The gift that keeps on giving

Guess what my daughter gave me for my birthday?

That's right, she gave me that special flu that starts with EWWW and ends with GROSS!

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

As Gad as my witness, I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever eat a Whopper Junior ever ever ever ever ever again!

But a gift is a gift, and every gift teaches you something. From this gift I learned that you should never cup your hand over your mouth when running to the bathroom because, trust me, there are other exits on your face whereby a Whopper Junior can make its great escape.

Was that TMI? Because an artist pledges allegiance to truth before beauty, you know.

That's another thing I learned from this gift, that I'm a true artist. You know you're an artist when you can heave ho while your mind simultaneously describes how it feels to heave ho. If you are a painter/artist, your mind will most likely simultaneously sketch little bits of Whopper Junior splattering across canvas, just as if you are a dancer/artist your mind will most likely start choreographing those little bits waltzing enthusiastically to the Duluth Accordionaires.

Sorry, truth before beauty. That's my pledge.

A true writer/artist always pushes herself to show, rather than tell a story, even as the story is unfolding. She may be in mid-gag, but her mind is not. Her mind is making decisions about adverbs and adjectives. Should she take the easy way out and use a verb coupled with an adverb, like regurgitated heartily, or should she go with a declarative adjective like EWWWWW GROSS!!!! Or should she go the extra mile and describe the way that little flu bug winds up like a bobbin just before it sews the big dipper into her gut?

It's the million dollar question all writer/artists must face when they're bowing at the porcelain throne.

(My apologies if you're eating right now.)

Another thing I learned is that in between regurgitating heartily you realize what's most important to you.

I never realized how important banana popsicles were to me. Alls I wanted was a banana popsicle.

"Please somebody, anybody," I whispered in fetal position from the bathroom floor. "Can someone please, please, pretty please bring me a banana popsicle?"

But no one could hear me because they were all out mowing the lawn and then shooting baskets and then taking Lulu for a romp through the park.

Finally my hub burst through the door and declared, "Someone just tried to beat me up in the park!"

"That's nice, honey, can you get me a banana popsicle?"

"Isn't that freaky?" He continued.

"Banana . . ."

"Why would someone pick a fight with me?"

"Popsicle . . . "

"I wasn't doing anything to him!"

"Please . . ."

"He ordered the boys to sit and then he took the dog leash and then he pushed my chest and said . . ."

"POPSICLE!!!"

"'Come on, you swear word coward! Let's GO!' and I was like, 'What are you doing, dude???' and he was like 'Are you going to be a swear word swear word swear word coward in front of your boys? bleep bleep bleep.'"

My hub, poor thing, was obviously suffering from post traumatic stress, (he's a lubber, not a fighter) but so was I!

And doggonit, I just wanted a freakin' popsicle!!!!

Is that so wrong?

Anyways, that's what my dear, sweet daughter taught me about myself this weekend.

And anyways again, now it's up to me to pass this gift along so all the people I lub can learn important life lessons too.


Is it true that I'll have seven years of bad luck if I don't send it to ten of my closest friends within the next five minutes?


Consider yourself tagged!

LY!!!!

Tithing settlement: My friends and family plan

Well, I spent my entire birthday making a list. And checking it twice.

Sadly, only 71 of my 711 Facebook friends wished me a Happy day.

That's 10%, peeps!

That's tithing.

On the bright side, at least I can bear testimony that I know a tithing of my friends are true.

Aww, JUST MESSIN' WITH YOU, peeps! I don't know how many friends wished me happy birthday on Facebook. Alls I know is my hub had to keep giving me the heimlich because I had a big lump in my throat all day. Thank you for that, tithing friends!

So you wanna hear about my big birthday? Huh? Huh? Huh?

It started off early, with me trying to sleep off my head cold/lub allergy and my hub trying to wake me up to feed me French toast made from French bread topped with a French kiss.

(Ewwww! That's not true.)

(You guys probably think I'm a liberal now, huh?)

(Fer reals, I only kiss American style.)

After breakfast my hub asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday.

"I want to go to the dump," I said.

"We're not going to the dump on your birthday!" he said, firmly.

Or maybe it was forcefully.

On second thought, it was more disgustedly.

Anyways, I told him that is was MY birthday and that I could go to the dump if I wanted to. It seemed a simple enough wish to grant, but there we stood in the carport having a knock-down drag-out fight over it. Finally he pulled out the ladder, climbed to the top of the garbage can and began to dog pile our leftover Mother's Day/Birthday/orange business garbage while I screamed in slow motion:

"I W A N T T O G O T O T H E D U M P!!"

I'm pretty sure there are city codes that say you can't pile your garbage higher than 8 ft above the rim. That's what I told him, anyway. So he began passively resisting my assertive confrontation by attempting to fill up all the neighbor's garbage cans with our leftover crapola.

So I began assertively confronting his passive resistance by attempting Karate Kid position at the end of the driveway.

I'm proud to say that in the end my wish was his command. He made all my garbage-free dreams come true and we lived happily ever after.

After we lived happily ever after, we took our cute dog, Lulu, for a walk and guess what! I'm not allergic to lub after all! As it turns out, I'm just allergic to garbage.

Since my hub consented to spending $7 at the dump, I consented to spending $7 at the movies.

We saw Iron Man 2, which I liked very much, except for the kissing scene at the end. It was WAY too American for my liberal taste buds. (Get it? Taste buds? hee hee hee)

Then my daughter came home from school early and started BHBO (barfing her brains out), which I thought was kinda rude, being as my stomach is so susceptible to the power of suggestion.

When my hub asked me where I wanted to eat, I hesitated and considered my options carefully. I decided that Zuppa Toscana soup would be the best BMBO meal choice.

In other words, we ate at The Olive Garden (of course).

*I'm happy to report that my stomach did not succumb to peer pressure.

The rest of my day was a blur of bright balloons, pretty bows and redundant words. I got the impression that everyone just wanted me to be happy.

So I was.

But it's time to get back to reality. I've been dragging this birthday out for far too long. My mom, Gigi and aunt Carol started the ball rolling when they took me out to celebrate a few days ago. Alls we talked about were dogs, dogs, dogs. I can't figure out what I used to talk about before I had a dog. Can anybody tell me? We laughed and laughed and laughed about my aunt Carol's dogs, and I bragged and bragged and bragged about my dog. And then we cried.

Well, I didn't cry, but my mom did. And all because my aunt Carol told her that "Daddy" on the Dog Whisperer had died. My mom just about choked on her chicken enchilada as tears began welling up in the corners of her eyeballs. I felt so bad and I tried to think of something comforting to say (in between giggles), but alls I could come up with was,"I can't wait to blog this."

My mom really lubs the Dog Whisperer. She even gave me the Dog Whisperer book so I can train my already perfect puppy. I've been whispering in Lulus ear all week, but it doesn't work for me. I don't think puppies speak English. In fact, I would guess their primary lub language is "Words of Mastication." Either that or "Acts of Chomping."

Guess what else my mom brought me on my birthday! A Jumbo Jamba Juice, which basically amounts to 43 bowls of Fruit Loops. (What mom in their right mind would give their kid 43 bowls of Fruit Loops for their 43rd birthday?)

What ever happened to birthday spankings?

Mother Nature didn't give me any birthday spankings either. The mountains and the clouds and the sun and the the sky were on their best behavior all day. It was almost like Mother Nature had whispered in their ear, "Can't we all just get along for once? For Crash!"

Thank you Mother Nature whisperer!

And thank you all my tithing friends and family who remembered to remember not to forget!

You guys are da bombdiggity!

LY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hauoli la hanau, Crash (forever young) Dummy.

That's what an old family friend/home teacher from Hawaii wrote on my Facebook wall, which is so sweet, being as today is my birthday and all.

When I was a teacher at BYU-H, I used to tell my students that Facebook was creepy.

Well I've changed my stance. Facebook isn't creepy at all. It's AWESOME! In fact, I'm just sitting here hitting refresh over and over on my Facebook page to see which true friend is going to wish me a happy birthday next.

For those of you who want to know how forever young I am, let me just say, last year I was forty somethin' somethin', and this year I'm forty somethin' somethin' somethin'.

You get me?

My daughter just asked me what age I would choose to be if I could go back in time. I thought for a minute and said, "40." Her jaw dropped. "But that was only two years ago!" she said.

Is it weird that I would choose to be forever young at forty?

It's just that at 20 I was worried about being lubbed, and at 30 I was worried about not being lubbed.

At 40 it finally dawned on me . . . what's lub got to do with it? (Seriously, what's lub but a second hand emotion?)

Speaking of lub . . . my new puppy is soooooo darn cute! I probably say I lub you Lulu at least a hundred times a day.

Call it coincidence, or call it staying up until 3 a.m cleaning the house for my Mother's Day party, but I got this annoying sneezy, stuffy-nosed, itchy-eyed head cold a few days after we brought that cute puppy home.

And now my daughter has planted a subliminal fear in my head.

WHAT IF I'M ALLERGIC TO LUB?

Wouldn't that just be par for the course of my rolling stone-cold heart!

Well, I gotsta go see who is and isn't my true Facebook friend.

Happy forty somethin' somethin' somethin'th birthday to me!

P.S. Please (please, pretty please) don't hold me responsible for anything I may have said which appears disjointed or paranoid, as I am under the influence of Nyquil (and fear).

P.S.S. Martha, I'm going to miss your birthday sandwiches today! (sniff)

Hug hug, kiss kiss, hug hug, big kiss, little hug, kiss kiss, little kiss

Here I sit with two tears sliding down my cheeks. One on either side of my face, which means one from each eyeball.

They are silent tears, these two, and my face hasn't even moved a muscle. Mostly because I'm watching the Jazz play the Lakers, and for goodness sakes, there's no crying in basketball--at least not in front of my hub and my little cubs.

Technically I'm not crying, I'm sweating. Around the eyeball area. But not because the Jazz are losing, because I just received an email from a friend who had a dream about me.

It's not the first email I've received this week from a friend who had a dream about me. It's the second.

Both dreams were about the same thing and both emails contained specific embedded coded ancient Chinese secrets that neither of my friends could have been privy to.

Only me and the Universe were privy to these secrets.

You know what that means, don't you?

The Universe has been talking behind my back.

Mahalo Mr. Universe!

I feel like the luckiest dummy in the world, and not just because I'm on the tip the Universe's tongue in conversation. There are a million other reasons why.

In order to show my appreciation, I have compiled a list of the top ten things for which I want to stand on tiptoe and hug and kiss the Universe:

1. Macey's now sells seaweed wraps!

2. We have our first Magic Quilt recipient. Click here for details.

3. My daughter gave her 3rd Mother's Day talk in a row, (probably because she hasn't yet learned to make me look good in public.) I predict she'll be speaking again next year because she shared the story about the time I took the family to study nude beaches in Maui, leaving her home alone for a week when she was only 14 years old. (At least that's how she told it over the pulpit. She's definitely a Crash Test Dummy, Jr.)

4. For the first time in 20 years, I got to spend Mother's Day with my cutie patootie mom.

5. AND my stinkin' cute Gigi.

6. I also got to spend Mother's Day with all of my siblings. And their wives. And their kids. And my favorite auntie Carol.


If I had to give you a family map, it might look something like this:

7. I finally got to host a family party, and all because my yard ROCKS! (Technically, it's my sister's yard, but her casa es mi casa, (and SERIOUSLY, everything I have that rocks is a hand-me-down from my sister!))

8. Brandon Sanderson sat next to me at church. And my 13 year old nephew recognized him. And now I'm his favorite aunt!

9. A good friend of mine (who goes by The Mom in blogland) brought me some Japanese rice crackers all the way from Hawaii.


And finally . . .

10. Did I mention that we have a new puppy?

And did I mention that she's the most perfect puppy in the history of the world!!!?

Today my hub came home from work and gave her a kiss on the mouth. That's how good she is!

She's so chillaxed. And gentle. And she sparks all kinds of new vocabulary in our household. Words we've never said before, like "Ohhowcute," and "she'ssodarnadorablefunnyprecious" come spontaneously tumbling from our mouths.

Get this: she goes to her kennel and puts herself to bed at night and down for naps during the day, and she doesn't do her bizness in the house, or bark during the night, or whine, or jump up on company, or lick our faces, or leave the yard, or go upstairs, or jump on the couch.

And she lubs her bath.



I lub her bath too.


I know it's hard to tell because I have such a struggle showing my emotions, but I just lub my puppy so darn much!!!!!!