Almost 2 Decades Later

Today is six months before or after my anniversary with Genius Golfer. Which means, we have been married now 16 1/2 years. With all the wedding business this summer with the nephew and this fall with the niece, I have been contemplating a lot of how and why we got together about two decades ago.

GG and I met when I moved into an apartment with two girls I never knew before. I was escaping a bad roommate situation and really didn't care where I ended up as long as it was with some good people. Luckily, I did. Not that good is always the same as sane. But these girls were good.

Stacey was the apartment building manager, so she got her pick of roommates, and apartments. The third girl in their apartment had just moved back east and they needed one more. Stacey wasn't sure what she wanted to be when she grew up but she tormented her boyfriend with a lot of flirting and wiggling around on the couch together. Her steady boyfriend, Kevin, who was like a fourth roommate from the beginning.

Perri was a returned missionary and a level headed and dependable girl. She worked more than she went to school, but she wasn't sure school was what she wanted anyway. She worked a couple of jobs all the time, and was a great ally in the "Us" versus "StaceyandKevin" world that became our apartment.

GG and his good friend were friends with Perri and subsequently StaceyandKevin. They would regularly be found on our couch in our front room. The two of them were very nice, GG's friend Jordan was gregarious and friendly and very funny. GG was quieter but polite and up for any fun that anyone else suggested. And I thought he had the hots for Perri. Which, apparently he thought too, for a while.

We hung out as an apartment plus guests for almost 3 years.

The last year I lived there, StaceyandKevin had moved on to who knows where and Perri had to moved home and help her mom with her dad who had become terminally ill. I stayed in our little #18 place and four other girls moved in with me. They were equally dear friends and a lot of fun. That year, Jen married our FHE "brother" Ray, Jodi married Dan and I ended up marrying GG. Jenny and Shannon were off to bigger and better adventures back East or law school. It was a whirl wind year.

A lot has changed since those early years hanging out. But even after two decades of first being friends and now being married I would still rather hang out with him than just about anyone else. It is a nice feeling. We don't agree on everything, and we haven't seen eye to eye lately on future plans, but I still prefer him to anyone else.

Like the title character told Harriet in Jane Austen's novel Emma, "If you think him to be the most amiable and agreeable man you have met or ever will meet, than by all means you should accept his offer."

I'm still glad I did after 16 and a half years.

Coping Mechanisms Observed

I spent this morning with my Dear Friend Tammy. Tammy has A.L.S. (also called Lou Gehrig's Disease) and is completely bedridden now. Her personality and sense of humor is still intact and same as ever. But physically she is not herself.

Tuesday and Friday mornings I spend at her place doing some housekeeping and laundry and just visiting with her. Her Husband, Rick, goes into the office on Fridays so she needs someone there to help her and watch her while he is gone. Today, I also got to help the hospice nurse wash her hair and then I fed her some lunch.

Her girls were home today, since it was Fall Break Weekend, but their dad still had the regular adult help scheduled for today. I was curious to watch how the three girls are coping with their mom's situation. Each one deals with it so differently.

Daughter #1 is a senior in HS and seems to deal with the whole situation by avoiding it. She is away as often as not. She has a job, granted, but it sounds like she is off with friends (always away from home) when she is not working. I hope she doesn't miss the opportunity to say things to her mom that she will want to say. And I hope she figures all this out before she regrets her choices down the road.

Daughter #2 is in junior high and very sporty. But she has become more of a home body of late. Today, in fact , she was making chili for their family's dinner and kept checking in with her mom for directions. Her mom tells me that DD#2 regularly sits with her and they read/listen to a book on tape and then talk about it together. Daughter # 2's coping with things by not going very far from home, nearly the opposite of her big sister.

Daughter #3 is in elementary school and is the family princess. She has always been the baby and was treated as such as she was growing up. But she also likes to dress and act older than her age, playing up the cuteness or the (at times) flirty factor. Her coping mechanism seems to be a stronger need for attention. She checks in on mom while she is home, but has also swiped mom's lipstick or make up and I find silky black bras in her laundry. I worry that her acting "older" will draw the exactly wrong kind of attention down the road.

How these three girls cope is fascinating and at the same time worrisome. I want to encourage them to do things that will be positive and will become treasured memories with their mom and the time they spent with her, serving and sharing with her for them. I'm not sure my influence is one they will listen to or even care for, but I feel for them all. Most of all I feel for Tammy who is not capable to changing much around her. She is putting on a good face and being as strong as she can for her girls, but she can't force a change in them, or in herself.

Each one of us is in a similar circumstances with our families and loved ones. We may not be facing terminal illness, but we all know that no one gets out of this life alive. Are we spending our time wisely? Are we making memories that we will treasure down the road? Are we telling people who mean something to us that we love them, admire them, pray for them? Look at your family this weekend, and see how you can improve those little moments together. It isn't easy, but it will be worth it. I just hope Tammy's girls can balance out their feelings with the time they have left with their mom.

Foiled, Again

I couldn't keep my eyes open last night. I fell asleep several times on the couch watching "Iron Man" with the family before I realized that I just ought to go to bed. It had been a long week , and it was only Wednesday.

Thank goodness, it is UEA--or Fall Break--Weekend! The kids are out of school Thursday and Friday and Monday! Of all those days, Thursday was my one chance to sleep in. It didn't work.

I mean, I guess I slept in later than normal, but I was really looking forward to a lazy morning where I could lounge around until, I don't know, eleven? That never happens.

Friday I get to get up and head out to help Dear Friend Tammy in Orem and Monday morning I get to get up and head out to my appointment with an academic advisor in Salt Lake. I'll let you know how that goes. She may tell me to get my head out of the clouds and take the job as a teacher's aid and get over my sorry self!

Or, that is just what I fear she will tell me when I take my 16 year old transcript from BYU to her and say, "I don't want to be that anymore. Can't I try something new?"

"NO CLASS FOR YOU!" she may yell in the Soup-Nazi's voice. Oh, that nightmare is way too vivid. Keep your fingers crossed for that on Monday for me.

So, back to the point, no sleeping in today. No lounging around, and no laziness in general. Just a slightly grumpy mom who needed more sleep and yet still has errands and jobs to do while everyone else is "on vacation".

Hope your weekends are off to a better start than it is here. Hopefully it will get better with some cold, icy caffeine, I mean, Diet Coke.

Hey! I Know You!

One of my favorite perks from my time at the schools is when I get some little student who recognizes me but just can't place from where they know me. I had this happen yesterday.

As you may know, I help the PTSA sell suckers at the Junior High every Friday. But yesterday I was helping on an off day with their Red Ribbon Week. I was in charge of a bean bag toss game (of sorts). I spent two lunch periods stooping over and over again to pick up little bean bags/hacky sacks from around the target and handling out very tiny Tootsie roll-type candies to a ton of junior high kids.

The Boy, meanwhile, got stung by a bee on his ear (?!) at lunch recess and had toughed it out as long as he could and called for me to come get him. By the time I got him all checked out, legally, and he got his stuff and met me in the office, it was nearing time for the elementary school to let kids out anyway.

A smaller collective of junior high kids generally show up each day at the elementary to pickup brothers, sisters, cousins, or neighbors and walk home all together. It is nice to see, actually.
One of these seventh graders was talking with her friend when she noticed me waiting for The Boy.

"Hey, I know you!" They always begin this way. I love the dawning comprehension and the recognition they own when they announce it.

"Sure," I try to help her. "I've done PTA stuff here for nine years now."

"No, I didn't go to school here. I'm just hanging out with my friend."

"Then, you must have seen me at the junior high today during lunch. I was helping with Red Ribbon Week games."

"No, I stayed inside at lunch today."

"Then maybe you know me from the sucker table on Fridays at the junior high."

"No, I would remember you from that. I don't usually get to buy a sucker."

"Is it from soccer? Did you play soccer this summer?"

"No, no soccer."

"Did you swim on the swim team this summer? I helped with meets for the city team."

"No, I didn't swim on the team."

"Well, I went to pool a bit with my kids. Maybe you saw me there."

"No, I didn't go very often."

"Well," I try to offer kindly, "Maybe you have seen me, but just can't remember from where."

"Wait," she calls as I am headed to the door with The Boy in all his stingy soreness.

"Hey, aren't you, like, from the, uhm, like from my, uhhh, you know, from camp! That is it. You were at Girl's Camp!"

"That must be it. I am in the Stake Young Women's presidency and you must have seen me at camp. You must have had fun, then, huh?"

"Yeah, it was great. I knew I knew you from somewhere."

Exchanges like that remind me how important it is to be a good example--no matter where I am. Just like I tell my kids, "I know a lot of moms and they know who you are and they will tell me if you are fooling around!" I try to scare them into not choosing badly. I hope by now I am a better "show you know" kind of example than not. At least, the kids who have these kinds of conversations with me, know that I was kind to them--mostly--and in reality care about their well being. The ones that think otherwise, were probably trying to steal suckers!

All Aboard the Bandwagon!

I have been "FF-ing" through some episodes of Oprah where she has Suze Orman on talking about the current financial mess our country, and now the world, has found ourselves. I enjoy this because they seem amazed and delighted to find a plan to live more carefully, more frugally. Where have THEY been?

Isn't the point of this mess that, as a people, we have over extended ourselves and have been living way beyond our means? We have been spending our imagined income, not our actual one. We have been saving nothing. And the government's answer to this is to run into the back room and print more money?! Isn't that a felony if WE do it? So now, with this bailout, the government is spending our children's children's futures. Where does this madness end?

My grandparents would have been very young children during the Great Depression. [By the way, isn't that the best oxymoron of all time? Was it really that great? I know it was huge, but we don't call it the Huge Depression...just a thought.] I remember visiting their homes and they all lived fairly simply.

My Washington Grandparents were living in the country and Gpa worked cattle. He was a cowboy in all the right ways--down to letting his doberman house dogs drink beer from the bottle and eat pizza with him. But I digress. He had simple tastes. He liked his beer and he liked his coffee with the guys down at the Brass Rail in the morning. He said little, but liked us kids to come sit with him on the couch and give him a hug.

My Gma was well into her mental illness by the time I came along, but she made the best homemade blackberry jam from berries picked on their place, at home, by hand. She didn't do anything fancy with them. She stored it up and we ate it when we got to visit. In fact, she "stored" a lot of stuff. She could be considered a hoarder now, probably, but she figured she might need it again someday, so why throw it out.

My Live-In Grandparents moved in with us when I was about 6 or 7. When they first came, Gram was pretty sprightly, at least by comparison to later. Gramps had suffered a stroke after a devastating "motorbike" accident disfigured his "good side" a few year years before that. He was physically pretty hammered, but he insisted on being as independent as he could be--despite my parent's concerns and frustrations. But I watched him as he returned to school--wheelchair and outhouse-shaped trailer pulled behind his spray painted old car and all. He wanted to learn Spanish, of all things, so he could communicate with the others at the Senior Citizen's Center where he regularly had lunch. He didn't ever give up while he lived with us. He showed a lot of courage and determination and grit.

My Gram, meanwhile was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis which brought them to us in the first place. She did what she could, but I knew she was hurting, and suffering, and wasn't happy with her situation. It made me very uncomfortable to try to be with her when she was whimpering from the pain she felt. I'm sure this isn't what she wanted with her life, but she stuck it out and showed some real unconditional and, many times, undeserved love toward me as a girl. I do have regrets about how I treated her as I grew up. I hope my behavior once I was older and a little better able to understand her made up for some of that. I know she wanted the best for my sister and me. She loved to hear what we were up to and what new things we were doing. She put on an optimistic face and demonstrated that just spending time together was the most valuable way to live.

These are the lessons, I gathered, that Oprah and Suze are just now trying to help people figure out for themselves. Where have all these people been all this time, since my grandparent's days? My parents lived pretty frugally too. Not to the point that I remember going without something. But we sure weren't fancy folks. And remembering now, I think we were fairly spoiled at times. But there wasn't a lot of money spent on stuff. We spent time together and learned to work and were expected and encouraged to work for what we wanted.

I heard all the time as I grew up, that you can't spend what you don't have. I thought everyone learned this. Apparently not. And now, we are all paying for mistakes made by everyone across the board. Too bad this lesson has to affect so many people's retirement savings and investments for their futures.

I can appreciate, a little, what Suze and Oprah are trying to do, but I just wonder what planet they have been living on for the last few decades as the public's spending habits have amped up year after year. Maybe now, living cheaply will be trendy! Thus making our family and friends trendy too. Yeah. I don't think that will happen. But at least Oprah is driving the bandwagon at this point. Maybe she'll collect some over the top extras from the entertainment industry too. Couldn't hurt.

When I Grow Up...

In light of our recent employment changes here on the circle, I have been reviewing just what I want to be when I grow up. Genius Golfer keeps telling me we are fine and I don't need to worry about that sort of thing, but as you know, I do worry and then I feel like I need to be responsible for all of us.

I have a bachelor's degree in history, with a teaching certificate that is still "mint in the package". I never got hired after graduation to teach under contract. Which is how I began my illustrious career at the dental lab from hell. But all that is over now and I feel no desire to go back to the lab or to teaching.

Not that I don't like being at the schools. I have been doing that as a volunteer for 9 years now. But if I go, I want to be there because I choose to be, not because I have to be. Does that make sense? I have had several people in those 9 years ask "Why don't you do this full time?" Simply answered, because I like to pick and choose the teachers I work for and help out, or I prefer to not deal with the general public that comes with public school students--meaning their parents!

But, you then ask rhetorically, don't you volunteer with the PTA? I do, but even there I am dealing mostly with parents who choose to be involved at school, and as a teacher you have to deal with all of them--the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So in light of the changes around here, I have been re-examining my career goals. GG asked me what I think I would like to do. I told him it was easier to tell you what I DON'T want to do. Here was my initial list:

Don't want to work with fast food--same requirement I had leaving HS, but more adamant now.
Don't want to work with the general public in a "everybody comes here" way.
Don't want to work in a place where I come home each day stinky or filthy dirty--that just makes more work for myself in the laundry arena.
Don't want to sell anything.
Don't' want to be in charge of teenage employees.
Don't' want to work weekends or evenings, if I can help it--since that would only add to the guilt of ditching my kids on others, albeit the kids are growing old enough to do more for themselves.

On the flip side of that list, I discovered that I do want to do:

Help people.
Keep learning.
Interact with others--just not the "look what the cat drug in" general public--more like coworkers.
Be able to do whatever I choose eventually for a while, like until GG makes the Senior Tour to golf, professionally--just joking.
I also thought I would like to do something within the medical field. I realise that I am too old to think of medical school, plus who wants to put yourself through that financially, but I think it would be and interesting field to look into.

So there you have it. The basics of my career placement interview. I'll let you know what I come up with here, but GG keep telling me there is no rush. I have news for him. The rush began twelve days ago and only intensifies as he seems to enjoy his "semi-retirement".

Somewhere...Over the Rainbow...

I just finished watching 5 nights of evening news in a row (thanks to a DVR) with The Boy for his Citizenship in the Nation merit badge homework. Talk about a downer.

This was a rotten week to watch the news. Each episode included terrible financial news. Each episode included reports on the presidential campaigns that have both taken negative turns as the election draws near. Each episode reiterated regular American's fears and anxieties of the future.

This homework was exactly the opposite to what Boy Scouts encourages and embraces. They teach to "Be Prepared" and to "Do a Good Turn Daily". I sure didn't hear any of that on the news.

Wouldn't it be great place to turn on the news and hear about how one neighbor was able to help another when they had trouble befall them? How nice would it be to read in the paper about the increased donations of time and resources to a local school by community businesses? What would it feel like to hear a reporter talk about how violence had been replaced with service? Or where families drew together to strengthen each other and those around them? Where jobs were created by cooperation letting mothers share a full time job and still care for their own children? Where health insurers were looking out for the patients who needed their help rather than looking out for only their bottom line?

I realize how outlandish that sounds. I know that it will not happen anytime soon. But after the week we've all just experienced, can't I try to imagine what that kind of world would be like? Is it wrong to wish for things to get better emotionally, morally and ethically, instead of just financially? Wishing doesn't make it so, but my wishing is another commitment to keep doing what I am doing--helping at school, serving in my callings at church, and watching out for my friends and neighbors. Maybe someday, that difference I make, that influence I have will make a bigger difference by helping to bring on the kind of world I have otherwise, only wished were real.