a thanksgiving miracle..

Hello? Is this thing on? Testing, testing. That reminds me. Last summer at the family reunion (the annual 3-day camping trip with Dave's entire family), my brother-in-law was setting up for our morning flag raising -- yes, we do that, every morning; and we take it down every night. It's a little like Scout Camp, I suppose, but cuter, with little boys running around in footy pajamas, and half the kids' (and sadly, adults') attention drawn away by someone's new puppy. Really. I think someone has a new puppy every year.

Anyway, so my brother-in-law is setting up the sound system (aka the "You Can Be A Star" Karaoke machine), and plugs in the mic and says, "Testing, testing... Testing, 1...2...3.." For reals. Now, I know that this doesn't come across as very funny. But even as I type, I'm smiling, because he said, "Testing, 1, 2, 3." Why do people say that? It's a lovely cliche, testing the sound by saying, "Testing, 1, 2, 3." You know you did it as a kid. When you got your hands on a microphone, you'd hold it up right by your mouth and say, "Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3." It seems like real sound guys say things like, "Check, Check," nowadays, but there was my brother-in-law, testing "1, 2, 3." If I get my hands on a mic, I usually go for silly-game-show-host voice, never "Testing, 1, 2, 3." But I suppose that's just a personality difference. All I know is it was awesome.

Ahhh, so this is working. Nothing like a pointless memory to start a post after what, 3 months? My friend told me that my blog is collecting cobwebs, so I had to see for myself. Sure enough, I barely found it underneath all the dust collected over months of no usage.

So even though I have lots of things I plan to write about, including such hits as "The Great Shoe Disaster of December 2008," or "Local Idiots Shut Down Alpine Loop with Jack-knifed Trailer," or of course, my personal fave, "Did I Tell You They're Publishing One of My Children's Songs in the Friend Magazine in September?", I thought I'd pick back up right about where I left off. Somewhere in November.

One dark Sunday evening (it was darker than usual that night, since we'd just "fallen back" with the time; so really, it was like 4:30 but it seemed later. Okay, it was later than 4:30, maybe 5:30 or 6:00... Vital details...), we all gathered into the dining room. Dave had just finished preparations on another spectacular Sunday dinner -- he's kind of taken over Sunday dinners now, and he's brilliant, of course.

Anyway, we had just sat down, and everyone was oohing and ahhing over the spread -- he's really good -- when I caught a glimpse of a large something moving across the street. It was quite a large something or other, clearly an animal, and I thought, "Hey, it's one of those horse-dogs!" (which is actually a Great Dane, but I can never remember Great Dane when I'm trying to talk about them. Really, I had to Google it just now so I could tell you what I mean). Luckily I didn't actually announce that I'd spotted a horse-dog, although, what came out was only marginally better: "Um there's a really big do--" (and then I saw more clearly) "a DEER!"

That's right. A deer -- a 4-point buck, strolling down the middle of our street. Well you can imagine how quickly the entire family had their noses squashed up against the window to get a better look. I mean, it's not like we live in the foothills; we don't have a mountain in our backyard or anything, so really, I can count the number of times I've seen a deer strolling down our street on no fingers. Sure, it's just a deer, but it's a deer walking down our street, out for an evening stroll, enjoying the sound of his hooves on the asphalt. Now that's something. ...Do deer have hooves?

We watched him until he rounded the corner, and then we jumped into action; we couldn't just stand there and watch it walk out of our lives without at least trying to see where in the world he was headed, or more importantly, if he was meeting friends. So we ran out the door, all seven of us shoeless, and half of us sockless as well, and jogged after the deer. I only mention the shoeless bit because I admit, I displayed a small slide in parental wisdom. I mean, it was November, just a few weeks before the first snow, and it was cold. What kind of mother allows her kids to run outside after a wandering deer, in the dark, in 40-ish degree weather, in bare feet? The one who does it with them, I suppose.

Anyway, we were as stealthy as 7 people chasing a random deer down the road could possibly be. We didn't want to spook him, so we kept him about 15 feet in front of us, and paced him. If he slowed up, we did too. When he paused and turned to look at us, we all froze in place. Those years of Freeze-Tag had finally paid off -- he hardly realized we were following him. Either that or he didn't care. I admit, we started getting a bit giggly after about 20 feet. I think it was the absurdity of the moment hitting us; that, and the cold feet.

And just as I thought we'd tire of running after a deer at dinner time, our hearts stopped: Dead ahead was a car. You know the scenario -- ever heard the term "Deer in the headlights?" We had to do something, we couldn't let him just become hypnotized by the dreaded lights and be plowed down right in front of us. So we did what any normal, deer-in-your-neighborhood-loving people would do: We ran out in front of the car to stop it.

Again, a lapse in motherly instincts. Usually you try to get your kids out of the line of oncoming traffic.

Dave held up his arms as the rest of us waved ridiculously. The car slowed down and rolled down the window. "You okay?" the driver asked.

Hmmm. A family of seven, out in the dark, with no shoes on, flagging down a random car. I'm going with probably not.

"There's a deer!" we all said. Not together. I'm sure he heard something more like, "Look over- DEER!- there's a- can you believe- DEER!- What a- DEER!" Right about now, a car came from the other direction, and our little friend Bambi turned the corner and ran down the street.

Gone.

Forever.

At least from our neighborhood.

And that was our Thanksgiving Miracle. The night the random deer took a walk down our street. What makes it a miracle? Hello, deer in Suburbia. What's Thanksgiving-ish about a deer? Hello, November.

I'm sure it all makes sense now.

All I know is that ridiculous 15 minutes is among my top 5 favorite 15 minutes ever spent with my fam.

SO love that.

Happy Thanksgiving. Or St. Patrick's Day. Whatever.

a few words on my long absence...

Okay, so was it wrong to miss an entire month and a half without some sort of mention of what in the world was going on at my house?

Here it is, in a couple of deliciously long, run-on sentences.

Long about the beginning of May, my husband's masonry work finally dried up, causing a few dark weeks, made darker by hopeless thoughts, of blah and oh dear and what in the world are we going to do; by June we began survival mode, in the form of selling anything that could be liquidated, buying new, used-paid-for vehicles, and trying to come up with a general plan of what in the world are we going to do next; in the midst of all that, I was called as the Young Women President in our ward (do you ever wonder if the Heavens snicker a bit behind discrete hands?).

Let me be honest. I couldn't even think as far as next Tuesday to get my perspective straight. I had to just wait until next Tuesday came, and come it did, long about mid-June. The darkness left, even though no great, substantial things happened to push it out. It was just hope. Delicious, lovely, hopeful, Hope. We are certainly not out of the woods yet, but we are definitely not alone in the woods, and because of that, life keeps going, and we keep living it. Not just surviving, but living.

Thank goodness for Next Tuesday.

thursday afternoon

It's cold today. It's one of those day-after-a-storm days and the sky is bright blue with a few lovely poofy clouds here and there. There is just the slightest of breezes blowing, but it's a cold one, reminding my fingertips and nose that winter is coming sooner than I'd like.

You know, why doesn't someone make a nose warmer? Not a scarf, because that has to wrap all the way around your head and cover up your mouth to warm your nose. They have ear muffs, why on earth not a nose muff?

I suppose you'd look stupid.

But I digress. Shocker.

I'm sitting at the dining room table with a view of the Western Flutter-Leaf trees (a.k.a. Aspens) in the yard behind my house, fluttering their leaves as they should. They're best this time of year, since there's only 4 of them, and 3 of them are mostly dead. In the summer they're only half-clothed in green leaves, except for the one healthy one, which takes its role of Show-Off Healthy Tree quite seriously. This makes the other ones look absolutely pathetic until fall, when the brilliant one is yellow and losing its leaves and the dead ones just look like over-achiever Leaf Losers. PS. Photo below is so NOT a pic of my neighbor's trees. It's just a gorgeous reminder of why I love fall.


The point (Yes, there is one): It's a gorgeous afternoon and I adore this season. A few days ago I got out of the car and stepped into a gutter full of leaves. I couldn't help it: I ran through them, dragging my feet so it would kick up the leaves even more. I ran back and forth 3 or 4 times, then realized I must have looked fairly ridiculous -- not only because I was a 34-year-old mommy running through the leaves in the gutter, but because I was swinging my purse around while I was at it.

Caution: Leaf-filled gutters may cause rampant leaf-running, unabashed purse waving, and absurdly huge grins.

And then to top it all off, I grabbed a huge handful of leaves, stuffed them in my face and... inhaled. Deeply. Deliciously. Oh, I LOVE the smell of fall leaves!! It was just about the most perfect 8 minutes of my week.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Happy fall. Again.

cooler than you think

There's something in me that wants to think I'm still cool -- If I ever was, that is. I'm always shocked when someone acts as if I'm older and less cool than I feel. Like the time my friend's 16-year-old came over to interview me for her financial literacy class (I failed, by the way), and asked me how old I am. "34," I said. "34?! Why you're so young!" she said. "You've still got your whole life ahead of you!", as if I'm considering throwing what's left of my miserable life away because I'm so terribly old already. And she said it in the same way that people sometimes talk to old people, like they're 4 years old and incapable of understanding adult conversation. Oh, I love her to death and she was really kidding (...I hope), but I can't help but wonder if she secretly thinks 34 is as good as 93 and I'm really teetering into the grave.

It's all relative, I guess.

Just like coolness.

I drove over to my favorite little antiques shop a few nights ago, hoping it would still be open. It wasn't. Dang 6:30. I ended up driving home behind a particularly obnoxious vehicle. To call it pimped would have been an understatement. It was shiny blue and very sparkly with dark tinted windows. It had several exhausts -- okay, probably just 2, but when he stepped on the gas, it sounded like 20. And I doubt it was more than 3 inches off the ground. It was a real beauty...Well, to someone, anyway. And on top of it, the entire neighborhood was shaking in beat with his woofers and subwoofers and tweeters and whatever else they have to make your music everyone's music.

I'm looking at this car and I'm thinking what I always think when I drive by these kinds of cars: This guy thinks he SO cool. Oh, look at me in my cool pimped ride! I'm so cool with my super loud music with the thump thump and the bass! Move out of the way, uncool people. (Isn't that what cool people say? I'm sure it is.)

Happily, I'm still only 34, so I didn't feel the need to yell at him to turn that racket down, there's people trying to drive here, and then add under my breath, Dang kids these days, think they own the world! That'll probably come when I'm about 35, but I'll check with my neighbor's daughter, she'll know for sure.

But I was reminded of a day a few years ago when I had the suburban filled up with our kids in car seats. It was one of those first yummy spring days of the year, when you have to roll down the windows and turn the radio up and breathe in the absence of winter. We were on our way to the library (which was usually a bad idea when I had two 1-year-olds, a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 6-year-old, but that's another story) and stopped at a red light. We had been there only a few seconds when we heard, rather than saw the car coming up behind us on our left. Then, of course, we felt him, and next moment, there he was in all his lowered, shiny red, tinted windows, thumpin' bass glory. We all looked over at him, and' although I didn't say anything, I thought it. Oh, look at you in your cool lowered car with your cool super loud music and your stupid tinted windows. You are so cool, Stud.

And then I turned my attention back to my stereo, which was also playing rather loudly, since of course, the windows were down and we had to be able to hear over the wind. It was then that I realized cool is relative. Because there I was, in my car seat-stuffed suburban, sunglasses on, bottles of formula in my bag, and the music blasting Goofy, singing "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee."

Now that's cool... At least to my kids. So I guess Mr Fancy Ride is cool to someone, and so am I. I'm sure we didn't make each other's cool lists, but at least I made it onto someone's. It probably won't last though. From what I hear of teenagers, I have a very short cool life, and I think it's already on the way out. Oh well, it was cool while it lasted.

the view from next minute...

A month. It has been an entire month since I've been able to actually sit down long enough to complete a posting. Oh, sure, I have several in the works -- and they're good ones -- but there they sit, in the works.

What a month. No, what a week. I learned in the most painful way last week that sometimes you can't go as far ahead as next Tuesday for a better view. Sometimes you can't go farther than the next minute. ...Breathe. Breathe again.

I learned last week that even though it seems like the world should stop and take note of your own particular upheaval, it does not. You wake up the next day and life is still moving, with or without you.

I learned last week that sometimes life is a little less real and a little more like a badly written mini-series than I ever thought possible -- So much so that if I was watching it, I'd be like, "Who wrote this?!"

But I also learned that a few of the people I really really love and have always expected to shine in life are capable of far greater things than I ever imagined. I learned that sometimes the strongest person is the one who should have been the broken one. And I learned that there is always hope in next Tuesday, and that if I can just get there, surely today will not feel quite so achingly painful.

And really, I have hope in next Tuesday because I have hope in Christ. And there it is.

So to those people whom I really really love and are starring in a horribly written mini-series (you know who you are): You make me want to be braver and wiser and funnier and a little bit more like you. Thank you for who you are. And PS. Dang, I love you.

In case of an emergency, hit me.

So I spent the greater part of my morning in the Insta-care -- Utah's local alternative to the ER. Last evening The Boy managed to fall on his arm wrong. He cried some, but not tons -- that's a good sign, right? His arm was swollen at the elbow, and he had no desire whatsoever to straighten it out, so it wasn't just a little owie. But I, going against my Injuries & Crises history, waited til this morning to take him in. That's a bigger deal than you realize. In my earlier first-aid moments, I'd have rushed him, cradled in my arms, straight into the emergency room, not even bothering with a car. I'd have run him there. On foot. Lots faster than a car. Okay, so there's a little drama in my blood. What can I say?

Don't worry, it was a good call. It turns out nothing was broken, it was probably just "a good sprain," whatever that means. I mean, really, is there such a thing as a good sprain? The very definition of a sprain is

"a violent straining or wrenching of the parts around a joint, without dislocation." (Thank you, dictionary.com.)

Those aren't good words. Violent. Straining. Wrenching. If I'm understanding it correctly, a sprain is the moment right before the break. How's that good?

But I digress. Apparently, I've been known to freak out a bit. Oh, I never felt like I was freaking out. In my head, I was calm and collected, the very image of strength and stability in a time of stress. Ha.

Let us consider a day two years ago -- almost to the day, ironically enough -- when The Boy incurred a similar injury. All of the kids and Dave were in the living room, playing some game that I'm still a little vague on. I know it somehow involved marshmallows and jumping off the back of the wing chair, which of course, sounds really stupid. I mean, duh, let your kids jump off the furniture and someone's bound to break an arm. But since it was "supervised" by dad, how bad could it be?

Well they're all playing and laughing their heads off, when after one particular thump, I heard crying mingled with the laughter -- obviously someone was hurt (bad, by the sound of the crying), and no one had else realized it yet. And then I hear Dave repeating The Boy's name several times and saying, "Just let me look at it." I listened for what I thought was probably 4 or 5 minutes before bursting in to save the day -- plenty of time to let Dave take the lead in this thing. After all, there was no need to go rushing in too soon to come to the rescue.

In all likelihood, I actually waited 4 or 5 seconds. When I came into the living room, The Boy was standing with Dave's hands supporting him a bit. He was still crying and holding his arm, but just as I entered the room, he kind of just slumped over. Dave, of course, still had him, so he carefully lowered him to the floor, where I went directly. I've never seen one of my kids pass out, and I admit, it was a little disheartening. But I mustered my coolness and assessed the situation. Calmly (I thought), I smoothed his hair back and rubbed his cheeks softly as I said his name. His response was to roll his head and eyes a bit. Just as I suspected. Now was my moment to shine. Feeling perfectly cool and in control, I announced to the room in general, "He's in shock!" Dave, of course, is thinking, "Really? Brilliant! Thank heavens you told us!" and the kids all freak out. The oldest girls start crying, the younger girls are asking, "What does that mean? Is he gonna be okay?" And I'm thinking, "Hey, hey, guys. What's the problem? No need to panic."

It wasn't until later that I realized that the kids were actually all fine until I showed up to "diagnose" the situation. Everybody, he's in shock! Well that's helpful. I think they picked up on my freaked out vibes and all hope for a calm situation was out the window. Good thing I was there to give them the cue to panic.

Yeah, that was pretty good (in the good sprain way?), but another time, my oldest, Kam, had her best friend over. It was night-ish, 9 or 10 or so, and the doorbell rang. I answered it to find the best friend's oldest sister. She briefly told me that her dad had blown out his knee playing Church Ball, and they were heading to the emergency room. My job was to have her sister stay here until they could get back. Got it, I said, and headed downstairs to do my duty. Here it comes. Everyone, he's in shock!

"L," I began. Not wanting to forget anything, I paused and then in one breath said, "I don't want to freak you out or anything, but I guess your dad blew out his knee playing basketball and your sister just stopped by to tell me they're on the way to the emergency room and you've gotta stay here til they get back, I'm sure he'll be fine, but it could be pretty late, you know how those knees can be, painful and hard, so just get comfy, you're gonna be here awhile."

She stared at me blankly for a second and then said, "Okay, what?" And then I did it again! Instead of finding some more delicate, less hurried approach to the whole thing, I pretty much just repeated the mindless truth!

And now, the spokeswoman for delicacy, me.

Then there was the time I followed the wails of my RyBread to her room to find her covered from nose to toes in blood. She'd been pulled off her bed and had hit her nose, and I, in the He's in Shock Tradition, announced, "Oh, it's broken for sure!!" Helpful.

There are a thousand more of these stories, one for almost every first aid emergency at my house. I think I should just stick to the band-aid on the finger and a kiss on the owie and leave the diagnoses to the capable hands of my Dave. I'm just glad I'm easing up on the whole thing -- I can tell the freak-outs are lessening with time... at least I hope they are. I know it's not gone completely, though. Last night I asked Dave if it was time to make the announcement. It never was. He never went into shock. ...Now what?

The view from next tuesday...

So... the title of my blog. What's the deal with that? I seriously spent about 3 weeks contemplating names for this dang thing, and easily another oh, hour or two checking availability on my different ideas. I considered the usual -- you know, something with my name, or something catchy about what I do: "marianne's life," or "life as the super mom -- it's what I do." I could have gone with a clever one that hints at (or maybe screams) my interests: "the mommy-accordion lover- marathoner-snowboarder-mt.everest hiker-scuba diver-and all around great gal blog." Or of course there's just the ever popular and right to the point, "My Blog." They were all very good, very REAL possibilities... Well, except for the accordion-loving mt.everest hiker one... You know, since those interests don't actually belong to me.

I ended up choosing the name a coupla days ago, when for no reason at all, I was wide awake at 3 o'clock in the morning. Maybe it was because my husband's out of town and the bed just isn't the same without him. Maybe it was the fact that both of our Italian Greyhounds (obviously pictured above) honestly believe my bed is their bed and they're just tolerating my presence there but are secretly plotting my removal from that place as they slowly shove me out of it. Whatever the cause, I was wide awake and thinking. Okay, worrying. I spent a good hour fretting about whatever (I won't get into that because it turns out half of my concerns were actually part of a sleepy-funk and not really real concerns), then finally allowed my mind to wander elsewhere for another hour. By about 4:50 I decided I might actually be tired enough to fall back to sleep; but then I realized the rec center opens in 10 minutes, and I could just run over there and get my weights done. So I did.

POINT: Yes, there is one. As I walked into the weight room, I realized that I should completely ignore most thoughts of worry that occur to me between the hours of 11 pm and 5 am. I have to wait until it's actually morning before I freak out about things, because light, you see, has a knack of bringing with it... well, light. Understanding. Reality. Wakefulness -- that one's kind of key. And once I have light, I gain real perspective.

So when I realized I just needed morning perspective (as opposed to the crazy half-awake non-reality), I knew I had found my title. It's my happy reminder to myself that perspective just depends on where you're standing. Don't like your perspective? Try shifting to the right just a bit. Wait for the sun to show up. Or better yet, move to next Tuesday and you'll probably love the view.