Miracles

I've been feeling like I should post for several weeks (ok months) now.  I mean, I know how unfair it is to just leave you hanging and everything. I've probably started a hundred posts over the last couple of months, and none of them have said what I really felt.  ...probably because what I really feel changes every single day - sometimes even by the minute.

But let me at least get you caught up.

We are counting down -- we're 11 days from the induction date.  Hannah looks and feels really great, but as anyone who has been 9 months pregnant will remember, she is getting really really REALLY ready to be done.

I'm torn.

When people talk about adoption being a true gift from God, they are usually talking about adoptive parents who are searching for a miracle.  And it IS a miracle for many of them.
I think a birth mom also gets a miracle. She gets to know that her baby is going to be taken care of in the very best home she can find, with the very best parents she can find, and she gets the chance to choose a different path for her life. It's a miracle all the way around, and I am incredibly grateful for it.

Having said that, it's also the most painful thing I've ever dealt with.

If I hadn't met Jolene in person, I'm pretty sure I would be under sedation right now.

 (that's The Brain, me, Hannah, and Jolene)

But I love her.  And she loves Hannah, and wants her to have a part in her family too.  And she and her husband are so excited to have this brand new baby come to her family.  And even though it will leave a giant hole in my heart, it's right.

I know in my head that it's the right thing.  And I've been searching for peace to my heart. Most of my searching is done at 3 in the morning staring at the ceiling,  - but last week in the temple, I had this thought that maybe I was praying for the wrong thing. Maybe finding peace in my heart isn't nearly as important as Hannah and Jolene finding and keeping the peace in their hearts. So that is my new prayer.  And if you want send a few prayers out for them, that would be great too.


I'm sure that one day we will look back on this and feel all the joy that we're feeling right now without feeling all the pain.  That day is what keeps me hanging on.

It IS a miracle.

Just Another Day

Me: Hey Mimi - Where'd you get that chocolate bar?  (and can I have some???)

Mimi: Ummmm, I went to the grocery store with Tori during my off hour. (and sure)

Me:  Hey, we've had this conversation before.  If you want to leave the school grounds during school hours, you have to tell me in advance.

Mimi: {noncommittal shrug}

Me: Seriously.  If you can't remember it on your own, I'll have to give you a reason to remember it.

Mimi:  I guess.

Mimi: Am I still grounded from before?

Me:  I don't know.  My life is just so much easier when you're grounded.

Mimi:  Is that really where you want to go with that?   Because if it is,  I'm going to give you a reason to remember it.


Oh.
Yeah.

It's virtually impossible to be annoyed at someone who has just given you chocolate.  I think I'll just take her advice.

The Party

Hello my neglected blog friends!
Blogging has taken a little bit of a backseat in my life these days.  You might have noticed.  
I don't even remember the last time I was on my google reader.
I just popped in today to say "Hi" and "I miss you guys!"

I'll be back to catch up one of these days, but in the mean time, here's a link to the best blog post I've read in a long time. Maybe EVER.

(thanks for the link, Dave!)

The Party

( I have no idea if this has already made the blog rounds.... I've been srsly out of it... But even if it has, well, it's worth reading again.)

Some People Should Just Be Banned From Texting

 Reasons why I should not be allowed to text:

1) I'm just slow.
 In the beginning of my texting career, I would get a text from one of my children,  and then while trying to respond, I would get another text asking if I was there.  And then another asking if I was going to respond.  But, you know, to see what the new messages were, I would have to exit the message I was working on, and then re-find it again, thus doubling or tripling my already lagging response time.

I soon figured out that it was faster just to start another text.

(I'm pretty sure my extensive draft folder is most of the reason my phone has the response time of a retail cashier on Dec 23rd.)

I knew I'd really taken a looong lonnng time (in teen years) if I ever got the phone call.  Seriously, my kids would rather bite off their own fingers than call me in front of their friends.
"MOM WHERE ARE YOU!?" - urgently whispered into the receiver means I have been incredibly slow, and they needed to know if they could get permission for the whatever thing within a reasonable 27 seconds or so after they sent the text.

2) Apparently, I don't know when I'm insulting people.
See, to try to improve my response time, I changed my tactic to the One Word Answer.  Here's a little tip for you. The One Word Answer,in some texting circles, is thought of as the highest of insults .

"Your mom said "YES"?  Wow.  That's cold, man."

3) My word predictor is insane and does NOT predict words that actual people would use in a sentence. On the up side though,  I think I have finally trained it to predict the word "quesadilla" instead of "question" when I type "ques".  In case you were wondering, I did that by adding the word quesadilla to the end of every text I sent over about 3 weeks time.

4) My keyboard is so tiny, that even if I DO mostly get the words right, I rarely get all the spaces.  For some reason, I am much more likely to get a . (period) or no space at all, thus making the word predictor even crazier than usual.

5) I have completely given up on using punctuation on purpose.  It takes too long to access an apostrophe, anyway.  Remember - - we're on a timer here, and   youre gong toknow what im sying anyway.  Punctuation that happens on accident is just a bonus.

* this one drives Mimi crazy enough that she will actually text back corrections.

6) And finally, I never really look at what I've texted until it is in "send" mode, at which point it is too late to call it back.  Fortunately, most people are willing to interpret my texts - sort of  like a first grade teacher reads her students papers.  For example,  I sent this one recently -

"Hey! if there areatill plums on the free you should bring some.ome"

Which obviously was supposed to be
"Hey! If there are still plums on the tree, you should bring some home!"

Here's how my family would handle that text:

The Brain would probably not see it because he keeps his phone on silent.
Mimi would text back corrections.
Brandon would text back "if there areatill plums on the free, I'm etng tem."
Lizzie would txt back "lol...  I don't get it."
Hannah actually brought plums home.

So if my name ever pops up in your inbox, it's not that I'm trying to be insulting or cryptic, you've just got to remember that the emphasis is on speed, not accuracy.  I know that you'll eventually figure it out, or just ignore it and frankly, I've decided to be ok with either one.

quesadilla.

Let's Go to New England!

Yep.  That was the little phrase that saved my sanity.
 
And then occasionally in the ensuing weeks - he would walk around humming "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year".  Because, well, we all know how I feel about fall.

And then he really made it happen LAST WEEK, and it was everything we hoped it would be, except for the part where we didn't stay for weeks.   Because I'm pretty sure that at least one of us was kinda hoping for that.  But "New England for Two Weeks In the Fall" is way more than 5 words, and way more than our budget could handle, even if you count all the frequent flyer miles, so it couldn't work out at all.  But hey, 4 days in New England in the fall?  AWE-SOME.

Now, I know I promised pictures, but here's the thing.

One of us (who shall remain nameless) was offered a really great camera for Christmas a couple of years ago.  But said person (who I think we have already established has mental problems) turned down the camera offer because it seemed really bulky and, you know, that person would have to carry it around and stuff.  And it really didn't seem that important when you could get a perfectly good camera the size of a credit card which would fit in your pocket or purse (I mean if you were the gender that would carry a purse)  (not that there's anything wrong with that) and keep your hands free for other things.  Like 44oz drinks.

Anyway, the other person in our marriage (who shall also remain nameless) really kind of wanted the camera and wanted to be able to figure out cool effects and stuff and so either way we ended up with this great (and heavy) camera.  Which one of us uses A LOT.  And so, if you were the other person, you might think to yourself - "hey! why carry around 2 cameras, when one of us takes really great pictures and has this really great camera.  I mean, look at all the room in your pocket you could save if you didn't take that camera.  You could even carry an extra pack of gum or something."

Or some other completely random - yet clearly RATIONAL thought such as that.

In any case, as it turns out, only one of us carried a camera and took pictures and hasn't downloaded or edited them yet, while the other of us only has a few measly pictures from a phone camera.

Here are the 5 (yes, five) random pictures I took.

 Some cool church in downtown Boston.

 Cemetary pictures from my morning run in Salem, MA.  I liked these headstones because they are so close together, and i like to think its a sweet old married couple. 

 Blurry photo from 55 miles an hour in a 45 mph zone.

This is what happens when city planners have a bad day, and still have to come up with a town name to put on the sign.

I was still laughing 14 miles later. And I will tell you that I'm much more likely to stop for gas in a town named Effingham, than a town with a regular old name like Freedom.  Well, idk, Freedom is really a pretty good name for a town.

More pictures coming... eventually.

5 Happy Words

 The Brain Deserves An Award.

Well, more than one, but I'm talking about some sort of trophy or badge or recognition just for being able to stay married to someone who is somewhat - let's call it "psychiatrically challenged" at times.

I had kind of a rough July.  There were running injuries.  There were vehicle issues.  There were daughters with life changing news.  There was youth conference coming.  And there was a random myriad of other things.  At several different points, I was quite sure that my head was going to explode from trying to solve so many problems on so many different levels.  And so I sat down and cried.

Well, if I were completely truthful, I would tell you that first I yelled, and then I cried, and then I ranted a little bit, and there may have even been some swearing involved - for sure in my head if not out loud. (That part's a little foggy.)  (Thank heavens)   And then, even after I wasn't very nice,  and even though he was dealing with all the same issues (except he also had a mentally, uh, "fragile" wife to deal with),  he let me cry on his shoulder, and he said all the important things I needed to hear, and he did it multiple times during that month.  

One of the main things he said - that I used as a life raft to get through the month -  was a little 5 word phrase.

Not this one:

I Love You So Much
(though he did say that)

or this one:

You Can Do Hard Things
(but he did say that too)

or even

The Chocolate is Ready Now
(can you believe he found even happier words than those?)

but his little mystery phrase DID get me through July, and it got me through most of August, too.  Tomorrow I'll tell you what it was, and I'll even have some pictures for you!

You can try to guess mine if you want, but I'd rather hear YOUR 5 word happy phrase.  What would pull you out of an uberfunk?

Catalog Living

This site makes me laugh.    It's full of catalog photos for which someone has written funny captions.
Like this one:

Elaine got the feeling that Gary planned to stay in the bathroom for a long time.

and this one:

Sure Gary’s out of town, but I’m perfectly capable of starting a fire in the fireplace by myself, thank you very much.

I sometimes wonder who does the staging for catalogs and what they are thinking.

Now I know.  It's Elaine and Gary.

(*thanks adrienne!)

Life's Lessons

I wish I could have an advance schedule for my Life Lessons.  Don't you think you could do better if you knew what God had on the agenda for you, and approximately when it was coming?  I maintain that every kid should be born with a little schedule taped to his or her backside. I don't even need specifics...just give me a hint at what I'm supposed to be learning, and I'll be twice as fast to catch on!  I could have really used something like this:


Randi's Life Lesson Schedule:

1970's: 
Learn to be Flexible.
School is easier if you actually study.
Bell Bottoms don't look good on just anybody.

1980's: 
Marry your best friend.
Trust the Lord.
Naps will not kill you.

1990's: 
Don't wait "till the kids are old enough" to establish Family Night.
Follow the Prophet.  Like NOW.
Try to choose happy
Naps will not kill you

2000's:
You can't always be the good guy AND a good mom
Prayer is for real
Curfews are also for real.  And for a reason
Naps will not kill you

2010's
Whatever it is, try to look at it through an eternal filter.
Kids have agency.
You have to choose who you want to be.
Naps will not kill you


Some people just seem to go through life's crises so gracefully.  I seem to fumble it around and hope for the best, especially when it's sort of sprung upon me.   I've always done better with a little warning. 

As this summer ends, I find myself very busy making and remaking plans with Hannah.  The plans change all the time, constantly really, because one of us is very hormonal. And no, it's still not me.

Hannah is pregnant.  Which means all the stress and emotions --times about eleventy billion.

She's getting ready to move home so she can have more support through the next few months. (baby in January) She's decided to place the baby for adoption, which is a decision I certainly support, but it does present it's own set of hurdles for all of us.


so add to my 2010's list:
Personal revelation comes in many forms
The priesthood is powerful.
Life is hard.
Service is the best way out.
It will be OK.

oh, and

Naps will not kill you