The Cutest Tarantula Ever

In 2020, I told each of my children's birth story in the month of his or her birth. Here they are, in case you missed any: Luke, Shulamith, Isaiah, Eli, Seth.

This year, instead of birth stories, I think I'll share a favorite childhood memory for each of them. Saturday was Eli's birthday, so he's up first.

At age 6, Eli made his theatre debut, as a tarantula in the Missoula Children's Theatre (MCT) production of The Wizard of Oz. I realize there are no tarantulas in Oz, but in this spinoff production, there definitely were. Little Mountain Elementary School sponsored MCT each year, a fabulous weeklong program, where two actors show up in a van with costumes, sets, and props, and produce a full-length musical in one week, using children from the school. 

Sound wild? It was!

Isaiah had participated for a couple years, but this was Eli's first time. It was the year 2000, and he was in 1st grade. I was pregnant with Seth, and very tired, so my friend Joanne took both Eli and Isaiah to the auditions, along with her daughter, Amy. I remember waking up from a much-needed nap to Eli running into my room with news that he would be a tarantula! Joanne and Amy followed, with big smiles all around.

Eli attended the rehearsals every day after school, and soon it was Saturday, the day of the performance. He was beyond excited. There were probably a dozen little tarantulas in a row up there on the stage, drowning in black fuzzy spider costumes, but it was Eli, right in the middle, with his round face and giant smile that melted the audience's hearts. 

And mine.

Trust

Admittedly, I have trust issues. That truth is the product of both my natural personality and my life experiences.

Today I had to break ties with the company I hired back in November to finish our basement. The reason? I don't trust them anymore. It makes me sad because I want to believe that people are honest, that they take responsibility for their promises, and that they try to be fair and transparent. It's disappointing to discover this is not always true.

This company, called Probasements, advertises on social media to be "fast, organized, and transparent." I found it to be none of these things. I hired Probasements in mid-November to begin work the day after we closed on our home. Part of the reason I chose them over the other bids I received is that they promised they would have the project completed by Christmas. It is now mid-March, and it's still not done.

They are woefully disorganized; they show up with no warning, do a bit of work, then disappear for days and sometimes weeks. When we hadn't seen or heard from them in 4.5 weeks, Shulamith found one of them on social media and threatened to take him to court. That motivated them to install flooring the very next day, but we've heard nothing from them since.

Feeling less and less confident in these people, I called the City of Bluffdale to make sure they had actually secured a permit for this work. They had. And their early work passed a legitimate inspection by the City. Thank goodness! However....

My conversation with the guy from the City revealed that Probasements no longer has a license. Before I hired them, Gerald checked to make sure they were licensed and insured, and without a license, they would never have been issued a permit. Apparently, that license was revoked sometime in December, because they have a history of starting projects and then just peacing out, leaving the projects only partly done.

Say what??????????

Well this is awesome. Not only do we have a partially-finished basement that was supposed to be done by Christmas, but now our contractor is unlicensed. And no, they never shared this information with me.

We will be hiring a new contractor to finish this project ASAP.

Oh, and my trust issues? Yeah, this isn't helping.

A Goofy Poem about a Man in a Nursing Home

When I was 15, I spent my summer charting and dispensing medication, giving insulin injections, and irrigating catheters at my job as a nurse's aide at Glendoveer Nursing Home in Portland. Anyone else find that alarming? At the time, I was too immature to be alarmed; now, I'm just so thankful I didn't kill anyone! The rule was one RN was required to work each of the three shifts. The RN on my shift was a lovely woman named Corbin (her last name, and what she preferred to be called). She really was a sweet lady, but sadly, she struggled mightily with obesity and was too heavy to make it up the stairs to the east end of the building, where the men's ward was. So she taught me to do all things she did.

With no computers, we used physical books to chart patients' medication and treatment. Corbin taught me to look at the chart, determine all the different meds each patient required and at what time, then take the proper pills out of pill bottles and put them in little paper medicine cups and deliver each patient his medication. We had three diabetics in the ward, so she also taught me how to give them their insulin injections, and at 6:00 p.m., they would line up at the nurses' station door for their shots.

I thought I was the absolute coolest doing all this stuff, and I have many crazy memories of my experiences there. One in particular I chose to memorialize in a poem.

Recently, my mom was cleaning out her bookshelf and came across a literary magazine from when I was an undergrad at Willamette University. In it is this poem. I have zero idea what possessed me to submit this poem to the magazine and less than zero idea why they chose to publish it. 

All the other poems in the magazine are serious, heavy, deep, and meaningful, the kinds of poems people discuss and argue about as they seek for hidden connotations and interpretations. Mine is just a goofy poem about a man in a nursing home. It's a true story, embellished just a bit (the FBI and private spies). For the sake of family history, one of the goals of this blog, and also just for a good laugh, here's the silly poem:

I once worked at a nursing home

Its name was Glendoveer.

I had a rare experience

I'd really like to share,

One night when I was working hard

My friend came in to say:

"Has anyone seen Mr. Brown?

I fear he's run away."

"Oh me! Oh my! Oh no!," I shrieked,

"Not dear old Mr. Brown.

He said he had to meet a man.

I'll bet he's gone to town."

We searched the east; we searched the west.

We searched that nursing home.

We searched in every single place

We thought that he might roam.

Mrs. Brown, his faithful wife,

Who lived just down the hall,

Was frantic and hysterical

Which didn't help at all.

We couldn't find him anywhere.

We called the F.B.I.

They begged us please to have no fear;

They'd send a private spy.

We waited not so patiently.

It seemed to take forever.

But finding one so small as him

Is quite a large endeavor.

Finally after hours and hours

We heard the telephone.

They'd found him sitting on a bridge

Quite wet and all alone.

While I can't remember a thing about his wife, all these years later, I can still vividly picture Mr. Brown. A tiny, frail man with osteoporosis, a cute bald head, and glasses, he was one of my favorite patients. By now, he is most certainly dancing with Mrs. Brown in heaven, but I will always remember that night, waiting with Corbin and my coworkers for news of this sweet man, about whom we had grown to care so much.

Surrounding that trailer were miles and miles of dirt!

One year ago in February of 2020, Shulamith and I sat in a white, single-wide trailer, with no masks or hand sanitizer, across from an Edge Homes real estate agent named Chase. Surrounding that trailer was nothing but dirt, miles and miles of brown, rocky mounds of dirt. Chase explained to us the vision for that dirt: a large housing development that included both single-family homes and rows of townhomes. She showed us floor plans and explained the process of bidding for these homes in a ridiculously competitive market that definitely favored sellers. 

Within a couple weeks, Shulamith and Matt had selected a floor plan and put offers on several lots, hoping they would be chosen for one of them. Stressful, much? In the end, they were successful in securing a perfect lot to build their perfect "forever" home. And then it was my turn. Eeeeek! Gerald and I decided to go with a townhome. I've second guessed myself on that decision dozens of times in the past year and continue to do so even today, but I need to stop! There are plusses and minuses to either choice. In the end, for me, it all came down to the yard. I couldn't handle the discouragement of yet another ugly yard, and trying and failing to make it good.

I hate yard work. I suck at it. I also hate the look of a shabby, unkept yard, which is what I always have, no matter how hard I try to take care of it. So while there are clear drawbacks to living in a townhome, I'm hoping this spring and summer, when I'm not mowing and not watering and not trimming and not clipping and not weeding, only to end up with the same ugly yard I had before I started, I will quit wondering if we should have bought a single-family house.

Gerald and I went through the same process of bidding for several units (because there were more bidders than there were available homes) and were ultimately successful in securing the middle unit of a row of townhomes. Shulamith and I think divine providence guided this process, because we had so little say about where, specifically, we would live. As it turns out, I can exit my back door, turn left, walk about 100 steps, and be in Shulamith's back yard. Since moving here two months ago, I've been able to watch the progress of her house from my bedroom window.

Of course, back then, both these houses were only hypothetical. Here in Bluffdale, it was still only dirt. We made multiple trips to Edge developments in Lehi and Saratoga Springs in order to see the the actual houses we were buying, and eventually, construction began here. The process was smooth as silk for me, but Shulamith's house was held up because of issues with the city and power lines. Then there was the giant stumbling block none of us remotely expected when we signed contracts back in February: the global COVID19 pandemic. This left Shulamith and Matt in a small, 2-bedroom apartment, sheltering in place with three little kids.

I am here to report that today, all that ends. First thing this morning, they signed the papers, and we spent the rest of the day moving and putting things away in the Webster-Monsons' new home. We are beyond happy and so grateful and just full of joy that this whole endeavor, which began one year ago, came to this perfect conclusion. It is a dream come true.  

Here are some happy pictures of the happy homeowners!

What is this white stuff all over my house???

Warning! This will likely be a whiny post. Sorry. Sometimes you gotta whine. So remember my unfinished basement, the one that was supposed to be finished by Christmas? Yeah, it's still not finished. How close is it, you ask? I'm not even sure. I think all that's left is paint, flooring, and the bathroom, but who really knows? No one from this company communicates. At all. They simply show up and work some days. But not most days. And we never know ahead of time which days. 

The last time I saw them was five days ago, which brings us to the main point of this post. 

Last Tuesday night, I was upstairs teaching my broadcast class. Most of my online classes are fully asynchronous, but this one is a broadcast format, so once a week I have to actually be online, teaching on WebEx, a Zoom-like platform, for 90 minutes. 

I was upstairs for two hours, and when I came down to start dinner, this:

These pictures don't begin to capture the magnitude of this mess. Fine, white powder (dry wall?) covered my house. We could see it in the air and feel it as we breathed. It was on the appliances, on the dining table, on the kitchen countertops, on the cabinets, on the furniture, and all over the floor. I wanted to cry. I didn't, but I wanted to. Instead, I went to work.

The next day, Isaiah commented, "It seems like you've been cleaning for the last 15 hours straight." No, I slept, but otherwise, yes. 

I'm still cleaning. Not as constantly as I was those first couple of days, but I'm still finding powder here and there, and no matter what I do, I can't get it out of all the creases on the laminate flooring. I'm afraid I'm going to need to hire a professional floor cleaner.

I tell my students to show, not tell, their readers, so I won't tell you how I am feeling about all this.

I'm sure you can guess.

"Sometimes": A Poem for This Day

It has now been three days since my family gathered in our living room, ate Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and watched as Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States of America. It was not a huge celebration, only Gerald and I, Shulamith, Isaiah, and Seth. Both Eli and Amanda had to work. 

As the five of us watched that morning, we once again felt pride in our nation. Our hearts were full as we witnessed the many traditions that surround the peaceful transition of power that defines our democracy.

For the first time in four years, we felt calm. And hopeful. There is no perfect person, and there is no perfect President, but President Biden has already proven to be a man of character. Has he made mistakes? Of course. Serious ones? Sure. But unlike his predecessor, he owns them. He is able to admit when he's wrong or when new information causes him to shift his perspective or change his position. He can listen to others and accept their counsel. 

His focus is outward, rather than on himself. An honest desire to serve, rather than a juvenile need to be admired, informs his decisions and fuels his actions. 

Our hope for this new administration is bold and it is brave, and that's a good thing. The despair that has plagued us for four years is now behind us, leaving plenty of room for optimism. I sensed that optimism in each of us as we watched together Wednesday morning.

One of my very favorite poems came to mind. May I share it with you today in honor of President Biden and Vice President Harris and the hope for better days ahead:

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you. 

                                       -Sheenagh Pugh

.

These are a few of my favorite things!

I haven't talked about products I like in a long time, but I've definitely discovered some new, cool stuff in the past year, so I decided now is the time to share. I was gonna try to rank these five products in order of how much I like them, but I can't. They are all so different--apples and oranges really. They are all my favorites, just in different ways.

1. Portable seat warmer for my car. Backstory is Shulamith's minivan has a built-in seat warmer on both the driver's and front passenger's seats. Oh how I love to ride in her car in the cold winter mornings. It is the best thing ever to turn on those toasty seat warmers. So last year on my birthday, my kids gave me a portable seat warmer, and wow! It works every bit as well as the built-in ones in Shulamith's car. This is one of those times when I shook my head and thought, "Why didn't I find this a long time ago?"

2. Bona mop. We have laminate flooring throughout our new house; the only carpet is upstairs in the bedrooms. When we had our orientation before we moved in, the Edge representative explained like a million things about how to take care of the house (thank goodness Amanda was with me and took notes!). One thing he emphasized was that I purchase a Bona mop. Not any brand. Bona! I worried it might be super expensive, but no, about $30. It's the best mop I've ever used.  No cords to deal with. Easy pump spray. Large mop pad. It makes my dark brown flooring shine, and it's so easy to use. With the four of us here plus the dogs, I pull it out multiple times a day to spot clean. So great.

3. Beddy's. Have you heard about this company? I hadn't until Emily bought some bedding from them. So it's a bottom sheet, top sheet, and comforter all in one. It fits over the mattress much like a fitted sheet would and then zips up on both sides and around the bottom, kinda like a sleeping bag. They have all sorts of colors and patterns in both the "minky" if you want to be extra warm and the "cotton" for not so warm. I got cotton but plan to get a minky before next winter; right now I need an extra blanket on top. Best part: all you do to make the bed is zip it up! Your bed always looks nice, your bedroom tidy. And the whole thing goes right into the washing machine and dryer. I truly can't love this enough.

Is it expensive? A little. But...it's excellent quality, and if you were to buy quality fitted and flat sheets, pillow cases (they come with the Beddy's set), a comforter, and a duvet cover, you would spend at least as much if not more. Wanna see how it looks???

4. Pulse Oxygen Monitor. Okay, you may not ever actually need one of these, but if you do, it's the most reassuring product. As you know, our family recently experienced the COVID virus. Three of the four of us in the house us tested positive. COVID is scary even for non-anxiety folks; imagine what it did to me?!?! The day Seth tested positive, my friend Lorelei told me to get a Pulse Ox device to monitor our oxygen saturation levels. I was familiar with these monitors because our oldest son Luke had childhood asthma and was in and out of the hospital repeatedly in his first three years. When he was hospitalized, he always had an O2 sats monitor clipped on his finger, but back then, there weren't any we could take home. 

Last week, as we checked our oxygen saturation levels regularly, I could sleep knowing everyone was breathing fine. Every time I saw that 97 or 98% on the screen, I knew we were all okay. And I kept thinking how much grief this thing would have saved me when Luke was a baby and unable tell me when he was struggling to breathe.

5. Kortni Jeane Swimwear. Okay, ladies, tell me how you feel about wearing a swimsuit in public? Those who just said they love that experience can stop reading now. For most of us, swimsuits are necessary evils. In no other circumstance do we wear so little clothing or show so much skin out in public, right? Well, this particular line of swimwear is designed to help women of all sizes feel comfortable and confident in swimsuits, so they can play with their kids, run through the sprinkler, swim, water slide, and do all the fun summer water activities. Most styles are mix and match, so you can wear one top with several different bottoms and vice versa. There are dozens of cute fabric patterns and styles. The only problem is once you discover this product, you kinda become obsessed with swimsuits; you want every new style and color that comes out. 

This is definitely what happened to me. I LOVE these suits so much that I want all of them. I may or may not have 6.5 Kortni Jeane swimsuits, or "swimmers" as she likes to call them. I have six tops and seven bottoms, most of which are interchangeable. Recently, when I just had six of each, I placed a moratorium on my KJ swimsuit buying. "No more until next summer," I vowed. But then. Then, she had this special deal where you could get a classic, plain-colored bottom for just $16! I mean practically free, right? What was I to do? There was really no choice. So I got these cute navy bottoms that go with five of my six tops. But now I'm uneven. I think I really need another top. Help!!

Okay, not to ignore what you're all wondering about: price. This swimwear is beautifully made, but yes, it's a bit pricy. That said, she (Kortni) has all these different sales and promotions and fun games. For example, throughout October, she goes to various locations here in the valley and then announces where she is, and anyone who shows up within an hour wearing just a KJ swimsuit (in October!) gets a top or bottom for free. Anyway, I haven't done that yet because it didn't happen in 2020 for obvious reasons, but I plan to do it this year. So just FYI, of all my KJ swimsuits, I only paid full price for one. I was having a sucky day and needed some retail therapy, so I ordered a top and bottom at full price. I've gotten all the rest on sale.

So there you have it, my lovely friends: These are a few of my favorite things!