Can't Help Falling

I was putting Noah down to bed, while Justin was doing homework. He listens to his playlist while working, a most strange conglomeration of heavy metal, punk, worship, and John Denver with a little of everything else sprinkled in. After a hardcore version of O Holy Night, on came Elvis "Can't Help Falling in Love with You." I heard my husband's voice softly singing along, "Like a river flows surely to the sea..."

I have never liked Elvis much. I know in some states this is a hanging offense. But if Justin keeps singing old Elvis songs, I may just move to Graceland and start eating peanut butter and banana.

With our daughter on the way and our son toddling all over the house, it delights me that I am still in love with my husband. Everyone told me the infatuation would wear off, and, no, we don't stay up until 2:00 just to be together anymore. But I still whistle whenever he takes off his shirt (a little harmless sexual harassment never hurt anyone, right?), and I still want to make him cookies every night, fresh out of the oven. Our love has matured, but with so many big-kid, adult decisions ahead, with so many life-changing actions and experiences in our lives, I revel that right now I am somewhat immaturely in love with Justin. I still think he's cute, funny, smart, sexy, strong, and handsome. Daily he reminds me that I am the luckiest girl alive.

In our church, with our family, among friends and colleagues, I feel I have to be so wise. It's nice to hear a voice that makes me shiver and grin remind me that:

"...Only fools rush in
But I can't help falling in love with you."

Saintly Boxers - An Addendum to 'Satan's Panties'

The other day I came home from a long day at work, patted my bulldog on his massive head and set to work preparing dinner. It was on a third pass through the living room that I spotted them: a pair of perfectly innocent, somewhat camouflaged, rather unimposing boxers on the couch. Part of me smiled and thought perhaps there was justice in the universe after all. The rest of me quickly interceded on unfairness' behalf. These unders were dark, blending almost perfectly with the furniture. They were balled up, so if you weren't familiar with my husband's boxers, you could just as easily imagine they were a shirt or towel of some sort (and really, I hope no one out there is that familiar with my husband's underoos). And for a third mark: Boxers are just in general far more respectable than panties. I imagine certain men would have a much harder time taking themselves seriously if they were wearing bright red, lacy, high cut under-riggings beneath their slacks.
...
Oh and strange men weren't walking around our house all day to infer, surmise, and snicker at the naughties upon our sofa!

28

I don't feel twenty-eight. I lived my entire twenty-sixth year thinking I was twenty-seven and then tried to reverse the process for the following year. It didn't go well. I ended up being twenty-seven for two years, and now I'm having a difficult time breaking the habit. But whatever age you are, celebrations must ensue on your birthday, so here's ours.

Breakfast at Mimi's with the husband and Little Man. It was delicious, Noah only threw down all of his toys about 400 times each, and, I am happy to report, I kept it down... all the way until noon. Wahoo.

We took Noah to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. He seemed most interested in the goats. The horses scared him, and the chickens were rather concerning. Goats seem safe. (And yes, from the previous post, this is where I cried at a goat. For no particular reason at all. Poor goat: crazy lady crying at him and a baby boy pulling his ears. [It must be difficult to distinguish between a Dumpster, who's ears you can pull, and every other smelly, overweight creature out there.])



And what does an Abi want for her birthday? ...

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

To end the day we went into the canyon to cook S'mores with the family. And somehow, although I can't stomach soup, crackers, or water; S'mores are no problem. I'm going to be living on Hersheys and marshmallows until November. Here's Baby Noah with his Grandma and Nana playing in the mountains:

All in all a grand birthday with only a little unsightly vomit. Now to figure out how to be twenty-eight years old...

The Wrecking Ball

At our ultrasound in two weeks we find out whether we are having a boy or a girl. It seems a formality only, to me. I'm 95 percent sure there is a sweet and fiery baby girl tumbling about inside of me. At my last appointment we had a hard time finding a heartbeat. This was not a matter of concern. Every time the doctor placed the ultrasound microphone against my belly, probably she/but maybe he would give it a firm kick. Eventually my OB guessed we were dealing with a girl. This doesn't mean much. He is the OB for my sister-in-law as well, and of the three children we already have, he's striking out on guesses. Noah was supposed to be a girl, and he is decidedly, all boy.

However, the real reason I know we have a wee femme on our hands is because I have become an emotional wrecking ball. I had a few little breakdowns with Noah, a few boohoos and woe-is-me's. But with this baby, it seems a weekly, if not daily occurrence. I walked out of our bedroom the other day, tears pouring in torrents down my face. "What's wrong?" my ever-concerned and ever-sweet husband asked.

"I need a sweater." ...

Justin's eyes flitted nervously back and forth. If he were a man of lesser character he would probably have bit his lip and looked for an escape. "OK," he replied cautiously, as you would speak if you were occupied with trying to diffuse an incendiary device. "So what's the problem?"

I just shrugged. There is no problem. Except that I am insane, swinging like a 100 lb concrete destroyer, ready to shatter anything I come in contact with.

I've cried at my brother, I've cried at my friends, I cried at the cable man, and at a bird. I cried at my dog, and a basil plant, and an umpire. (Poor guy. That must have been a first.) I have even cried at a goat. (Explanation in a future post.) And every one of these is a story that would take too much time to recount.

Mother's Day 2013

I didn't post forever because our Internet was down for a day. Our Internet provider promised it would be one day, but their days must be counted more biblically than everyone elses. 'To DISH Network a day is as a thousand years...' Punks. But I got them back. I called on Saturday when Justin needed to turn in his homework for online classes, and I wept like the mad, pregnant woman I am. There's nothing like having a customer crying on the phone to really turn someone's day cloudy. Perhaps, I was too cruel.

Noah decided to mark my first real mother's day by getting up at 4:15 in the morning, demanding milk, and then wanting to play instead of going back to sleep. The refusal of sleep lasted all day, and he was a joy to be around. He has been sleeping very well, so the sudden turn of events was both unexpected and untimely. All I wanted for mother's day was a nap, which was a request more impossible to fulfill than if I had wished for a Cadillac full of conflict diamonds.

However, Mother's Day night, my sleepy, grouchy boy, my own tired brain, and the week approaching, lost all meaning and matter in the light of the world crashing down. And this is more why I haven't blogged in a month.

Sunday morning my mother told me she had some concerning symptoms the night before. While working in the garden, she had pain in her face and jaw, felt feverish and generally ill. She googled symptoms for the most concerning of potential causes, and it didn't look like a stroke or a heart attack. She taught Sunday School, taught children's church, and was seemingly fine and dandy for the day. That night I got a call that my dad had taken her to insta-care. I still wasn't too worried. Our family frequents insta-care with an annoying amount of regularity, and generally, on holidays. We really ought to make it part of our traditional celebrations. Now dad will read the Christmas story, and now we will all bundle up and drive to Insta-care whereat we will have IVs and cake.

The following morning I got myself together, saw my husband off, fed my son, and lived my usual life. I decided to call my folks to make sure all was well. My dad answered the phone. "I'm going to the hospital, to see your mom," he said. The hospital is not Insta-care. "She had a heart attack."

There had been words after that. They were reassuring, explanatory, tired, and worried. They said she was fine. They explained how they ran a tube from her thigh to her heart, put in a stent. Lots of words. I heard almost none of them. The tears were drowning them out. Tears are so ear-drum shatteringly loud. Part of it was just the shock. My mother takes very good care of herself: she eats well, she goes on her treadmill, she lifts weights (otherwise known as a twenty-two year old handicap daughter). She doesn't look the way she wants, but who of us does. She's never had high blood pressure, or struggled with heart issues. I could formulate a very, very long list of names of persons who I thought would be more likely to have a heart attack than my mom. And my name might appear somewhere on that list.

My mother has always had a sort of agelessness to me, like Galadriel. Somehow you imagine that she has age, but simultaneously she is not old and never seems to approach old. She has always seemed strangely immortal. Not an immortality of power, but just of continuity, as every morning she rises like the sun and feeds her daughter, and does her Bible study without withering or faltering. It doesn't quite make sense that she could have a heart attack. Elves don't.

A week after the heart attack she fell and broke her ankle. Now, she seems like Galadriel caged in a body that does not suit her. As a dancer, I try to have a great deal of respect for the body and mind, how deeply they are connected, and how much our physicality is a part of us. But it doesn't seem a part of her. The woman I know is strong, graceful, and quiet, full of joy and fire. The body is weak, and a little clumsy, with a heavy boot and two extra crutch legs echoing on the concrete. I know she will heal, and she will appear as the beautiful elven lady again. But somehow I imagine she will have aged. Perhaps she will return to her agelessness slightly older, become again immortal further along life's road. Or perhaps I will be able to comprehend her as more human, and maybe that will be good for us. To be alive and dying and patient for our uncaging to be truly immortal again.

Tea Testimony

After a series of very humorous ploys by our loving Savior, I ended up sharing at the Women's Spring Tea. This is what it was sort of like:

"God has been incredibly faithful to me, and His promises have been so real in my life. Often these are very emotional experiences. And being so pregnant as I am, my emotions are neurotic enough. So I decided to share God’s faithfulness in my love story with my husband. Because it’s cuter and funnier and won’t make me weep like a little child.

At the beginning of 2006 I discovered a Youth for Christ summer missions trip to New Zealand. And I fell in love with this idea of serving people, and going on adventures, and pretending to be an elf off in Middle Earth. I became obsessed with New Zealand. All I thought about was going there, and serving God and His people, and following my Captain on His adventure. It was almost literally all I thought about.

Around the same time my-now-husband, but then just an undyingly handsome acquaintance joined Youth for Christ as well, and began planning a yearlong internship in where-else, but New Zealand. And around this time I started falling in love with him, but we are both such outgoing, big talkers (insert ripe sarcasm) that I didn’t dare say a word, and apparently neither did he. But with us both heading off to magical New Zealand, I imagined we must be cosmically connected somehow. Because once every five years I’m allowed to be a little girly.

God was amazingly faithful in helping me raise funds for this trip, and the people in my church were so generous. I started fund raising in February, and by the end of March I had raised $3000 dollars, which was $47 more than I needed. It was like this amazing confirmation that I was in God’s will and on the right path, and He was just going to bless me so much for making this decision.

Not so much.

The first week of April I got an email from YFC that my beloved trip to New Zealand was cancelled. I don’t tend to be dramatic, but let me tell you, I read this email and ran out of the office, tears pouring down my face. I was utterly devastated. I’m going to share what I wrote in my journal that night:

I thought if I read the email again it would change, that my eyes were just playing tricks on me. But reading the email three times more did not change the words on the screen. The dream which had become my obsession, the service I’d given my very heart to, the hope I’d fallen in love with was gone. And there was nothing I could do. You can’t imagine the sense of betrayal I feel, the first time I’d truly given my heart away to something, truly fallen in love, and my dreams are crushed. There is always the burning question, “Why God, why did You let this happen?” Why would God allow me to suffer after I followed His leading as best I could, after I took steps toward what I thought was His will, after I gave of myself to His work? And I had no clue. And I still have no clue.

Because I’m not at all ever dramatic.

But because his trip was just him and a year long, Justin was still planning to skip away to New Zealand for his missions trip. And let me tell you how happy that made me. Not only was I now stuck in Utah for the summer, betrayed by my Creator, it would be a year completely devoid of the man I was quickly losing my heart to. And I felt very sorry for myself.

Around this time I read Romans 8:26-28. I love this chapter of the Bible, and at the time it was so relevant. As my faith was faltering I knew I had an Intercessor, a hope, and a future.

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

I clung to this promise throughout the following year. Another New Zealand trip came up for 2007, and I instantly applied. All my funds were already raised so all I had to do was wait. And daydream about Mr. Perfect Justin for hours on end.

I still didn’t know why God would make me wait, and what His plan was, but I felt like I had perhaps grown a little in my faith. Isn’t it a shame that pain is often the best way to teach us. And sometimes the only way I learn.

So Justin returned from New Zealand on July 20^th, 2007 and I left for New Zealand on July 19^th, 2007 and because of the time change we very literally passed each other in the sky. And I snickered at my Lord because He’s just so funny. And I spent a month in New Zealand. It was everything I hoped (except I didn’t turn into an elf, which was disappointing). I served, I grew, I learned, and prayed, and somehow I became less a little girl and more a woman. And I raced go karts down a mountain, which was almost as cool as the fact that Justin got to build a snowman on Mount Doom.

After returning home, and readjusting to non-missions life, Justin asked me out to coffee… like, every night for the next few months. But we weren’t dating… I just have to make that clear. We weren’t dating officially, until December. I asked him since we are both so shy and quiet, why he finally asked me out. He said since I had just come back from New Zealand, and I knew the people he met there, and had seen the places he’d been so recently that he felt like we finally had something to talk about. We had both just come back from this amazing experience, and we had a connection, not something mystical or magical, but something definitely God-ordained.

So maybe that’s why I had to wait for a year. Because my soon-to-be husband needed some reason to ask me out. And New Zealand, if nothing else, is a good excuse for a date."

All Nighter

To deal with my wicked morning sickness I am using a combination of Promethazine at night, Zofran in the morning, anti-nausea preggo drops, and PSI wrist bands. With all of these remedies combined I still feel nauseous most of the time, but thankfully I'm only throwing up about once a day now instead of six times. For some reason I still don't feel like clicking my heels with delight, but I am trying to be grateful for the blessings I have. Like a new growing baby.

The Promethazine causes extreme drowsiness, which is why I take it at night. I tried taking half pills during the day, and ended up drooling into my keyboard for long stretches of the workweek. Last night I forgot to take it. And no sleeping occurred. I was awake as a chihuahua on espresso. Thankfully, (read deeply embittered sarcasm in that word) Dumpster was restless most of the night too. My tossing and turning was accompanied by the grunting and snuffling of a bulldog shaped like the world's largest sausage trying to squeeze himself under our bed. Like trying to stuff a salami in a mail slot. Then he got an itch and scratched himself right up against our bedroom door so it thunked against the wall at machine gun fire tempo. Then he found his bone and tossed it across the room for himself a couple times. And then, I will not share with you the awful noises and smells he made.

The moral of this section of the story is: although bulldog puppies are preeminent amongst God's adorable creations, at some point they grow up, and then, it's like owning a biochemical weapon with a tongue. He is an assault on all the senses.

I am now debating with myself if I should endure some more nausea and stop taking my night drugs or continue on in comatose bliss, less sicky.

It concerns me that I can't sleep without this drug now. And it also frightens me that if I'm so wigged out by it, what the baby might be feeling. Any intelligent comments on this dilemma would be greatly appreciated.

Satan's Panties

This post is based on two basic premises: 1)We don't do laundry that often, and 2) our dog has some severe psychological issues.

Living in America with a vast availability of comparatively expendable wealth and places at which to expend it, Justin and I have enough clothing to take us through at least a week or two without needing to do laundry. I'm sure we could go a good deal longer, but some of the combinations we would have to devise might leave the general public scratching their heads. At the end of every clothing rotation, once I've been through the comfy cottons, the seamless solids, and even the fun prints, are the red undies. Don't you blush for shame; we all have them. They are red and lacy and monstrously uncomfortable. Once intended for sexier purposes, they now merely serve to squeeze one more day out of any already maxed wash cycle.

Dumpster, our special puppy, has this unusual habit of transporting our dirty laundry one article at a time to the living room every night, and making himself a little nest of mom and dad's clothing. His favorite items are dad's socks, mom's unmentionables, and Noah's onesies. It is super annoying.

Friday was a rushed morning. We had someone coming in to clean our air vents, so we were trying to move furniture and pull covers off. In the rush of it, Dumpy snoozed away on the couch, on a small selection of our dirty clothes. I returned home that afternoon, after allowing strangers in my home all day to clean and dis-in-microbial-fect. There spread out across our couch, leaving no room for doubt as to their identity, were my lacy, red panties.

What do you do at that point? I'm sure this is the real reason the British claimed Australia. Every young British maid, whose knickers got left in public view, could run away to a hot desert land, where they would never again have to face polite company. Although I'm sure there are a few deranged kangaroos that probably make a habit of stealing frocks and bloomers to make little beds out of. There is a Dumpy in every bunch. Except maybe this Ririe bunch if he ever does that again.

Bye Bye Oil Can Mania

We used to watch a lot of television. Not that we would sit obsessed with the screen; it would just be on while we did homework, or ate, or let our tired brains dissolve. Now we have a child, who is not only far more entertaining than any show we could watch, but also absorbs time like a sponge. With this bouncing little time muncher and another on the way as well as nursing school, working three jobs, and being worshippers, we've decided to get rid of cable. We have Netflix to satisfy our depravity as needed. Cable is just one giant waste of money. (Or so we say now, but just wait until the Utes season starts, and we don't get any of the games. -shudder-)

There are some things I will miss. Perhaps not with the same nostalgia I hold for my carefree childhood days, but miss in that, "remember-how-we-used-to-have-time-to-watch-THAT?" kind of way.

You know you need a life when you watch American Pickers. Since I assume the very best of all three of my readers, I assume you have no idea what American Pickers is. Allow me to educate you. It's these two Iowa farm boys who travel all over the back roads of the country collecting old junk rusty gold. They meet people who haven't shaved since the signing at Appomattox Courthouse, and they dig through tetanus infested barns looking for motorcycle engines they can blow $42,000 on. It's quite boring, honestly. I wouldn't have ever watched it at all, except, at least once an episode, they say it... Sometimes it's a variation. Sometimes they try to just slip it in. But it is always so worth it...

"This would be a really great piece for someone who collects mid-1930s Fleet-Wing oil cans."

...

...

That's your target market?!?!

Who are these people???

Where did they get $300 to pay for a rusty oil can???

The fact that people with this kind of taste and disposable income exist in this God-forsaken land renders me utterly speechless. And then I die laughing. Oh, I will miss that fifteen seconds of each American Pickers episode. It always makes the other 2805 seconds totally worth it.

This is Frank and his beloved oil cans.

A Proper Tea

I’m not the tea party type. Lace gloves make no sense, tea has never been comforting or satisfying, and I believe sandwiches should not be finger foods, they should be foot longs. Growing up, my favorite color was olive green (the kind found in camo), my favorite pants were two sizes too big, and my single greatest joy was showing up the guys in… everything. Sitting and chatting with the girls over a steaming brew with little dried out biscuits sounded rather like punishment or at least a waste of a Saturday better spent looting, pillaging, or otherwise pirating.

But somehow, the tomboy got herself put in charge of the Ladies Spring Tea at church.

This evening I am off to purchase lace doilies, fake crystal bowls, and bright table clothes. I will spend some night soon figuring out how to make tissue paper flowers. (God help me.) Cute little scentsy door prizes need to be acquired soon as well. I will decorate with flowers and ribbons and glitter. I will set plates with little tarts, adorable cookies, and bite size cucumber sandwiches. I will play Celtic stringed hymns in the background with little bunny slides flashing on the power point screens.

And a little part of me will die inside.

Only to be reanimated Friday evening as I kick dirt, swing a bat, masticate unsightly amounts of Big League Chew, and throw like anything but a girl.

Because God made me a woman, and then He made me an athlete.