Because we are so hip like that…

So, we bought an additional car a few weeks ago. It’s cute, and gets good gas mileage, and is new enough to last a few years before my husband gets the new car itch again.

Now, I think of Shane & I as pretty technologically savvy. I can program my DVR remote control to my TVs. I can add songs to my mp3 player. Heck, I can even walk and chew gum.

But this past weekend, our new car key fab got the best of us. Well, when I say us, I mean mostly Shane, but I was there to. It sucked going through it, but now it makes for good bloggy fodder.

Picture us on Sunday as we exited our friendly neighborhood Old Navy. Now, I’ve got to back up just a little. The car we bought has a button on it that, provided the car is locked, you can push it and the car will start. I’ve used it a couple of times just fooling around and it hasn’t seemed to rock my world much, but its cool all the same. Until that fateful trip to Old Navy, that is.

Shane hasn’t had as much alone time with New Car as I have, so he wants to play with the toys on it as much as the next boy I mean MAN does. So, he started the car with The Button. All was fun and games until…

The car wouldn’t unlock.

After asking me what to do (I felt like I was along for the ride at this point), he tried unlocking the car with the key. Big mistake.

The car starts honking uncontrollably.

He tries to start it with the key to get the honking to stop. More uncontrollable honking. (OH, HI everyone in Old Navy Parking Lot. We really aren’t trying to steal this car, I promise.)

Helplessly, he exits the still honking car, and gives the keys to me. For some reason, the key fab spirits must like a woman’s touch or something, cause I was able to relock the car (terminating said horrible honking) and unlock New Car. So on we go with our little errand (summer shoe shopping…can I say UGH!) And suddenly, I am the Queen of the New Car Key Fab and Shane is 100% Anti the Start Button on Key Fab Guy.

Now, enter Monday afternoon. Again, a little history. Shane and I commute to work together; he drops me off at the train station and finish my route to work on the cozy train while he takes New Car to work. As I am riding said train and am ¾ of the way to my destination (which, in ideal circumstances, would be him, waiting for me while seated in New Car) I get a call from him asking how to unlock the %#$%$$% car. Being the smart girl I am, I tell him to use the key fab (duh!). His reply is that he can get the car to lock, but not unlock. Pretty soon he can’t even get the car to lock. He knows if he attempts to use the key, it will honk again, and one of his coworkers happens to be sitting in front of the window in front of said Unlockable New Car, swinging his feet and watching this entire drama play out. Shane’s pride won’t allow the coworker to see any more is his misfortune then he’s already seen, so he starts walking towards my train stop. Now what to do? It’s 4:30 pm, we are both in our work clothes, we need to be our kids up in 45 minutes 25 miles away, and our shiny new ride has bested him.

Luckily, my train stop is situated next to a Best Buy. The nice Car Audio person opens up the key fab & figures it is the battery that is causing all our troubles. The battery type is CR2016 and they point us to a shiny display with every kind of lithium battery EXCEPT CR2016. Onward-ho to Office Max, right next door. As we are walking to yet another battery display I’m praying like crazy that they have CR2016 because I’m fairly sure that the other stores in the complex (Countrywide Mortgage, New York Subs, and Carl’s Jr) will NOT have it.

Well, my prayers were answered. We purchase the battery, and start running down the street to get back to Shane’s work. The 80+ degree weather started to kick my butt, so I let Shane run ahead while I called our kind babysitter to tell her that yet again, we would be late getting our kids. Since no one could possibly come up with this good of a lie, she luckily believed me and laughed as she assured me it was fine.

A few minutes later Shane pulled up in New Car and picked me up. Ordeal over. But lesson learned: when the key fab starts being unresponsive…CHANGE THE DAMN BATTERIES! It definitely beats the alternative, people.

Did I really just do that?

Have I ever mentioned that I’m kind of a wash-and-wear kind of girl? I wait; I did. The faster I can make my getting-ready routine, the better. The semi-recent beginning of wearing mascara & lip gloss hasn’t put as much of a dent as I thought. It even makes me feel like a grown-up. Wow, how mature of me.

Anyhow, with all these changes, I guess I needed one more. First, a little history (because I always seem to have to explain myself in extreme, boring detail. But you’ve already figured that out.) Around the time I was 14, I decided that having bangs was a drag, so I grew them out. I discovered that ponytails and buns are super-duper fast if the hair in front can be swept back along with the rest. So all through high school, my wanna-be hippie days of college, my newlywed days, new mom days, my hair has been mostly the same length front to back (because how better to display my ginourmous forehead, right?).

Enter the boredom I felt on Saturday as I contemplated my hair. I had just finished drying it, and I felt the familiar frustration at the curliness of the hair right around my face. So, instead of going on with the day & stuffing it all in a ponytail, I grabbed some scissors and CUT BANGS! It didn’t seem real until I viewed the 5+ fistfuls of hair lying innocently in the bottom of the trash. What had I just done? Great, now it can be curly-but-not-curly-enough-to-be-cute BANGS that I get to deal with.

I don’t know what I was thinking. It is strange to me to lift my eyebrows (which I do, you know, when being stern with my children, which I seem to notice a lot more now) and see little hairs trailing towards my eyes. I have yet to figure out what to do with them. How do I get them straight without copious amounts of gel? How to keep them from frizzing in the rain? Are they going to drive me nuts while I’m running? How do I get them to do the schwoopy thing ala Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man 2? These are the questions that I will be exploring as I start this new adventure almost 19 years in the making.



So, have any of you ever done anything impulsive with your hair you later regretted?

I've waited for this for a long time...

Thomas brings home a book every night from school. As this year has gone by, the books have gotten better and better, and since he started on chapter books, things are great.

A few Sundays ago, I asked him to read the first two chapters of a book called Henry and Mudge: The Happy Cat. I was doing dishes, and I didn't really pay attention, but all of a sudden he stopped reading. I looked over and it appeared that he was closing the book, which led me to ask, "did you read the whole thing?"

Now, let me interject here something about Thomas: he LOVES cats. Our two youngest cats, Bucket and Squeegee, are his favorite friends. Bucket will curl up with Thomas whenever she gets the chance and will sit in his lap for as long as he will pet her. I've never known a cat to like a little boy, but Thomas is a cat lover, and they seem to love him back. And, for as good of a reader he is, he doesn't seem to really like it the way I think he could. I keep hoping, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence that he will one day while away a rainey day cuddled up with a book.

So, to answer my question, Thomas explained that he had finished the book. I asked him what it was about, and he said it was about a cat and a boy and a policeman that came to get the cat. At this point, his whole face fell, and he started to cry. It was as if he had lost his best friend or something. He came and sat in my lap and cried and cried. He was so sad that The Happy Cat, who had gotten lost from her family and had been taken in by Henry and his dog Mudge, had had to go home with her owner. It took Thomas the better part of an hour to compose himself; he sat on his bed for a long time and held Bucket and cried.

Now comes my confession. I LOVED that he cried over The Happy Cat. I'm probably the meanest mom in the whole world, but I thought it was great. I LOVE books that make me cry. I will read them over and over. When I read the Time Traveler's Wife for the first time, I sobbed for the last 200 pages of the book. I finished it in a night, and started reading it again the next day. Little Women? I cry every time Beth dies. I could go on and on with my tear-jerker books, but suffice it to say that to me, the sadder, the better.

I have fostered this little hope for a long time that my boys would be readers. Since this is the first year Thomas has been reading, I've often wondered when or if he would ever really start to enjoy it. He's a good reader, but usually as soon as he completes the assigned reading, he is more than happy to put the book down and do something else. That Sunday I saw him be engaged to the point that he didn't want to stop reading after the first two chapters; he went on and finished the whole book so that he could find out what happened to the Happy Cat. I saw him internalize the characters enough that he felt strongly enough about them to cry for them. I hope that the more he reads, the more he will find how wonderful it is to read.

Keeping all the balls in the air…

Shane is a juggler. During his single years, he honed several skills, but the only one I’m willing to talk about here is juggling. Whenever he juggles, he gets this look in his eye that screams that wants me to applaud him. Early on, I applauded, but nowadays my praise is mostly sarcasm. Luckily, Ben & Thomas love to watch him juggle. Some things we just have to save for our kids, I guess.

In fact, if Shane had the time, I’m sure he would become a joggler. It would combine two of his many talents - running AND juggling.

But today, I’m thinking about the other kind of juggling, the kind I do everyday that mostly my kids don’t applaud. Working, taking kids to the doctor, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, helping with homework, going to church, fostering my own talents and hobbies…I could go on and on.

Now, I know we all have our laundry list of daily tasks, so don’t think I’m trying to have a pity party here. But Sunday night, Ben woke up in the night fevering like crazy with that tight, barky cough that spells out croup. Even at 1am, my first thought as I got up to dose him with Tylenol was, “Will he be better by tomorrow? I really have to go to work.” I knew he wouldn’t be. I thought of all the things I had to do this week at home and at work, my always-depleted paid-time-off bank at work, and despite it all, resigned myself to stay at home with Ben for the day. I made him a doctor appointment where it was confirmed that he had croup, and I went on with my busy day. Even last night, he didn’t sleep well, though the medicine had loosened up his cough some.

So there I was this morning, doing the juggle thing, weighing the balls against each other to see which ones would fly. 1- Do I take him to the babysitter first thing in the morning and hope he feels better? 2 - Do I plan to stay home all day? 3 - Do I wait and get Thomas off to school and see how Ben feels after waking up and then play it by ear?

I think that this is THE HARDEST part about being a working mom. Granted, I only work part-time, and so I only have a few days of the week where this is an issue. But the days that I’m scheduled to work are a commitment that I don’t take lightly. I like to be there those days, knowing I’m pulling my weight with both our finances and my work’s objectives. I like that working gives me an out and the interaction I get with my coworkers; they are like my second family. Also, I also don’t take lightly the fact that if I take my kids to a babysitter sick, I’m not doing them or the babysitter any favors. I am very lucky; our sitter is great to me and my kids, so I try to respect her house and the other children there.

I’m not coming to a great conclusion here. In the end, I went with option #3. Ben felt a bit better today; not 100%, but enough that I felt he wouldn’t be too sick to hang out at the babysitters for a few hours. But I still set off to work wishing that I could just stay home with him until he was better all the way. I don’t know that that will ever be my reality.

I just know that sometimes, keeping all these balls in the air is really hard, and that sometimes, the ones that I drop hurt. But I guess that’s just life.

Where I share a little more than I intended with some complete strangers

Have I mentioned that I now teach relief society (the women’s organization within the LDS church)?

(chorus of “No, please Becky, tell us about it!” rings around the world. Thanks for your encouragement.)

So, since it seems that in my religion, they believe anyone can be a teacher, they picked me to teach on the 2nd Sunday of each month. I accepted this new assignment because 1-I promised God I would at least try to do the things he asked of me, and 2- it didn’t require any extra time away from home. Easy, right?

But then the actual TEACHING has to occur. Hmph.

This past Sunday was my second attempt at teaching. I felt hugely inadequate to teach on the subject (baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost) so I had a hard time getting my head around the lesson. I finally came up with a lesson on Saturday night. I was nervous on Sunday morning, but I managed to get up in front of everyone and teach the lesson.

All was going well until the end. I felt the need to explain myself & where I came from and how I’ve grown a little in the gospel. After sharing my experience of coming back to church, suddenly I found the following words coming out of my mouth:

“I know I’m not perfect. I’m just this Jack-mormon standing up here, with no real clue of what she is saying.” The room rang out with laughter, but I found that I couldn’t look any of those nice ladies in the face anymore. Did I really just say that? I tried to recover, read a really nice message about listening to the Holy Ghost, said amen, and sat down as soon as I could.

I’m kind of laughing about it now, but I assure you, I spent most of Sunday going over and over those words in my head and wondering what possessed me to announce this to the entire relief society. I hope that I didn’t offend anyone with my slang, but I have a hard time pretending that I know everything (or even anything, for that matter). I can carry the title of teacher, but it doesn’t fit snugly on my shoulders; I have to wiggle and adjust under its yoke, because I don’t feel adequate to the task. There are so many people who know this stuff far better than me, and have lived it more thoroughly (if that is the right word.)

But teacher I am, however loosely it fits. I guess the women in my congregation will just have to get used to me bumbling my way through the concepts.
If nothing else, I guess my lessons will be worth a laugh. You just never know what is going to come out of my mouth, but you can probably guess it will be inappropriate. I’m glad I’m good for something.

Good Carma

I was 18 when I moved out on my own. I was going to start school at the University of Utah, and since my parents lived more than 50 miles away, I had to find somewhere to live in downtown Salt Lake City.

Enter Becky’s duplicitous nature. I was a bit of a rebel, but enough of a coward to keep my rebelliousness to myself. That meant that I needed to keep a semi-good little mormon girl façade to most of the world while doing what I wanted away from prying familial eyes. So, the means that I used to get an apartment were these: I called numbers off the “I need a roommate” board at the U of U’s LDS Institute of Religion. Meaning, that any apartment I succeeded in obtaining a room in would be full of good mormon girls who would think I was just such a mormon girl myself.

Boy did they have a surprise coming.

I got a room in a dive apartment on 7th South in Salt Lake City. Already living there were two other girls, one named Shaunette and the other Carma. I met Shaunette when she called and invited me to an event called “Ward Prayer” one Sunday evening. To explain, Shaunette attended the local LDS Singles Ward, and each Sunday night the ward members would meet at someone’s apartment for prayer and treats. Although I knew that it wasn’t quite my regular scene, I felt like I should go with my new roomie, so I went with her. I gathered from meeting Shaunette that we wouldn’t be the best of friends, and that I probably do my best to keep my extracurricular activities from her.

Now Carma, she was out of town during mine and Shaunette’s cozy getting-to-know-you activity. I gathered that she wasn’t very happy to be getting an 18 year old roomie, but I reserved judgement of her until we met (she was a much more mature 23). Once we did meet, I thought of her as a little strict, but an otherwise nice person. Not someone I would be close to, but we could certainly survive sharing a bathroom and kitchen. I carefully kept my home life separate from my friend life, and things went along happily. Carma and I had a few chats, but I kept my distance, thinking I could pull the wool over her eyes and let her think I was every bit the good mormon girl she’d advertised for, even if I wasn’t coming to church, or ward prayer for that matter.

Now, remember Cindy? During the time when I was picking my apartment & starting college, Cindy was living her own duplicitous life in Italy. Luckily for me, she decided to come home and, being the great friend she was, joined me in my little room next to Carma. The difference between Cindy and I was that Cindy wasn’t going to live much of a duplicitous life anymore, which meant she was willing to do things in our room that I hadn’t planned on. Within a week of her arriving, she had stowed beer bottles in the fridge and decided that if you opened the window, you couldn’t REALLY tell that she was smoking in our room.

I was horrified, and I don’t think that Carma and Shaunette were too impressed with our new roomie (this is pretty much where Shaunette falls out of the story; sorry Shaunette, wherever you may be). However, Cindy would have her way and was paying rent, so everyone persevered. I went along with Cindy just because that was what I did, and despite everything Carma saw and heard and, ahem, smelled, she and I got to be friends. In a way, we were able to know each other more, because I didn’t have to pretend anymore that I was the good little mormon girl they had wanted. Carma knew the real me and most of what I was doing, and she still liked me. She fielded all sorts of early-morning phone calls from my parents when I was somewhere other than my apartment, all the while watching out for me. She was kind of like the mom/older sister and I was the wayward child. After Cindy moved out and I came back to church, Carma helped me to not feel so awkward at church functions and gave me someone to sit next to in sacrament meeting. She was a good example and great roommate.

One by one, Carma’s roommates moved out. She moved on, bought a house, traveled, and had fun with her numerous friends. Then, a few weeks ago I got an invitation and wedding announcement in the mail.

Well, this past weekend, I went to Carma’s wedding reception. She looked so beautiful and happy standing next to her new husband Joe. She introduced me to her parents as “her little girl” and I assured them she had been my mom. And I introduced them to my little family. We chatted, hugged, and moved on down the line.

Being there, it was one of those moments when the past and present kind of collide. There stood Carma, who knew me through those rebellious, oh-so-formative years, and there stood my little boys who know me now, fully formed (just kidding.). Shane knew me during that time, but in a different way. I stood in the middle, the past and future and present Becky’s all around me like little wisps of smoke. I’m not the same person to anyone of them, but each facet makes up the whole that is me.

Sometimes I feel like I should try to distance myself more from the young person I was; rebellious, impressionable, determined to learn things my own way. I don’t want to do that. Being the Becky that Carma knew then made me who I am now, and for the most part, I like that person. If I tried to pretend I didn’t have a past, I would be a hypocrite, and nothing bugs me more than a hypocrite. I know I don’t have to announce to the world my past to the world, but I also refuse to pretend that don't have one.

I like that I had people around me like Carma who knew me for who I was, liked me despite it, and hoped for the best. She probably had more to do with the person that I am now than she realizes. I wish her every happiness in her new future.

It’s never dull, bumping into yourself, is it.

Book: The Other Boleyn Girl

I've been on a read-the-book-before-watching-the-movie kick lately. I had heard good things about both the book and the movie for The Other Boleyn Girl, so I read it.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I learned far more history about Anne and Mary Boleyn than I ever expected. Previous to picking this up, I knew about Anne Boleyn, but I couldn't have told you for sure which wife of Henry the 8th she was, nor whether she died with her head on or not (spoiler: she doesn't.) Nor could I have said that she was Queen Elizabeth's mother. That being said, I really enjoyed the story of Mary Boleyn (who is the "other" Boleyn girl, and the main character in the book). While I'm sure the author has taken liberties to make Mary out to be the sympathetic character, she still did have to give up the King of England's bed to her sister, who became queen in her own right (not his last, but, well, still queen.) What I'm really trying to say is that I liking learning the history of the Boleyn family, and I liked the characters that Phillippa Gregory created.

Now the other hand. There was no setting or analysis in the book whatsoever. Most of the book is filled with dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And while this is important and advances the plot nicely, it gives the reader nothing in the way of placing the characters and their interminable conversations in a setting. For any one scence, you would know what room the characters were placed, but there was no description or historical importance given. What made Greenwich Henry's favorite castle? What is the historical importance of the Tower of England? I'm not explaining this very well, but I just got tired of all the talking, and wanted a little more history, introspection, analysis of the characters and why they were doing what they were doing. I wish Gregory hadn't written the book in a way that made all plot advancement be done through dialogue. It made me less interested, and I kept wondering if I was reading a Harlequin romance. It didn't keep me from finishing; by the end I was racing to get to finish, but it was an issue for me throughout the book. I'd like to read the sequel about Elizabeth, but this may keep me from reading it.

In all, while it wasn't my favorite book of the year, I did enjoy learning the history of the Boleyn family, and am glad I read it. I'd like to check out the movie, but with my luck at seeing movies, it won't be until it's out on video.

Book: Atonement

I had big expectations when I picked up this book. I'd heard good things and I knew the movie was out, so I expected a lot. I am still puzzling this book over in my head, just because the ending is frusterating. Granted, I was warned by the narrator herself what I could expect, but I still felt a little blindsighted at the end. I don't want to say too much to keep from giving anything away.

Basically, Briony is a spoiled, imaginative young girl who sees something her sister does one day and blows it completely out of proportion. Her inability to understand the event she saw leads her to make conclusions about something she doesn't see which effects her life, her sister's life, and her sister's boyfriend forever. There were moments in reading this book, when I KNEW where it was going, that I felt unsure I could go on reading it. The tortuous knowledge of what would happen just overwhelmed me. But I took sneak peeks ahead every few pages to assure myself it would be okay, and I went on reading.

I loved the word choices that Ian McEwan used throughout the book. I was in the habit of carrying a pen with me while reading this, and I tried to underline the words that related back the the title, Atonement; words like sacrifice, sin, sacrament, forgiveness. I enjoyed finding those references back to this extremely symbolic word (I know I'm being vague, but I don't have the book with me today; sorry!). I tried to keep thinking while I read about what atonement means. In order to atone, there has to be a sin. On the surface, it would appear that the atoning should have been performed by Briony, but it so happens she isn't the only sinner. Her betrayal is merely the catalyst that will bring everyone else in the book's sins forward. Had she not interpreted things the way she did, most of the characters could have walked away from the event unscathed. My expectations of how her atonement would come about were completely different than the reality.

Another thing that stuck out to me was what the author chose to detail, and what he did not. The main event in the book is told as almost an afterthought. It may only get 2 or 3 paragraphs, tops. But each moment that leads up to the climax is so thoroughly detailed. You know each characters thoughts, hopes, fears; what they wore, why they wore it, what they dreamed about before they started getting dressed. It was a little like watching a trainwreck in slow motion where each second lasts an hour, only to miss the actual wreck and later be told that some people died, others went to the hospital and later got out. How can you detail every moment leading up, and then gloss over the crux of the story? I think it was an interesting study in narrative, and it makes me respect McEwan more, and forgive him for the ending.

Has anyone seen the movie yet? I've meant to rent it each of the past 2 weekends, but I have yet to get it. I really want to see what they do with it, and if any of the elements that I appreciated in the book get included in the movie.