Hurricane Sandy in North Carolina: Merely a blustery day

It's windy today. Cold, and windy, and rainy, and our welcome sign broke. Andrew informed me of this as he opened our front door this evening.

"We have hurricane damage!" he announced excitedly.

"We do?" I asked, surprised. It was windy today but not that windy.

"Yeah, our welcome sign broke. We should take a picture! It's our first hurricane damage."

I told him that I thought it would be in poor taste to take a picture because there are people dying outside, having the walls of their houses ripped off, their cars are being carried away in white water rivers flowing through their streets, and I can fix our sign with a glue gun. Anything that can be fixed with hot glue does not constitute hurricane damage.

He reluctantly agreed with me, although technically the wind, which is technically from the hurricane, did damage our sign. But I think I can live with that.

We live in a sturdy little house (that is admittedly getting a little chilly inside) with a sturdy storm door. Our storm door is solid glass, I just thought I would point that out to anyone who perhaps didn't know that. Solid glass.

Before Hurricane Sandy drummed up this cold weather, we were living it up. Carolina dreamin', baby: flip flops, shorts, popsicles, bug spray. We'd turned our air conditioner off weeks ago and couldn't really bring ourselves to turn it back on (it's almost November, remember?) so instead we went all old-fashioned and opened the windows (even the ones without screens which made our house a mosquito-infested nightmare later on) to let the cool evening breezes in.

On Saturday evening (when it was already dark outside) I came out of the bedroom with Benjamin and saw that the front door was open. I've recently become a little paranoid about people seeing into our house at night so I asked Andrew why the front door was open.

"Oh, just to let some air in," he said, waving his hand to dismiss my concern.

Thoughts of voyeurism aside I was now concerned about his observation skills. I puckered my lips and blinked at him a couple of times, wondering how to break the news gently. Taking a deep breath I asked, "You do know the storm door is solid glass, right?"

This time it was his turn for a pensively pregnant pause.*
*That's afliteration!

"It's...not a screen door?" he cautiously ventured.

I shook my head sympathetically. "No, not a screen door," I answered.

"Fascinating!" he said.

We're going on three months in this house and he just now realized that we don't have a screen door.

He's a brilliant, brilliant man. And I don't say that facetiously at all.

Civic Duty

Yesterday I voted. Today we raked our leaves. How civically minded are we!?

Spelling Bee

My mom informed me today that I misspelled a word in one of my posts, though her grammar told me that I habitually misspelled it so because I at times lean toward perfectionism I did a little search to see how many times I'd spelled it wrong: 10 out of 407 times. That's about 2.5% of the time (which Andrew assures me is not statistically significant (now if it were five percent that'd be different)). I fixed those misspellings in case you were wondering.

I wasn't offended by my mom's message because a) it's my mom and b) she misspelled something in her message. 

People misspell things. Even the most stringent of spellcheckers misspell things. 

Shoot—I edit things all the time and I find mistakes and I fix them. And then someone else will edit what I edit and they find mistakes and fix them and send it back to me and I find more mistakes. It's amazing how many mistakes are overlooked.

Andrew's a typographer. Do you know how many hands a book passes through before it gets published? Sometimes Andrew will go through a book three or four times before it gets sent to the press because nit-picky editors keep finding things to nitpick. And guess what—after the book is printed there is still that typo, that orphan line, that stacked word. 

I used to feel triumphant about finding typos in novels or textbooks or blog posts of people I'd label as grammarians. Since I've done more editing myself and have seen the rigorous process a book goes through before it gets published I've stopped feeling triumphant and instead melancholy because it stinks to make a mistake when that's the last thing you want to make. 

I think all editors have a touch of perfectionism in them. 

Not that I'm a real-life editor or anything but I do edit things. And I'm a bit of a perfectionist...when I do certain things...that don't involve keeping my house clean...

Ironically I got another comment about my spelling today shortly after my mom's email. But I'm sure it's spam because it has spam written all over it. And I'm sure it was troll-y because it made me feel a teensy bit angry. But I also thought it was hilarious because:

naturally like your website however you have to check the spelling on several of your posts.Many of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very bothersome to inform the truth nevertheless I will definitely come again again.

As my children would say, "Whatta? Whatta?"

They felt they could tell me my spelling has issues with grammar like that?!

So I stopped feeling angry and started feeling awesome instead.

Miriam's Three!

Miriam had a rather low-key birthday, which was perfect. She woke up a little disappointed—I suppose she had been expecting some sort of dramatic change to have occurred overnight and was very disappointed that she wasn't notably bigger. She concluded that it couldn't possibly be her birthday, that she couldn't possibly have turned three, because she still couldn't do any of the things that she expected she'd be able to, such as reaching the sink by herself. And her old shoes still fit.

Eventually—mostly when we showed her the beginnings of her birthday cake—she came around to the idea that it really, truly was her birthday, despite all her disappointment in not feeling any different at all.

We spent most of the day doing ordinary things: Daddy did homework. I went visiting teaching. Benjamin napped. Miriam played.

But we also found the time to do this:

Trunk-or-treat

Our ward's trunk-or-treat activity was a couple of nights ago. Miriam's been so confused about the name of this activity that now I'm confused. She keeps saying that we went treat-or-trunking (and I just typed that as the title of this post and then had to delete it when it didn't look right—it's trunk-or-treating). However you say it, it involves candy and costumes and the girls were excited about both those things.

Rachel was Hermione Granger, of course. She came off the bus one day, grinning from ear to ear, and announced that she and her BFF from the bus (Hailey) were both planning on being witches for Halloween. And I was like, "Uhhhh...you're not being a witch. You're being Hermi... Oh. Right; you're being a witch. Sweet—you guys are like twinners!"

A little coughy will keep you awake at night

Benjamin seems to only be able to sleep as long as he does not cough. Unfortunately, he has a cold (his very first one, courtesy of Rachel, courtesy of some other kid in her kindergarten class I'm sure) and this cold comes with a cough. He's not really sure how to handle it...so mostly he just screams which I imagine only makes his throat feel worse. It's lovely.

Needless to say, his cough is keeping him (and me) up all night (and day).

So our day was a little bit rough.

Benjamin woke up before I took Rachel to the bus stop. He fell asleep for ten minutes in the morning, for about half an hour around lunch time, and then again for a half hour before Rachel came home from school. I was ready to curl up in a ball and die because that's about how our night went as well.

Lucky for him, he's a pretty cute baby. Sometimes he reminds me of a porcelain doll. This is one of those times:



His skin is just so perfectly smooth and his eyes so big and glossy and his hair so fine and wispy.

The weekend, in pictures...mostly of Benjamin

I left Benjamin on the floor while I was off doing something and when I came back, Rachel gave me a big, guilty grin. "He's big enough for me to pick up now, Mommy," she said. Picking him up has been strictly taboo...until now, I guess, because there he was, sitting on her lap. "He was fussing so I picked him up. He likes it when I rock him like this!"

M is for...

Last year in preschool Rachel learned an alphabet song. It's rather long and involved, as it has a word for every letter and the kids learned the sign language to go along with each letter and word, but we sing it all the time now. I can't remember all the words all the time but that's okay because we just make them up as we go along—it's not difficult...it's the alphabet. Rachel ended up scoring very high on her beginning of the year evaluation when she was asked to name the first letter of various words and I like to think it's in part because of this song because now Miriam's quite interested in singing this song for every word she comes across.


Rachel's original performance is in this video (at 1:33) but the song we sing varies greatly because, like I said, you can throw any word into the song:




Miriam was trying to read an alphabet book the other day and it went a little like this:

"Q is for duck. Quah! Quah! Duck! R is for bunny! Rrr! Rrr! Bunny! S is for sun! Sss! Sss! Sun! T is for tree! Trr! Trr! Tree!"

We were all laughing up a storm but she couldn't quite figure out why so she just kept on singing.

On the way home from church on Sunday Miriam, who had been sitting quietly in her seat, suddenly announced, "Mom! We have the same letter! Mmm! Mmm! Miriam! Mmm! Mmm! Mom!"

She's been thrilled about that discovery all day today. At lunch she found out that monkey and marshmallow and milk and mango all "have" the very same letter, too.

We made up a song together at lunch to help her remember how to spell her name. There isn't actually a tune so I suppose it's more of a chant. This is how it goes:

M-I-R-
I-A-M!
That's how you spell Miriam!
She's so smart!
She's so fun!
That's why we love Miriam!

M-I-R
I-A-M!
That's how you spell Miriam!
She's so cute!
She's so fun!
That's why we love Miriam!

She tried to make up a song for me and this is kind of how it went:

M-O-M
M-O-M
That's how you spell Mommy!
She's smart and cute because I love her!
That's why we love Mommy!

I was happy to learn that the reason I'm smart and cute is because she loves me. Where would I be without my little letter-sharer? In a less wise and less beautiful place than I am now, that's for sure!

It's the weekend?

As a follow-up to the last post (where I kind of whined about Rachel not having an early release date even though it was on the school calendar), Rachel came home with a new school calendar on Friday. It was a nice gesture on behalf of the school, but a little late to count for much, considering the only change to the calendar had already happened—the rest of the holidays match up with the old calendar.

Anyway...

Was it just me or did this weekend go by way too quickly?

On Saturday morning Andrew had a primary training meeting at the stake center—he's a cub scout leader—so he got all dressed up in his Sunday best and then went out in the kitchen to have breakfast with the girls.

"Why are you wearing church clothes? Is today Sunday?" Rachel asked him.

"Of course it's Sunday," Andrew said, not wanting to pass up the opportunity to tease her.

"But it should only be Saturday," she said and then broke into song while ticking the days of the week off on her fingers: "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...then we start again! See? Yesterday was Friday so today has to be Saturday."

"Yesterday was Saturday, don't you remember?"

"No."

"Oh, come on! We did so many fun things! We went to the park and played and we mowed the lawn together and you watched some cartoons. It was such a fun day! How could you not remember?"

Rachel started to look a little less confused and a little more worried.

"Hurry up and finish your breakfast," Andrew urged her. "You need to pick out a dress to wear today."

"Okay," Rachel said hesitantly.

We only revealed it was Saturday after we'd had family prayer and Andrew said goodbye.

"Wait, where are you going?" Rachel asked.

"To a meeting at the church," Daddy answered.

"So...today is not Sunday? Today is Saturday?"

We had a wonderful, if not busy, Saturday doing chores around the house and Saturday was over all too soon. Before we went to bed, we threw in a load of darks to wash because Andrew's Sunday pants were covered in spit up and needed a little refresher before church the next day. He couldn't put them on first thing in the morning because he had to throw them into the dryer so instead he put on some shorts and a t-shirt. I, however, put on a Sunday dress.

Andrew was already out eating breakfast with the girls (in his shorts and t-shirt) by the time I came out of the bedroom (in my Sunday attire).

Miriam looked from me to Andrew several times.

"Uhhhh? Uhhhh?" she grunted, slapping her face with her hands (à la Dobby). "Is it Saturday? Or is it Sunday?"

Apparently our wardrobe is the most reliable calendar in the house.

West Point on the Eno

Sometimes having no choice is easier than having to make a choice—and not only because I'm indecisive. Initially making choices is difficult, of course, but no one tells you about retrospect. You know: buyer's remorse (or what I think should be called "the pillar of salt principle"). We've been relatively immune to this principle for much of our married lives.

When we went to Egypt we had no plan B. It was stay and do nothing or go and do something.

Two years later when we came back to BYU it was only because all our other plans had fallen through. BYU was our backup plan. There was no where else to go.

This time, though, it was different; this time we chose between two very attractive choices.

Now and again, I catch myself glancing back at that moment in time when we were making this choice, wondering if we made the right choice—the best choice. I wonder how our lives would be different. I wonder if Andrew would be less busy, more busy, or as busy as he is now. I wonder if Rachel's schools would be better. I wonder a lot of things, but usually I just tell myself to stop it...because we've made our decision and it was a good decision and there's no way of knowing if was the best decision, but it was ours. We don't need to live in the "what if" moment; we need to live in the now...or we'll turn into a pillar of salt.

Once you're on the log...you're better off walking across it, right?