Jealousy

I get jealous when I read the blogs of others and their children who are the same age as mine (or even younger!) are speaking in full sentences.

And my child still screams for an hour when I can't understand that she wants milk based on her pointing and grunting.

Makes me want to kill someone.

No wonder jealousy is a deadly sin.

Slappy

If I hear the following statement one more time, I'm going to lose it.

Someone in R.S. raises their hand and says:

"I always thought I would go on a mission. I planned for it and told everyone that I would. But then I got married. And I had to tell myself that I would just be serving a different kind of mission. I mean, it wasn't what I wanted. I always wanted to go on a mission! But I guess other things were in the cards for me. . . ."

The next person I hear say that, gets me, in their face screaming LIAR!!! and then they get slapped. Maybe verbally slapped, or maybe physically. I can't decided which yet. But there will be slappage.

No, no, no no no no NONONONONONO.

If you really REALLY wanted to go on a mission then YOU WOULD'VE GONE ON A MISSION. My mission (and every other mission in the world for that matter) was full of girls who had other things distracting them. They had boyfriends, debts, schooling, family, money issues and physical issues. And you know what? They didn't let that pull them away from a mission, because THEY REALLY WANTED TO GO.

I want you to just accept the fact that you weren't that into it. That you thought it would be something "cool" to do if you had nothing better to do, if no potential marriage prospect was on the horizon. As long as things all fit into a nice little package for your convenience. But once things didn't go as you expected, when you met someone when you were TWENTY, you just were KICKING yourself because "BOOOO HOOOO!! Now I can't go on a mission. He's the ONE!! I'm not supposed to go on a mission if I have the possibility of getting married! That's what everyone says! And everyone knows heaven cries a little when there is another 23 year old female RM in the world"

Slap, slap, slappity, slappage.

Other comments that will get you a slap from me:

-"I really wanted to get my degree, but we thought it was better that HE finish and not me. I'm just at home with the kids. What do I need a diploma for?"

-"I never thought that we would get pregnant so fast! I mean, we didn't really use birth control, but so-and-so didn't either and it took them MONTHS to get pregnant. So we didn't really take precautions. But I'm SO SURPRISED we got pregnant!"

-"I deserve ________." No, you don't deserve it, whatever it is. You deserve things when you EARN them. Like working for them, paying for them. You know, EARNING THINGS. Just being alive and being annoying doesn't constitute earning.

There are lots of other things that will get you slapped in my mind. And if you aren't careful, maybe even slapped in real life.

Because seriously? PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANT TO GO ON MISSIONS DON'T LET ANYTHING STOP THEM. THEY JUST GOOOOOOOOOO!

I'm done now. I need to go take a nap and sleep off the rage.

P.S. My best guy friend in high school used to call me "Slappy". So the title of this makes me laugh as I read it.

P.P.S. I have a whole different rant about how RM girls know that not every male RM is created equal. And that we can see through a line of B.S. and know that just because you were a zone leader (OR AP!!) doesn't mean you didn't try to scam on all the members in your areas. You disgust me, and I have no respect for you. But go ahead and tell everyone that you were an AP. But I have a picture of you DANCING. And I sure don't think that's MO TAB playing while you do the Salsa and Merengue.

Oh, I guess I got that additional rant out of my system right then. I guess I don't have to come back and make a whole other post about it. Good for me!

Slappy, OUT!

It's not me. . . It's you.

I have a serious pride problem. I'm aware of it, and I'm working on it. Just so you know. If one of the things you think when you read my blog is "MAN! this girl is really smug and sure things a lot of herself" Just be aware that I agree with you. I'm trying to be better.

And in accordance with this goal, I have decided to un-subscribe to certain blogs. See, there are certain blogs that I read only to get offended, or to judge people, or to feel superior, or to mock them in my mind. Usually they are the blogs of friends of friends, or blogs that Reader has recommended to me because we live in the same area and subscribe to the same blogs. So I don't even KNOW the people that I'm judging. I just look at what they write and fume to myself that these people have no idea what they are talking about. And they are cocky in their ignorance. Makes me want to find them and punch them in the throat.

But the thing is, I never comment on these blogs. I never let them know that I am reading them and I just fume silently. BUT I ALWAYS GO BACK! Why do I do this? Is my need for self-declared superiority so large that I need to feed it daily by calling other people "twats" in my mind? Apparently so. But no more. I'm cutting myself off cold turkey.

If any of you are reading this post and thinking "Is she talking about my blog?" the answer is no. If we have met, exchanged emails, or if you have even ONCE made a post on my blog, I am not talking about you. Like I said, these are people that I have never met in life, who I've never exchanged an email with, who don't even know I exist. So it shouldn't be that hard to cut them out, right? That's what I'm telling myself.

But now where will I get my daily dose of snootiness? If all goes well, it will be gone shortly. It's good for me. Pride never helped anyone.

Why haven't I done this sooner?

The Cabin

Mom is selling the cabin. It's sad, but we knew the good times had to come to an end sometime. We have had that cabin for more than 1o years and we all have some great memories there. My husband has said that it's in the top 5 most favorite places in the world for him. He loves to be outside, relaxing under the trees. It is the embodiment of vacation and it will be missed. Here are some of my favorite things to do while there and the things I will miss most:

* Wakeboarding
* Drinking root beer (and letting my mom have "just a sip" of it herself)
* Falling asleep on a hammock after trying to read a book
* Playing SkipBo with my sisters
* Eating licorice
* Leaving the lid off the licorice tub so it gets hard and super chewy, and then listening to everyone whine about how SOMEONE left the lid off the licorice tub. So then I try to just take out a FEW pieces and leave them to get hard. But they always seem to disappear before I can go retrieve them. So then I just take the lid off the whole tub as retribution.
* Getting sunburned because I always forget to slather at least ONE part of my body and then taking a shower followed by a long nap to let the heat soak in
* Trying to convince my husband to get in the water
* Jogging down to the boat dock and then jumping in the water
* Smores and "skit night" by the campfire
* "Speerneck" stories
* Taco Bombs. And BFTT's. Actually, I don't think I will be missing those.
* One bathroom for 20-30 people
* My Aunt Lynda's crazy CRAZY antics.. And I mean crazy. Whether it's trying to convince people to eat the left over pizza crusts from 3 nights ago, or making clothes out of pillowcases, there is never a dearth of mocking material when she is around.
* Fresh blackberry pies
* Walking/riding down to the "swimming hole"
* A fridge so full of food it cannot close properly or even chill the food adequately.
* And finally, the battle that IS the yearly photo. I mean, we've only been doing this for 10+ years, but for some reason, something always goes wrong. Usually we know EXACTLY when the photo will be the first day of camping. "Hey, don't forget, family photo Thursday at 4:00 pm". But then there is always SOMETHING. Like a couple of kids are down at the swimming hole, or someone decides to leave early so we have to take the photo a day before, or someone forgot to ask a neighbor to take the picture so we scramble to find someone at the last moment. Or my personal favorite, last year, where mom decided to make dinner and then RIGHT BEFORE she announces it's picture time. So the food waits and gets cold for 45 minutes while we try to find a photographer and then proceed to give her 97 cameras to take a picture with each one. It's always something.

So here are some pictures of Trinity Center 2009. The last year we would all have those crazy wild times, even though we didn't know it at the time. (Thanks to my cousin Dakota. I stole them all from her)

The genesis of the FAMILY PHOTO. Notice how everyone is confused, there is someone trying to direct things, babies are crying, people are getting annoyed:













But then we always pull it together at the end:


Farewell cabin! Enjoy the next people who own you. But I'm sure they won't love you as much as we did.

Home

It's so nice coming home from a long trip. Even though we live in a little postage stamp of a home, it's ours. We have our routines here, and they are comfortable. It's nice being able to get back to normal.

Where were we you ask? Well the Bibbers my mother and I went to Missouri for about a week. We dropped off the coveted grandfather clock for my sister Sarah to pick up at a later date, and we got to see my brother's youngest daughter get baptized. We got to go to the lake and eat real Kansas City BBQ and it was just a great time all around. Here are some highlights from the trip:

* Taking off just hours after my baby's 2nd birthday party. (Party will be saved for another post) We wanted to get on the road sooner but there was a big issue with the trailer we were driving and the lights on it not working. Uhaul helped us out, though and we soon got on the road.

* Driving all through the night to get to Missouri Monday morning. There were a few times that the Baby screamed bloody murder because she wanted her mother (who was driving) and she wasn't being properly served. My baby gets HYSTERICAL and will do things to get my attention. She'll rip out her hair, stick her fingers down her throat to make herself gag/wretch/vomit, scratch herself, bang things and kick the DVD player. She knows that ALWAYS gets my attention. The good thing is that by the end of the week long trip, we had been in the car so much and traveling so much that she was used to it. The trip back to Utah had no screaming meltdowns at all!

* Going to the lake and getting up on a wakeboard! That hasn't happened in years. Maybe since I was married. I just gained too much weight, and our boat isn't the best for pulling people up on a wakeboard. But my brother's boat has a great tower on it and it's as easy as pulling yourself up on a ladder. I was so shocked I got up. I went around for a while but I was so tired from the previous day (when I went around on the super tube behind the boat) that I didn't have the strength to go very long. Next time for sure. But I got up! I'm just happy I got that far. Especially because as I strapped on the boots and slid into the water I IMMEDIATELY wanted to be out. That old nervousness of "you aren't going to get up, you will make a fool in front of everyone" was there. And I really didn't want that. I think I said "Oh, I really don't want to do this" but I stuck it out and did it! Hooray for me!

* Texting Lynn while at a BBQ place to ask her the proper protocol of saying "Yes Ma'am" to someone. I feel like I'm being rude when I don't reciprocate a "ma'am". I was told that if the person is older I should always say it, but THEN I got worried that I would offend someone by using ma'am when they were younger than me, and thereby telling them that I thought they were old. Lynn let me know that it doesn't really happen, and that if you are older than them and you still say it, they just look at it as respect. (Did I get that right Lynn?) I still feared doing it because I thought it would sound fake. But now I know the rules.

* Coming back from an outing to the park only to find a WATER MOCCASIN (also known as the COTTONMOUTH) snake chilling in the front yard. Actually, chilling about 3 feet from where my baby was just walking. OHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYY CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!! We ran inside, locked the door and my sister in law proceeded to call everyone she could think of until she found a ward member to come over and kill it. Which is a big deal for her because Tina is a big animal advocate. Example? the day before I found a spider on the floor and told my 14 year old niece to take care of it (I don't do spiders, remember?) and they PICKED UP THAT SPIDER AND PUT IT OUTSIDE! ZZHHHHHHGGGGEEEE (audible shiver) But luckily they were smart enough or cautious enough not to take chances with one of the most aggressive and deadly North American snakes that was just chilling out right by the front door to their house. The snake got it's head taken off. And I rejoiced in knowing my child would not die that day.

Just so you know, while Tina was calling trying to find a snake wrangler, I took the broom from the kitchen and unscrewed the handle. I was not going to let that thing get away. So if it started to move, I was prepared to go out there and beat it to death. Seriously, it was FEET away from my child. I was mad, and it deserved to die.

*Going outside to pick Mulberries. They are pretty good, if you can look over the inch worms that you have to pick out (or eat) and the little stems that come off with the berry. You can just spit those out after you eat them. Don't try to take them off the berry, because it squashes the juice out. But going into the back woods of the Missouri wilderness might get you in trouble. Which brings me to. . .

*My mom got a little bit of poison ivy on her face just to the right of her mouth, close to her chin. (I call it the "zit spot" because every month I get one JUST ONE zit right there. At least it's only one, right? But isn't 30 too old to get a zit when I'm PMSing?) Anyway, as we were driving home and were pretty close to the Wyoming border, my mom says, "This poison ivy is really itching my face. But I'm doing good not to touch it. But I have another little itchy thing in my eye lashes. Can you look and see if I have poison ivy in my eye?" And being the inquisitive nice daughter that I was, I agreed. I should've refused. Because as I looked in her eye, I noticed that her lashes were particularly thick in one area. And as she blinked, they moved in response. And then I saw it. . .The tick in my mother's eye.

Now, I want you all to go get a mirror. Or look at a butter knife you have retrieved from the kitchen. But you need to know where this tick was. Take your eyelid, and flip it up as if you were going to do that hideously grotesque and macabre act of flipping your eyelids up on themselves. Don't do it all the way, just gently tilt up your lid until you can see the teeny tiny ridge of skin running JUST UNDER your eyelashes. The minutely small piece of skin between your lashes and your EYE BALL. And you will know where that tick had its nasty Lyme disease-carrying head buried.

My mom says she wishes she could've preserved forever the look on my face when I realized what it was. I was horrified, and couldn't even bring myself to look at it, especially when it moved its legs. Bleeeggch. I'm getting queasy now just thinking about it. We were going to wait till the next gas fill up so my brother could pull it out himself, but after about a 5 second wait I just couldn't think of that thing feasting SO CLOSE TO HER EYEBALL for another second and I said I would just get it.

If anyone knows anything about pulling out a tick, you know that you have to get the whole thing making sure the head doesn't detach. So I grasped that thing, and gave it a gentle pull thinking that was all I would need to do. Nope, it was really drilled in there. So I just pulled harder and success!! And I was pretty sure I got the head too. That thought was confirmed when I looked at the thing and saw 2 chunks of my mom's eye flesh still visible from its nasty little pincers. Mom bled a little, but was very VERY happy to have it out. She said even with the little blood in her eye it was much more comfortable than having it on her itching her. AND SUCKING HER BLOOD I should like to add.

For the rest of the ride home I kept checking my (and my baby's) hair and all over our bodies for the hidden ticks I knew were at that moment giving us Lyme disease. I didn't find any but that's probably because they saw the death of their comrade and ran for their lives.

* And finally, you will ALL think this is gross, but it made me just so happy. When I got into the upstairs shower that all the girls share, I noticed that there was hair on the wall. Isn't that awesome? ALLLLL my sisters put their hair on the wall while they are taking a shower. I don't know where we all learned it. Probably from each other. But it's so nice to know that the same trait is being passed down to my niece. And you should know that her mother (my sister in law) specifically TOLD her daughter to put her hair on the wall. Because after they pulled a hair ball out of the drain that was the size and shape of a large rat, they figured that was the best way to avoid it in the future. Makes sense to me! That's why I do it!

I love my family. It's good being home. I can't wait for the family reunion in July!

Scarred Witless

So I got a call from our second counselor in the Relief Society today. She asked if I could substitute teach in R.S. next week. I of course immediately agreed. Because relief society lessons in our ward are usually really bad (since the bishop's wife got released. She gave the best lessons) and the teachers have a hard time reigning in the horrible comments. Seriously, there was a comment about a serial rapist the other day. So beyond the scope of the lesson on the word of wisdom!!!

So I find myself rolling my eyes a lot and thinking I could do better.

Then she says, "so the lesson is #12. . . .The Atonement"

Gulp. Gasp. Choke. Vomit a little in mouth, quickly swallow it and say, "Ohh! Great!"

Someone is being served up a hefty HEFTY slice of humble pie. With ice cream. You know, "a la mode" style. And then a big portion of humble cobbler, also with ice cream. And humble brownies with mint frosting on top. I'm going to eat some serious humble calories next week.

Stupid, stupid girl.

P.S. I have birthday pictures and travel log to post. But as you might suspect, my mind is a little scattered as of 6 pm this afternoon. Stupid girl, indeed.