And Then We Came Home

Well, we're back.

From New York.

Where we spent Thanksgiving.

It was an adventurous trip which I'd love to write about someday, but yesterday my throat started to get sore and this morning I have itchy ears and I am afraid to expend any energy not directed at wishing away whatever ailment I am starting to feel because I refuse to get any kind of influenza during the holiday season.

However, here are some photos (mostly of my son in touristy places) taken by Chup's best friend--his iphone:

Move over Eloise, The Chief is now the Plaza's most famous resident:

(we did not stay at the Plaza, but close enough.)

I am not kidding when I say this, the soldier at FAO Schwartz made me take this photo. We just went in to buy The Chief a stuffed cat (or something else as equally awesome). I was really humiliated for some reason, but I did it anyway:


Good thing it turned out blurry.


Thanks Carnegie Deli for the seven pound Reuben of my dreams:

If this baby is a boy, we are naming him Reuben, so says me.


Park Centrale:

All hail to the heavens (and NBC) we were across the street from Central Park. No baby under five should endure more than one hour inside a small hotel room. The torture is extreme.

Sensory overload a la Times Square:

The Chief is still seeing stars.

And who is that good looking, Mormon-style nuclear family from the West posing like posies on Times Square?

Us!

One day we took the subway down to the lower east side where we enjoyed a morning of walking and eating various and sundry:

The bahn mi on Broome St. was outstanding and I am sorry it has taken me thirty-two years to try it.

Meredith Viera (you know, Meri) hooked us up with tickets to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Huge hit with the three and under crowd:

And the thirty-seven plus crowd.

Our blond hair, brown eyed cousins:


Lucy is going to kill me for posting this photo, but if this sore throat keeps up I might want to die anyway:

Besides it is not like I look like Mrs. Thanksgiving either.

Plus, here is a cutie one of Betsy Boots:

Who needs a turkey? Let's eat Betsy!

Speaking of turkey, our courageous cousin Ryan Fitzpatrick Simmons and his good wife (and our former neighbor) Kimberly invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner in their lovely fifth floor apartment in Harlem. I steal these photos from Kim's blog:

The decor was delightful, the food was superb. Maybe the best pumpkin pie Chup and I have ever had? Yes, affirmative.

Because Ryan and Kimberly are newlyweds, we were honored to have crashed their first Thanksgiving:

My mom is wearing her Hermes Turkey scarf like she does every year. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without my mother's Hermes Turkey scarf. Post Script, aren't Ryan and Kimberly adorable?

Okay Lucy, does this make you feel better?

(thanks Fitzpatrick for the download!)

Well, I think that about sums things up. Actually, it really doesn't. I didn't even get to the part about meeting Alicia Keys or how funny it was to be on set when Stephanie and gang were being interviewed on the Today Show. Or how Matt Lauer said, "Hi Courtney, nice to talk to you again." Or how nice Ann Curry is in real life, SO NICE. Or how we had a fancy time at White Christmas on Broadway with a backstage tour afterward by the Mara Davi. Or how my sister gets recognized everywhere we go. Or the cupcakes at Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Or how I was briefly detained and yelled at by the NYPD at the Thanksgiving Day parade and spent a half hour crying over it. Or how Tavern on the Green is my worst nightmare stuck inside a restaurant with tricky mirrors and crawling chandeliers serving boring cuisine. Or how we met up with Bari at Bryant Park for NYC's best falafel and we all fell in love with her chutzpah. Or how my husband was called a moron by a Delta employee at JFK and how we got our revenge. Or how Stephanie had to spend the night in the hospital. Or how we got lost in Harlem on Thanksgiving and it almost ruined the evening. Or how many times we ate at Whole Foods just because we could. Or how Ryan called me an ewok in my new faux fur wolverine vest (wolverine, not ewok).Or, how much I love my family and I am grateful to be apart of them.

Maybe as soon as my throat gets better I will have the willpower to write it all up in a whimsical post.

Or maybe I'll just let the four hundred pictures I just posted do the job.

Good (Thanksgiving) gravy that's a load of photos. If I wasn't a Mommy blogger before, I am now.

Meet me back here tomorrow? I'll be blogging for a good cause.

Winged Victory of Inmyface

Page, Vance, moi & Paris

Eight years ago when my sister Page was 31 and I was 24 we went to Paris together. On the plane ride over I crowded her with a map of the metropolitan area and started pointing out landmarks we'd be visiting. I think my finger was somewhere between La Défense and the Bois de Boulogne when she flopped her body limp in her seat.

"I don't want to do any of those things." She whined in my ear as I wrestled with the map.

"I am sorry. What did you just say?" I asked with squinted eyes.

"I don't want to do anything but sleep on this trip."

"We aren't going tropical here Page, we're going to Paris."

"I know. But I am tired."

"But it's Paris."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. When Page's husband Vance broke the news to his wife that he'd be in Paris for Valentines Day on business she insisted on going with him. Then she called me up and told me to pack my bags as I was chosen to navigate her around the city with my sharp Quebecois French. I assumed this meant we'd be sight seeing and crepe tasting and art viewing, but now? Sleep walking? What is this?

"I don't really care. I just want to sleep on this trip." She reiterated while adjusting her neck pillow and closing her eyes.

I dropped my head in defeat.

Granted the woman had five children, and lived an incredibly busy lifestyle. For this slight set back, I could allow her a day or two for jet lag, but by day three we needed to be up early spending the morning admiring the Winged Victory of Samothrace, followed by a brisk walk in the Tuileries over to have tea on Rue de Rivoli.

When I lifted my head to finish our conversation she was asleep.


Last week Lucy came to my house.

"What are we going to do when we go to New York?" She asked me while bouncing her baby Betsy.

The Today Show asked our sister Stephanie to fly back to the NBC studios for an interview, and we were in invited to come with our husbands and babies. When we first heard about the offer, I considered not going because I was still quite sick with my pregnancy-inducing fetus. It also sounded like a lot of work to wrangle an eighteen-month-old while keeping up with husband who travels for a living. But then I thought about eating a New York City Reuben sandwich and changed my mind.

"I don't really wanted to do anything but sleep. And eat a Reuben." I said to Lucy as I reclined on the couch.

"What?" She replied with squinty eyes.

"I am so tired." I said, "I just want to use this vacation time to rest."

"We are going to New York City. Don't you want to ride the subway?"

"I don't care, I'll take cabs."

Something about this conversation sounded familiar. Then I did some analysis in my head--because I have talent for that sort of thing--and realized that I am 32 and Lucy is 24 and I am tired and she isn't.

Granted, I am pregnant and my life has quickly gone from bare minimum to maximum in a few short weeks. For this you'd think I could be sanctioned a week of pure lazy endeavors. A week to enjoy maid service, room service and a grandpa willing to take The Chief for walks in Central Park. Just let me have mornings until noon and naptime until dinner. The Statue of Liberty will be there the next time around, besides I've already seen it.

Unfortunately, I now feel Page's weariness. No sight seeing in the nation's greatest city could compare with a morning to snuggle with sleep. It was a full circle, out of body, retro fitting empathetic moment.

But Lucy who has a world class title in eye rolling, did her best to ignore the apathy seated cozy and comfortable on my lap. Which is what I did to my older sister eight years ago when she was my age, and I was Lucy's age.

And when we were eating baguettes in the mosaic recesses of the metro station after an arousing day at the Musee d'Orsay I turned to Page and said,

"Remember when you wanted to just sleep?"

And we laughed so hard one of us lost bladder control.

(The older one, who had five babies.)



Hello New York, here I honk shoo.




p.s.

Cat Do It!

Looking for opinionated people who have something to say about cats.
I explain it all here.

*photo of his daughter's cat Lovebells, by Jed Wells

More than Enough--Post Thought

Last summer, while at a gallery opening I was handed a book called Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations. It was for me to read and enjoy and maybe . . . possibly . . . if I liked it . . . mention it on my blog(?!)

When I got home, I took off my shoes and put the book in my library of books I hoped to read sometime before Armageddon. If time dripped from the sky I would catch all those minutes in a tin bucket and use them to sit and read. Until then, it will take me a quarter century to get through a book . . . if I like it. I don't read anything that doesn't flirt with me in the first paragraph.

Then I thought if I put more books in the bathroom maybe I would read faster. Bathroom breaks are priceless to a mother with a constant shadow of one-year-old proportions. I am not too embarrassed to tell Daddy I've got to take a bathroom break-- and hide away in the bathroom for twenty minutes. For all he knows I've got a pregnant system in need of patience in the restroom arena. While really I'm just relieving my bladder for thirty-nine seconds and reading for the remaining 19 minutes, twenty-one seconds.

And that is how I started reading this book.

It is a series of interviews and photographs of Mormon Women who have had remarkable lives and made incredible choices. A book about the most common women having uncommon lives. (Doesn't that explain just about everyone you know?) But it is also an answer to the question that lingers among the members of our church, as well as the non-members of our church: What is it like to be a Mormon woman?

Which was somewhat coincidental you see because I've been wrestling with this whole concept of motherhood as it pertains to being a Mormon. I had hoped to forever hide under the umbrella of being a wife and mother--two roles our church claims as next to divinity--and nothing else. I wasn't interested in being a wife, mother or friend/or a wife, mother and Primary President/or even a wife, mother and blogger (I always said I'd quit blogging when I became a mother). I didn't want anything to complicate what I could control here at home. Besides, these two roles kept be busy enough with questions and quandaries, how was I supposed to gladly add to the confusion by also taking on other relationships/causes that required attention? AND I thought, somewhere in this battle of my brain, the church would surely back me up on this idea--that wife-hood and a motherhood (or the quest to be thereof) were all that was required of a Latter Day Saint woman.*

I skipped the first interview**, then the next and the next until I found the interview of my favorite writer of all time Emma Lou Thayne. Of course so many of her thoughts expressed were translated into my heart, helping me read what I already felt. Mostly about being a wife, mother and a writer. From my interpretations of her chapter, she was saying that all three were connected. Her need to write made her a wife and a mother. Her being a wife and mother made her a writer.

She says, "I never felt like I was neglecting my family. I always said I can love you with all my heart but not with all my time, I've always felt life was a both-end thing rather than either or."

So then I was hooked.

But twenty minute installments haven't pushed me through this book nearly as fast I could hope. It takes me several days to read one interview, because I like to equally think about each life experience. The only common thread made obvious to me so far, regardless of life status--married, single, rich, poor, culture, race--is that each woman has been directed by Heavenly Father to be more. More of what they thought they could be. More of what they thought they had energy or time to be. More than what they thought life would give to them.

It is still uncomfortable for me to open up to the possibility of being more of what Heavenly Father needs me to be. My nature will always wish to live on an emotional farm, one far away from duties outside of wife and mother. (Heck, I'd also like to live on a physical farm too). But then I think about my mother who sits on the city council.
My sister in law Megan who is the PTA president.
My friend Sue who is heading up a civic board for our downtown area.
My friend Laura who runs a boutique.
My best friend Wendy who manages special education at our local middle school.
My neighbor Janna who spends part-time counseling women with severe body issues.
My aunt Judy who helps run a weekly health clinic to the uninsured.
My other sister in law Lisa who performs with a comedy troupe on weekends.

If they can do it . . .

. . . so can I?

Book: Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations by James N. Kimball & Kent Miles
Get it: Amazon or Deseret Book
Book review: Meridian Magazine


*If you would like to hear what our church leaders have said about motherhood you are welcome to read this talk by Julie B. Beck (a talk I printed out and placed on my night stand for permanent study!)

**The first interview I skipped has been one of my favorite so far--Carol Gray from Sheffield England.

If you end up getting this book email me and let's chat?

Post-Edit:

I have really enjoyed the comments pertaining to this post. I appreciate the thoughtful discussion and despite popular opinion, I like to hear opposing views. It makes me feel like my words are at least worth feeling.

Lucy always tells me to be more bold on this blog and I have yet discovered how to be bold without losing artistic prose, but I do want to explain a little background to this post-something I should've mentioned in the drafting of it. I will try to do so boldly:

I am lazy.
(Or selfish, but let me say lazy because it sounds less depraved.)

I never, ever really believed my church would back me up on the whole being "a mother, wife only" idea because inherently we are asked to do so much more by nature of being covenant women.

Let me be more bold, we are asked to work hard as Mormon women. Hard work is hard for the lazy. I am lazy. So in my laziness, I hoped to be able to twist the ideas I was hearing from the pulpit to back up my "a mother, wife only" idea. But because this was not truth, it hounded me.

Blogging/writing for me is hard work.

I want to hide from it sometimes. I ask Heavenly Father if there is something else I can do for Him instead. He lets me know in resolute terms to keep going. Blogging/writing is my more.

Let me be more bold, I am not currently asking Heavenly Father to give me more, but to help me be open to what is already being asked. I can wish all the responsibility away, but publishing my thoughts (as uncultivated as they sometimes are) and being a wife and mother is what is being asked of my time and talents right now. Reading this book helped me to identify similar patterns in other women's lives--many of them just as skeptical as I am.

I say skeptical, but also I am lazy/selfish.

In listing the ladies in this post who are also doing more, I meant to illustrate their inspiration to me.

Let me be bold: I was not comparing myself to them, I was showing my appreciation for their willingness to heed to personal revelation. I do not endorse comparisons.

They received their calling, and I must to. So if I don't fight it, my byline looks like this:
Wife, mother and blogger/writer.
And if, on a gray day in January I pray and find out it is no longer my calling, I have to be willing to let it go.

Let me be more bold: every woman has something more to them. Even if they fight it like I do. And if they fight it like I do, they are in for a world of frustration. Like I was, before I read this book.

But I will say this, when I write posts like this and listen to other's voices and ideas. I really, really, really love blogging/writing. And it is so worth it.

So thank you.

p.s. I think Sister Beck's talk was mostly aimed at me, Mothers Who Don't Know Because They Are Lazy. If her sentiments didn't sit well with you, perhaps you are already a Mother Who Already Knows--I think that is plausible.

Writing On the Wall

"Do you see what The Chief is doing?" asked Chup as we readied ourselves for church this morning.

"Yes and I love it."

"Love it?" Chup asked with the tone that reads: what is wrong with you?

With his favorite green highlighter clutched in his manic fist, while balancing on my green wooden chair, The Chief was producing installation art all over my office wall. He would extend his arm high and draw lazy lines back-and-forth then follow up with frantic scribbles reaching from my desk to the doorway. Jackson Pollock's little apprentice. I couldn't be more proud.

What is wrong with me?

When I was five years old I colored on the basement wall. I thought the white washed plastered canvas was simply void of artistic impression and so I took to the task with my set of markers. My mother however, thought otherwise and failed to applaud my project. In fact, she expressed to me in a very firm statement her disappointment and asked the question every parent has asked since the whole Adam, Eve and Cain debacle, "What were you thinking?"

With my fragile artist feelings shattered about me, I decided I could no longer live at home. Not after what was said, not after was done. So I emptied my brown-floral pillow case of my pillow, filled it instead with a couple shirts, shorts, underwear, a package of Zesta crackers, a red apple and hit the road.

I got as far down as one block away and wondered what to do next. This was my first attempt at being a runaway and I wasn't very clear about the conditions. Where was I supposed to runaway to? Where could I find materials to build a leaky shack? And how long would it take for someone to notice I was gone? I needed tears, hugging and a mother's begging apology. Those were my terms. Until then, my absence was my ransom and retaliation.

So I sat on my neighbor's lawn for awhile. Long enough to realize it would take a mealtime--or maybe even bedtime--until someone noticed I wasn't around. I was a middle child in a huge family, I was just stuffing between the eldest and the youngest. A filler, if you will. This runaway business was never going to have the effect I needed it to, and in my heart I knew it. Darn it.

Slowly I wandered back home with my pillow case heavily slung behind my shoulder. I slipped in the front door without being noticed--no one yelled "Courtney? Is that you? We've been looking all over . . . just about to call the authorities!" I put away my clothes. I ate a few crackers. I sighed. Sorry about this ending.

Then years later, when my brothers were old enough to be teenagers, they took over the basement with their indoor basketball hoops. They wasted no time using the basement walls to write blatant messages to each other about who can dunk over who and who has a better three-point shot.

No one seemed to care then? Did they?

But my five-year-old self did. She risked her life (!) for artistic freedom only to see the sports world take over like some cheap franchise. This opened the way for hundreds of visitors flocking to our basement to leave their personal mark--a tribute to themselves (or their crush) written in graffiti. My walls littered with other people's junky proclamations. To the tune of this:

Have you seen enough?


Oh no you haven't.

What is wrong with me?

I say let the child express himself.

Our Latest Family Portrait:

left to right: Chup, c jane, The Chief

*via The Chief's fine selection of random stuffed stuff

Hearing the Ultra Sound

Two years ago this month our dog died.

I was never a pet fanatic, never one who'd foresee myself crying over a lost animal, but when my dog died I fell apart. So did my husband. We cried for days on end. Until we moved, we never stopped anticipating seeing our Ralph waiting for us on the back porch. I could've blamed it on the spice of a hormonal pregnancy, but either way it was really sad. He was the only baby I had known, the only being to appreciate me as a mother.

Recognizing our grief patterns, my helpful cousin Katie offered to give me an early ultrasound.

"Come see your baby. It will help you feel better." She promised.

So we did.

And I had never been more nervous in my life. Not for any recital, or mission, or marriage. Not because I was anxious about the gender, or about the health of the fetus. I was nervous I had made the whole pregnancy up in my brain, just because I wanted it that bad. It was plausible to think Katie would take that wand, squeeze blue jelly all over my slightly protruding belly and find nothing but a bowl of black soup in my uterus.

But no. A baby appeared.

And she was right. When I saw that being moving and stretching and giving us a thumbs up sign my heart had found a replacement for the hole Ralphy left. A replacement that expanded until it took over my entire heart. Oh the miracle of modern technology!

I was mother to a human.

---

As I write this post, a second baby is punching around inside of me. I am almost twenty weeks. In this stage of pregnancy the going question is, "Do you know the gender?" --an inquisition added to the repertoire of pregnancy pondering in the past twenty years. Do you know the gender? Are you going to find out? What do think it is? All questions I've asked to others in my position. It is Ultrasound Season again for me.

I've been asking the Lord for some insights this time around, and I feel differently with this pregnancy. I know I have a tremendous amount of options given to me for the direct purpose of a successful pregnancy, delivery and postpartum period. From medical procedures and miraculous ultrasounds to alternative methods, I recognize them all as gifts from God. I will accept them all as good, I will be grateful for what options I choose.

But with this pregnancy I have decided to choose less options. I am learning to find the mothering instincts inside of me in a different way. The Lord is teaching my spirit in terms that my soul can understand, and the more I let go of options, the happier I feel. Happier, lighter, better. This is for me, not everyone, but yes, definitely for me.

So have I heard my baby's heart beat? Yes. But not with an instrument.

Will I get an ultrasound? Maybe, but probably not.

But it doesn't mean I haven't seen my baby.

***in keeping with photo series on the last post, this is our former dog Ralph, Utah Lake, dead of winter.

The Waffle Maker

There was a tense moment tonight in our living room when Lucy asked Chup,

"What would makes you mad at Courtney?"

and before he had time to answer, I responded,

"He doesn't like it when I am snotty."

(Or when I answer questions for him, but let's focus on one thing at a time . . .)

And you know what I did then? Something really regrettable for the sake of validity, I reminded him of a time when I disliked a Christmas gift he gave me. Why did I do that? The very mention of this terrible memory introduced a horrible spirit of drudged-up issues and suddenly our comfortable living room became really uncomfortable.

Chup was living that Christmas morning all over again, I could see it in his eyes. And in an attempt to clear my good name (for the 45th time) I mercilessly argued my point, I disliked that gift because _____. When that didn't work I blamed it on genetics, all the women in my blood family have a weird streak of snobbishness. Except for Page, she isn't snobby, just bravely blunt which makes her more of Clark. This other stuff we blame on our mother's side.

Lucy was there to back me up on this second point. Thank heavens.

Putting all of that aside, do we not all know the feeling of being gifted with something we don't like? We exchange, return, re-gift all the time. What makes me such a heartless wife? Does a wedding band equal a disintegration of opinion? Besides, we kept the gift and it malfunctioned three times until finally we told the store from whence it came to KEEP IT. It had cursed our home long enough. Of course, when I brought up this point the debate went dead, like it always does. Because I am right.

In the silence following my final contention, Lucy left to talk to her husband Ric on the phone. Chup and I were husband, wife and baby in the living room. I looked over at him as he held The Chief on his lap playing some goofy barnyard game on his i-phone. I too relived that dreadful Christmas morning years ago. I remember crying because I was so conflicted, should I pretend to love it? Or should I be honest and say I didn't?

Chup interrupted my thoughts with,

"Hey. I love you."

Then again,

"I love you."

And again,

"I love you."

And me in return,

"I love you too."

And I meant it in a "I'm sorry" kind of way.

This past weekend, Chup and I quietly celebrated our anniversary of being sealed in the temple. He made me a mug of Belgian dark hot chocolate, him a cup of milk chocolate mint and we toasted to our happy--if not unfailingly flawed-- marriage.

*photo of us as newlyweds taken on Utah Lake in the dead of winter

The Problem With Being A Mother

The problem with being a mother is that at first you are handed a baby. A little helpless human who wants nothing more than to wrap up inside your arms, or next to your chest and feel secure. In this state of co-dependency you feel helpful because the being is so tiny and you are so in love. All the while, the chemicals in your brain trick you into believing the entity in your arms will always be in your arms. An itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny package of perfection.

Then one cheerful morning, you hear crying in the nursery. You go to pick up your little human all snugly in his handmade quilt safely tucked in the crib only to find a bigger model has replaced your littler model. A much bigger human--who doesn't need your constant barrage of hugs and cuddles, or worse, doesn't want them either. And you are bewildered how overnight (OVERNIGHT!) those minuscule feet grew so much in just a short space of existance. All the while your brain cannot register this disconcerting reconciliation.

How did that being become this? How?

Quickly you head to the photo files containing the birth of that being. There is proof that the smaller version once existed. All mummified in receiving blankets with eyes of uncertainty that will certainly be calmed by your motherhood. Checking the newborn photos against the not-newborn baby standing before you, the bewilderment returns.

How was this being once that being?

I tell you, it has been the shock of my life. And don't tell me it gets worse.

I don't want to know how those feet get bigger.

Shhh.

*photos by Wendy of Blue Lily who has documented my son's life so far

A Little Dish on Yesterday

Yesterday I wanted to buy things. I wanted new pillows, new decor, new lights, new shoes for The Chief, new clothes for myself and a pair of hot black boots.

"Why do I want to buy things?" I said to Lucy, realizing that just a day earlier I had made a promise to my sister Page I'd join her in scaling back our lives. The desire of my heart is to forsake the vicious cycle of wanting. Wanting, getting, wanting again--with no needing in sight.

But, sometimes these wanting urges have a way of being useful. A quick remedy, like comfort food, that helps me get to a better place. Meanwhile, I am hoping that someday acquisition won't be needed for self-security.

"You are nervous." Lucy explained, "I am too. But I don't want to buy things, I want to eat. I think you should shop all day and I should eat all day."

This conversation happened mid-morning after voting. My dad was running in a tight race for Provo City Mayor. There is a nervousness on election day that gives us all the shakes-- us relatives of those brave enough to run for public office.

"I am going to at least buy the boots." I told her, turning to Zappos.com to zap my nervous energy. But just as I was about to press "buy" I was called by the Deseret News for an interview about blogging. I am horrible at interviews and I couldn't possibly buy boots and answer questions about blogging at the same time. Are you crazy?

When the interview was over I returned back to my online shopping but couldn't find my credit card. I searched high and low and finally gave up. Lucy and I had lunch, shaky fingers eating fries.

During nap time I seized the opportunity to go back and buy my lucky boots. But then I got caught up in the nowhere lands of the internet and forgot all about it. In realizing this I thought maybe it was a greater indicator I wasn't supposed to buy the lucky boots after all. Three strikes, you know.

After naps The Chief and I picked up niece Lindsay and her friend Dixie for a short segment with KSL about my Provo Blog. If you think navigating media functions is a typical day for me, you are right. I mean, wrong. Did I say right? We were meeting the crew downtown for a trip to the Provo Bakery. As I pulled up to Lindsay's house, I noticed a lot of cars at my grandma's house across the street.

"Is everyone okay over there?" I asked Lindsay in the car.

"Grandpa Don died." She told me.

Our Grandma Clark (Dad's mother) had married her fourth husband, Don in 2001. They lived a very romantic senior citizen life together as gardeners and lovers of life's pleasures. Lately he had been feeling weak, and yesterday after what seemed to be a good morning, he passed away. As my family tells it, he took his last breath after conversing just moments before in the kitchen. He was in his nineties and very deserving of such a tranquil exit.

(On Halloween night he gave The Chief and me candy at the doorstep, and encouraged us to take more than our obligatory two pieces. My kind of man!)

When I got home from the taping I bought the boots. Good for me! Good for me?

As the sunset my stomach set too. The votes were about to start coming in. My parents were hosting a party at their house for friends of the campaign. I showed up early to see how things were going. The were so many energies colliding at that point, nerves for the campaign, peace for Grandpa Don, worries for Grandma, hunger for the catered dinner.

I went home and watched the results come in with Chup. In Chup's vast repetoire of emotions (I married an actor, remember?) nervousness isn't a major player. I do nervousness enough for the two of us. His coolness helped calm my chattering teeth.

It was a close one.

Dad lost.

This morning as I woke up and saw the blue sky colored between the tree branches, I felt empty. The election was over, Grandpa Don is gone and not much too look forward to . . .


. . . except those boots.

*photo taken by Patrick Smith for the Daily Herald

Where I End And Offend Begins

I don't know how humans physically come out of "the woodwork" but for the past week people have been apologizing to me left and right and center court. Tons of people, from good friends to strangers, family and facebook friends all worried about hurting my tender feelings. ONLY I HAVEN'T ONCE BEEN OFFENDED.

This is befuddling. (Does it offend you when I use that word?)

After a rousing conversation about politics, religion, race and sexuality with my visiting teachers (the female equivalent to home teachers) one morning I felt invigorated. Perhaps when people love eachother there really aren't topics of conversation off limits! But then the night following, my visiting teacher showed up with a party plate full of peanut butter chocolate love bars and a practiced apology. I was almost offended that she thought I was offended, but told her I'd take the treats anyway just to ease her of her guilt--the ultimate act of charity.

Others too have called, come by or mentioned in conversation how ashamed they were for something they said. Something I might have taken wrong. Something they couldn't stop thinking about. Like my friend today who called to say she was sorry for teasing me when I said the word "peepers" during church yesterday in front of the children. I laughed at her for even dialing my number. Besides peepers is in the Bible. Look it up.

This isn't like two weeks ago when instead of apologies, people came crawling out of the woodwork sending ugly photos of me as a missionary. Isn't that uncanny? Ugly photos of yours truly were being tossed into my inbox like croutons on a Caesar salad. Ugly like Day Light Savings Time. In fact, if you are my facebook friend you can go right now and find one in my photos file.

I can't tell which experience is worse, having to look at ugly photos of myself or people thinking they have offended me when they haven't.

Anyway, before I get too derailed and start to tell you about how I sprayed myself and then Chup in the eyeballs with The Chief's lavender sleeping spray tonight, I shall gather this whole post in to some sort of sense.

I need to:

a.) figure out why people think I am so sensitive. Is it my allergies? I don't have allergies.

and

b.) figure out what offends me. Because it sure ain't what people think it is.

(It used to be my lisp. Anytime someone mentioned my lisp I'd be really hurt, but Chup came along and started calling it "cute, in a sexy sort of way" and then I didn't care what people said about my slip of my tongue. So there, high school.)

Maybe I should turn this question on the world.

Dear World, do you know what offends you?

*thanks Soeur Clark for the photo, you are welcome for the leopard print dress.

Ho! Bo!

Well, I guess it is time for me to tell the rest of The Tent story.

As it turns out, we found a hobo living in our yard.

Yes, a hobo.

We caught him one evening drunk on Pirate's Booty
while rummaging through our stuff
looking for shiny things.


And to make matters worse
he wasn't wearing pants.

I chased him off our property using words like Skedaddle! and Scoot!

Oh boy did I mean those words too!

Meanwhile Chup shot photographs
for evidence of the crime.

The whole episode went by like a blur,
he picked up his knapsack

and started running . .

. . . laughing the whole way . . .

Last we saw him he was headed for the hills,

begging for candy from door-to-door as he went.

If you see him around, tell him he left his mangy tent here.

He knows where.

*costume, make up and knapsack all produced by Daddy Chup
isn't he clever?