Photo-Off: Portrait in Red

Let's say you wanted to take a self portrait (featuring the color red) in the snow. Unsure of how you'd go about it? Lucky for you, I did just that earlier this week and am eager to share the fruits of my experience!

First step: Set up your tripod on your covered back deck (not that it's currently snowing or anything, but it just seems like a good idea to keep the camera on level ground and out of the weather).

Now you'll need a point of focus, so look around on said deck to find something to use as your stand in. Tromp with your focus object around to the far side of the deck (which has mountains in the background rather than the neighbor's house) and plonk it into the snow. Tromp back to the camera to adjust focus.



Next you'll have to figure out the desired height of your tripod. Make a few trips through the snow and back before getting it right. (Discard shovel at some point during this step.)



Decide it might just be easier to climb over the deck railing (and hope it holds) than slog through so much snow so many times. Adjust manual exposure settings a few times before getting them right. Have trouble with the remote shutter release. Wonder if this is working.



Decide that no, it isn't. Or at least not with the hood on. It looked way better in your head than it does in real life.

Continue to try to get a decent shot, stopping every five or six frames to climb over the railing and check the camera. Repeatedly stand too far to the left or right of the frame. Dab snow on your nose, and then later pinch it vigorously, to accentuate its redness in keeping with the theme of your portrait. End up with something like this as your best result:



Decide that it's way more fun to photograph your children, and ultimately submit this as your Photo-Off Challenge picture.



:-)


~RCH~

The alternative

Tres refuses to sit down when she eats -- even (or especially) when placed in a high chair. The girls and I were trying to coax her to sit at dinner last night. I pulled out the old standby, "Look, Tres, all the cool kids are sitting!" And then Uno jumped in:

"Hey Tres, if you don't sit down you won't go to heaven."

"If she never sits down, where will she go instead?" I asked, wondering if Uno had any concept of the traditional notions of heaven and hell.

"She'll go straight to JAIL!" she said.

So ... I guess that's a no, then, lol.


~RCH~

Santa Love

Here's my favorite pic from the past week of trying to capture the Christmas Spirit on film. It's Photoshopped nearly to death, as you can see, but it cried out for a vintage treatment. (And plus I cut off Tres's feet and Santa's hat in the original and had to "glue" on those parts from another, much less cute photo to make it full frame.)




~RCH~

Photo-Off: 'Tis the Season

I'm submitting two photos for my Photo-Off Challenge this week, because I am (as usual) indecisive like that. The first one is an abstract of our lovely Christmas tree, the first non-artificial one I've had since I was a kid (not that you can tell from the photo, but still).


Nikon D70 - 85mm fixed lens; 1/15 at f/5.6; ISO 1100

Kind of festive, right?

The next one is sooooooo close to being a fabulous shot ... but it isn't. It's of Dos looking at our tree with a priceless expression -- but the particular thing she's looking at (a gold ornament) is obscured by some very out-of-focus branches. It looks instead like she's gazing in wonder at a big green rectangular blob. I wish this were the sort of shot I could fix and recreate, but 4yo models don't take direction well enough for that. Or, at least my 4yo doesn't.


Nikon D70 - 85mm fixed lens; 1/100 at f/1.8; ISO 1400

The point of these challenges is to push myself, to break through the same ol' same old, and to learn new things about photography. One thing I've learned from this challenge, and from that second photo in particular, is that I need to prepare for those perfect moments far more carefully. I couldn't have known she'd make that sweet face, but I should have noticed the lack of lights and ornaments in that half of the shot. I should have put some extras on, or moved a branch or two out of the way. Fabulous pictures happen by luck, absolutely, but not just luck.

Your thoughts, class...? :-)

I do have another photo to share, but it required some Photoshopping (and then I really went to town with the Photoshopping, lol) so it doesn't count as a Challenge picture. But if I get a little time tomorrow, I'll try to post that one too.


~RCH~

Happy Good Hard Worker Doctor Day!

From Uno, who is always trying to invent reasons to have a party.

I told her that, while I'm sure Daddy would love a party (complete with her trademark hors d'oeuvres of potato chips and snack cheese in paper bowls) for being such a hard worker, what he'd probably like more is a clean house to come home to. So maybe she could help me out with that.

She harrumphed and walked away.

Scenes from our most recent affair, the Happy Hey Mom Don't Worry About It, Just Sleep In party, which they had ready for me when I woke up Tuesday morning:









They've been cracking me up a lot lately. Here are a few Quote Book worthy episodes from the last week for your enjoyment:

No. 1

Uno & Dos stayed with my parents while I was in Phoenix; they took the girls to the town Christmas parade on Friday night, at which they saw Santa Claus. All the way home, my mom reports, they debated which list each girl might be on: Dos is fairly convinced she's on the Nice list. Uno figures it could go either way for her.

No. 2

Uno told me on the phone that she had devised a plan to take care of the neighbor's cat. (She's terrified of cats, this one has sharp claws, and it's always in our yard.) Step one: Get a fake mouse and put it in the driveway. Step two: The cat will come put his claws in the mouse; his claws will get stuck, leaving him incapacitated. Step three: Uno will hit him on the head with a shovel and then quickly put him back in the neighbor's yard. (Don't worry that she'll grow up to be a serial killer who got her start torturing cats; she's just been watching too much Tom & Jerry.)

No. 3

When Tres and I got home, we hung out at my parents' house for the big family Sunday dinner. Uno used the opportunity to wield her power over all the cousins in putting on a show: As the grownups visited in the living room, I could hear Madam Director ordering all the other kids around; occasionally she'd come to me to ask how to spell a word, which she'd then scribble madly on a white board. At one point I heard her say, in her best (unintentional) impersonation of a punchy 40s movie star, "Hey Caleb, can ya' read? Here's your lines! ...Dos! You just sound it out!"

No. 4

Sibling rivalry, as done by Uno and Dos during lunch the other day:

UNO: ...Well, at my school we have computers!

DOS: At my school we get snacks!

UNO: At my school we learn to read!

DOS: At my school we learned all the way to the letter Z!

UNO: At my school we have recess!

DOS: At my school we play all the time!

UNO: Yeah, well today at my school we jumped off the roof and flied!

DOS: At my school, we jumped off the roof and DOUBLE FLIED!!

Take that, suckas! :-)


~RCH~

Photo-Off Challenge: Architecture

I'm not very good at photographing buildings. I'm just not. I don't have that particular gift that can make the prosaic details (or even interesting ones on older buildings) worth a second look. I tried: I shot houses; the old ZCMI / bank / current hardware store in our town; "deconstructed" architecture in the form of abandonned, crumbling barns and farm houses.... Eh. Nothing.

When I asked DH if he knew of any interesting buildings or stone work anywhere, he suggested an old dam that's way out in the country north and west of here. So I loaded up the girls and we went for a drive! This turned out to be the most interesting photo of the week:

Dam It!



Those of you who can and do photograph architecture well, spill your secrets! I tried and tried, but I kept hitting that proverbial brick wall. Ha, ha. ;-)

Mary, your next challenge is ... lights! You should have plenty of holiday subjects, if that appeals to you, but feel free to go in a different direction if your heart leads you elsewhere. As always, I look forward to your results! :-)


~RCH~

Oh, and PS!

Very quickly, as I need to change a stinky diaper: Tres took her first steps late Monday night! Accidentally, of course; she began by holding on to the entertainment center, and when that ended she kept going for two more steps before collapsing.

I tried to make her reenact the moment for DH tonight, and she took three steps before falling over! Give her a few more days of practice and she'll have this whole walking thing down pat.

Yay Tresy! :-)


~RCH~

Well hey, look at that! It's December.

I always miss the best photo ops. I was rushing to get the girls out the door for their karate lesson at 4pm this afternoon, and as soon as I pulled out the driveway and headed down the street I saw it: A strong golden slant of light coming from the only break in a gloomy, cloudy sky shining (I kid you not) directly on the white steeple of the church down the street. So pretty! I didn't have my camera with me and the girls were already very close to being late, so I did the best I could. I dropped them off quickly and sped back home to grab the Nikon -- but of course by the time I had all my gear, the light was gone.

*Sigh!*

I drove around a while, hoping for another dramatic break in the clouds somewhere. No luck. Oh well. I did still manage to get a pretty shot or two, but nothing like what I'd hoped for.



I got back to karate about half way through their lesson. They had finished practicing their forms and were on to a rousing game of Dragon, Dragon, What Time Is It? It's sort of like Mother May I, as I remember it: One person (the dragon) stands at the front, her back turned to the others, while they chant "dragon, dragon, what time is it?" in unison. She replies three o'clock (or whatever) and they have to move forward three paces in the predetermined karate stance (chicken kicks seems to be a favorite). When they get close enough, the dragon replies "Dinner time!" and chases them all back to the other side of the room.



When we got home from karate, we realized our water had been shut off. The city has been tearing up the underground water pipes for the last two months or so, and while they've been working all around us nearly the whole time, they have only now begun work on our particular street. It would have been nice to have had some warning -- a little note tucked in the door yesterday, or even a knock at the door today before they got started: "Hey, FYI we're cutting off vital services for a few hours. Hope you don't mind!" -- but no.

GRRRRRRRR.

It's back on now, and we've stocked up on bottled water for the inevitable days of continued incompetence before they move on to the next street, but just.... UGH.

In other news, my little weekend trip to Phoenix is coming up! I feel like I have all sorts of things to do to get ready, but when I sit down and actually try to do some of it, I experience a mental block; all I want to focus on is the fun I'll have, not the work it'll take to get there. I am overwhelmed and useless. I should probably be doing some of it now, in fact, lol.

Welp. I guess I'll do that, then. :-)


~RCH~

Emotional Porn

So apparently the movie Twilight, based on the Stephanie Meyer teen-loves-vampire book, opens tonight. (Or tomorrow. At midnight, anyway, according to the news reports of the throngs already lining up in prom dresses -- ??? -- to go see it.)

I have to admit that I read the book. I knew nothing of the hype (easy to miss up here in farm country, where my only friends are the 5-and-under set) when my cute SIL loaned it to me. "I don't know what you'll think," she said. "I thought it was only okay, but plenty of women in my neighborhood are convinced it's The Best Book Ever; they totally have a testimony that Twilight is True." With that rousing endorsement, I took it home and began reading.

I guess it was a page-turner; I kept turning the pages. It only took me a few days to get through it -- which is impressive, considering how little time or mental energy I have for reading these days. But I finished the book with a feeling of profound irritation: First of all, I kept waiting for Edward's "family" to eat Bella, lol. Some of them (don't ask me to remember the names; it's been a while and nothing really stuck) glowered suspiciously at her from their seats in the high school cafeteria nearly the entire book, ultimately for no good reason. What a wasted set up. Secondly, the real danger, climax, and denouement.... Well, it was just lame. "Really? That's it?" I thought at the time. "That's all?" Yes, apparently that was all.

My primary irritation, however, stemmed from the frustration that real life just isn't like that. ("What," my brother asked, "you mean there aren't really vegetarian teenage vampires roaming the Northwest? I'm shocked!") No, perfect, brilliant, mysterious, gorgeously bright and sparkly boys do not fall for dull and unremarkable girls. It's the same irritation I feel after watching certain romantic comedies: You get all grinny and stupid as the credits roll -- awww, wasn't that sweet? -- and then the sugar high ends and you feel disgusted with yourself for having bought into such cheesy tripe.

I've had a difficult time articulating that sentiment for some reason, but I came across a term that describes it perfectly: Emotional porn. Twilight, romance novels in general (whether explicit or not), and a specific subset of chick flicks and RomComs exploit the universal desire for emotional connection, but in a way that is neither realistic nor healthy if one were to base or judge her own relationships on them. Just as visual porn can warp men's views of what real women are, should be, or behave like, emotional porn gives women a warped sense of how a good man should behave and of what it is to be in love ("love means being stalked by a controlling -- oh, I mean 'protective' -- boyfriend who watches you while you sleep! How romantic!").

Obviously I don't think most women are stupid enough to make such an overt connection from fiction to their real lives; they know it's just a fairy tale. But read / watch enough of it -- especially when you're young and impressionable (the books are supposedly geared toward teens, though I only know adult women who have read the series) -- and it seeps into your subconscious. Attitudes are subtly affected by the exposure, like it or not, and when the material is glorified the way Twilight has been (sorry, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Harper Lee, but Twilight is the BEST BOOK EVERRRRRR) you start to ignore the bad aftertaste and bask instead in the grinny sugar high. "Wow," you swoon. "I wish my husband was more like Edward."

Feel free to call me a Grinch, but I feel the same way about most fairy tales, too. Plenty of women miss out on what could be a more rich, full, and independent life because they're waiting for some white knight on a steed to come save them from their banal existence. Don't get me wrong, my daughters have all sorts of Disney Princess crap, but I really do try to minimize or alter what I consider these damaging cultural messages.

I haven't read any of the other books in the Twilight series; from what I've heard of how the plot develops, I think I'm glad. The last book, in particular, sounds really creepy! (But not in a good, spooky vampirey way, lol. More in an incestuous fundy way.) I have mixed feelings about the series' author, Stephanie Meyer. On the one hand, um, see above. On the other hand, though, she's one of my "tribe." She's a regular ol' Mormon girl, a BYU grad and a SAHM, who's done really well for herself. Yay for her! I don't begrudge her the success; I'm sure it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. I just wish she hadn't made all her money in porn.


~RCH~

Photo-Off: Contrast

Scene (and Herd)


Nikon D70 - 85mm fixed lens; 1/60 at f/4.5; ISO 640.

So I went with the technical interpretation of the theme: Black and white; it doesn't get more contrasty than that! I stuck these plastic zebras on a piece of white posterboard, propped against the living room couch, my ghetto version of a seamless background. Our large picture window provided the natural light, and voila. Zebras. LOL.

There's also this one, on which I went to town with shallow depth of field:


Nikon D70 - 85mm fixed lens; 1/60 at f/3.5; ISO 500.

Kind of random, but oh well! We were sick around here! ;-)

Mary, your Photo-Off challenge for next week is (*drum, drum, drum, drum, drum, drum*) Street. Have at it!


~RCH~

Better than a status update

I've fallen down on the blogging job. I blame the family's recent illnesses -- I had day-long nauseating headaches all through the beginning and middle of last week, then Dos and Tres had stuff coming out both ends toward the end of the week and all weekend -- and I also blame Facebook. Facebook is of the devil. It allows me to broadcast little tiny snippets of my life to 60 of my closest friends (who knew I had 60 friends?) through status updates ... and then I feel like I have nothing left to blog because I've said it all already.

But tough luck, because I'm going to say it again. Or say different stuff. Or, you know, whatever.

Facebook

I signed up a little more than a week ago, and within a few minutes of setting up my account I had about twenty friend requests. I had no idea I was so popular! And how did they all know I was there? Had they been stalking me? Searching Facebook high and low several times a day, every day, waiting for the moment I would grace them with my beatific presence? LOL. Obviously not, but it simultaneously amused and freaked me out.

Crazy Monkey

My preferred nickname for Tres is Crazy Little Monkey. I think I may have overused it, because I've begun to think of her more literally as a monkey: A chimpanzee, specifically. The kind you might see wearing a diaper and hamming it up with her animal trainer on the Tonight Show. She's just the perfect size; she fits on my hip just right and her little hands are so busy and expressive as she grabs my nose and tries to rip it from my face.... Ah, I love my little simian.

Dream Logic

I dreamed last night that I ran across two old friends from high school (probably through Facebook, lol). I tried asking the boy if he thought I had been a drama queen back in the day -- "and don't worry about hurting my feelings if you did," I said, "because I wouldn't ask if I didn't want an honest answer" -- but I couldn't understand his reply; apparently he had spent a lot of time in New Zealand in the years in between and had acquired a very thick accent. I suppose that means I only pretend to want to know uncomfortable truths about myself, lol. Oh well. I finally understood, through his wife's translation, that he thought I had been ragingly melodramatic, but not a drama queen in the sense of being an overbearing diva. So is that six of one, half a dozen of another...?

Next I dreamed I was in a parking lot when a leopard print Cadillac -- convertible, with the top down -- pulled in. Five goth dressed teenagers jumped out and ran over to a carousel, where they proceeded to set up for a concert and rock out. I snuck a few photos of them with my camera phone (I never have my Nikon on me when I need it!), until one of the goth girls stopped playing and yelled at me to cut it out. "Are you some kind of photographer?" she asked me. "No," I said. "I'm going to write the great American novel." She raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Or the great American short story." She stared. "Or, um, maybe just the great American haiku." Then I slunk away.

There's a shocking dream revelation: I have no attention span!

Two Quote Book Quotes

UNO: Mom, when it's my birthday, I get to be the Evil Queen and everybody has to do what I say! I can't wait.

* * *

DOS, taunting me as I lost Mario Baseball to Uno (final score 32-14): M-O-M. That's how you spell loooooooooser!

RCH: Hey, that kind of hurts my feelings!

DOS: I mean, that's how you spell Girl Who Tried Her Very Best But She Didn't Win But That's Okay!

School Policy

Uno had a meltdown last night because we refused to take her bowling. She had come home from school with an important note her kindergarten teacher passed out: [Local Bowling Alley] Family Night! All games $1.50, with $1.50 for hot dogs and drinks. One night only! Call to reserve your lane! It never would have occurred to Uno that we should go bowling if she hadn't been given that advertisement.

It's not the first time we've had an issue like this, either; she has been pitched ballet lessons, membership in the Girl Scouts, pizza.... These aren't fund raisers; none of them have any affiliation with the school. I don't understand why a public school would allow community businesses to directly target five-year-olds. Stick a coupon in the weekly paper if you want to advertise, but don't promise my child an evening of cheap bowling without asking me first.

Ugh.

Does anybody else's school do this? Or is it just our little town being weird again?

Contrast

My Photo-Off challenge comes due tomorrow. This week's assignment? Contrast! I wasn't sure whether to tackle it conceptually (muscley, tattooed biker holds kitten! -- Nevermind that I have neither a biker nor a kitten) or technically (bright vs. dark). I had planned to use last weekend to go exploring, head down into the city maybe to see what contrasty subjects I could rustle up, but instead I spent the weekend cleaning poop and vomit out of the carpet. Oops. I did take some photos at home on Friday that I may pick from amongst, but I am keeping my eyes open and my camera ready in the meantime. I may find a really great last minute subject; you never know!

I really do enjoy these challenges. :-)

The End

I'm sure I could continue to babble on about everything and nothing, but it's time to get the girlies from school! You've got a guaranteed post from me tomorrow, when I reveal my Photo-Off pic. Until then....


~RCH~

Recent Tres-isms

Uno and Dos have taught Tres how to give high fives. We've also tried to teach her "bones" -- the fist bump ala her cousin and birthday buddy, Peter -- but she is obsessed with fives to the exclusion of everything else. Her diction isn't all that great, though, so when she puts her hand out to be smacked she doesn't actually say, "High five!" No, my sweet baby thrusts her hand in the air, a big smile on her face, and squeals, "Die!"



DH and I got a babysitter last night while we went out to play canasta with K and W, two of his elderly patients. We came home to discover that the babysitter had taught Tres to say hello, in addition to her standard hi. She smiled and waved to me when I walked in the door, cooing "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!" Super duper cute. I took her in my arms, gave her a smooch, and told her to say bye to the sitter. Tres waved her little hand again and -- in a perfectly logical extension of what she'd just learned -- said, "Byelo!"

Oooh, I could just eat that kid up. :-)


~RCH~

Photo-Off: Renaissance

Here's my answer to Mary's Photo-Off Challenge



It's not what I wanted. I think I could do better if I had any lighting equipment (at the very least an off-camera flash) or if I'd had better natural light (I have no North / South windows in my house, boo-hoo). I wanted to get crisp definition on the light and shadows of the folds of her dress, and I don't think I did that very well. Perhaps a smaller aperture (right? A bigger F-stop, anyway, for a less shallow depth of field) would have helped? And I think the column in the back is more distracting than I meant it to be. :-P

The pose, at least (based on my research), is pretty spot-on, lol.

Here's what I may have done if it were Spring. It looks sort of stupidly contrived as it is (I did, after all, dig up the grass and dandelion and transplant them to the dead leafiest place I could find), but oh well. It is, perhaps, a little more original than the portrait.... Eh?



So, your thoughts, readers? Which do you like better?

Mary's next Photo-Off Challenge should be fun for her: Pink! Yay. I look forward to what you come up with, seester! :-)


~RCH~

Pilers vs. Filers and the race for the White House

DH and I have very different organizational styles: He likes things neatly filed away and out of sight; I feel most productive when I have stacks and piles out in front of me. My way looks messy, I admit, but I promise there is order and purpose in the chaos.

DH's anxiety flares up when he sees the state of my desk. I feel great anxiety any time he threatens to "clean it up" for me, as he did on Sunday.

The two older girls came into the room at the height of our discussion about organizing the desk. "Stop fighting!" the very sensitive Uno said. Now, we weren't fighting (I wouldn't have been talking to him at all if we were, lol, because I'm so mature like that); we just happen to enjoy banter and spirited debate especially where our views differ (and frankly, even when we agree). That's pretty much always been our dynamic.

I explained to her that we weren't fighting, we were just hashing out our different ways of doing things. "I like to organize things into piles," I told her, "and Daddy likes to put them away in a drawer. Dad wanted to organize all this stuff his way -- but I'm the one who uses the office most and needs all these papers, so if he put them away I wouldn't know where to find anything."

See? Makes perfect sense. I win. Case closed.

"Well," DH said. "All Mommy has to do is let me alphabetize it, and then she can find anything she needs."

I balked, my anxiety flaring up again. Alphabetizing won't help if he's the one doing it! Let's consider: Would he put the car insurance policy under Auto? Car? Insurance? Would our largest monthly bill be under M for Mortgage or H for House Payment? Ack. No, no, no. He is not to touch my piles. I know where everything is and he'd better not touch anything, I told him.

"Ah, come on. Why won't you let Daddy do it?" Uno asked. "Don't you know your whole alphabet?"

DH thought that was hilarious, and in a very serious tone asked Uno if she would begin the important job of helping me learn my ABCs. They high-fived on that while Dos (who very sweetly took my side) and I rolled our eyes and laughed with them.

Silly family.

My desk, in case you wondered, is still a lovely mess of organized chaos on Wednesday. DH vows that he will live to fight another day! ;-)

The thing is, I know that DH isn't wrong in wanting to clear off the desk. I believe he would concede that I'm not wrong, either, in wanting to know that every scrap of paper is where I put it. We just have different ways of accomplishing our organizational goals -- which brings us (clumsily) to the US Presidential election, decided last night in the favor of Barack Obama.

I know that there are plenty of people in my community and in my own family who feel not only disappointed in the election results, but anxious. They may be the proverbial filers to my piling tendencies, and the thought of having the nation's affairs put in order by someone who does things so much differently makes them nervous. I totally get that. But I hope they also realize that, while he sees things from another point of view, Pres. Elect Obama has just as much love for this country as his opponent does and that, like Sen. McCain, he only wants the best for the nation and its citizens.

At some point my piles are going to outgrow the available space on the top of my desk; at some point I am going to have to compromise with DH and file the old papers away. The thought makes me a little queasy -- it feels wrong and unnatural, lol! -- but eventually I'll have to buck up and do it. I think I'll feel far less uneasy if DH and I work together to file things than if, say, he surprised me with a clean desk one day when I'd been out grocery shopping (ooooh, that would be bad).

The same thing goes for the country: The Democrats won't be able to deliver on all their promises without a little compromise and concession; the Republicans, again the minority, certainly won't. And in either case, whether you identify with the party of the Filers or with the Pilers, I think that anxiety you feel over the other will lessen if you remain involved in the process. That's not to say you have to run for office, yourself, but keep aware of current events; write to your elected representatives about issues you care about, locally and nationally; don't vote just once every four years, but for all the little local elections, as well.

We live in an amazing country. I feel like we're in good hands -- and not just because my preferred candidate won the presidency, but because I know that my more conservative friends and family are intelligent, informed, and passionate about politics and the direction our country is headed. We may have different ways of accomplishing our goal of a stronger, better America, but in the end we do have the same goal; because of that, I'd say our future looks pretty bright.

(And hey, DH.... Pssssst! Don't touch my piles.)


~RCH~

We'll find out soon

UNO: Hey Mom, who do you think is going to be our president? John McCain or Rebock O'Rama?

RCH: I don't know, kid. We'll have to wait and see.

UNO: I know it can't be Abraham Lincolnton because he's dead.

RCH: Right.

UNO: Or George Washington. He's dead too.

RCH: Right, because that was a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago. People don't live that long.

UNO: I know, but John McCain and Rebock O'Rama aren't dead yet.

RCH: No, we hope they'll both stick around for a while. No matter who wins.


~RCH~

Drive-by

I keep meaning to blog because I feel like I have all sorts of things to share, but this week has been crazy busy. I'll try to cram it all into one post. :-P

Photo Off!

So my partner in photographic crime answered my challenge on Wednesday! (I meant to post about it then, but the life of a public school mom during Halloween week is INSANE. Who knew?) I didn't think the phrase Zen Moment would be particularly difficult, but Mary says it gave her some trouble. I really like what she came up with, though! I love that she's not afraid to shoot head on into the sun; the way the light gives contour and shape to the shadows, and the color of the light at sunset, contribute nicely to the mood. Very well done, seester.

She issued her challenge to me -- apparently in the spirit of revenge, lol. My topic? Renaissance. Ack! I could interpret that word more loosely if it were spring, but oh well. As it stands, I'm looking at Renaissance-era portraiture and figuring out how I can translate that vibe to modern photography. Without post processing. (D'oh! Why did I set that stipulation for myself, again?) I'll post my best effort next Wednesday. Wish me luck!

Not Right In The Head

I had a really weird experience a week ago yesterday. While driving the girls home from karate, and only about a block and a half from home, my left ear began ringing. And then my brain popped (which I realize makes no sense, but bear with me). Suddenly and out of nowhere, I felt wildly dizzy, though it felt less like the world was spinning and more like everything was lurching side to side like a drunk at closing time. Very strange. I quickly pulled over and waited for the sensation to pass (probably not more than a minute or two), and then I waited some more just to make sure before driving the rest of the way home. The dizziness never returned, but I felt fuzzy-headed and ... off ... for hours. For the rest of the day.

I texted DH about it right away because it freaked me out. Could it be simple ear congestion putting me off balance? Low blood sugar? Could I be pregnant? (I have one sister whose dizziness / fainting spells are her most reliable symptoms of early pregnancy.) He called me back to suggest it might be a migraine. "But I don't have a headache," I told him. Some migraines are like that, he said.

The more I thought about it, though, the more that diagnosis seemed to fit. I didn't have a head cold or sinus trouble at the time; I had eaten recently enough that blood sugar shouldn't be the issue; despite my monthly paranoia, there was no real reason to suspect pregnancy (now confirmed). And then there was the pop.

Remember the time I was accosted by moral crusaders? The women who, when I didn't take their side in a confrontation with a bookstore manager, gave me (an innocent bystander!) a talking to? One thing I left out in the original telling of that story was that, on the way home in the privacy and solitude of my car, I thought it might be fun to release the tension with a good primal scream. And so I did. I screamed loud and long. And then my brain popped. 30 minutes later, and for the rest of the day, I was throwing up.

I didn't mention that part of the story to anyone because (a) it was silly of me to have screamed, (b) I worried that I had broken something in my head, and (c) I knew that telling people "my brain popped" made absolutely no sense and maybe it didn't even happen; maybe I imagined it.

It's kind of like when your ears pop from altitude change, only it's definitely not your ears. And now that I've experienced it twice -- followed both times by odd neurological symptoms -- I think I didn't imagine it. I think I had silent migraines, or in other words, all the fun of a migraine without an accompanying headache.

I've talked to other people who have migraines, including the silent kind, and it sounds like mine are pretty mild. I haven't had any visual disturbances, no sensitivity to light, I'm not incapacitated for days at a time.... One girl said that she once had a silent migraine that left her unable to read or talk for several hours; she thought she was having a stroke. If all I have is a few hours of nausea or a couple minutes of dizziness followed by an evening of feeling disoriented and out of it, well, I'll take it.

I just wonder why they're happening now -- two in seven months' time -- when I've never been prone to them before. Weird.

Halloween Angst

I love this time of year. Halloween is my favorite holiday because who (besides my party pooper DH) doesn't like to try on a different persona every now and then? I have fond memories of traipsing through the neighborhood with my siblings and dad, pillowcases at the ready, and after a block or two feeling torn between the desperate need for more candy and the strong desire that my hands not fall off from frostbite.

Ah! Those were the days!

Of course, back in those days I had beautiful homemade costumes. One year Becca and I were matching princesses with cone hats, one of us in pink and the other blue. I went as a geisha in the 2nd grade. My mom says she thinks my little brother wore it first, but I have vague (possibly false) memories of a ~3yo RCH wearing the Cowardly Lion costume sewn from gold chenille fabric with yellow loopy yarn around the headpiece for the mane. And -- though Anna Jo models it best (anyone have that photo online?) -- I was the original blue crayon. I don't know how she found the energy or the time to do it, but my mom made us some amazing things.

Sadly, even if I had the energy or time, I couldn't do the same for my girls. I can mangle a hem (it won't look pretty, but it'll hold) and reattach a button, but I can't sew -- which means that, for the most part, my daughters are destined to wear crappy store-bought costumes. And not the fancy kind, either (because I'm cheap), but the kind from Walmart (sorry Uno; I know it's your favorite place).

*Sigh.* I have mostly come to terms with my lack of traditional domestic skills -- and truth be told, for 11 months of the year I don't even want to know how to sew. Sewing irritates me. They don't write patterns in English. But at Halloween...? I feel inadequate! I feel like a failure! I feel like I'm deliberately depriving my children of the true meaning of the holiday! Waaaaaah! LOL.

Lucky for me, I have a very talented BFF who occasionally offers to make things for me (you'll see Tres wearing the famous mouse costume in an upcoming post, I bet). And even when they don't have Beckle originals, the girls don't seem to mind their thin and poorly constructed Walmart costumes. See as evidence Dos in her unicorn costume, frolicking off to her preschool party:



So I guess I should take a cue from them and just relax. ;-)

Halloween Yay!

Hooray for global warming! As I said earlier, the Halloweens of my youth were marked by the struggle of competing desires: Rot Your Teeth vs. Keep Your Extremities. (You wouldn't think it would be such a hard decision, when put like that, but believe me, it was!) Although our Halloweens in West Texas were mild, this year will be the first I can remember in this region when the weather will actually be nice! I'm excited.

Crazy Busy

I wonder if Christmas will be this bad, or if they try to get all the fundraisers and parties out of the way now to make the winter holidays easier? It's been nuts this week:

We began with a school rodeo (stick horses for the barrel races, but they brought in real goats for the other events!). I feel like such a city slicker around here. Everybody else already had their rodeo attire (aka cowboy girl clothes), I'm sure; as soon as kids learn how to toddle and walk they stick them in the mutton busting events at the county fair. (Don't ask me to explain what that is. I don't actually know.) Last year, when one of our teenage babysitters discovered that I had never in my life been to a rodeo, she looked at me with a mixture of horror and disgust as if I'd just admitted to never having bathed. "Really? Never?" Nope. Never. ::Shrug::

Anyway, yeah, so we began the week with Uno's rodeo. Then Dos had a preschool party. Then Uno had to paint a pumpkin for a school contest (which she won, yay!). Yesterday Uno had her kindergarten class party and last night the whole family (except for DH, who was stuck at the hospital stitching up someone's head trauma) went to the elementary school Halloween carnival. They had a raffle at the end; Uno was very bitter that we didn't win anything. She's such a sore loser. (Dos, on the other hand, has gotten the garbled message of gracious losing: "But Uno," she says, "You're not supposed to win. Losing teaches you things!" Right! Sort of, lol.) Today the girls will be making Halloween bracelets with a friend from church before heading out to the community Trunk or Treat and, when that's over, trolling the neighborhood for even more candy.

And then -- I think -- my life will calm down for a while. *Phew!*

I'm Tired

Tres has not been sleeping well lately. She demands that I hold her all night (which means that I get to sleep on the too-short loveseat in the basement), and even then she tosses and turns. *YAWN!* I think it's because she's on the verge of a new skill. She stood up without holding on to anything for ~5 or 10 seconds yesterday. She's later at standing / walking than either of her sisters (Uno walked at 2 weeks before her 1st birthday; Dos walked about 2 weeks after hers), but I think she knows it's coming and she feels unconsciously anxious. Either that or she's teething, but I haven't seen any evidence that she's adding on to her set of four. Go figure.

In any case, I'll be glad when she works this out and remembers how to sleep through the night again.

Applesauce

Uno woke me up early this morning (well, it was after 8am, but given the nights I've had recently...) to tell me some important information. She gingerly approached the couch where I was sleeping and poked me in the arm. "Mom," she whispered, careful not to wake up Tres who still slept soundly in my arms. "I know how to make applesauce: You get some red apples in a bowl, but you cut the red part off, and then you put in water and cinnamon -- do we have cinnamon? Mom? Do we have cinnamon? We do? -- and then you mash it all up together until it's sauce. And there you have it," she said before tiptoeing away.

Yes. There I have it.

My children are delightfully random.


~RCH~

Easy Halloween craft

The girls and I made a fun and easy craft this week: Cheesecloth ghosties. This project may be old hat to some of you, but it was new to us and the girls loved it.

Supplies

• balloons


• cheesecloth


• white school glue


• water


• paint brushes (optional, if you don't mind a mess)


• drinking cups


• string

Directions

1. Inflate the balloons you will be using (but not too much, we discovered, or your ghosts will have weirdly bulbous heads). Place each balloon on top of a drinking cup and drape with a layer of cheesecloth.


2. Prepare a mixture of white glue and water in a 1:1 ratio. Coat the cheesecloth that covers the balloon (don't worry about the part that falls down around the cup) in paste using a paint brush -- or your bare fingers if you like to get messy.


3. Add more layers of cheesecloth and paste until you're satisfied with your ghostie's thickness (we did just two layers). Allow to dry overnight.


4. When completely dry, pop and discard the balloon. Draw a face on your ghost if you want to, then thread some string through the holes on top to hang your lovely creation. Voila!

We have three of these spooks hanging in our living room, and one hanging next to Dos's carseat in the minivan. They're pretty cool if I do say so myself.

Happy crafting!


~RCH~

A Photo-Off

Mary and I have decided to challenge each other to a series of weekly Photo-Offs (you know, like the models' Walk-Offs in Zoolander, lol). I'll give her a concept or word or phrase and a week to interpret it photographically, then she'll post her results and issue a challenge for me. And back and forth and back and forth. I will also limit myself to no post processing; the point, for me at least, is to improve at getting the shot in the camera, not making the shot in Photoshop.

So, the first challenge: Zen moment.

Have at it, seester! I look forward to seeing your photo on this theme next Wednesday.


~RCH~

Four!

I have been tagged with the four things meme by my adorable blog buddy Nicole. I'm a little slow in finishing (I started this four days ago -- whoah, trippy), but I do enjoy being an It Girl. So here you go. :-)

Four Random Things I Like About My Husband/Best Friend:

1. He's a rock star. Seriously, he was the lead singer of the band Peyote Posse during grad school. All this was before my time, but I've seen pictures. I eagerly await the the reunion tour and the Behind the Music special on VH1.

2. DH is all kinds of smart. He has room in his head for all that doctor stuff, plus enough about Pharmacology to earn a PhD, and he could accurately give you sports statistics from teams he doesn't even care about from years before he was born up to the present, and he knows the complete lyrics to all sorts of random songs (including, I discovered yesterday, the Strawberry Shortcake theme song, which I didn't even know despite having been a little girl in the '80s). *Phew.* Where does he put it all?

3. Despite #2, I am still able to beat him semi-regularly at Trivial Pursuit. And no, he doesn't "let" me win. He's way too competitive for that. (His motto: "Nobody ever remembers who finished second!" Except that I do when it's him.) We'd make a great team if we ever played anybody else. And yes, you may consider that a challenge.

4. Something I like but simultaneously feel defensive about (because it highlights my own ineptness in this area): He loves to clean. And he's very efficient at it!

Four Jobs I've Had:

1. Grocery store check out girl at Winegar's. Wooo!

2. Web master / marketing assistant at a simulation software company (I got business cards and everything for that job -- still have 'em, in fact).

3. Assistant to the corporate budgets director at Trans World Airlines for about a year before they went under (but I don't think it was my fault, lol).

4. Assistant at an intellectual property law firm. (You might have noticed a trend by now: I like to assist. In politically incorrect analogies, I'm totally an Indian with no ambitions to ever be chief.)

Four Movies I've Seen More Than Once:

1. Dead Poet's Society -- Poetry! Cute boys! Preppy single-sex boarding school with gorgeous scenery! Yeah, seeing that movie 18+ times as an adolescent had no affect on me whatsoever, lol.

2. Waiting for Guffman, because I'll always have a place at the Dairy Queen.

3. The Princess Bride -- who hasn't?

4. The Usual Suspects -- "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he doesn't exist."

Four TV Shows I Watch:

1. How I Met Your Mother -- it's like Friends, but far less annoying!

2. House -- how could I resist such a cranky genius?

3. America's Next Top Model -- I'm rooting for Marjorie this time. (And is it just me, or has ANTM gotten exponentially cheesier this cycle? Is that even possible?)

4. CSI -- the original. DH doesn't know what I see in Grissom; he has a man-crush on Horatio from the Miami edition, himself. But all the women I know think Grissom's quiet intensity is way sexier than Horatio's unrealistic Superhero Leprechaun With Torticollis schtick.

Four Places I've Been:

1. Carhenge in Alliance, NE

2. The Chapel of the Bones in Evora, Portugal

3. The Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England

4. Eutaw, AL (There's nothing there but a prison and an antebellum house -- well, and a Piggly Wiggly -- but as a native Utahn I thought it would be cool to visit Eutaw, and it was)

Four People Who E-Mail Me Regularly:

1. Coldwater Creek

2. Land's End

3. 1-800-Contacts (despite refusing to fill my recent order because my Rx is too old -- whatever!)

4. Amazon.com

(Though that list might suggest otherwise, I don't spend all my time shopping -- but order something just ONCE from any of those places and you've got a new friend for life)

Four of My Favorite Foods:

1. Lately: Avocado quesadillas, with peach mango salsa on the side. Mmmmmmmm!

2. Always: Pizza

3. Too often: Ice cream

4. If a beverage counts as food: Dr. Pepper

Four Places I'd Like to Visit:

1. I want to take my family back to all the cool places I visited in my youth: Portugal, France, Germany, Austria, England, Brazil.... Plus dozens of fabulous road trips here in the US. Though I'd have to drug DH to get him in a car long enough for a road trip.

2. India!

3. Scotland! (Beckle, you & BigScottishJerk.com can be my tour guides)

4. Honestly, anywhere. I'm always up for a new adventure!

Four Things I'm Looking Forward to This Year:

1. The arrival of my newest nephew (happy!), even if I don't know when I'll get to meet him (sad!)

2. A weekend trip to Phoenix in December

3. Halloween, my favorite holiday

4. Christmas, my next favorite holiday

Four People I Tag:

1. Beckle the Freckle

2. K2

3. Anna Jo

4. Susan

And anyone else who wants to play!


~RCH~

Super star

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, my littlest sister and her DH came up to visit. Mary helped me take some more group shots of my uncooperative children (Dos refused to wear long pants or normal shoes, and all of them were much more interested in playing in the fields around the cemetery than in posing like supermodels, lol). We did get some cute ones; below is one of my favorites:



We let the girls run off and do their own thing after a few minutes, and then I got down to business with Mary. As a budding (and award-winning!) photographer, herself, she doesn't often get to be the subject of a glamorous photo shoot. But she should be, because she's sexy like that. Case in point:









Yep. That sister of mine, she's a babe. And I don't just say that because she's the baby of the family. :-)


~RCH~

Wonk!

Sorry to keep blogging today, but it's cold and snowy out and the girls are napping and DH is down at the hospital. I could spend this time scaling Mt. Laundry, but wasting time online is so much more fun.

A few weeks ago I gave certain of my family members an incredibly incoherent recommendation of a PBS documentary I had seen last summer:

"It's about health care in other first world countries," I told them. "Five or six.... I don't remember which ones. The UK for sure, and maybe Germany. And one other -- maybe Austria? Switzerland? No, Sweden. Maybe? I don't know. Plus some in Asia. I don't really remember any of the details. Some weren't socialist at all. Probably some were. One of them had lots of naysayers because they'd been so capitalist about medicine for so long, but now everybody loves it. I don't know which country that was, though, or exactly how they do it now. It's been a long time. But it was super interesting, so there you go. You should watch it. I think I still have it DVRed at my house. Maybe it's been deleted by now. Hmmmm."

Yes, I'm helpful. I know.

Anyway, if anybody is interested in watching it after my rousing review (apparently I should watch it again, and pay attention this time!), the program is Frontline: Sick Around the World. If you don't want to spend an hour watching the documentary, the website has a basic overview of how each country operates and the pros and cons of each system. None is perfect, but there are certainly some ideas the US could take in the reform of our own system.

Obviously I'm not educated enough about this topic to spout off any proposals, but I do have some very generalized thoughts:

Back in the day, the idea that the government might control any aspect of health care scared me to death; I didn't want the same people who ran the DMV (no offense, DMV employees) making decisions about which doctor I could see or what medicine I should take. That's not a realistic or fair characterization, obviously, but it was that gut-level distaste for government bureaucracy that colored my position.

Apparently I've grown more liberal in my old age.

These days -- and perhaps my being married to a doctor has led me here, or perhaps I would have come to these conclusions either way -- I think it's disgusting that a country so rich in resources and trained medical personnel, a country founded on such beautiful ideals, leaves so many of its citizens un / under cared for. What good does it do to declare that all human beings have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if the life part means nothing more than breathing in and out?

I believe that in 100 years or so, when universal health coverage is a long concluded fact, we'll look back and wonder why we didn't do it sooner. Universal health care will seem as obvious a civic obligation as, say, the universal right to public education. And, as with public education, though it probably won't be administered perfectly in every city or every region, it will certainly be better than the nothing that so many people have right now.

I am not a policy wonk (though I really like the word!); I have no idea what would be the best way to implement a new system of health care in our country. But I do believe that serious reform -- including some level of government oversight, if only to ensure that everyone has insurance coverage and access to care -- is necessary.

I guess we'll see what happens.


~RCH~

Where I Live

It's snowing today (waaaah) -- the first snow of the season. It seemed an appropriate time to share this poem I wrote years ago. I can't find an original draft or anything with a date on it, but I remember writing it while at school in North Carolina, so it must have been either the fall of 1993 or 1994. (I'm old.) Enjoy.

Where I Live

The first snow hits by mid-October.
Bright orange days of fire and warm wind
blot out slowly in a blur of white.

I walk outside
        a few wet leaves still cling to apple branches
I stretch my arms
        houses line the streets, hushed sentinels
I raise my face to the slate grey sky
to the shavings of ice trembling down
        the air is still warm
and the flakes melt to tears on my cheeks.

It won't last;
Autumn must die by degrees.
The snow that swoops with gentle determination
folds into itself as it falls,
dissolves as it brushes the ground.

Where I live nothing succumbs
to the first blast.


~RCH~

Stupid question

Let me preface this by saying that I know what I'm about to ask is incredibly dumb and/or naive. And yet, I'm just dumb and naive enough not to know why, lol, so I'm asking it anyway!

If a healthy economy is fueled by the confidence of its consumers, and a weak economy is made worse by fear ... why don't we all just hold hands, close our eyes, and pretend it's still good? If perception is so all important, why not give ourselves daily financial affirmations, Stuart Smalley style, until we're back to the boom times?

::Scratching my head about this, and also wondering once more how I got elected treasurer of this family, lol::


~RCH~

Therapy

After all the angst and hand wringing and histrionics I've subjected my readers to in the last month, I figure I owe you an update:

I am feeling much better.

Writing things out was, as it always has been for me, extremely cathartic; while my sadsack posts may have been annoying to read, they helped me begin to process my emotions. So, step one? Binge and purge the negativity!

Step two: Instead of moping around the house, hiding from the world (as is my tendency anyway, but particularly when I feel down), I've spent the last several weekends in the company of my family and my best friend. Who woulda' thunk -- especially as introverted as I am -- that being with people would perk me up rather than leave me feeling more drained? Not me. I'm lucky to have such a wide circle of people who make me laugh, who want to hang out with me, and who love me, warts and all, come hell or high gas prices. (Cue the Barbara Streisand!)

Step three in my therapeutic process: Spiritual edification! I loved the messages from church leaders in the recent LDS General Conference -- particularly those from Elder Wirthlin and President Uchtdorf. A natural optimism is not among my spiritual gifts; most of the time I'm easy going, but I'm definitely (genetically?) prone to bouts of melancholy. (That tendency doesn't reflect a lack of faith on my part or even a deficiency in my personality, I don't think; I simply am what I am.) In any case, the entire Conference and those messages specifically felt like very personalized hugs, simultaneously comforting and nudging me in another direction. It's nice to feel so personally known and looked after by Someone Who Probably Has Better Things To Do. ;-)

So there you have it. I'm still riding out the ups and downs of life along with everybody else, but I'm hanging on. And I'm enjoying myself again. Hooray for (free) therapy!


~RCH~

It's autumn time, it's autumn time!

The girls and I did a photo shoot yesterday. I had wanted to get a good group shot, but for some reason it's tricky to get three children 5yo and under to pose correctly and smile (or even look at the camera) consistently without an assistant to wrangle them. I'd step in front of the camera, prop up a slouching kid, tuck some hair behind an ear, tell a joke or play peek-a-boo, then run back to verify the composition and press the shutter ... by which time everyone had moved. Plus, I felt so frenetic trying to get everyone's cooperation that I failed to notice the tree growing out of the back of Dos's head. How's that for amateur? Oh well. Group shots should get easier once Tres learns to stand alone / walk; then we can do action shots rather than sitting poses.

I did get some pretty good individual photos, though! Here are some of my favorites:


Uno, laughing at her own joke (the punchline of which was probably "POOP!"). This shot is totally and completely her.


Ahh! Love that evening light!


For whatever reason, Dos was the most difficult to photograph this time around. Good thing she's so pretty! Look at those eyes!


Dos peeks through the autumn leaves.


The famous Tres schlumped in the famous gold chair.


Again with the eyes! And take a look at those smooshy cheeks -- I could kiss into them for miles!

I may try some more group shots (and Uno's super hero photos, which I've still never got right) this weekend if anybody wanted to come up and help me wrangle (*cough, Mary are you busy? cough, cough!*). There may even be some birthday cake involved, as Tres will be turning one on Saturday! :-)

(Also, speaking of birthdays and speaking of Mary.... Happy Birthday today, seester! I hope your day / year will be everything you dream of and more!)


~RCH~

Her own drummer

Dos dressed herself this morning.

I tried to tell her that her shirt didn't exactly match the pants.

"But Mom," she said, "they both have pink on them."

I tried to tell her that the patterns didn't match.

"No, look," she said. "The pants have flowers. The shirt haves flowers. They totally do match."

I tried to tell her that her outfit looked "busy."

Blank stare.

I told her that if you have a lot of decoration on your shirt, it's good to have plain pants. Or if you have a lot of decoration on your pants, it's good to have a plain shirt.

She rolled her eyes and sighed, obviously weary of explaining things to me.

"Mom," she said. "This is fashion. You just don't know it."

So we clipped an orange and yellow and pink curly bow in her hair, rounded up her red plastic Lightning McQueen shoes, and off we went to school.


~RCH~

...And in much cuter news:

I think Tres has an official First Word! I could be wrong; she may only say it over and over and over because the sound gets a consistent response, and not because she knows what it means, but oh well.

So, are you ready for it? Tres's first word appears to be [drum roll, please]...

"Hi!"

She says it to everyone. Repeatedly. With a big friendly smile on, so it must be her intention to say hello, right?

Sure.

I once guessed that, if they had to choose a profession right then and there in baby / toddlerhood, Uno would grow up to be a politician (that would still suit her) and Dos would become a podiatrist (eh, her love of stethoscopes and shoes has waned). Playing the same game for Tres, I'd say she's destined to be a late night talk show host. She is, as I said, super friendly -- and she gets chattier the later it gets. It's nearly midnight now and, aside from a break here and there to chew on USB cords, she's babblier than a brook in springtime.

What a sweet baby, that girl.


~RCH~

State of Mind

Life isn't one thing after another; it's the same damn thing over and over.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't know why (not true; more on that later) but I continue to let a particular incident sniggle at me. I continue to be hurt by the fact that someone I don't know and have never met finds me ridiculous -- and not in a charming, "Oh, isn't she funny! What a great sense of humor!" kind of way. No, she finds me worthy of ridicule. That stings a little more than simple dislike, for some reason.

Her opinion shouldn't matter to me. We've never met and likely never will. I couldn't pick her out of a lineup. I don't admire her or aspire to be like her in any way (which is nothing personal; aside from her remarks about me and the name of the street she lives on, I know next to nothing about her). She holds no influence with people I care about.

But still. Ouch.

Every time I think about it (embarrassingly, stupidly often) I feel freshly humiliated. I dredge up old insecurities that have lain dormant since my early 20s. I fall into bad habits and a spiral of negative mental chatter. Add a tragedy to get my morbid emotions stewing and I worry I'm on my way to being depressed.

I'm on the lookout because I've been there before, and it isn't pretty. It isn't tragically romantic; it isn't lying in bed all day in a silk robe while the world goes on around you; it isn't waiting with a heavy heart for some doe-eyed lover to save you from your sadness. Clinical depression is the ugly cry and irrational outbursts; it is raw and angry and mean; it is days without food; it is an incessant prayer for annihilation. Nearly everyone leaves you, and you push away those who don't with whatever force you can muster until you are completely alone.

I'm not there, don't worry. Not even a little bit. But the fact that I've let an incident so small completely overtake my interior life concerns me. I've been through this before (which means I'm vulnerable to relapse). I know that it can begin as small as this and snowball if I'm not vigilant.

I didn't used to be so thin skinned. I felt very brittle after my first (let's hope only) bout of depression -- like a shattered ceramic vase put back together with scotch tape -- but when I came back to myself, I came back awesome: Confident and strong (and still a little neurotic, because hey, spiders really are gross and potentially life-threatening, and the phone really is the worst of modern inventions -- ask anyone in my family). Quirks aside, I was independent and adventurous and I had the courage of my convictions; I no longer cared what anybody else thought. I rocked the house.

What changed? Honestly, motherhood. (Is that awful to admit? It is, isn't it?)

I was a good mom of one: I doted; I cooed; I beamed. Every moment was a learning opportunity seized. Someone told me that, through motherhood, I had "blossomed" -- and while that sounded really incredibly cheesy even at the time, I took the compliment to heart. I believed it. I thought, "Wow, so this is what I was meant for!" I wanted more, more, more! A whole fun brood of closely spaced kids, just like the family I had grown up in.

And then we had Dos. She and Uno are precisely 18 months and 2 weeks apart, which didn't seem too awfully close to me at the time. My mom had the first three of her eight children in slightly less than three years (Irish Triplets!) and she made it seem absolutely effortless. She and I are a lot alike, I thought, so why wouldn't I excel at this mothering business like she had? But I found out the hard way that I am not my mother.

The transition from one to two -- the sleep deprivation, the delicate negotiation of simultaneous needs, the isolation, the hormones that hadn't quite settled after the first pregnancy ramping up, then dropping again -- overwhelmed me. My nerves frayed until they were completely exposed. I was tightrope walking on barbed wire. As the girls got older and more independent, that feeling faded ... but I've never regained the confidence I had from my mid 20s on, the confidence I had when it was just me and Uno. I am not a puddle of maternal goo. I am not an energetic guide on the learning highway of life. I am not the mother I had, nor the one I wanted to be.

It doesn't help that Uno has entered that charming phase in which every discipline or simple request is met with a stomp and a squeal: "You're the worst mother EVER! Daddy is much more nicer than you!" I know she doesn't mean it. I know it's just a stage she'll pass through on her way to other, more exciting outbursts, lol. I remember saying similar things to my own mom at that age, and we're about as close as can be.

But still. Ouch.

Uno's fits sniggle at my deepest fears. Random Lady Who Doesn't Like Me exacerbates the problem. I've already come to terms with the fact that I am not a unique and special butterfly -- my life is a total cliché (which amuses more than bothers me) and my talents, while I have and enjoy them, will never rise much above pleasant mediocrity. That's fine, because I was meant for something bigger: The noble job of motherhood!

...Problem is, I'm not very good at it, this most important of important jobs. If I'm not a very good mother, I must not be a very good person and thus everything Random Lady says must be true and certainly what Uno says must be because she's down here in the trenches with me, she sees me how I really am when nobody else is around, and slowly the mental chatter escalates and the onion peels and my proverbial skin gets thinner and thinner until....

And this is where I have to put my foot down. I have responsibilities. I can't do this again.

*Sigh.*

I suppose I'm just asking for criticism with posts so confessional, with such (let's be honest) patently ridiculous idiosyncrasies celebrated as if they were cute.... I shouldn't be surprised when strangers think I'm weird.

But in any case, I need to stop caring.


~RCH~

It's hard to be Dos

Dos came to me, wailing and sobbing.

"Mom! Uno punched me in the tummy!"

"Are you okay?" I asked her. "What happened?"

"She PUNCHED ME in the TUMMY I said!"

"No, I mean why were you guys fighting? What happened right before she punched you?"

:: insert sobs here and an unintelligible whiny explanation ::

"You have to calm down and speak slowly," I told her.

"I said, we were watching PBS Kids and I know Super Wide was coming on next but she said it wasn't but I knew it was so I kicked her in the face."

*Sigh!* So much for Dos being the innocent victim here. (And now I'm wondering, was karate really the right extracurricular for these two...? Yeeps.)


~RCH~

Obit

I attended the funeral alone yesterday; my wonderful sister Mary volunteered to take a day off from work and drive the 100+ miles up here to watch my girls for me.

After much prayer and discussion with anyone who would listen, I decided that -- now that I had childcare options -- I would bring Uno if she wanted to come, and leave the other two at home. We talked some more about what a funeral is, what would go on, and she asked me if we could bring snacks. I said no, probably not; a 5yo ought to be able to last an hour or two without a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios and Cheez-Its. Uno decided she'd rather stay at home with Mary and play the Wii.

That was fine. I'm sure she and Dos would both have been okay had they attended (and if I'd agreed to bring snacks, coloring books, and crayons, like we do for church each week), but I wouldn't have been fully present to celebrate and mourn my friend because I would have worried about the girls the entire time. It was nice to be able to focus.

In any case I'm so grateful to Mary, who saw a need and jumped on the chance to serve. My parents were also trying to figure out a way to come up and help -- also completely unasked for -- but Mary beat them to it. I've got the best family ever.

The funeral was difficult. I started crying right as I walked in the door of the church (and realized I had forgotten to bring any tissues, ugh). I sat next to the mother of one of Uno's friends (whose name I ought to know, but I don't, and two years after we met is way too late to ask). She has the gift of small talk, which kept me somewhat composed as we waited for the service to start. But oh....

When they brought the casket in, wheeled on one of those gurneys so the youngest pall bearer, my friend's 3yo brother, could help push it.... His parents trailed behind. His mother -- oh my goodness, his poor mother! -- she looked so.... Like she wasn't even there. Like all the grief had been squeezed and wrung and tortured out of her over the preceding five days, and she had nothing left. It broke my heart. Behind the immediate and extended family came the honorary pallbearers: The high school football team (of which he was a freshman member), all in their jerseys, and the city league baseball team he played on, all in their uniforms.

The boy's lifelong best friend and his best friend's father gave the life summary. I don't know how his best friend kept his composure throughout -- it must be a boy thing -- but he didn't crack once. They told funny stories and sweet stories, and none of it felt like the typical overblown canonization of the dead (once you're gone, you're immediately a saint!). It all rang true to the boy I knew, who was everything they said he was: An incredible kid, smart and funny and kind, a friend to everyone. A youth and Scout leader from church spoke next, along the same lines, and the bishop (who did struggle not to cry) concluded with a message about the reality of the resurrection and the promise that we will all see our loved ones again. Cousins and a group of young men from our church congregation provided two musical numbers respectively. It was a really good service (if such a thing can be said about a child's funeral.)

Our town has a weekly newspaper that gets published every Wednesday. My mind has been preoccupied with my friend's unexpected passing, with sympathy for his poor family, since I heard on Monday what happened, and when I got this week's paper I half expected to see his picture printed large across the front page with a two-inch headline shouting his loss. Because really, what other news matters? Instead, they printed a report of a recent County Commissioners meeting on the front page; I found my friend's obituary on page 6. The highlights:

Joe (not his real name, but it's not my place to breach his family's privacy) turned 14yo two weeks before his passing as a result of an acute asthma attack. He was the second of four sons and is survived by his entire immediate family. (His maternal grandmother, I found out at the service, preceded him in death by about a month.)

He loved to read -- learned how from his brother, two years older, before he began kindergarten -- and loved learning. His teachers last year nominated him to attend a Youth Leadership conference in Washington, D.C. He had a 3.9 GPA, and planned to take enough college-level courses to earn an Associate's Degree by the time he graduated from high school. He would then serve an LDS mission, return to finish college, and enroll in medical school. He planned to return to his hometown as a family physician (good ones are desperately needed here, believe me) (and boy does that tug at my heartstrings).

Joe loved sports. He was on the football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, and track teams; he assistant coached peewee league baseball and community swimming lessons; he loved the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He loved Scouting and was working toward his Eagle Award.

Joe loved the gospel. He had a strong testimony of Jesus Christ, of the restoration, and he loved the scriptures.

Joe will be deeply missed by his parents, brothers, and all who knew him. (I can vouch for that.)

Ritual has power; I felt the weight that has pressed on me all week lift a little as I drove away from the church. I can think of my friend now without tearing up (mostly). I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I was able to attend the funeral and mingle my grief with hundreds of others'. But I also know that the intensity of the loss will focus more sharply now on his parents and brothers: We as a community have cried and let go and can move on, but every day a room in their house will be empty, a place at their dinner table will not be set, and though they have faith in the promise of a reunion, life (for most of us) is so very long.

I don't know his parents well, and as you all know I'm not good with people in general; I'm awkward even under the best of circumstances. I would appreciate your prayers on their behalf -- but please pray for me, too, that I can find some way to serve them. Because I really feel like I should. I don't know how, but I need to do something.

He was a really, really great kid.


~RCH~

Reader input, please

The funeral for the boy in my Sunday School class is scheduled for this Friday; school is letting out early so that all who want to can attend.

I feel like I should go, but I don't have anyone to watch the girls; everyone from church, all of our usual high school babysitters -- everyone will be at the funeral. None of my family is near enough to watch them.

So here's the question, which I feel personally conflicted about (and I've had mixed opinions from others about): Do I take my 11mo, 4yo, and 5-1/2yo to the funeral? Or should none of us go?

Pros
It would provide an excellent opportunity to teach the girls more concretely what we believe about death / heaven / eternal families / the afterlife, etc. (We've been talking about it already, but it's all abstract for now.) It might give Uno some closure about what happened to her friend and swimming teacher (though as of yet, I don't think she realizes the finality of death, so maybe she doesn't need anything like closure). It would allow me to go.

Cons
They are 11mo, 4yo, and 5-1/2yo. I can't guarantee that they'll behave themselves (Friday is DH's busiest day, so he won't be able to leave work to attend and/or help me). An open casket might freak them out. An open casket might freak me out, for that matter; he was so, so young!

Your thoughts? I think I went to my first funeral at ~6yo or so (Dad, how old was I when your mom died?). I don't remember feeling traumatized by it. But this is a funeral for a child, so it might be a whole different thing. I don't know what to do. I would hate to miss it, myself, but on the other hand, I'm going to hate going just as much. I wish nobody had to. I wish he were still here.


~RCH~

Perspective

I found out today that a boy in the Sunday School class DH and I teach --- just barely 14 years old -- passed away last night during an acute asthma attack.

We teach the 12-14yo kids, so he's been in our class for two years; I feel like I know him well. He was one of Uno's swimming teachers last year (do I tell her what happened?). He was going to be on the freshman basketball team that DH is coaching this year.

DH got a call about it as we were heading to the big city on some errands; I cried the entire 50-minute drive, and really struggled to pull myself together as we got into town to do our shopping.

14 years old. He was a good kid: Funny and kind and and smart and he actually listened to our Sunday School lessons (not all do, lol). He was great with Uno.

I can't imagine what his family must be feeling today (if they're feeling anything at all; I might be struck numb with the grief if it were my child). I know, at least, that they have the gospel in their lives and the promise that they will see him and hug him and hold him again. I don't know how anyone goes on after a tragedy like this without that assurance.

My heart and my prayers are certainly with them. I can't believe he's gone.


~RCH~

At the end of a rough week

I started off with the moral high ground, I know I did. Reviewing the source of a recent misunderstanding, even with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, I believe my conclusions to have been the most reasonable interpretation of the facts. Never mind that they were wrong; on the face of it, I was the legitimately injured party. My tears (though amplified by insecurity) were justified.

Somewhere in the ensuing days, however, I became the bad guy. I slunk down a deceptively gentle slope; I didn't even realize I'd done it until it was too late. I couldn't sleep at all last night. I kept turning the events and my actions over in my mind trying to pin down the precise moment I slipped onto the low road.

I found it, don't worry. DH is as sick of hearing about all this as I am of thinking about it, but he dutifully asked me what I've learned and this is it:

Wounded animals lash out; grown women don't. If I were to relive the last week, I would go straight to the source for a clarification rather than moping around, waiting for someone to notice. I wanted to be defended. I wanted to be consoled because I wasn't the bad guy here. Problem is, if I'd had the sense and maturity to get the full story up front (I was afraid to know the details, honestly; I was afraid it was worse than I imagined), I'd have discovered in time that the other person wasn't, either.

So now I am the bad guy, the occupant of the moral low ground and people I care about are hurt. I keep thinking, how did this happen? How did I end up here from there? But I know the answer.

*Sigh.*

If nothing else, I've learned from the experience. Small consolation to some people, I'm sure, but for now that and my apologies are all I have to offer.


~RCH~

A moment in time

Last Spring we purchased the movie Meet the Robinsons, which has become one of my favorite children's movies of all time: The villain is adorable; the music is awesome; the message of perseverance is so positive; and the poignancy of the main character's family situation makes me all misty-eyed, no matter how many times I've seen it. Wonderful, wonderful little movie.

Uno found it inspiring in other ways: It prompted her to build a time machine.

The first time she mentioned the project, I told her it sounded like a great idea but secretly hoped the whim would pass. We are not handy; we do not build things around here. She kept asking, though -- every day, several times a day: Can I build my time machine today? How about tomorrow? Will you take me to the hardware store? Here's what we need to get....

I continued to put her off, wary of a construction project, worried that she would expect it to actually work and be heartbroken when it didn't. But her enthusiasm wore off on me: I pictured her and DH hammering 2x4s in the back yard, bonding, building a time machine to Uno's specs (she had even drawn a blueprint by then) that could at least serve as a play house when they finished.

Real life intervened, of course (which is probably a good thing -- as I said, we are not handy; the play house would not have been up to code). But Uno, having internalized the theme of the movie, continued to ask about the project. We compromised: I told her we could build a model time machine as practice for some [far-distant] future real time machine. We went to Hobby Lobby that weekend, loaded up on balsa wood, decorative wooden craft thingies, spray paint, and clocky scrapbook stickers, and the next Monday evening the whole family sat down together to help her build.







We finished gluing the time machine that night and put it downstairs in the storage room to set, with the intention of painting and decorating it later. Days passed, then weeks. "Can we paint the time machine today?" Uno would ask, and I'd always have some reason why we couldn't: Painting is an outside project, and it's too cold / windy / rainy; we've got too many other things to do today; let's do it on a weekend when Dad has time to help us.... Months passed and still it sat in the darkness of our basement storage room.

Thank goodness for kindergarten.

Yesterday Uno had her very first public school Show-and-Tell opportunity. She wanted to make it count, so we pulled out the time machine and some cans of spray paint on Tuesday evening. Uno and Dos took turns (with my help on their trigger fingers to make sure they didn't spray paint in their eyes) beautifying the balsa wood. We let it dry over night, and then yesterday morning before school (her class meets in the afternoon) I helped Uno super glue the rest of the decorations onto the time machine.

Here it is, finally completed:







And here is Uno, practicing her Show and Tell presentation:



When I picked her up after school, I asked her how everything went. "My teacher said it was a great project," she said, "and at recess me and Sara and Rebekah pushed all the buttons right so that when it's my birthday we'll all transport to the movies with popcorn and candy and lemonade!"

I had worried that she would feel disappointed when it didn't really take her back or forward in time, but I can see that her imagination has made the appropriate adjustments; apparently it is a delayed-reaction time machine. She probably will get to go to the movies for her birthday (a tradition that seems to be supplanting our West Texas custom of going to Chuck E. Cheese), so maybe she did push all those buttons right.


~RCH~