In Lieu of Fancy Schmancy Christmas Cards

I used to be quite the Martha Stewart... Handmade, glittered, stamped, sealed-with-a-kiss Christmas cards for everyone. And none of those generic,obnoxiously bragging newsletters that so many are fond of: "Nathan scored 837 on his IQ test last month. And Hayden wrote his own piano concerto for Easter this year. We're so proud of them." Nope. They were hand written, baby! But alas, I have resorted to this form of greeting for all of my loved ones... At least the ones who check my blog. I even went one step lazier than last year, as I sent the "Elf Yourself" greeting via email last year.

So enjoy your Holiday Greeting, Van Cleave style. Notice Timmy has returned to the family, thanks to an astute and very highly regarded friend back in San Rafael. Thank you, Christine for sending him back to us. It wouldn't have been Christmas without him!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

What Do You Mean He's Not Real?!?

"You're a LIAR!" I shouted to my mother when the truth finally came out. A dirty, rotten liar... That's how I felt when my Christmas dreams were shattered. When it came time to reveal the stinking realism to Hayden, we tried not to break his heart. Somehow, it seemed so much easier if we could just get him to sneak up on the truth on his own.

We started with the tooth fairy. We asked Hayden to tell us what he thought about her and how it works... You know, hauling teeth around all night long. His response was, "Well, she's magic! She's very little, leaves me notes under my pillow, and she LOVES teeth." Wayne and I exchanged knowing glances, which quickly degenerated to raucous laughter. "Well," Wayne said, "She's little all right... And she does love teeth..." At which point Hayden's expression flashed understanding, and he pointed to me and said, "IT'S YOOOOUUU!!!"

We worked our way through the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, etc. before we got to the Big Guy. With each debunking of his favorite magical characters, he would say, "But Santa is real! I KNOW he is, because he eats the cookies we leave for him, and the reindeer eat all the carrots!" But when he realized Daddy was the cookie culprit, he shed a tear or two.

At least we weren't considered dirty, rotten liars.

Poor Me

No. Really, REALLY poor.

You know it's bad when you start looking around the house for things you might be able to post on Craig's list to score a little extra coin. I wonder if there is anyone out there in cyberspace who would like to buy a periodontal surgery textbook for somebody on their naughty list.

But this post is not meant to be a pity party. I've learned a lot of cool stuff from being flat broke...

Such as: when you can't afford presents, you don't have to get trampled to death by greedy shoppers. I can't go shopping right now, therefore, I get to avoid the crowds and think about what I would buy for all the people I love if I could. And that gets me thinking about why I love them. And then I get to spend my time thinking about all the really nice things people have done for our family instead of wondering if they would like the harvest spice tealight candles or the ones that smell like cucumber-peppermint-chamomile... Which they would probably end up putting in a drawer somewhere in their house, never to be lit... Or even worse: Regifted at their office white elephant gift exchange.

I also LOVE to put up my Christmas decorations. Especially my tree. It looks like a glowing snowball when it is all lit up, and it reminds me of the strange and wonderful circumstances by which we acquired it.

A few years ago, while we were living in Riverside, we all got the nastiest of flu bugs. We all felt like dying. To make matters worse, our heat was not working, and the gas company could not come out to fix it for a week. There was a ridiculous cold spell, such that we could see our breath in our own living room. And to top it off, Nathan needed to go to the doctor to get some antibiotics because he had an excruciating sore throat and fever that made me suspect strep. However, I was in no state to take him and neither was Wayne, so my mother-in-law kindly stepped in. While at the pharmacy, she called to see if we wanted a tree: Green or white. I quickly said green (as I am such a traditionalist), but was persuaded by Nathan to try the white, as he believed I would really enjoy it once I saw it. And he was quite right. We also enjoyed the heat Lynne brought along with her in the form of portable space heaters from the same drug store. I have the hardest time taking down that tree every year, because I love to bask in its soft glow every evening. And each time I do, I think of that Christmas, where we hung our ornaments clutching our barf bowls, and basking in the warmth of our little space heaters.

I've also learned how abundantly rich we are when it comes to family. Between my divorced parents and my in-laws, we have a plethora of choices as to where to spend the holidays. Granted, this has its pros and its cons. We recently got calls from both sides of our families dictating our holiday schedules: "Here's all the goings-on... Sorry you'll have so much travel time, but at least the gas prices are down... We'll have so much fun, we'll be whistling zippidy doo-dah out of our ---holes! (Sorry. It's a movie quote. Just think EARholes if you want the G-rated version.)" I first felt annoyed and a little put out by the presumptuousness (Sorry Mom and Mom, but it's true). And I thought, "Does this side of the family forget that we have that side of the family to accommodate as well? What about my own little family? When do our traditions get to happen? WHAT ABOUT ME?!?"

However, I have chosen now to look at the situation this way: "It is wonderful to know how many people want to share the Holidays with us! That's pretty cool!" While it is not likely we'll be able to make everyone happy and attend every family gathering we have been invited to, I will still enjoy spending time with some of my favorite people at the time of year when I feel most festive and joyous!

'Cause family is great. Isn't it?

The Difference Between B's and V's

I was brought up at the head of the class--Not because I was particularly brainy or gifted, but merely due to my alphabetical circumstance. You see, I was once named Shana Berger... as in second letter in the alphabet Berger... as in, "Sit at the front of the class," "Go to the front of the line" Berger. Due to my short stature, I was also shuffled forward whenever height was the determining factor in student placement. Bottom line: I took a front row seat everywhere I went.


Life placed perpetually at the front of the classroom does something to a person. Sitting in plain view of the teacher, unable to get away with passing notes, dozing off, or daydreaming; unable to mutter anything under one's breath without being heard... It all adds up to a very tightly wound student. Being a B makes one type-A by means of simple classroom logistics.


Enter Wayne Van Cleave: My V-man. I took his name almost sixteen years ago as a matter of fact and didn't have any clue how different life would ever be at this end of the alphabet.

I learned the difference between B's and V's quite plainly in dental school. Our class was set up according to alphabetical order. We spent most of our first year of dental school toiling away in the sim-lab, arranged (of course) alphabetically. The sim-lab was a gigantic room wherein we would work on little rubber heads with plastic teeth to learn the fundamentals of restorative dentistry before they would let us loose on real teeth. The room was so large, I barely got to interact with the B's during the day. I was relegated to the side of the room housed by the students at the END of the alphabet: The V's.


What I learned from my carpool that year (Ballew and Bevens, who sat at the B end of the sim-lab, but remained outliers in the following statements about said B personalities), is that the B end was quite studious and very tightly wound. They took everything super seriously, would haggle over grades, talked endlessly about dentistry, sat silently doing their work, would freak out if something went awry... You get the picture. Many of them sat at the front of the class in lecture, too, and got quite a reputation for shouting out answers and asking endless questions. Bottom line, had I remained a Berger, I would have sat around a number of stress-cases and my perception of dental school may have been completely different.

As for my experiences with the V side of the room: All I can say is PARTAY!!! Our side of the sim-lab was MUCH more relaxed. We blasted "The Final Countdown" before every practical exam, we had weekly potlucks, decorated the walls with Christmas lights, drew faces on our rubber-headed patients, and basically lived in levity and fun (That's right folks. Despite the intense pressures inherent in dental school, I liked it! It was fun!). I thanked Wayne every day for showing me life with the V's.


But tonight I sadly learned I am still a B at heart.



Hayden recently chunked it on a Social Studies exam: 25 out of a possible 100. "Dang it!" I thought. "I'm raising a V! He's living in the end-of-the-alphabet-partay, and now his grades are starting to suck!"


Today, however, he received notification from his teacher that (aside from a smattering of A's and B's) the whole class had sucked it up on that exam. Therefore, he would omit those grades for everyone in the class. He acknowledged that it was kind of a bummer for the kids that had done so well--far above and beyond the rest of the class, but thought it better for all involved to drop the test scores.

For a brief moment, my heart stopped. I stopped chewing my dinner. I tensed up, barely able to breathe. My autonomic nervous system had reverted to my B mentality, which screamed, "NO FAIR! Those kids who got A's deserved them! They worked harder than the rest of those little slackers! Reward them for their efforts!"

The rest of the V slackers at my dinner table laughed at me, and I found myself feeling guilty for dredging up emotions directly related to my front-of-the-classroom-upbringing; emotions that stood in direct opposition to the success of my child on this particular exam. But there I was in all of my raw, type-A, competitive, stress-case B-ness. I guess you could say something along the lines of, "You can take the B out of the front of the classroom, but you can't take the front of the classroom out of the B."

I'll conclude my saga from one end of the alphabet to the other with a simple footnote: Our class valedictorian's name was Yetzer. How do you like them apples, B side?!

Mentisms

What better way to reenter the blogging arena than with a good old fashioned tag? Natalie Nelson posted this a couple of weeks ago and was probably feeling totally dejected when I didn't respond... Actually, she probably could have cared less, but I'd like to maintain my well practiced self-delusion, thinking my opinion actually matters to people. But when I finally found it, I responded to her witty answers in a comment, wherein the word verification was "Mentisms." I think I found something to add to the vernacular.

Mentisms (pl. n.): Musings of a person with questionable mental faculties. Ex: "Three Men and a Little Lady" was full of mentisms today.

So here they are... Mentisms galore in the form of descriptors about me.

I Am: Freakishly short
I Want: Chocolate at any given moment
I Have: A big butt (see above)
I Miss: Northern California
I Fear: Hurting my patients
I Hear: Wayne playing the X-box
I Search: For a complete set of socks for the boys EVERY day. Where do those little buggers go?
I Wonder: Why, when you have children, does everything on your entire body change shape, but we can't grow an extra hand or two to keep up with all the multitasking.
I Regret: Torturing my little sister so mercilessly as a kid
I Love: My boys... All three of them.
I Forgive: But there better be a darn good excuse for the offense. (I know, I know... Not very Christlike.)
I Ache: When I see a special-needs patient that is not being well cared for.
I Always: Cringe when somebody smacks their food.
I Try: To whistle, but it sounds like I'm just hyperventilating.
I Am Not: Frou-frou.
I Seem: Like I know what I'm doing.
I Know: A lot of random crap that will never matter in my life. I'm a trivia trap.
I Feel: Bummed that the wonderful Holiday weekend is drawing to a close.
I Dance: In a manner that brings great embarrassment to my children.
I Dream: Very rarely. I have difficulty sleeping.
I Give: and I give and I give...
I Listen: To the most ridiculous conversations between my boys sometimes. And I think to myself, "Where in the world did you come from? Surely you don't have my DNA!"
I Sing: Like a Mermaid these days.
I Laugh: Quite often. Wayne is a funny, funny man.
I Can't: Believe how bad our economy sucks right now!
I Write: My mentisms for all the world to read.
I Cry: Very rarely, but usually at the lamest of times, and usually when I have wicked PMS.
I Sleep: With lots of pillows, elbowing Wayne whenever he comes near me, flopping back-to-front and front-to-back... Basically, I'm a high-maintenance sleeper, and even if all the conditions are just perfect, I still don't achieve much in the way of a good REM cycle.
I Am not always: Tolerant of whining. Correction...I am rarely tolerant of whining.
I See: Christmas decorations that need to be put up.
I Need: A massage and a great hairstyle.
I Should: Finish my book.

Eventually, I will put up a post of things that went on while we were on our forced hiatus from the blogosphere. For now, I tag anybody who is related to me (In-laws count).

Thank Goodness!

And thank Remy, who has kindly offered up a mildly temperamental laptop with power cord issues for our use right now. We are finally able to rejoin the blogging world once again. No longer will you have to wait weeks on end to hear my rambling, nonsensical pontifications. No longer will I have to wait after work to get a quick peek at other blogs, but not have enough time to comment. Oh! There will be comments once again! Such comments will I give! Get ready blogging world... I'm BAAA-AAACK!!!

Surreal...

Our computer is still D-E-A-D, but couldn't NOT write about what I experienced yesterday.
After work at UCLA, I emerged from the children's dental clinic and found about six helicopters circling the skies. All the buses had been rerouted, and I found myself wandering down the streets to find a way to get home to watch Hayden's chorus concert. Traffic had stopped. Sirens wailed. Streets were blocked off. Random people with signs were coming up to anybody who would listen saying, "If you wanna join in, we're converging on the Mormon church!"

...And by "Mormon Church," I knew they meant the Los Angeles Temple, which was just a few blocks away.

As I plodded along, now within a couple of blocks of the temple, and a half a mile from work, more sirens began to wail. On three flat bed trucks, standing ready to jump off as soon as they reached their destination, dozens of police in full riot gear made their way to the sacred, usually serene grounds that people of my faith worship.

Let me make clear, this is not an ordinary meeting house. This is a step beyond--where we make sacred vows to our Heavenly Father; where we kneel across an altar to marry for time and eternity. The interior is usually so quiet, you can almost hear a pin drop. Once patrons enter, they shrug off the cares of the outside world and devote their minds and hearts to prayer, meditation, and learning. The environment is peace and tranquility in its purest essence.

But yesterday, the outside world came clamoring to the temple gates. And with their venom and a form of bigotry I have never experienced before, a SWAT team followed in their wake. 2000-3000 gay and lesbian advocates loudly expressed their disapproval at the outcome of the recent Proposition 8, which put in place a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Wrongfully, they assumed the many members of the church that contributed to the cause had an agenda that included hate.

I thought this picture summed up the hostility that I witnessed very succinctly:
In the background is a sign saying "No on 8... End Hate." I see in the foreground the very personification of hate, as an angry man shouts and incites contention at the top of his lungs.

I have many thoughts on this battle that rages, and I hope you'll indulge me as I purge my system of these thoughts:

1. Can you imagine what would have happened if this protest had been organized in front of a Muslim Mosque or Jewish Synagogue? Or what about in front of one of the Catholic churches or Baptist ministries that inspired "Yes on 8" sentiments to their parishioners? 70% of minorities in California voted "Yes" on this very matter, but you don't see angry protesters yelling horrible insults to Blacks or Hispanics as a whole. One would never even dream of doing such a thing in a state which cries "Tolerance!" for everyone. Apparently, these folks have no tolerance for Mormons, because we are often marginalized and misunderstood. We are thought by many to be a satanic cult, or a dangerous brainwashing machine, hell-bent on converting the populous whether they like it or not. We are often confused with the polygamous FLDS-type sects that wed their 14-year old neighbors. And this, along with an ideology that does not encompass gay marriage (but does NOT diminish gay civil unions), has put us on the radar of many who wish to stir things up against members of our faith.
2. The political process went forth. The majority has spoken. Other states like Florida and Arizona passed similar amendments on the same day. They are not suffering the same insults as we are here in the Left-Coast. I am reminded of a boy who came up to me on my first day of High School in Georgia. He sat down across from me at lunch, peered at me with skepticism and said, "Did y'all have a hard time gettin' dates out thar in California?" When I answered,"No. Why?" He said, "Well, aren't all them guys out there gay?" I was taken aback, because I had not expected that perception of California... Surfer dudes--yes. Gay guys--No. But this is another one of those events that is going to further embitter people about gays and perpetuate the reputation of California as "The Land of Fruits and Nuts."
3. I have no ill will towards gays. I have worked with several. I know them to be regular people who feel deeply about their partners. I am NOT a gay basher because I voted yes on Prop 8. I do NOT feel any hatred toward them. But PLEASE don't spit on my beliefs and desecrate the things that I believe are holy because your cause did not persuade the majority. We are not tyrannical, bigots as you spew in your negative campaigns and protests. We simply believe in the sacred and divine institution of marriage between a man and a woman.

I walked the three-or-so miles home and managed to make it in time for Hayden's concert (which was great, by the way). But I will NEVER forget that walk. I will forever be changed by the imagery of that night: particularly the juxtiposition of the peaceful temple grounds and the SWAT team serving as a blockade to prevent violence on its soil. I now know I live within walking distance of a temple. I have blisters on my feet from the trek, but I know it's really only a stone's throw away. I have no excuse to take it for granted. If the protestors were aiming at putting into doubt my ideology or intimidate people like me into feeling shame at my faith, their plans sorely backfired. I have never desired more to enter those temple doors and shut out the ferocity of the world outside.

If you are interested, you can click on this link to see the LDS church's response to the recent protests.