu, but I want to lie in bed and nurse my baby, not sit in the office chair in front of the computer. (Yes, I can see the irony that I write this while sitting in front of the computer.)

I miss the Food Network, HGTV, TLC, Discovery. I miss the Barefoot Contessa. I miss House Hunters International. Okay, fine, sometimes I even miss Survivorman and Mythbusters. Jakes misses Burn Notice. But he watches it at work, where he has satellite. He even gets BBC America there. Which makes me green with envy.

The channels don't change correctly. Getting where you need to go is like wading blindfolded through the La Brea Tar Pits.

Couldn't get Conference on WB this year, and didn't have KBYU. Jake rigged up computer to TV. He is very handy.

So anyhow, my feelings are mixed. And I'll tell you, I am scared to death of having five kids home all summer (110 degrees outside, you'll remember) with a newborn, and no TV to entertain the elder children. If it weren't for the pool, I think I'd have already called the cable guy.

I'm a weak woman.

Have any of you unplugged? Love it? Hate it? Are you considering the switch? Or love your cable and think I'm crazy?

My nouns are gone.

2010-04-12T08:40:00.013-07:00

So, something is up with my brain. Like, it quit working good.

I can't think real clear-like, and I can't come up with words. Not just words to hook together here on the blog, but nouns. In conversation. Especially proper nouns.

Last night I was trying to explain that Hotel Circle in San Diego wasn't too far from Sea World, only I'd lost the words SEA WORLD, so I panicked for a minute, then said: "you know, that...Shamu place."

So you see. Shamu place. Is what it's come to over here.

There have been, like, tons of other examples of my problem, which I would freely share, but I can't actually remember any of them.

Sure, I could be sleep deprived, but we can all be honest here, right? We've seen this blog going downhill since the insomnia started in October. Or really, maybe since I started barfing last July 20? (Is like my own personal December 7, 1941, a day that lives in infamy.) (I'm really surprised I came up with the word infamy.) And the baby is pretty good about eating and going right back to sleep during the night. I think I'm getting more sleep than last month, when I was up every 45 minutes to pee and do laps around the bedroom to loosen my stiffening back.

Anyhow, I'm thinking this new level of dumb must be hormone related. As in, all the estrogen has left the building, and now I'm in shock, which has developed into some sort of walking coma?

Honestly, I got no other ideas. I'm just hoping it's...what's that word? The one that means not gonna last forever.

Has anybody else ever misplaced their words? Or had other weird post-pregnancy symptoms? Anyone? Anyone?