Here I am on the day of my sisters wedding. I am brimming with happiness.
Would you still be my friend if I looked like this?
I probably ask jj some version of this question everyday. Would you still like me if I was in a wheel chair? Would you still like me if I was missing a pinky? Would you still like me if I had a mastectomy? I wonder what he would say to that one. He might have to think about that for a while.
Apparently I need to find a new place for my make-up. Or I could put it in a steel box with three pad locks on it. That might deture him for about three weeks.
This is not a black eye. He found my 12 hour lip stick and it did as it promised, it stayed with us all day.
Last night, while I was at young women’s, Gentry started puking like crazy. Luckily, he has a great dad who took care of him during the ordeal until I got home so that we could tag team the messes that were being created.
I was astounded by the way this sick little boy brought out ultimate love and concern. This was the same little boy that earlier in the day I had been yelling at to get back here and be quiet. As he was lying on the floor, holding his stomach, pail and not moving and trying to blink away sleep, I wanted to crawl into his little body and take away the sickness that he was feeling so that he did not have to.
We finally cleaned him up and his room up to an acceptable manner, and left him to go to sleep in his crib. But seconds after we closed his bedroom door he was throwing up again. We went back in and just stripped him down to a diaper and put new blankets under him and a fleece blanket over him. This time, I sat next to his bedroom door and read magazines for about an hour then I went and got the twin mattress out of the office and put it on the floor in his room. I slept in his room and everytime he squeaked, coughed or sneezed, I was up and out of bed in a flash. I would make sure that he was still covered by the warm fleece blanket and that he was not about to throw up again.
He has not thrown up since, and I think that he is ok now. I think that he got sick from drinking the Splash Pool water. Which I did not recommend, but he does not do what I tell him to do. He does what he wants.
I am glad to have a husband that will take care of my baby and am glad to have a son that helps me understand what love is really about.
Our back door neighbors think that jj and I are perfect. We like to keep them in the dark and keep up the charade. She was saying the other day that she would like to wife swap and see how we really live. Interesting.
The thing is that I am like the back door neighbors husband and jj is like the wife. jj and the neighbors wife are calm, understanding and patient. Where as me and the back door neighbors husband are moody, impatient, and hormonal. jj and the other wife would be a calm couple, me and the other husband would drive each other nuts with our insanity. I wonder which one of us would really kill the other one first.
I think that they neighbors would be shocked to know that I had my monthly temper tantrum again yesterday. It included me throwing the pile of stuff to take upstairs on the floor, throwing my flip flops down the stairs, making the baby cry and locking jj out of our bedroom by moving the nightstand in front of the door so that he could not come in.
Do you remember the scene in the movie, “Superstar” where she runs up stair and repeatedly slams her door while screaming, “You’re horrible! You’re horrible!” I would like to say that I have patterned my life after her. Isn’t that a comforting thought.
I think that I took PMS pills last month, I will try it again next month. Hopefully, I will be able to keep this under wraps.
It is my birthday today. I am going out for sushi for dinner with my cute hubby. My cute hubby has been begging to shave his head since we have been married. I finally gave in yesterday and did it.
When shaving off hair or beards, he always likes to do it in stages and document them. Here we have Crusty the Clown.
He doesn’t look bad, but I do prefer hair.
It is always comforting to find one of these guys hanging around the place where we keep the Gentry’s outside toys. Yikes.
jj is the hero and he killed it. Hip Hip Hooray.
My cousin Sarah has written about her cat. It is hilarious.
In other news, at girls camp, I shared some embarrassing stories. I think that it would have been better if I had kept my mouth shut around underage girls, but I thought that you all would get a kick out of them also.
In high school, I played the bass drum in the marching band. When you do that it is like being pregnant because you can see way in front of you, but you cannot see what is right under your feet. So you are constantly hoping you do not fall to your untimely death. That, unfortunately, is what happened to me. I was walking down the street with the band, or marching rather, and I fell in a hole and slid down the street on my drum. I was not in a parade at the time, but I was rather embarrassed since the entire marching band saw.
Another embarrassing moment happened when I was on my honeymoon. I had a urinary tract infection and did not know it. I was dreaming that I needed to pee so bad and I was looking everywhere for a bathroom. I could not find one and then I spotted a fountain, so I sat down in it and it was really cold and then suddenly it warmed up and I woke up. To my astonishment I had wet the bed in my 21st year of life. I was utterly humiliated. I did not even have the guts to wake jj up and tell him what he was sleeping in. I just went into the bathroom and called my mom and asked her what I was supposed to do. She told me I had to tell him. So I went back out and I did. We tore off the sheets and flipped the mattress over and went back to sleep. In the morning I informed jj that we could get divorced if he wanted to and I would understand. Luckily, we are still married. I guess you can tell what a good guy he is.
As you can tell these get progressively worse. Maybe you should quit reading now. I would suggest it, but I know what you won’t.
If food is bad it shoots through me like crazy and very quickly. I will call this explosive-D. Because that is what it is.
When I was dating jj we went to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner and when we were finished I had to go to a study group on campus. So jj drove me up to the library and I told him to wait, I guess because I was late and I wanted to see if the group was still there. So I was walking to the library and suddenly without any warning, I explosive-D my pants. I stopped mid-step and weighed my options. Obviously, I was not going to be going to my study group, but what do I do about jj, and I had to get home quick and I was not close, so I needed a ride. I decided to tell jj. He was so nice about it and the entire ride home he told me about times on his mission when his companions had done the same. Anyway, so I was laying awkwardly, stomach down on the front seat of his car, it seems that he put down newspaper. What a great way make sure a guy stays interested in you.
That same year, I went to eat lunch with my boss and fellow managers at the Sky Room at Utah State. I had the salad bar, and left, thankfully, before the other managers did because I needed to go to class. The Sky Room is kind of exclusive because it is the only thing on the top floor of the Student Building, so as I was walking down the stair and suddenly felt the urgency that I absolutely could not control. Again, I explosive-D. This time though there was an open office and I ran into it and sat down at someone’s desk and said, “I need help.” The person said, “What do you need?” I sat there for a second and looked at them like I was confused (because really I was beyond confused) and realized things were over. I said, “I need to go,” and I bolted out of the office into the closest bathroom. I cleaned things up the best that I could, tied my coat around myself and went home.
Now you can see why I did not share these with the bishop. They are beyond embarrassing. I should just pretend that they are about someone else. By the way, I am still married to this guy. I guess that personality is more important than bowel control.
So many things to say without knowing how to say them.
So often in being a leader for the young women, I feel useless. I don’t feel like I contribute. I feel like my lessons are on the level of the leaders and not the girls. I don’t feel like I do any good.
I remember a little while ago we were talking in our church class, and one of the girls asked about her aunt who had married a bad man in the temple and then divorced him and then married someone else. She wanted to know who her aunt was going to be with for eternity. The leaders tried to answer the question, and I finally just said, “We don’t need to understand what is going to happen. All we need to know is that we have a kind and loving Heavenly Father and he wants us to be happy. He is going to take everything into account and he is going to do what is best for your aunt.”
This past week while I was at girls camp, we had some time where we shared experiences where prayers, journal writing or scriptures had helped us. The girl who had asked that question said that when I said that I had answered her prayers. She said my name and said that I had said what she needed to hear. I was amazed.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
I feel it. I feel how close and easy it could be and yet for some reason I want and try to depend on myself and people who do not deserve that kind of trust and people who do not have the strength to do it.
But, ever so slowly, I feel myself moving in a different direction. However, there is no other way to go. I have come to the dead end and have been beating my head against the sign for years. It is slow though, I don’t even feel like I have moved yet. I have just stopped beating my head against the sign, looked up and realized what the sign actually means. Now after years of pain, I have turned around from the dead end and can see that I need to get off this street and start heading in a different direction. The hope that accompanies this feeling is amazing. The hard burden I have been bearing is lifting. I can feel it and the hate is leaving me.
And yet I can still feel it.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Yesterday I dropped Gentry off at Hill Air Force Base, that is where jj’s dad works and he then took him up to Logan to stay with jj’s parent for week. It made me sad and I cried on the way home.
I have left him before and it did not bother me, but this time, I cried. The first time I was stuck in my hormonal, just had quit breastfeeding stupor. I could not have been more happy to get away from him, after having suckled him for a year.
This time, my hormones have mellowed, my hair has grown back and he has enlightened my life. I finally feel the amazing feeling of love that people talk about with their children. I have yearned for that so much. Not because he has changed so much, although he has, but because I have. The insanity has left my blood stream and I am feeling whole again. I hope that I can feel like this from now on.
Yesterday in church, we were discussing what is appropriate to wear to church. One of the young women raised her hand and said, “Nothing above the knee and nothing below (insert something, I cannot remember what she said).” Then she maliciously looked over at one of the other girls who had a shorter skirt on and grinned to herself about her all-knowing goodness. Self-righteous little girl. I thought, I wonder what other lovely doctrine you have been taught.
Then today I realized why this has bugged me so much. She is the embodiment of me at that age. I was the most self-righteous child, and I learned it from home. That’s right the home what was all full of itself with no actual content, love, or honesty. The home that took all blame and placed it outward on the world and taught me what everyone else was doing wrong, because Heaven forbid we actually look inward and discover that we are not perfect.
I remember fighting with a girl in my young women’s class about whether people who had gone on missions were better than those who had not. The girl said that a lot of her brothers had not gone on missions and they were still good people. I argued that people who had gone on missions were better because they were more committed to the Lord and it would show up in all areas of their lives. Oh, what an ass I am. I hate looking back and remembering doing such things and unfortunately that was not the only time.
I am better now, or at least working on being better. I hope that I can teach my children to love all people and to look inward and fix things in themselves to make them better people. I also hope that maybe I can influence Miss Know-it-all.
Tonight at dinner, jj and I were discussing how nice it is that Gentry can talk and ask for the things that he wants, or tell us what is wrong. However, I wish that is all that was coming out of his mouth. The rest of the time I am thinking, “Shut it kid, we just fed you 15 minutes ago and pancake syrup is not a beverage, so stop asking for it.”
Today when we were at the library, where it is generally known that you should be quiet, Gentry would not be quiet. I kept saying, “Shhhhh,” or “be quiet please.” After about the nine hundredth time I had had it with saying it and apperently he had also.
He punched me in the face.
To say the least, I was angry. We left and I forgot to do a timeout. I don’t get the deal with timeouts. Gentry is good and will sit wherever I put him but 10 minutes later he is hitting me again. The only good that they do is that I get to be away from him for a minute and a half, so that I don’t tear his head off.
The other day at church he hit me during the sacrament, so we went out in the hall and had a timeout. On the way back into the chapel, he hit me again, so we went back into the hall and had another. Then when jj came back and sat with us, he hit jj. I am getting a bit frustrated with the kid that does not listen to me, ever. It is so frustrating to know that he understands but refuses to be nice or cooperate.
Any advice? Maybe I should have him neutered. I have heard that makes puppies calm down. Just kidding. But seriously. Arrrrgh.