The Christmas I Remember Most

Le Chrissimmissy I Le Rrrmemmbeerr Moste.

The Christmas I remember most is the Christmas my family will never let me forget. In fact this particular Christmas, and many thereafter, began something like this: In a lovely home, in a conservative neighborhood, in a cookie-cutter suburban Utah city, I was likely the first to awaken my poor old Gramma Merle who at night would wear a scarf around her head to protect her newly picked-through coif. Then I would crawl into bed with her where she whispered something like, “Elizabeth, it's 4:30 in the morning, don't you go and wake everyone up.” When she would fall back asleep, I would sneak back out of her sofa-bed, and traipse downstairs where I ogled the twinkling lights, the rotund home-made felt stockings and the largest stack of presents this side of middle-class America. Indefinitely, I became exhausted from awaiting the arrival of my competition, and fall back asleep on the couch. When each of them arrived, my six siblings and I would find our own special corner of the living room that we would deem 'Our Space'. This room is where the paper tearing would commence on the early morning of December 25^th, and 'Our Space' was where we gathered our own coveted booty. Pajama clad toddlers-to-teens became one-eyed, one-legged, grisly green pirates.

Mutiny against all order was the order of the day. The teens slept through Luke Chapter 2 while the tots sucked on their candy canes tossing their tangerines and apples aside. The sounds of shredding paper permeated the room with 'wows' and an intermittent 'thanks mom and dad', 'thanks Santa Clause'. The dimly lit basement living room was now the Cave of Wonders. Skis had fallen to the ground, new gargantuan stuffed teddy bears named Duncan were being drooled on and the newest video game console was bleep bleeping in an even darker corner of the room. After one seven year old girl (that's me) saw mounds and mounds of treasure and perused her brothers' and sisters' 'Spaces', she enviously declared, in the whiniest, (so I'm told), most pathetic voice for all to hear, “BUT I WANTED MORE!!!”

Now, growing up, perhaps the only thing my parents could ever be guilty of is providing too well for us seven kids. Certainly, I was dealt an earful by a watchful parent immediately following my ungrateful exclamation, but it is the lesson that I continue learning in the Christmases following that have made a powerful mark upon my life. Every Christmas, every sibling and both parents remind me of my selfish declaration. Especially at Christmastime, those words, “BUT I WANTED MORE” ring through my ears as I see others who are less fortunate. Ironically, now it seems, that each year I want for less than the year before. Perhaps this year I want for three things. I want the courage to forgive those who have trespassed against me, the humility to serve my neighbor, and I really wouldn't mind a pair of those sweater-boots everyone is wearing. So while that particular Christmas may have begun in an uneventful way, its never really ended. I'm sure years will pass, and I will still never hear the end of it. I'm grateful for that.

I published the above on my blog just in case it never gets published by Desnews.

Lil' Tidbits

So, it's been a month and a half since I updated my blog. I'm not very good at this, but I have been busy. I am currently writing another novel. The first novel was lost last October when my PC crashed, and since I wasn't ready for that character to die, I had to mourn her loss, it took a year to get over the mourning process, but I think I have put her to rest, and may resurrect her in the future. I have been doing research for my novel most every night and have the outline and some or most of the first chapter completed. My novel's heroine is Suzanne, so while I will not tell you what the novel is about, you may ask how she is. Some of you may know who Anadorinia is, this will give you a clue as to who Suzanne might be. Suzanne is a gamer, you see. She loves computers and all nerdy gothic virtual reality-type computer games. Don't laugh. I will never be an Ayn Rand, I may never even get around to reading an Ayn Rand novel, and most people will probably think what I write is complete drivel, but it must be done. Just a couple of funny things that have happened in the last little while. Richard and I went to Las Vegas for our eighth anniversary. That was so much fun- it was like an extended amazing date. We went to see 'Beatles Love' by Cirque de Soliel. It was amazing. So, I wanted to find a steal of a deal to wear on my super-uber date with my hot hunka love. So, naturally, I crossed the street from the Imperial Palace, where one should never spend the night, to the Forum shops at Ceasar's Palace. I had myself an Aztec Haute Chocolate- yes haute is spelled correctly. It burned all the way down and all the way out, but it was delicioso. So, then, I'm minding my own business, thinking I'm looking haute, when this very delicioso looking latino grabs my hand and pulls me into his shop. He looks at me in my eyes and says, "I din't min to be rrrude, but ckwhat doo yoo ckwhere underrr yourr (ch)eyes?| I'm like, "mmm...(embarassed to say) just some botanical cover-up sticky thing." "So, ckhow eld arrre you?" (Thinking he's going to flatter me by feigning to guess my age as a much younger twenty something) I say, "I'm thirty" He smirks and says, "Thirrrty-what?" Grrrrrrrr........."Thirty....years....old" Needless to say I didn't buy his damn products with smashed up 24 karat gold bits in it. There were some more funny happenings, I'll have to write about tomorrow- since Anadorinia and Corker have a rendezvous in Stormwind tonight.

Baby Lukey!!! He's grown up in the blink of an eye! We need to convince the Man Upstairs that we promise we can handle another one, because we did such an amazing job making the first one!!! He's turned out to be such a wonderful person, despite our shortcomings.

I know I have bad roots in this pic, we were poorer than we are now. Nonetheless, we were able to see some beautiful things and enjoy thoroughly our life in England. I rummaged up some old photos from an old hard drive. This is in a seaside town called Ilfracombe. This town was even more stunning at night. The pic below is me weeding my beautiful English garden. It was an oasis that I only wish I would have had more time to spend there. We have moved an average of every six months since we've been married. No more moving for me for a while.

I miss that garden!!!

This was a very cute picture I rummaged up from a few years ago. As you can see, Amber is pregnant with Aiden, so it was at least 5 years ago. What beautiful women!!!

My dog is afraid of my neighbor's Halloween ghosts they have on their front porch. They are happy looking ghosts, but nonetheless, they have black holes for mouths and eyes. The think is, is that he never barked at the door-to-door salesman who was accosting me on my front porch. Koda never barked once at him. But he barked at the Happy Halloween Ghosts. He stares at them and his ears go back and he backs away and gives a cowardly woof.
So, this has been a lousy couple of days. I was feeling sorry for myself because my ward is so big that no one knows my name, or would care that I died, let alone anyone in my gigantic stake. So, naturally, for General Relief Society meeting, I decided to go to my mom and sisters' gathering for General RS meeting at their stake center. My mom is on the stake RS Presidency and was in charge of organizing the cake-and-drink-after-the-meeting-mingle. So, of course, I volunteer for the set up and cleanup, which eventually set me up for the screw up. No one would think it was that big of a deal to break a platter someone brought to showcase the yummy cakes on. Unless it was a gift given by a friend, or an heirloom, or crystal, or something like that. Well, I shattered the platter, all over the kitchen floor, which was a probable heirloom that was probably crystal and was definitely given by a dear friend to the lady whose husband killed himself last year. I cried on the way home in the car by myself, mainly because I felt like a damn fool.
I also want to vent about the myriad other ways in which I tend to feel like a damn fool. So, I am getting to be disgusted with the very yuppy school my child attends that is trying to make me spend a damn fortune on extra-curricular things outside of school. Not to mention this silly Dragon Pride award program. So little six year-old Luke is supposed to read 900 minutes in a 9 week period. That is just fine. I can handle that. I can also handle the exercise requirements, since he plays soccer at least twice a week. All the other requirements in order for this little boy to feel like he is able to compete with his peers is just ludicrous for a first grader to have to worry about. He has to jump a rope 15 times in a row without making a mistake, for example. Bloody hell. The child is already a perfectionist and harps on himself if he writes a number 3 backwards. So, naturally, I feel like a failure of a parent because I told Luke it was a bunch of rubbish to feel like he had to get a phone call from the school to tell his parents they were really proud of him! We don't need the school to tell him they are proud of him. We are proud of him even if he can't tie his own shoes yet and still wets the bed! He was like, 'but, I want the school to be proud of me!' He also gets: please buy this product from our sponsors, it will go towards buying books for the school! Please buy dinner from Chick-fil-A from this time to this time on this particular day, or your son is not displaying school spirit! WITW!!! (We took him there by the way because I happen to LOVE C-F-A). I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't that every other day he was bringing something home to try and get us to spend money!!! I have PMS and I'm drinking caffeine and I'm going to have some dark chocolate. Really cliche', but I don't care.

Well, I am having fun with this so far. I am ahead of my lectures in school as of right now. I baked some cookies today to give to the neighbors since we let the dog out the front door on Sunday to browse over the Lillys and he came back in the house with a bag of cookies tied up with a pink ribbon. We figured the neighbors would be pretty ticked if we gave them their cookies moist with dog slobber, and today was the first day this week I have had the ingredients and the time to make it up to them. I don't even think they even know they had a bag of cookies tied up with a pink ribbon anonymously set on their front porch, (there was no name attached to the pink ribbon, unless, Koda ate the tag and left the cookies for us- he is selfless like that- I wouldn't be surprised) and I am still wondering whether or not I should actually knock on thier door or keep the cookies and the faux pas (or should I say fur paw) to myself.

Here we go!

So, it is a grand thing to conquer old anxieties, and not only overcome them, but excel in overcoming them. For me, Algebra is an old anxiety I feel I am learning to conquer. I firmly believe that my teenage brain was not developed enough to allow me to complete algebraic problems succesfully in order to retain the processes in my brain with the resources I had available to me. I also firmly believe that my perfectionist self resigned to the fact that math wasn't going to come easy to me. Because it wasn't going to come easy to me, I was going to have to fail innumerable times before I got to the correct solution, and I never liked failing. Thus, as a youngster, I didn't try many new things.Coming from a family with seven children, one child's inability to easily compute math was probably overlooked. I remember vividly the day that math became my enemy. In the second grade, I was in the highest math group and my classmates and I had gathered to the old lady with the helmet hair's classroom. We were subtracting numbers like this: 37-29= ?, or 23-15=?. Because we had to do the little fiddly thing by crossing out the first number and applying a...( you know what I mean, I can't explain it.) anyway, I couldn't do it. I got every single question wrong on my math test. The teacher looked at me like it was my fault I couldn't understand this new process, and I really took this failure to heart. I wrapped my arms around my head and sobbed and sobbed a snotty, salty pool onto my desk. Only Kelcey Kemp asked me what was wrong and what could he do about it, so, I loved him until the seventh grade. Jarrard love is loyal love. So, I am seeing mathematics in a whole new light. With a fully formed and mature frontal cortex, and with a mature 'I don't fear failure' attitude, only a 'I fear never trying' attitude, and a higher than average IQ, I can ace my math 1010 class. I think it is fitting that it is math 1010 and not math 101 nowadays, because 1010 is 911 more than 101, which would indicate math 1010 was more difficult than math 101. (I used the fiddly subtracty thing to figure that out!)