Meet the Newest Addition to the Family:

This is Hayden...

This is a tuba...

This is Hayden with his tuba...

Any questions?

KNOCK IT OFF! IT'S TIME TO PRAY!

General Conference was awesome this weekend. It was a spiritual feast. And by that, I mean a veritable Butterball turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and ALL the fixin's. It nourished my soul and made me fat with testimony.

I especially loved Elder Holland's talk, and have never heard such a powerful declaration of the truth of the Book of Mormon in all my life. Many of those same thoughts came to my mind when I first read the Book of Mormon, but as a 16 year old girl I would have never been able to articulate the impressions that he so succinctly put into words. If you missed it, here is the link. It's from the Sunday PM session, and it's the 5th segment.

I also loved Elder Bednar's talk from Saturday A.M. (11th segment of that session) and his assurance that we need not put pressure on ourselves to be perfect in our parenting. He put it all into perspective: Our kids aren't going to remember any solitary lessons or prayers for the rest of their lives. But they will remember that we prayed and that we taught them correct principles. And I was so thankful to know that someone whom I esteem so greatly has endured the same things we all have as parents: "Quit touching me!" "Tell him to stop looking at me!" "Mommy! He's breathing my air!" ...during family prayer. Just the other night, I was getting exasperated with the boys' stall tactics at bedtime and caught myself raising my voice, saying, "KNOCK IT OFF! IT'S TIME TO PRAY!" We had a good chuckle at that one.

I know. Not a typical joke bag post from me this time, but food for thought. Not a feast, mind you... More like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Wonder Bread.

All this talk of food is making me hungry. I should go see if Wayne needs help in the kitchen.

I don't know how to put this ...but I'm kind of a big deal.

I know it's hard to believe, but I've never really been all that popular. When tell people I was a cheerleader, I know people instantly think of me like this:



And when I mention that I was student body president, I know for a FACT that people flash upon what that might have been like for me. As crazy as it sounds, it was nothing quite so glamorous as this:

Nope. It was more like this:
I know, I know. I don't mean to make you jealous of all the hotness that is embodied in this one picture, but I'm sorry. I can't help it. You're just going to have to cry yourself to sleep at night, envious of me and all my super-hot friends and our totally rad bangs.

But now my blog has apparently received global attention
...thanks to famous writers like the author of this awesome blog, who lavish me with gifts like this:

Now... I have to tell you, I was initially morally opposed to posting this award simply because it says plainly in my blog description, "anything frou-frou is very out of place in our mostly masculine home." It doesn't get any more frou-frou than dainty pink roses on gingham and a title that Kleverly misspells words in a Kute way. But I figured, "Hey. It's for my peeps." (BTW, Leah #2, you're considered peeps now.) And I think it's kool that somebody I've never met before thinks I'm Kreativ. Thanks Leah! (Apparently, my biggest blogging fans have lately all been named Leah. Who knew I could carve out such a niche in the blogging world.)

I'm soooooo hot right now.

The Shoe Is On the Other Foot

I have never had a cavity in my life. Never, that is, until dental school. Then the Diet Coke started flowing like water and Everlasting Gobstoppers became the mechanism by which I could pull all-nighters. That is when tooth #12 became traitorous on me... Just a little cavity hanging out in the dark little crevice between my two left bicuspids.

So like any responsible dental professional, I waited four years until residency to get it fixed. I knew all the tricks to keep it from progressing rapidly, and kept my eye on it with x-rays and checkups, but I just never trusted any of my colleagues to perform microsurgery on my precious #12.

Well, yesterday I mustered the courage to hop in the chair. A very competent coworker gave me the chance to see first-hand what I do to my patients every day...

HOLY CRAP!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE I DO THAT TO PEOPLE EVERY DAY...
AND THEY LET ME!!!!!

I didn't mind the shots. We had to practice those on each other multiple times in dental school, so I was somebody's guinea pig on several occasions and I know that after that first little pinch, everything is going to go right to sleep and everything will be just fine.

But the drilling... Oh, the drilling!!! All that noise and vibration!!! It felt like a jack hammer in my skull!!! I thought my brain was going to rattle out of my head at one point! Not painful at all... Just otherworldly and weird!

I do this to young children daily, and most of them don't care!!! HOW?!? How do they sit there so unconcerned? How is it that my singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Little Mermaid" is distraction enough to keep them from shooting out of their chair and clawing me in the face?!? It is a WEIRD sensation!!! ...and I do this to people a l l t h e t i m e. AND THEY LET ME!!!!

And as I watched my co-resident at work, and watched as my saliva and little tooth bits flew up into her face, glistening in the overhead light as they caught flight, I thought "YUCK!!!" That's what's in my hair when I come home from work every day... Spit, blood, plaque, and tooth bits... in my hair and on my face... every day!!! *shudder* This is fair warning to anyone who associates with me on a regular basis: Don't ever touch me again until I've had a shower after work. I am stewing in Au De Gingivitis.

So now I finally understand why dentists are portrayed as such bad guys. Now I understand why people think us sadistic and mean. We do weird things to you in your head with your mouth wedged open and a light shining in your face, and we talk to you while you can't respond, and we stink with spit in our hair.

I get it now.

......

Please don't hate me.

I'm a WINNER!!!

I just won a major award!

No... Not THAT award, silly!
This one....

It's spunky... It's clever... It's mildly inappropriate... Just like ME!!!
Thank you Leah!

I Don't Like-a Mondays

Today couldn't have felt more like a Monday if a piano fell from the sky and landed on my head.

It started with something simple... Just a quiet alarm from the other room at 5:00 am. Nathan started seminary last week. Hence, the world begins before the sun has the nerve to peek over the horizon. For some reason, Nathan had to walk back and forth in the hallway for a full 30 minutes while he waited for his new carpool to arrive, which means the wood floors creaked beneath him for 30 minutes straight just outside my door. Not the most pleasant sound to greet the new day, but I remained cool. Hey! At least he got up and got ready without me having to nag him. But at 5:40 he came into my room and said, "It's 5:50 and my carpool's not here." (Note the time discrepancy here.)

My response: "Whatever. If they're not here by 6:00 then you are missing seminary and we'll find out what's up with the carpool."

...10 minutes elapse...

"Sorry, Mommy. I was wrong about the time last time. NOW it's actually 5:50 and they're still not here."

Same answer given... just as there is a knock at the door and he's off to seminary. Crisis averted.

So now I am super-chipper and LOVING the new day, because I am SUCH a morning person, she said in a manner dripping with sarcasm. Tossing and turning ensues until the next alarm sounds at 6:20. I then get up and rouse Hayden, who has missed two days of school from a nasty cold. Today was to be his triumphal return to the classroom.

NOT TODAY IT ISN'T!!!

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Let me back up to Saturday afternoon. Wayne and I had decided to take a walk to the Santa Monica Promenade and enjoy a little alone time. Nathan and Hayden stayed home with simple instructions: they were allowed to play on the X-Box, provided they completed their chores by the time we returned home. We checked up on them periodically and all seemed great. Then as we walk in the door, I notice the game console and T.V. are off (which is really weird, given their free pass from both parents), and Hayden is sobbing on the couch, nursing a puncture wound in his armpit which he sustained (get this...) by doing laundry!!! (Ah, the cruel irony!) Apparently, while sorting the laundry, he slipped and fell into the hamper, which has a wire frame scaffold supporting a cloth exterior. So one of the vertical components of the frame had protruded from the framework and wound up in Hayden's armpit meat. OUCH!!! So we cleaned out the wound with peroxide and dressed it with Neosporin and kept our eye on it throughout the weekend.

------------------

Back to the Monday morning o' fun... Now Hayden's wound is infected and oozing pus, despite our best efforts to prevent such things. Super. And now Wayne is mad, because he wishes I had taken him to the E.R. on Saturday, which I refused to do because they would have made me wait 6 hours for a tetanus booster and a band-aid and charged me the $150 copay to do so.

So while he's upset, he goes to move the clothes iron, which he failed to notice is scorching hot, and attempts to pick it up with his only opposable thumb, which makes a sizzling noise and blisters almost instantaneously from tip to palm. (I'll leave out the dialog that ensued, as it was understandably a bit colorful.)

So while I try to nurse Hayden's wounds and dress Wayne's wounds, I am still trying to get ready for work. So I go to get in the shower and there is no hot water. Which is super-fun for me, because I usually run the water so hot that I walk out of my showers with a red streak down my back. Not today! It's shivering and yipping and pulling out my hair as I rush to wash my unmanageable locks before I suffer hypothermia.

As my teeth chatter away, it is decided that Hayden will miss another day of school so that he may go to the doctor, and Wayne will take him and try to maneuver the steering wheel with his eight intact fingertips.

I leave as things finally seem to be resolving and normalcy can return. I sit pensively on the bus, trying to distract myself with a book, only to find I am rereading the same words over and over without comprehension. I get to the clinic, put my game face on, and pretend everything is hunky dory. After all that rushing around, a quick look at my schedule reveals that my first patient has canceled, and the rest of my day is bound to be more of the same.

The cool, professional exterior melts away, and I confide in the secretary of the morning's events ...and I went home. Thank you, Esme for your sympathetic suggestion to do so!

Here's to Tuesdays. May they be gloriously uneventful!!!!

Intruders... BEWARE!!!

If you are breaking into my apartment and you happen to wander into my home while I'm sleepwalking...

Particularly on a night when I'm wielding a clothes iron
to attack you...

You might wind up with your face looking like this:

Somnambulism:
Always funny for a good post, but seriously...
I think I have a problem!