Currently {Day Before September 2023 Edition}

Reading: nothing! I don’t think I’ve ever said that in one of these posts. I am reading NOTHING!!!

Wearing: my jammies. At this moment I’m in bed Wednesday night. 

Cooking: Chicken Zucchini Casserole .

Sick of: zucchini.

Suffering from: heart burn. 

Annoyed by: excessive use of the ‘F’ word. I feel like it’s becoming the new “um.” It’s a filler word with no purpose. 

Wanting: one more bedroom in our house.

Making: lots of jam! I canned 30 jars on Monday.

Dreading: three four-day school weeks in a row. 

Sad about: trials some of my friends are going through. Cancer, ailing parents, loss of loved ones, faith crises, and more. 

Embarrassed by: my phone starting to play a Marco Polo very loudly in the middle of a restaurant today in which I was describing (in great detail) my trip to Walmart for Shannon. Now everyone in Cup Bop knows I bought toenail clippers, mascara, and allergy medication. 

Happy about: any form of cooler weather. 

Looking forward to: a five-day school week sometime in the middle of September.

Saying: “We’ll see what happens.” I just realized this week how often I say that. Many, many times a day. 

Wishing: I could teleport. But with that skill, I would like to be able to take things and/or people with me. 

Feeling: okay. I’m keeping a mood log since I recently changed medications. So far, so good. 

Learning: how to navigate my new (to me) phone. I held on to the home button for as long as possible (with my iPhone 8), and then adopted my mom’s old iPhone 11 recently with the facial recognition. I dreaded it, but now that I’m used to it, I’m not hating it. Other than having to swipe up to close all my apps.

Laughing about: my nephew falling sleep whilst using my other nephew’s butt for a pillow.

And look how he’s just hanging off the couch all hazardous like (this is the twins’ sleeping couch at grandma’s house. They sleep on it every Sunday). 

Missing: giving birth. I don’t want to ever do pregnancy again, but I liked the birthing part. I also miss snuggling newborns, but I don’t want to raise any more humans. 

Eating: half a Crumbl cookie and saving the other half for tomorrow. 

Update: It's now "tomorrow" (7:38 am, and I will not tell you whether the other half of my cookie still exists)

Buying: butter, which is on sale at Smith’s (via digital coupon - limit 5) for $1.99. Yes, I am a walking grocery ad.

Procrastinating: making orthodontist appointments for three of my kids.

Craving: egg McMuffins. I’m going through a thing right now.

Sidenote: last week my driver’s side window broke (aka: the “drive-thru” window). Not the glass, luckily, but something down inside the door. I was rolling up my window when it made a loud pop (scared me to death!) and then my window was stuck about four inches down. Then, while I was driving Zoe and Eva to school, the window suddenly fell down into the door, and I was stuck with a fully unrolled window. 

Worried about: my kids. They are going to have to do something hard soon (a long story for another post), and I’m worried about how it will go.

Trying: to be nice to and think good thoughts about a certain individual I really, really struggle with. 

Listening to: my older children getting ready for school (opening and closing cabinets, filling their water bottles with ice, going up and down the stairs, etc) (it’s now Thursday morning, and I think I need an egg McMuffin). 

Sidenote: Daisy is so loud in the morning. She slams every door she touches and stomps everywhere she walks. I often ask her to try and be quieter, and she always claims she is being quiet.

Smelling: instant oatmeal (made by Daisy with a slam of the microwave door). 

Needing: to deep clean Zoe and Eva’s room for the 423rd time this year. 

Thankful for: good friends who love me even when I suck. 

September Writing Challenge 2023

Since 2018, I've done a September writing challenge each year. I make a list of 35 writing prompts (one or two words) and use them as my inspiration for my blog for the whole month. Ideally, I would write and post something every day for the entire month, but I don't put quite that much pressure on myself. Instead, I draw from the prompts and do as many as I am able to. 

This is one of my favorite blog traditions. As always, feel free to use this list and join me (or make a list of your own)! I don’t follow them in order because that’s too hard (numerical order ain’t the bossa me!) Also, there are more prompts than days of the month because some just don’t work out.

Here is the list for 2023:

1. Nerd Alert

2. Adjectives

3. Emotion

4. He Said/She Said

5. Watch

6. Things on a Thursday

7. Jewelry

8. Menu

9. Vocabulary

10. Experience

11. One Year Ago

12. Rewind

13. Purchase

14. Renew

15. Create

16. Success

17. Failure

18. Deal

19. Ah ha!

20. Problem

21. Happy Accident

22. After Hours

23. Try It

24. Communication

25. Ten Photos

26. Weekend

27. Menu

28. To Do List

29. Back in the Day

30. Laughter

31. Change

32. Animal

33. Old School

34. Listening

35. Snacks

The adventure begins Friday!

It’s almost September! (and ten other random facts)

Fact #1: If I spill on my Sunday clothes before church, I just have to play it as it lies. There’s no time to address my own clothing by the time I have everyone dressed and fed and ready to leave. I pretty much always have something on my dress by the time I get to church. Last week it was lipstick. I dropped it, it hit my chest on the way down, and I just had to go with it. Today is still to be determined as I’m not in my Sunday clothes yet.

Fact #2: Eva likes to pick out my accessories.

Zoe gave me these earrings for Christmas, and yes, I do wear them when requested.

Fact #3: All of my babies have gone through phases where, out of desperation, I’ve had to put them in the car and drive around for hours to get them to sleep. I don’t have to do that anymore for sleep purposes, but now I have a kid who needs to be driven around listening to Diary of Wimpy Kid to keep calm. It dawned on me the other day that this practice is very familiar. 

Fact #4: The other day I did something I’ve been procrastinating for a while - I deleted all the people from my contacts who have passed away. There’s no reason to keep their info, but I’ve always felt weird about it, like deleting their phone numbers makes them more dead or something. I deleted both my grandmas, Scotty’s grandma, my friend Sandy, my brother-in-law Doug, my brother James, and a few people from my ward. I was a little surprised how many of my contacts had passed on. 

Fact #5: I am a very active dreamer. My mind is always buzzing, whether I’m awake or asleep (Scotty is the opposite. He never dreams). Lately I’ve been giving lectures in my dreams pretty regularly, so when I wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I continue my speeches as I make my way to the toilet because I’m still incoherent, and I kind of believe, in those moments, that I’m a genius, and I need to preserve my work. The other night, my lecture was about not leaving taco meat in bowls overnight on the counter. My subconscious? She ain’t wrong. I’m just sayin.

Fact #6: I found Snoop cereal on clearance at Walmart last week, and when you find Snoop Dogg’s cereal on clearance, you have to get some. You just have to (kind of like when Snoop Dogg writes a cookbook, and you have to send a copy to your friends).

Fact #7: I’ve always wanted to collect Lego mini figures (see fact #7), and I’ve always had a crush on Robin Hood, so I was rendered speechless when Nicky recently announced that he had a gift for me, and he presented me with this:

Favorite son. No question.

Fact #8: Last week before school started, I was sitting in my backyard under a tree watching my kids play with water balloons, contemplating my promising future when my chair suddenly gave up on me.

I laid there staring up at the tree branches for about ten minutes before attempting to roll off the debris and upright myself. My pride? Hurt. My self-esteem? Lowered. My torso? Severely scratched and bleeding from the sharp plastic. 

Fact #9: Every morning when I wake up, I look like a washed up 80’s rockstar. 

Fact #10: Today I am officially giving up soda… again. It’s gonna be a long Sabbath without my post-church juice. 

Things the Kids Say: Episode 26

 "I would rather be a bird than a cat because I don't want any baby cats sucking on my nipples."

-Eva

Baby lesser goldfinch in our yard last week

(does not breast feed)

——-

"I need to get buff so I can lift (my cousin) Delilah (age 2). She weighs, like, eight pounds!"

-Eva

——-

Zoe: How tall is the average fifth grader?

Me: I don't know, but Doctor (pediatrician) can tell us!

Zoe: Oh! Is she still alive?

——-

"I didn't know that old people could be smart. I thought all they cared about was having fun with their grandkids and telling everyone that Jesus is real!"

-Zoe

Grandparents having fun with their grandkids

(even though Delilah is so heavy)

——-

"Can we go shopping at a store that has new stuff instead of the store that has stuff people have already owned?"

-Zoe

——-

"Mom, did you know that you could get plastic surgery to make all your lumps go away?"

-Zoe

——-

"I never knew how attractive Diary of a Wimpy Kid was."

-Zoe

——-

"I'm going to invent a french fry flavored snow cone."

-Zoe

——-

“No one likes it when grown people does flirtin’!”

-Zoe

Doing flirtin'

—-

Eva: I made a new best friend today!

Me: That’s great! What’s your new best friend’s name?

Eva: I don’t know, but she said I can call her Dunkin Donuts.

——-

Daisy: Mom, can we sue the school?

(She asks me this everyday based on whatever complaints she has at the time)

Me: [explains the complexities of “suing”]

Daisy: Oh, I just thought suing meant writing them an angry email. 

Things I have to say about…

(I wrote this two weeks ago and never posted it, so it’s a little outdated, but I threw in some updates)

…Pinterest

Ever look at your recipe board on Pinterest and wonder who you were when you pinned that? There was a day I became intrigued by tuna melts. I’ve never had one because they’ve never sounded good to me. And yet… one day I saved a bunch of tuna melt recipes, and then a year later I deleted all of them without trying any. What was I going through when I became intrigued by hot tuna?

—————

My relationship with Pinterest is the following:

80% recipes

6% bulletin board ideas

3% perler bead patterns

4% writing prompts

3% books

1% gift ideas

1% activities for the kids

1% garden ideas

1% other (as in I’ve pinned 1 stretching routine, 2 hair tutorials, and 3 miscellaneous things I titled “great ideas”)

…brain fog

My brain? Is fried. 

Here are some of the ways my brain has failed me recently:

I bought 8 tickets for Zoe’s musical for a Thursday. That Monday, I randomly looked at my email confirmation and the tickets were actually for THAT NIGHT. Plus I had three more tickets for Monday… which I bought intentionally for Monday. Which meant I had 11 tickets for Monday and had no idea! I had to contact everyone that was coming on Thursday to see if they could go “tonight” instead. Can you imagine if I’d shown up with a party of 8 on Thursday night? The shows were all sold out, so we would have just had to leave. It was dumb luck that I even caught the error.

When I drove to my dad’s house for my brother’s memorial service, I missed the turn-off and drove 30 miles in the wrong direction before I realized I was in the wrong place. That means I drove an extra 60 miles by the time I went 30 miles out and 30 miles back to the turn off.

The other day I was driving to Scotty’s work to pick him up, and instead of going to his work, I mindlessly got on the freeway and started driving to some unknown destination. 

I’ve forgotten some basic rules to some of the board games we play all the time, and I keep getting called out for a bunch of really bizarre actions. It’s like I’m just making up the rules of the game as I go.

Last week when I got home from church I was walking around my house barefoot and I had no memory of putting shoes on for church. I started to worry that I’d forgotten to wear shoes, but I didn’t think I’d go that far (would I?) I concluded that I must’ve worn my flip flops because I slip them on and off all summer without even thinking about it. So I asked Scotty, “Do you know if I wore my flip flops to church?” and he said, “I think you did.” It doesn’t really matter that I wore flip flops to church, but the fact that I couldn’t remember what footwear I wore to church really bothers me, and, in my right mind, I never would have worn those particular flip flops to church. They are old, nasty, and smelly, and they are compressed in the shape of my foot from years of wear. 

I’ve been missing exits, losing my car keys, forgetting events, forgetting to change the laundry (but also going to change the laundry and finding that I’ve already changed it), forgetting where I’m going when I’m halfway there, ordering stuff online but never completing the purchase, and blanking out in the middle of sentences. I do all of these things on occasion, but right now I’m doing them with very high frequency. I’m also really clumsy. I almost broke my hand the other day, and about half an hour after that, I sliced my finger with a knife.

Update: I talked to my doctor last week, and she lowered my dose of antidepressants and added an ADHD medication. I’m hoping for good things, but I hate trying to interpret the effectiveness of medication. 

…weather

We’ve had some wild weather here lately. The sunflowers in my backyard that were supposed to be 4-6’ tall but ended up 10-12’ tall were knocked down from wind and rain. When they fell, their roots lifted up our garden box. After the storms, I went outside to assess the situation and see if we could salvage them or if we needed to take them out. I decided to try standing them back up and holding them up with twine tied to the fence. 

I hope they’ll be okay, because they were just starting to bloom, and I really wanted to see them in their prime.

Update: I was very shocked to find that once I tied the flowers up, they were able to stabilize themselves, and they are now standing on their own! There were two sunflowers I didn’t tie up because they were still standing, and they ended up breaking and falling over. It’s actually been really fascinating to watch the sunflowers heal. 

—————

In other garden news, we are starting to harvest tomatoes. We’ve had lots of cucumbers. The zucchini and squash are up to their usual antics - meaning we either have ten or none, there is nothing in between. We have a crenshaw melon on the vine, but it looks funky so we’re not sure if it will be edible in the end. We have a few pumpkins, and our pumpkin vines have taken over a section of the garden that we now can’t walk through, so I’m hoping there are more pumpkins hiding in there that we can’t see yet. Our corn exists, but it fails every year, so we’re just planning on that happening again, but we’ll see. We grew potatoes for the first time this year, and they are ready! And… everything smells like mint.

Update: we got 8 half-length, pathetic ears of corn, and they were delicious!

Shake It Up

I have a complicated relationship with shakes. It started in childhood when I developed Shake Anxiety. This is a condition wherein you panic when it’s time to choose a shake flavor. There are so many options and combinations, but at the same time, you don’t wanna choose too many mix-ins because a shake can go from $4 to $7 just because you asked for a few mini marshmallows. You have to be careful not to go too “specialty” because “specialty” shakes are up in the college tuition zone. The pressure is just too high! And with all the shakes I've tried in my life, I've never really found the flavor - my flavor (except for the rocky road shake at Dairy Keen. That's Keen, not to be confused with Queen. I don't know what keen is, but I like their food, so I just go with it, and it's the only place I am secure with ordering a shake). 

Another thing that makes my relationship with shakes complicated is that I always feel sick when I eat them. They are so deceiving in their sizing! A small shake, say 12 ounces, usually looks too little, but then I get one, and 6 ounces in, I start to feel yucky. Not “lactose intolerant yucky,” but the yucky that comes simply from overindulgence (last year I went off dairy at the request of my doctor, and I am pleased to say I don’t believe I am lactose intolerant! It was the happiest thing to discover about myself! Second happiest discovery is that I’m also not gluten intolerant!) 

Now don’t get me wrong! This girl can eat a ton of crap, so it’s not a matter of having made healthy choices throughout my life and not being able to handle my junk food. Shakes are an anomaly. Hot chocolate is another, and I love hot chocolate! But I have to keep my cocoa under 6 ounces.

Suffice it to say, I haven’t been much of a shake eater in my 39 years. However, right after I graduated high school, I started working at the local dairy, and we served shakes. Learning to make shakes was quite daunting. We used styrofoam cups, and the mixer would often puncture the cups. Because of this, most employees were hesitant to really get a good mix and get the ingredients way down to the bottom. We all secretly dreaded being asked to make shakes and would employ sneaky tactics to get out of it, such as pretending to be busy with something else, or yelling, “I did the last one! It’s your turn!” 

With time, my shake making skills improved, and customers started requesting me specifically to make their shakes. I didn’t mean to get good at it! I never wanted to be the shake maker, but there was also something very self-esteem building about being requested. So I tried to make the best of it. This helped me recover from my previous job at a donut shop where customers specifically requested that I not make their cappuccinos or iced coffees because, apparently, I sucked at it (future employers stalking my blog, take note). 

While I worked at the dairy, I pretty much had unlimited access to ice cream, so sometimes I would make myself a little mini shake - about 4 ounces - and that was a nice treat! Right size, right price, and a lot less anxiety.

But that was 20 years ago, and now my Shake Anxiety is going full throttle.

So why am I bringing this up? Because I had a shake today, and as always, I didn’t know what flavor to get, so when it was my turn to state my choice, I panic ordered, “Raspberry Rice Krispy!” I’ve never seen Rice Krispies on a shake menu before, and a month ago, I never would have considered ordering Rice Krispies in a shake. But I recently had a cereal and ice cream experience. I took my kids to Cold Stone, and Eva ordered cotton candy ice cream with Fruity Pebbles (quick note that Cold Stone gives me the same anxiety as shakes). As one would predict, Eva didn’t finish her creation, and she handed it to me with at least half still in the dish, so I started eating it. I would have assumed that cereal in ice cream would go soggy quickly, but I was surprised to find that it was still crunchy, and frankly, kind of delightful. I appreciate crunch in the right places. Crunch in ice cream? Yes to that! Eva’s ice cream opened a new door for me… a door that led to cereal in ice cream as a real possibility. Therefore, Raspberry Rice Krispy.

Would I order it again? Nah. 

But… the Rice Krispies were good. The crunch! There is potential there. 

So as I continue working on my Shake Anxiety, I can note that shakes are best (for me) in 4-6 ounce portions and possibly with Rice Krispies. I just don’t know what goes with the Rice Krispies, but I’ll be sure to report back if I find it!

Mom and Dad Til the End of Time

Back in May, Scotty and I went on a quick trip to Disneyland for our 20th Anniversary. In some ways, this made us feel young, wild, and carefree. But then when I saw the photos (like the one below), I was like, "Oh dear! We’re so old!" (said in Sultan voice)

The photos made me realize that, even when we don’t have kids with us, we are a mom and a dad. I mean, look at us!

I am such a mom! And Scotty is such a dad!

We were never supposed to be like this. We truly believed that we would always be cool and “with the times” (nevermind the fact that we weren't ever cool when we were actually young).

Here are some things that Scotty does that make him such a dad:

He wears an ugly hat to keep the sun off his head and neck.

He eats whatever our kids leave on their plates. 

When people drive fast up the street, he goes out on the porch and gives them the stink eye.

He tells dad jokes. Example:

Me: I’m going to run to the store and grab some milk.

Scotty: It would be faster if you drove.

He falls asleep anywhere, any time, and then he wakes up randomly and yells at everyone because he thinks they’re misbehaving, but they’re really just doing normal, non-sleeping things.

He has a dad bod.

He thinks everyone needs to be in bed by 8:00.

He yells at the neighbor’s dog from inside the house.

He pushes the lock button for the truck at least three times before he goes to bed.

He waves at everyone who drives by (as long as they are going the speed limit).

He digs coupons out of the garbage can.

He’s always telling us how much the cost of gas went up in the last 24 hours.

Here are some things I do that make me such a mom:

I ask my kids and all their friends if they are wearing sunscreen.

I answer to, “Mom!” even when it’s someone else’s kid.

I force everyone to eat my snacks.

I ask things like “Have you pooped today?” “Is there a chance you’ll start your period on vacation?” “Did you flush?” “Did you say thank you?” 

I think driving a mini van is a real treat.

I tell my kids that drinking water is the solution to every problem. 

I wear hideous knee-length shorts.

I went to high school with my kids’ friends’ moms. 

I have Bandaids stashed everywhere… kitchen drawer, wallet, glove box.

I stand outside of bathroom stalls and say, “Every last drop! Make sure you get EVERY. LAST. DROP!”

I’ve picked out my oldest children’s spouses. 

——-

There’s no getting away from it. We are what we are. Mom and Dad til the end of time.

Back to School Countdown

Ten things we did the week before school:

Went to parks

Went to Lagoon

Rode electric scooters

Did water balloons

Slept on the trampoline

Had friends over

Went golf ball hunting (grand total: 252)

Stayed overnight at a hotel with a water slide 

Had a back to school fashion show at Grandma’s

Went to Zootah

Nine things I want to do while my kids are at school:

Bake bread

Go to the gym

Take some of their stuff to the DI

Can tomatoes

Start doing puzzles again (I haven’t done one since the first week of March!)

Make raspberry jam

Listen to Les Mis loudly in the kitchen

Go to Cafe Rio with Christie

Start and finish a task without interruption. Any task will do!

Eight things we bought for back to school shopping:

Pikachu jackets (Zoe and Eva)

Nike and Adidas shoes (Nicky)

Squishmallow backpack (Eva)

High tops (Zoe)

Blue pants (Daisy)

Headbands (Zoe - who will never wear them due to sensory issues)

Winnie the Pooh shirt (Daisy)

DI hoodies (Nicky)

Seven classes my kids are taking:

Advanced Ceramics

Theatre

Choir

AP History

Social Dance

Seminary

Advanced Dance

Six things I don’t like about having my kids in school:

Bad influences

Hurt feelings

Scheduling appointments around school

Sickness

Getting invited to weird birthday parties

Mom guilt for enjoying time away from my kids

Five things I love about having my kids in school:

Having more structure/routine

Being able to run errands without kids and also without leaving them home to fight

They get to see friends everyday without me having to coordinate anything social

Having some alone time during the week (it took a really long time for me to learn that I need time alone. It’s crucial to my well-being)

Seeing them get excited about something they’ve learned or experienced 

Four grades my kids are in:

11th

8th

5th

3rd

Three schools my kids go to:

Elementary

Junior High

High School

Two things that are different this school year:

Daisy no longer has to wear uniforms 

Nicky can drive himself to his golf tournaments

One more day until school starts!

Things We've Done This Summer

Baptisms for the dead

Sidewalk chalk

DI shopping

Did not buy

In the Heights

Lagoon

We got season passports for Christmas

Out to lunch 

Way more times than I’ll ever tell you

Parks

Hanging out

Library

Three weeks of theatre camp

Girls camp

Lake days

Pick cherries

Mud run

Bike rides

Fireworks

Trips to Dollar Tree (the worst)

Bake

Camping in the backyard

Note that we took the TV with us

Temple open house

Movies

The Little Mermaid

Mission Impossible

Sound of Freedom

Elemental

Barbie

Go out for ice cream

Menchies

Cold Stone

Bowling

First time bowling with no tantrums

Paint fingernails 

Watch Lost

Work in the garden

Paint

Trampoline park

Pet store

Bath tub crayons 

"My ducky died cuz of mom"

(I don't know what this means, but I found it written on the tub one morning)

Baths in the backyard

Play with chickens

Sprinklers under the trampoline (trampoline is now dead)

Chores

Art projects

Board games

Saint George

Mount Pleasant

Slurpee runs

Make popsicles

Hit golf balls

Play in the rain

Summer break isn't over just yet, but I'm going to take a little blogging (and social media) break to reset before my kids go back to school. Sadly, I have to announce it somewhere public (like here), or I won't follow through. So farewell for just a little bit!