Oh How the Mighty Fall

I bowled my first turkey today. That's three (3) strikes in a row. This helped rally my score to a pathetic 104. Barely over 100. For you pseudo-mathematicians, when you bowl a turkey in any frame but the last frame, you get at least 60 points. I, unfortunately, bowled my turkey in the last frame. I got only 30 points. But I did redeem myself from a dowright humilating score. Sadie bowled a turkey in the last frame of the previous game to help pull us over the other team. Sadie's handicap is 55 and Kandiss's is 61. We have to bowl extra good to come close to winning since they have the two lowest handicaps in the league. I'm happy to report that we won all three games this week and have moved from last place to third place in the standings. We're making some serious gain.

Any Good Ideas Out There

Christmas is fastly approaching. Fast. And my visiting teaching partner and I and our extended families are supplying Christmas for our friend who is dying of cancer. We have the kids and the dad taken care of, but what do we get M? Does anyone have an idea? We thought maybe an ipod for when she has her treatments but, turns out, she doesn't listen to a lot of music and she HATES headphones. Nice. So where does that leave us? She also has limited mobility in her left hand so that lessens the options as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated in this area.

On a happier note, tomorrow is Thursday, which is bowling day. I look forward to Thursdays with an overzealous approach. Every day I wake up and do a mental check for what day it is. One day closer to Thursday. It's sad what my life has become, but happy that it's this and not other things.

What are you, crazy?

This morning, I rolled out of bed and donned my winter running clothes and headed outside with the next door neighbor, Christina. She really wants to run a half marathon in January and I--in a moment of nostalgia--agreed to train and run it with her. She has 4 kids, so we don't train together during the week. We're both lucky to get a run in when we can fit it in, so it's too hard to have a set time. But Saturdays, for our long runs, the idea is to get together. Between us both being out of town and me being sick, this is the first long run we've done together. I must confess, however, that I haven't been doing my long runs at all. And, as long as I'm confessing, I haven't run in 2 weeks. I thought maybe the snow would deter us another week, but she was all gungho. So, I slodged out there and we started off.

It was cold. It was wet. It was snowing for crying out loud. She's a machine. It's good to run with a machine. It keeps you going. However, it's better to run on a machine because then you don't get cold. Or wet. But mine is broken and long runs are hard to do on a treadmill. So there we are, outside, in the middle of a snowstorm, trodding our way down the streets while people sat cozily on their couches sipping hot cocoa and laughing at us. I thought for sure we would turn around before we got too far. I was so very wrong. People actually stopped, while in their nice warm cars, to tell us we were crazy. We ran past a church holding a Christmas Breakfast and could hear the roars of laughter directed at us.

It's good that people think you're crazy. I mean, we're not crazy enough to do anything that would directly result in our harm, but it is nice to come inside and say you've run 10 MILES today. In a snowstorm. With just a longsleeve shirt. And take a nap because you deserve it.

I Had No Idea

Yesterday was the first really big Relief Society function I've been a part of planning and orchestrating. I had no idea that much time and energy went in to making it happen. Everything has suffered the past few weeks as I've been consumed with this task.

Tuesday night, I arrived at the church at 8:30 pm to begin assembling Parley Street, Nauvoo in the back of the cultural hall. Two ladies had constructed, using cardboard boxes from the local furniture store, three life size store fronts. Our task was to figure out how to get them to stay up. We employed the use of every imaginable resource we could find. Ladders, bookshelves, portable chalkboards, duct tape, staple guns, etc. At 12:30, we called it a night, but at least our three buildings were in an upright position. I finally fell asleep at about 2:30 and woke up at 6 am for aerobics. I thought surely there would be enough time in the day to take a nap.

Yesterday, beginning at 9:30 am, I was at the church setting up tables, reconfiguring the "street", hanging lights, chasing kids, running errands, cooking, etc. It was crazy. At 5:15, I left to go home. I had to return with silverware and got stuck looking for a mike. I finally got home at 6:00, jumped in the shower and got ready for the blasted thing. The babysitter showed up at 6:50 and we headed over for the final production.

For a program that "no one wanted anyway" over 220 people showed up. It was a really nice ham dinner and then a program that lasted about an hour. We left to relieve the babysitter and then I changed clothes and went back to help clean up. The good news is that cleaning up doesn't take nearly the time that setting up does. I was home by 10:45. I was dead tire and my legs were really sore from standing up all day. I'm glad it went well, and the turnout was nice.

Fast forward to today. I'm on a bowling league (#55 on the list) and off we went. The first game was bad. All three on my team played integral parts in yesterday's festivities, so we were still a little sleep deprived. Kandiss and Sadie are both excellent bowlers and I'm there just to keep the mood light. In any case, their handicaps are quite low (the better you are, the less you need help) and mine is a bit higher. So, mathematically, they need to bowl incredibly good so that our overall score will beat out the other team that we're playing against. Logically, I need to bowl dang good to help pad our score so the pressure isn't all on them. For the first game, Sadie and Kandiss bowled pretty well, but I did mediocrely, so we didn't win that one. However, the second game we started dancing and yelling every time one of us got a strike. It really throws the other teams off. I pulled a 148. I've NEVER bowled that good. It's a good day when I get above 100. The third game, we went crazy. If all three people get a strike in the same frame, we each get a free soda from the bowling alley. We all got strikes in two frames, so two free sodas next week. YAY! I had no idea that there were bowling gods and they smile on us when we're having fun. I just know everyone else was jealous and wished they were on our team. :)

Things Weighing on My Mind

So a few things weighing on my mind as of late:

We've been out looking for a new kitchen table. We inherited our current table from Wade's grandma when we got married. It's ugly and there's only 3 1/2 chairs left standing. Not good for when we have people over for dinner. So, we've hit all the major stores in the area over the last little bit and haven't found "the one". The hard part is we both have a picture of "the one" in our minds, and nothing we see fits the bill. However, the other day, I was somewhere and found it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to plunk down $1500 for a kitchen table, so we opted not to buy it. Maybe when Wade is making his millions, I won't think twice about it, but right now with a mortgage to pay off, $1500 seems a bit excessive. The really, really bad part is that KSL classifieds is in my reader and I've been watching the dining room tables (there are some really ugly ones out there) and two have popped up in the last month that would've fit the bill just fine at a mere $325. 8 chairs and all. But, we're not the only ones out there looking and two very lucky families got a kickbutt deal on a dining room table. The only thing to do is to just keep looking...

Sunday, at a meeting for the Relief Society Presidency of which I'm a member, I was informed that I'm the Humor Specialist--the person that brings humor to the many situations we face as presidency of a very large and needy ward. Do you have any idea how much pressure that puts on me? I was merely being myself, but now I feel as though they're all looking at me to provide comic relief. I'm choking here people. I can't handle this kind of stress.

Lastly--and this one is much weightier than the previous two-is the slow death of a friend in the ward. She was diagnosed with colon cancer two weeks ago and suffered a stroke last week. Did I mention that she's only 37 years old??!! She has three young sons and they recently moved here from South Carolina. I was assigned to be her visiting teacher when she moved in and she's become a close friend. Why do bad things happen to good people? Yesterday, devastating news came when it was confirmed that her cancer is stage 4. It has spread to her liver, lungs, brain and lymphnodes. She and her family have an amazing attitude, and I hope things go well, but it's hard to sit on the outside and watch it happen. My visiting teaching partner is amazing and has all the right things to say. I just stand there like a blubbering idiot. Unfortunately, she's been in Mexico for the last week and doesn't know of the lastest developments. Last month, another sister that we visit had her third miscarriage after having tried for over a year to get pregnant. As usual, my partner stepped up to the plate and left me out in left field picking my nose.

Conversations in the Bleachers

Last night, Wade's cousin called him about an hour before kick-off between TCU and BYU and said he had three extra tickets. Luckily, we were in Salt Lake looking at kitchen tables, so we hopped in our car and inched towards the stadium. We only missed the first quarter of the game and it was a perfect night for football. Not too chilly. Good thing, as we weren't really prepared for sitting out in the cold. This was Josh's first football game and he had a blast. We even let him eat popcorn for dinner. What more could a kid ask for.

As any semi-football fan knows, the real fun of going to a game is listening to those around you. We were sitting in the "blue-hair" section--the section reserved for the oldest, most dedicated season fan ticket holders. When I say old, I mean they're old. Like 80 years old. And dedicated. They all have their 1980 style headphones on with their walkman's listening to KSL broadcasters call the game on the radio. There's no booing or doing the wave or...anything...but it was still a lot of fun.

Behind us were three guys about our age. They had this to say during a half-time routine put on by the marching band, flag girls, cougarettes (dance team), and the cheerleaders.

<> Do you know any flag girls?
<> No.
<> Me neither. I mean I've known a few cougarettes, a few cheerleaders, even some people in the marching band. But no flag girls.
<> You're right. I do too. I wonder why that is.
<> They must keep a low profile.
All three guys sit and ponder this deep revelation.

About a half hour later, during a spirited performance by Cosmo, the mascot, guy 1 says: I even knew a Cosmo once. But no flag girls.

Hmmm...deep, I know. So, this got me thinking: Did I know anyone in the marching band, dance team, cheerleading squad, or a flag girl while I was in college. Barring the two years I spent at a Junior College where it was impossible not to know who everyone was, the four years at the U of U yielded no inner glimpses into these elite squads. Then I thought, well maybe it was because I was a girl. So I asked Wade. Nope. No relationships formed on his part either. Perhaps it's because we're really big nerds, getting degrees in really geeky fields like computer science and mathematics. These types of fields don't generally attract those that spend college dancing, jumping up and down screaming, and girls twirling big poles with pieces of cloth attached to them. And everyone knows that if you're in the marching band, you certainly don't advertise that to the general populace. Mystery solved.

Tales From the Potty

Today, we had a breakthrough on the potty scene. Josh came running in to inform me that he had pooped. Nothing new, he's been telling me for awhile now, but when I went to change him...nothing there. Which only means that he's about to poop and I have time to get him to the potty. Yay! Visions of not having to carry diapers in my purse, not having to wonder if that horrible smell was emanating from my kid and not having to figure out how to change a diaper in a one stall bathroom with a questionably clean floor soon flood my brain. I happily grab Josh off the floor and high tail it to the potty. All hell breaks loose.

First, he doesn't want to sit on his potty. He wants to lay on the floor and *gasp* do his business there. Secondly, he's perfectly happy pooping and sitting in it and he's not about to change, but he definitely doesn't want to put on a new diaper right now. He's busy trying to poop.

Now I have a problem on my hands. I can't just let him lay on the ground and poop because that's worse than cleaning it off of him. So I do what every potty training book tells you not to do. I force him to sit on the big potty and do his business there. I hold him, of course, because otherwise his legs would fold up and he'd slip right in. This doesn't seem to comfort him any.

I'm happy to report that he completed his duty and after I showed him his accomplishment, he seemed to be quite pleased with himself. We called daddy and grandma, each giving him much praise for this seemingly easy task. I am quite confident that he has the idea now. No more diapers. So I put on his choney's and off we go to the church and the store. I keep asking him if he needs to use the potty. He responds "NO!" Okay...point taken.

We're safely at home when he comes running in. "Mommy, mommy, I'm wet." And sure enough, he was. Okay, I think to myself, accidents are to be expected. A little later, he pulls the leg of his (new) underwear and out falls...yeah, gross, I know. Then a friend comes over with her son, and Josh announces again that he's wet. I sit him down and patiently tell him that he needs to tell me BEFORE he pees. That Lightening McQueen is not suppose to get wet. We put on our third pair of choneys and head off to play.

Sometime during our little play date, Josh is bad and has to be put in time out. When I release him from his prision, he's naked. So on goes our 4th pair. Everything's good and then the straw that breaks the camel's back is when he stands up on his chair at dinner and pees. At the dinner table, right through his underwear.

Clearly we've missed an important step along the way...we're back to the drawing board.