How to Have A Morning

Wake up at 3:00am. Roll first on your right side, then on your left side, then your right side again. Recognize, even in your bleary state that those are lyrics from mewithoutyou. Try to return to sleep. Fail. As the alarm "waca waca's" a beckoning call at 4:30 sit up (it's not graceful, but no one is awake to judge). Realize that your right ear is completely plugged. Shake your head, amazed, that no one told you pregnancy induces deafness. Determine to write a book for all young women after you, explaining the truth about pregnancy. With a sigh, realize this will probably bring the world's population boom to a staggering halt. Can't have that on your head.

In the process of getting ready, realize that you have no clothes that fit, and so determine to rescue a work appropriate outfit from the washing machine. In the dark, forget you put up the gate for Noah, find it with your shins, nearly tumble head first down eighteen stairs into the basement. Express gratitude to your Maker that you and Hannah are not now dead. Hurrah!

Complete the getting ready process, scoop up your sleeping boy, and head out for Nana's house. Stop to get gas. This is not relevant to the process of Having A Morning, but will perhaps seem an ironic reference point in the future. And it's cheap! Woohoo!

Drop off your boy, kiss him and request he behave as best he can. Realize that you rather need to go to the restroom, but determine that getting on the road and getting to work is far more important. It can wait.

Close to the freeway entrance notice that the temperature gauge on your Subaru is reading rather high. Flip the heater on high, and comfort yourself: it always goes down once you get moving. Drive. Watch the gauge climb. Pray. Pray hard. Hear a football commentator in your head: "She's at the yellow... she's at the orange... she's in the red... BREAK DOWN!" Push on the gas and get no response. Crank the wheel with all your might to navigate the sputtering Behemoth off to the shoulder. Smoke will pour out of every crevice in your car. It will smell terrible, and probably give your unborn child cancer. But it's kind of pretty.

Did you mention it's snowing now? Full on blizzard? Can't leave these important details out.

And you still really need to go to the restroom. Just not on the side of the freeway in a blizzard illuminated by the scowling headlights of oncoming mac trucks and your own trusty flashers. ... You can't find the flashers? Well, there's only one thing to do: scream. When no flashers turn on, scream again, just in case they didn't hear you the first time. Whimper.

Call your husband. Put on your calm, wise, optimistic voice. Ask him very kindly what you should do. Smile and nod often; because people can hear a good attitude and a happy demeanor through the phone. (Stop almost crying!) Be very grateful to your Defender that you have a liter of water in the backseat. Listen as your husband instructs you to pop the hood, poor said water into the coolant tank, let the whole thing cool for five minutes, and then try to limp it off the freeway. Pretend you are not utterly terrified by every step in the process he just outlined. Wish him goodbye (hopefully, not forever), climb your nine month pregnant self over the center console to get out on the passenger side so as not to be flattened by early morning traffic, and then remember the hood-popper thing is inside the vehicle. Climb back over the center console, pop the hood, climb again, and stand to face your smokey Suba in the snow.

It is now snowing heavily. And it is cold. And you still need to use the restroom.

Locate coolant tank. Unscrew cap. Do not get sprayed in the face by boiling coolant. Do be very thankful for that point. Empty a liter of water into the tank. Realize it is not enough. Sigh. Climb back over the center console once again, start up the car, pull into traffic, and start praying. Hard. Manage to limp the traitor vehicle to your parking spot across from the train stop. As you stop, ridiculous amounts of smoke will pour out again. And the lights will not turn off. Oh, you can try, try all day if you want, those buggers are staying on.

Notice how haunted your car seems with the snow swirling down around it, smoke billowing from under its hood, the rebellious lights eerily glowing in the night. Suppose that if your car is haunted that would make you the ghost. That can't be right: ghosts don't have to go to the bathroom really badly. Understand that the only other reasonable option is that while owned by you here on earth, this car is the property of the anti-christ in the spiritual realm. Consider a nickname for the demonic Subaru: the anti-christ mobile. No, that's not very catchy. The Beast Wagon! Haha, Beast Wagon. Think yourself very clever. Pray for the demolition of your pride.

Walk through the driving snow to your train, climb aboard. Despite the fact that you are pregnant out to here, no one will offer you a seat.

Have contractions.

Put on a face of deep discomfort, even moan a little and hold your belly. No one will offer you a seat. Curse them. Curse them, we hates them! (Turn into gollum in your mind. See yourself shrinking, getting skinny and vile.)

Pray. Pray hard. Pray that your worldly, diabolical self will go up in smoke. Smoke. Haha. Think yourself very clever. Pray for the demolition of your pride.

Arrive at work: still deaf, still needing to go to the restroom, smelling of engine and forest fire, still contracting. Wonder what exactly you are going to do at the end of the day (or if you go into labor). The Beast Wagon is parked fifteen minutes away, filled with all manner of demonic intentions. Don't care. Really, don't. "For who of you can add a minute to his life by worrying." Just have some breakfast, drink some cool water, trust in Your King of Glory, and for goodness sake, woman, go use the restroom!

The Dog Park

Initially, we bought an English Bulldog with visions in our head of our lazy, lumpy hound laying idly on the couch all day, only moving to begrudgingly trudge to his food dish. In our naivety, we didn't realize that putting an 'Olde' in front of 'English Bulldog', turns the sluggish pooch into a hyperactive, attention-hungry, hihihihilovemelovemeloveme assault on the senses. We do love him so much, but it has been a learning process. Expectations rarely match reality.

With me being pregnant out to here (envision my arm fully extended away from belly), the husband working, in school full time, and doing clinicals, and a Noah discovering the world is amazing (in a danger around every corner kind of way), Dumpster has been somewhat neglected. I can't wrangle his bulk well enough to make walks safe, so Justin has to steal 10-15 minutes a night to run him around in the back yard. We're trying to make life fair for him (and we continually remind him that other dogs as endearingly offensive as himself have to sleep outside in the cold instead of on a fluffy, warm couch [what's left of our fluffy, warm couch]), but my first born, human child takes precedence.

On Saturday, as a treat, we loaded up the family and took Dumpy to the dog park. We'd never tried this before, so we were somewhat unprepared. Dumpster didn't seem to care. He LOVED it. There were at least 12 other dogs there running around, and he could not get off the leash fast enough to go make friends. This is problem number one with our beloved bully: he thinks everyone in the universe wants to be his best friend, so he just strolls right up and introduces himself. (In the same way that a monster truck strolls up to a sedan in a demolition derby.) Someone had brought a herd of little yorkies, who were incredibly well-behaved. They trotted nobly by their master as he strolled around the perimeter of the park. Until Dumpster went to say hi that is... Just picture a big fuzzy white bowling ball, and a bunch of terrified, yipping, bowling pins.

The other problem with our Dumpy is he thinks he is exactly the same as every other dog. He thinks he is just as big as the Great Dane. He thinks he is just as fast and tireless as the hound. He believes himself to be as well-groomed and well-mannered as the little yorkies. He ran and played more than any over-sized bulldog probably ever has. I would love to see the self-image Dumpy has of himself. I imagine it looks something like this: 

                      

In reality, once we got him home, this is how our bully looked for the rest of the day... and even part of the next day: 

Not to mention the smell. Dumpster had at least ten other dog's drool on him, not to mention his own delightful bouquet. Imagine wet dog, mixed with raw trout, and a touch of a tummy ache. Voila, Ode de Dumpy.

Preparation for Labor

A dear friend loaned me a Lamaze video series when we first got pregnant after she found out I wanted to deliver naturally. I can’t explain this compulsion to needlessly endure pain. Perhaps it was fear of a giant needle being excruciatingly laced under the metalwork in my spine and through inches (which might as well be miles) of scar tissue. Perhaps I liked the idea of being able to lilt and skip about after pushing out what my doctor assured me was a “hunky” baby. The most likely reason (and this says far too much about the kind of person I am) is perhaps I just wanted everyone to gape at how tough I am, to be impressed. I wanted to win. There’s no medal in labor and delivery... But if there was it surely didn’t go to those women who got an epidural at a 3.

Yes, I may just be that stupid at times.

I learned many things from the video classes. I learned the about a high water break versus a gush. I learned the three breathing techniques, which accompanied each phase of labor. I learned about dilation, effacement, focus objects, forceps, C-sections, and a host of other concerning paraphernalia that they don't tell you about until after you're lugging around your precious bundle.

I'm now trying to recall these lessons because, although I am still 23 days away from Baby Hannah's due date, I go to bed each night hopeful that I will awaken in a pool of amniotic fluid (wow, that's quite the eww), and deliver my little 6 pound bundle (yeah right) an hour later. As you may imagine, mornings tend to hold a great deal of disappointment.

I don't remember that much. I remember the breathing patterns still... 'cause yeah, those really work. I remember that they APGAR your baby after birth... so we can be defined first in life by a number instead of a smiley face or frowny face. But mostly I realized that there is no knowing what will be at the hospital, when you first see your child, or for the next twenty-six years. So while prepping is good, the best defense against the insurmountable unknown is a laugh, a love, and an attitude problem.

Thirty Minutes

There is a great deal of whining, and fussing, and otherwise grumping about our house this week. The, for the moment, littlest Ririe is teething and has a nasty little cold. It's difficult to explain what the general unhappiness of a child does to his mother. It's exhausting, heart-breaking, frustrating, utterly grrrsome. Said mother being the size of a walrus with a glandular problem, doesn't help. The husband, realizing that my nerves were shot and my patience was thin, offered to take the Little Sicko, so I could have thirty minutes to myself. I just laughed.

What would I do with thirty selfish minutes? Take an uninterrupted shower? Make something sugary, delicious (and at this point nauseating)? Lay in bed trying to watch old episodes of "What Not to Wear", while my daughter does the marimba against my lungs? None of these seems like as good an option as reading The Monster at the End of this Book for the two hundredth time, or catching my wobbly walker and wiping his belligerent little nose. (FYI: he knows where his nose is now. It's all coming together.)

I worry about being a good mom. I wonder if I'm teaching him enough and the right things at the right times. I question my choice as I drive to work each day. I pray that I am patient enough, firm enough, fun enough. It's hard being imperfect (dreadfully imperfect) when you have another life in your hands.

But it's a little easier... everything is a little easier... when you have a wonderful Little Man.

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."