Isms

(Yes, I know that this is less than stellar - again with cleaning the drafty folder.)

Rob and I have been married for the last 11.5 years, longer than some, far shorter than others. Over that time, I have acquired from him a lovely group of pithy sayings: "I'm off like a prom dress at midnight;" "Ain't nothin' but a g-string....and there ain't much to one of those;" "Don't sweat the petty, pet the sweaty."

There's a common theme, wouldn't you say?

And yet I do use them, quite often, without even thinking (much to the shock of some of my more upright Mormon friends).

His favorite (and, coincidentally, my least) is to quote Andrew Dice Clay (that great example of manhood) and say, "Hickory Dickory Dock...." That's all he usually has to say to ensure he gets a good dope slap or "ROBERT!!" Occasionally he'll get as far as "A mouse ran up..." after which I remind him of small children in the area.

He has a particular Robert-ism that he shares with my dear sister-in-law Mia, "Son of a biscuit eater."

Now I'm sure, since the two of them use it with great frequency, that this must be a much used phrase of the South (by which I mean Lower 48), although I've never heard anyone else use it.

Which brings me to the real point of this post (as much as I love my husband): Mia-isms.

My SIL is an amazing cook, home school mother and woman. But best of all, she can turn a phrase. Our conversations are quite entertaining.

When stumbling upon something shocking, "What the hey-diddley-do wop?" I'm sure you can see the Simpsons influence upon her vocab.

When she's frustrated: "I swear to Buddha," (I keep telling her that she's going to offend a devout Buddhist someday) or "Poop on my head," (which I remind her would be rather thoroughly unpleasant).

When she's angry at my brother (which, surprisingly, is not daily), "I don't care what you do, think or say."

When she's pleased with something, "Hot dog!" (Mickey Mouse's first words ever) or "Praise the bum!" (Yeah, I've got nothing for that one.)

When something is disappointing, "Dude bomber."

But when she has to pee, she reminds me that she is no ordinary girl, "I've got to pee like a banshee." Do banshees actually pee? One has to wonder if the supernatural must condescend to bodily functions like us mere mortals. In Mia's world, though, they do and apparently it's more than a racehorse.

So in a cheeky homage to these two dear people in my life, enjoy their frequently used isms and I encourage you to go out and use one today.

Double points if you can meld them together.....

Perhaps you'll have to "Be off like a prom dress at midnight," because you've got to "pee like a banshee."

The possibilities are simply endless.

In Memoriam

A blog has passed. It was a great blog, full of pithy Latin phrases, angst and comments on becoming a crone suffering from Crohn's disease.

Zillah's easy way of scratching items of her to-do lists filled me with envy as my own to-do lists stared at me with haunting eyes, reminding me of all I was ignoring.

Her beautiful house, the entries on man-sized bugs, brilliant essays on women and drinking gin....all will be missed.

So while I appreciate that it was just time for this blog to go, Z, you will be missed greatly.

Then again....it could just be all those spanking pictures.

Perhaps I'll just have to come out of the closet and start looking for my own.

If I Had A Million Dollars....

...which is really code for, "If I had so much money I could never spend it all," because we all know that million dollars, particularly after taxes, ain't going to get you very far in this day and age.

It's also one of my favorite Barenaked Ladies songs but I digress.

I'm not really sure I'd be all that inventive with the money actually. (Hence why I've never posted this entry.)

I would do boring things:

1. Pay off debts
2. Own at least two houses outright - one here and one in Alaska. Another house in Seattle with a car for Mia and the kids when they visit Children's.
   
3. Give money to family members.
4. Set up trusts for my children.
5. Sock money away for Rob and I.

And yeah, that's it.

Seriously.

Okay, I'd go a little shopping happy and buy books - so many books - and maybe have some built-in book shelves (because I love those too) installed so that I could store all those books. Or maybe build a library like the one in Beauty and the Beast because I've been in love with that room since I saw the movie.

I'd give lots of money away too. Maybe set up my own charitable organization. (Because we're talking about more than a million dollars otherwise I'd have been broke after #2.)

Hmmmm....I'd travel. Forget really cool indoor playgrounds and all that, I'd get passports for us all and see the world. I would really love to live for months or a year in different countries to learn more about the people and their culture. Oh, I would so love that.

Can you buy your way on to MoTab? Cause I'd love to sing in the choir. And maybe they'd wave the "living in Utah" requirement and just let me commute from another state, seeing as I'd have my own plane and all.

What about sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom? Would Obama go for that? Maybe I'll have to vote for Hilary in a few years so that can happen....

Seriously, I think that's it.

Maybe I'd take a class on expanding my creativity, apparently I need some help.

What would you do? (I figure I can get some great ideas or be comforted by the fact that everyone else is just as dull as I am.)

The Birds and The Bees

(returning back to my quest to clear out my drafts folder)

I've been telling myself for quite some time that I need to have "the talk" with Rhys. He'll be ten in, oh, just a few more days and at some point this year, his class will be discussing same sex development. Next year, supposing that Alaskan schools keep to the same time table as Oregon ones, they will be discussing opposite sex development in class. I have always publicly stated that I would much rather teach my children about this stuff at home or, at the very least, introduce the subject at home. I would very much like for all of my children to be comfortable discussing sex and relationships with me rather than constantly turning to their peers for information, as savvy as teenagers can be.

So, time to bite the bullet.

Yeah. Right. I've been saying that since last spring! This is definitely one moment where I'm stronger in theory than in reality.

Robert and I decided that we would be talking with Rhys before summer was over. We would even mention it to him and ask him questions every now in then. He would just give us an enigmatic smile.

The talk never happened this summer.

I talked with Mia about our need to have the conversation and how it kept not happening. She told me she had some fabulous books that she would send me to help me with the discussion.

We waited, but nothing came. (Not that I minded. I'm a procrastinator anyway and this particular event didn't encourage me to be other.)

Finally, we decided that Rhys and we needed to have the talk. Happily the books arrived to help. (No, there were no copies of "You Were Smaller Than a Dot.")

Rhys was so NOT excited to be sitting next to me in my bedroom with a book stretched out before us. He hemmed and hawed and wanted to avoid this at all costs. "Can't we just work on cub scouts?" I asked him what he knew and he professed complete. (Yeah. Right.)

So, we plunged in.

I had glanced over the book previously and it seemed to cover all the subjects necessary (puberty - male and female as well as human reproduction - intercourse and baby development) and had two characters: a bird who was pleased as punch to learn all about this and a bee who didn't want to know anything.

I thought I'd have some sort of funny punch line to end with but, yeah, I've got nothing.

The talk went well. There was one little snag. As we were reading, we came to a section that was talking about all different kinds of love: parent/child, friends, parents for each other, etc. I began to get that knot in my stomach and wondered what the page turn would bring. (Yes, in hindsight I should have thoroughly read the whole book.) And the page turn brought what I was afraid it would bring, a discussion on homosexuality.

Now, I do think I need to start having these conversations with Rhys, but being so uncertain myself it's hard to know what to teach my children. I must admit that I went the safe route; I didn't condemn homosexuality (in all reality I didn't say a whole lot about it other than to define it) and I stressed, as emphatically as I could, that regardless of orientation we needed to treat everyone the same. I told Rhys is he didn't like someone, he didn't have to like them just because they were gay. But I told him that if he had a friend who said he was gay, it was no reason to stop being his/her friend. (I confess that I stopped short of introducing the option that he could be gay; I just couldn't go there.)

He seemed completely unperturbed.

I love kids.

Here I was, tied in knots, unsure what to say, and he had the attitude of, "Cool."

Overall, I must say it was anticlimatic.

I'm thinking of taking on Quinn next (I waited far too long with Rhys and Quinn keeps wanting to read those cool books Aunt Mia bought).

I'm also thinking about talking to Lulu about it. Yes, I know she's only 5 but the girl's been obsessed with nipples since she was two; she wants to know why I put pads in my underwear and why I have hair in certain places. In fact, just yesterday, she came running up to me, "Mom! I'm getting hair on my vulva!"

Not likely.

But I'm thinking she would want some further information and clarification.

Je Suis Madame Mystérieuse....

Now that the morbidity is out of the way, on to the good news!

Robert is pretty amazing; he has supernatural powers of deduction. For Christmas a few years ago, I walked up to him and said, "I know what your parents are getting you for Christmas." He glanced up and said, "A gun safe." Not too impressive, he had guns, Rhys was almost 1, time to make sure everything is locked up.

I, however, did not want to be outdone. "Well I know what else they're getting you for Christmas...."

Seriously. He looked at me, thought for a moment and said, "Sweatpants."

He was dead on.

Seriously.

I mean, are the two even related? Do people normally buy sweatpants and a gun safe? Do stores have promotions, "Buy a gun safe, get a free set of sweats!" Is it a guy thing - guns and sweats?

I. don't. know.

I just know he nailed it and he's been doing the same thing for the last 9 years.

This year, however, I decided to surprise him. In a big way.

Robert visited at the beginning of May (he had a conference in Seattle and extended the trip south a few miles). It was fabulous and short and we talked about me flying up in June, by myself, to visit, see all the work being done and just be with him.

I decided that I should go, but I had an extra trick up my sleeve.

Rob's birthday was May 18th (and, coincidentally, so is my father's and yes, I do know what Freud would say about that). Robert puts a lot in store by birthdays and by our being together on said days. And I love to plot surprises (imagine my disappointment over the last several years).

So, I bought tickets to fly north for the weekend but told him (and everyone else in Alaska - sorry Mia) that I was coming in June. A friend picked me up from the airport and at 10:30 ADT, I was blessed to see my husband, slack jawed, wide-eyed saying something along the lines of "What.....?"

Seriously.

It was amazing. All that I could of dreamed of. (The weekend was really fun too.)

In hindsight, Robert realized he should have seen it coming a mile away from all the clues and hints I dropped but he's been so distracted by work and a ruptured ear drum that he didn't.

Me, I don't care what the cause or how it happened, I'm just glad that no only did I get to spend time with him,but that I surprised him. I'll be surprised if I can ever do that again, as long as we both shall live.

On Death and Dying

You'd think after all these episodes with Grey's Anatomy, the nights sobbing over deaths of imagined people, that I would give up watching the show, but I seem to be addicted, addicted to the characters, my "friends," their lives and choices and the certainty that we are all going to die.

Perhaps it's the impending anniversary of my mom's death, or really just the fact that she died at all, that gives these episodes extra import (then again, I am a drama queen), but I can't help but cry over every death and ponder, with every death, the meaning of life.

I have my faith, but there are moments when I wonder if all of this is worth it; if the moments of joy and happiness and love are really worth all the moments of tears and pain and anguish. Moments like now, as I watch Izzie sign a DNR and convince her husband that it's necessary and I remember the moment my mom told me she had signed a DNR and the moment I understood that that was the reason the ambulance didn't race her to the hospital with lights flashing and sirens blaring. Death is inevitable, as certain as birth, perhaps even more so. And while I believe, with all my heart, that eternity lies in death, that birth into "real life," I also know, with all my heart, that the goodbye of death is painful and the separation of death between the living and dead is enormous.

I just can't wrap my head around death and life and what it means to be immortal beings living mortal lives.