i heard this song and it really captured how i feel about my girls:

Every night i kneel beside you
and whisper in your dreams
and tell you just how much i love you
just how much you mean
then you grow older before my eyes.

Every morning you stand before me
and welcome me inside
that world of yours that's ever changing.
a lifetime of surprise

And there you stand, the boy i love
just like you are, just like i love.
Say goodbye to the boy of yesterday
and goodnight to the little things that we once knew.
Then say good morning to you.

Everyday my love grows stronger,
but like the river's song,
whispering that i can't stay longer
it's time to move along
and say goodbye a million times.

For here you sleep
this child i love.
Say goodbye to yesterday,
and goodnight to the little things that we once knew
I'll love the man that tomorrow brings
by saying goodbye to the boy i love today

by john canaan

that last line is the hardest for me. my girls are so precious and i just wish they would stay like this forever. i wish that i could just have this time permanently etched in my mind. i try, but the memories still slip away. i can remember some things about michealah and some of her cute quirky things that she did when she was 4 but the 7 year old michealah has replaced the 4 year old. she promised me she would stay 4. in some ways i wish she could have. i remember when she was a baby i would look at her in the mirror as i carried her asleep to bed and i was always struck by how fast she was growing--by how far her legs hung down. now if i were to carry her, her legs wouldn't be all that far off the ground! i hate how busy we get living our lives and getting things done that we take the people around us that we love for granted. i mourn for those lost opportunities.

i finally did it

i have a very sore butt. that is because it is thursday. thursday is one of my weight training days. so is tuesday. my butt wouldn't be sore if i actually went and did weights every thursday. fact is i haven't gone since november. fact is i took being pregnant as a good excuse to stop going. fact is i could never motivate myself to go. fact is, marilla, that i needed karen to get me to finally go. so i finally got someone to go with me so that i would not be able to back out. funny, even as i was making the "appointment" i was thinking in my head 'noooo i don't want to go' so today i finally went and i already have a sore butt. all the running i have done could not have saved me. speaking of behinds and running, nat asked me why people's bums move when they walk. then she demonstrated to me a hip-swaying kind of walk. i write a lot about my exercise...i wonder why. today was the enrichment relief society party. we were all supposed to bring a 5 dollar or less gift that reflected one of our talents. i thought about this for some time and couldn't think of anything to bring. i don't have one of those outward types of talents--like sewing or knitting or scrapbooking or being crafty at all. sure, i run, but what can one bring related to that? a bottle of yucky gatorade? so i struggled. i asked brent and he was no help at all. then today i called delanie to see what she was bringing...and then i remembered that i can speak a second language. how is it possible that i could spend sooo much time developing this talent and then completely forget it? i guess it is because i don't use it. that talent is covered with dust in some back closet. i wish i could use it more. now i'm so rusty that i have little confidence when talking to someone. i always think that they must be thinking...why is she trying? i would understand her better in english...haha maybe i think that way because i would often think that in japan. i hated it when people would speak to me in their broken english. (once i knew japanese that is) i think i took it as a bit of an insult that they thought they needed to use english--that my japanese wasn't good enough. then on the other hand, i hated it when missionaries said i was a good missionary because i was so good at japanese. i wanted to be a good missionary for other reasons--speaking the language well does not make you a good missionary. i miss japan. i want to go back. if brent got a good job there i would really consider it. this is the longest i have been away. i wish it wasn't so hard to go there.

"if you don't find it in the index, look very carefully throughout the entire calalog"

that is from the sears roebuck catalog which is quoted in the sisterhood of the traveling pants. at the beginning of every chapter there are little quotes and that one just hit my funny bone. i stayed up waaaay too late last night reading the book. i kept saying 'just one more chapter' but it just didn't work that way. when i went to bed (there were no more chapters, if you know what i mean) i encountered the laundry basket full of clothes, or more importantly brent's work pants that needed to be washed and dried before work the next morning. arrgggg! i had totally forgotten about them! originally when i had seen how late it was, i had decided that it was too late for me to get up early for my run, but now i had to choose: stay up now and wait for the washer to finish and throw his pants in the dryer or get up early for my run and do it then. i opted for the getting up early--hoping that i would actually be able to just go back to sleep. i really did sincerely try. i hardly opened my eyes as i transferred the laundry to the dryer, kept all the lights off etc, but it was no use. i was awake. so i succumbed to my wakefulness and went for my run. you'd think that getting way too little sleep would affect my run, but that just isn't how it works. in fact i think i clocked my fastest time ever for 3 miles. the lack of sleep will just affect the rest of my day. i feel sluggish now. it is such a beautiful morning. that is partially to account for my not being able to sleep in. i just can't sleep when it is sunny and the birds are singing. the neighbour who always takes mic to school wasn't there this morning. hello! thanks for the warning! so nat got dressed in record time and the girls rode their bikes to school. i pretty much pushed nat the whole way becuase she just can't ride fast enough yet on her new little bike. but all that was ok because it was beautiful and sunny out and in spite of my lack of sleep, my head couldn't help but fill with the possibilities on such a day. there is much to do and i have to figure out how to cook a whole chicken so that it won't be yucky to brent and me who only eat boneless skinless chicken breast....is it possible? we shall see. gotta go.

ps: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAREN!!!!

i love spring break! i really think that i enjoy and appreciate it more now than i did when i went to school. it has just been so nice to not have to go any where and to have mic home all day. i've had a lot less nat time because she doesn't need me when she has mic. but i've had mic time during nat's naps. i just feel like we've bonded a lot this week. i made a list of chores that needed to be done and the girls each picked one a day. they were actually excited to do them--except that they had to clean their room first. it really has been helpful. it just feels like there isn't enough time to give mic chores when she is at school. 3 out of the five days she doesn't get home until almost 5 and i just want her to have down/play time. she still has to eat dinner and do at least 20 minutes of homework before bed at 7:30. and that isn't counting working on her math with her. is it just me or is she just too crazy busy? she is only 7 afterall. anyways...only a few more months until summer holidays. except for after that nat will be going to school too. we went swimming for family home evening. it was really fun. usually when we go to the pool i can't wait for the time to pass so we can go but we all had a good time. maybe because the girls are getting older. mic wanted to go down the slide but brent insisted that he was too big and that he gets stuck. he would not hear me at all when i told him he was thinking of the other pool. after a rather roomy ride down where i sat up the whole time i convinced him to come up and he went up really reluctantly. he ended up really liking it. then another night brent made popcorn and we all watched a movie together. i guess it doesn't sound like that much but we were just able to be all together a lot--even brent because he actually was home at the same time every evening. yes. for those of you that haven't heard yet, brent is not working for stoneart any more. mic is reading this right now and she said "he isn't?" so it isn't necessary a well-known fact. so we are back to square one with what brent is going to be when he grows up. aaaahhh! grow up already! well maybe we are not at square one, we are at square 2. right now he is thinking of going back to school and getting an advanced diploma...but i just don't want anymore student loan debt! so we'll see. the police thing still looks good to me. it just seems more secure and more immediate..but it doesn't use his education.
i have a problem: when i see dvds on sale i can hardly resist buying them. if it is one i like and it is on sale--we're talking 10 bucks or less it takes a great deal of will power to walk away and then the deals still haunt me and i consider going back to go get them. it just seems more worth my while to buy then to pay to rent one. but i am amassing too many dvds as of late--because i found mtm sells them really cheap. well this is really taking the form of a long rambling, so i'm going to stop.

last weekend brent and i went to the temple with laura. laura gave up driving with her friends and being with them in the temple to take brent and me. we went over to vancouver friday night and so we got to see a bit of the "big city." brent wanted to go out to eat there so we made sure we caught an early enough ferry. then when it was time to choose where to go he was all non-committal and without a care where we went...or so he said. so, having read so many accounts of laura's yummy outings, i chose thai. brent still attempted to put up the front of he didn't care, but apparently he did care if i chose thai food because he was not familiar with it. i was confident that he would like it so i dismissed his little comments such as "i know this all you can eat sushi place in richmond" (what?? he doesn't even like sushi) or "how about there?" pointing to a indian restaurant, "what about red robins?" once he resigned himself that we were going out for thai, we discussed whether to go downtown or metrotown. once again brent claimed to have no opinion but as we drove downtown he kept saying things like "if we go to metrotown, we can look for new shoes for me" and "you need more hairstuff--we should go to metrotown." as it turned out, brent really liked what he ordered and so was satisfied. he got a little bored as laura and i wandered around some shops--but that would have happened in metrotown too. but i know my man and what keeps him happy. so on the way home we went to a gelato place. they make many an interesting flavour there. the idea is to browse and taste as many flavours as grabs your interest. i think brent tried 2 at the most before choosing his cone. he isn't into browsing or even being that adventurous at that. he got vanilla chocolate chip and hedgehog. laura and i tried (among others) kimchi...it was...yucky. it tasted like freezer burnt cabbage mixed with a slightly spicy garlicky aftertaste. my discovery was chocolate basil. it was surprisingly yummy. the basil really complimented the chocolate. i had that with hedgehog. it was a good combo and the chocolate basil got yummier and yummier as i ate it. brent was done before laura and i had even chosen our flavours, so he got another one. this one was...vanilla chocolate chip and vanilla chocolate chip....he finds what he likes and sticks with it. the owner, who according to karey and elicia is always grumpy, was in a very friendly mood and brent had a little chat with him about the different flavours. the grossest one he's ever made was chocolate truffle with smoke salmon. he's also done bacon and eggs. he'll do any flavour you ask him to.
laura and i were able to get to sleep at a relatively decent time, but the 7:30 alarm woke me with a jolt. laura got straight into the shower, but now i was awake with my morning bladder. to make matters worse, the cat allergies were closing in on me. so i got up and wandered around the living room, kitchen and laura's room desperately looking for something to blow my nose with, but there was nothing. it was tortuous waiting for laura to finish. we stopped at the dutyfree shop on the way down to skip through the long line. we listened to vinyl cafe. i was sitting in the back and got on laura's nerves by saying what all the time. at the temple we saw a boy of interest to bethany. he was much smaller than i had imagined, but puny seems to be a draw for her. it has been a long time since i went to such a late session and i was a little worried that we would miss a ferry, but instead it turned out to be very relaxing to just go at our pace. the session was packed and we were all in the back row (including wee boy of previous interest to a certain long cylindrical green vegie) the advantage of being in the back was that we were to first to... move on if you will. the disadvantage to a later session is that all the good food is gone when you hit the cafeteria. the entree that i wanted was gone and i made the mistake of just ordering a different one when it was clearly not something i would really like. ahh well. next time i'll know better and i'll have a plan b before i order. in spite of a long line at the border we got back with time to spare for catching the ferry. sot i requested that we get my watch that i'd left on laura's dresser. i live by my watch. i need it. just after we passed the exit to go to tswassen we got stuck in traffic because of an accident so we didn't have enough time to go back to catch the ferry. laura drove us all the way to horseshoe bay. that is a long way out of her way. she didn't complain. that is the kind of girl laura is. there is just something about going to the temple...it is not like i felt any strong feelings while i was there, yet there has just been more peace in my heart and in my home since going. i don't always notice it, but it has been along time since we've been able to go, so i guess it stands out more. i love to see the temple.

my life is just not fun to write about right now. it is as if stress, hurt, failures, and confrontations swirl around me allowing brief moments of reprieve before the next wave of difficulties hits. during those brief moments of peace i think of things to write, but before i get the chance to, something comes up and then to write the things i was thinking about seem so unimportant and irrelevant that to write about them would be a cover up of the real turmoil that surrounds me. so that is why there hasn't been much communication from the likes of me. here's hoping for a better week.

yesterday i was rude to the telemarketer. he asked for b shofield. it's skofield i said. it is not a german name. you wouldn't say shool would you? all the while he was apologizing. i didn't say this but there is no one here named b! i'm a hybrid: the girl next door with progressive girl--but really, i'm mostly girl next door. my characteristics are simplicity with tradition. i drive a ford, (but i would like a hybrid just like a progessive girl) i have my great grandmother's wedding ring, and i like trying new things. what kind of girl are you? go to www.cookingtohookup.com/quiz to find out.

night disturbance

last night i woke up to the sound of some annoying car alarm honking. it was 1:30 am and it just didn't stop. it wasn't until i heard the sound of a loud diesel engine starting up and then cutting out again that i woke brent up. "is that the truck?" i asked. brent bounded out of bed, looked out the window and started pulling on some pants. before he got downstairs the doorbell rang. i thought it was dennis until the person started pounding. it was dad. he'd come in the middle of the night to get some papers out of the truck. we're not exactly down the road either. he couldn't get the alarm off. so that gave both brent and me quite an adrenalin rush--not exactly something i like in the middle of my sleep. brent was up until 4. poor guy. crazy father.

getting back on track

i had a good day on monday. i felt full of energy. i wasn't winded when i walked up the stairs and when i looked in the mirror i didn't see this pasty blah face staring back at me. i was able to start to catch up on the housework that has been building up (including washing out the carpet in the van where the jello spilt--that brent said he would do later). after a week of bedrest and 10 days of no energy or strength, the house was not too pretty. i felt good about what i'd accomplished and in conclusion to a productive day we had family home evening. at the very end nat threw up. (i knew we should have stayed away from the family on the weekend. i even called tracy to try to get them to change the date night to another night, but i was assured that everyone was through it.) so anyways, around the time that nat got sick i started feeling really nauseous, so i didn't have any treat or anything else to eat. i stayed up with nat, who threw up every 15 minutes for a few hours until she finally fell asleep. she was still throwing up every half hour so i stayed up still. then mic started throwing up. at 3am, brent and i traded off and i went to bed feeling very yucky. i woke up around 7:30 to the sound of brent heaving in the bathroom. it sounded awful and neverending. i prayed "please don't let it happen to me, please don't let it happen to me" over and over until i fell back asleep. we all slept a lot that day. mic and nat got their appetite back and so they had soup with brent for dinner. i passed. basically i fasted--for about 36 hours. i hadn't thrown up, but my stomach was clenched in painful knots and i didn't want to eat something in case it made me throw up. it was awful and that annoying pasty face was back in my mirror. i went to bed that night assured by brent that i would soon be throwing up like everyone else. i woke up a few times in the night and worried that i woke up to puke, but it didn't happen. so in the morning i was weak, but whole. i survived. i guess i got a milder form--i hope. i still worry that it is still going to get me. today i went on my first run in 3 weeks. it was hard, but if felt good to be back on track.

my life seems to have been running in slow motion lately. january just feels so much like it is by far longer than any other month. it doesn't seem right that the gloomiest month is the longest, but it is. so, not much has been going on in my life. i've watched a lot of movies...i have an insatiable desire to watch movies every night. last night brent and i watched hitch. there are so many laughable parts in that movie. sometimes i wish that life could be more like the movies. from where i sit today, i don't believe that many guys are the way they seem in movies. they just aren't that romantic and even if they want to be as thoughtful, they don't know how to do it like that. maybe it is just the kind of guy i'm drawn to (the kind that is so nervous about proposing that he does it over the phone or in a letter) but i don't see it in the men around me either.
i started the day off feeling a little irritable. brent was being particularly annoying. the girls' hair was annoying because it was so snarly. we resorted to taking jello salad to potluck because we just didn't have anything else to bring. it hadn't set yet on the way to church and then it spilt. i rushed into choir assuming brent would clean it up. nope. so i marched out to do it myself because he wouldn't--greeting people with a hi, how are you as the steam blew out my ears. what i wanted to say was hi my husband's an idiot. luckily i was able to calm down and rid myself of the angry spirit that was plaguing me as church progressed. that's what going to church is all about--letting go of the hurt, angry, bitter feelings and coming away with a renewed hope and an increased love for the people around you.
today i sat with the older girls' class during the last hour of primary. nat called across the room "mommy, i want you" and the sister sitting with her class offered to trade. no way. 2 of the boys in her class kept getting up and leaving. nat ended up staying next to tammy the whole time. she sat on her knee and held her hand while she conducted the music. nat conducted too. it was interesting to sit behind her and watch how she interacted with other people. at one point tracy came and got her to sit with her. natalie was very attentive to tracy and sang staring up at her. it was like she was starving for attention and when she got it she was responsive. all day long natalie always asks me to play with her. i do, but it is never enough. she tells on michealah at night for mic not cuddling with her. she wants to be loved and doted on all the time and so she demands it.
carmen keeps calling me mommy. she thinks that's what you call someone when you want something from them. today she grabbed my legs and yelled mommy over and over in a very insistent voice. she wanted the sandwich that i was holding for michealah. what can you do when someone so small pleads with you like that? she reminds me of natalie. she knows how to work it.
it's late. i'm off to bed.

i have received a lot of support and caring lately. it has been nice. so far i am feeling pretty ok emotionally. physically, i still feel spent and it is frustrating. i haven't been able to fall asleep that well and i think that is why. on saturday morning i slept in till 10:00. i haven't been able to do that since natalie was born. i wasn't able to fall asleep until past 2 am and then the girls both had a sleepover at madelaine's so i had no morning interruptions. ahh those interruptions can be soooo frustrating! nat comes in and leaves the door open with the light on in the hall or bathroom and the light shines right on my face. if only they'd get that the more they disturb my sleep in the morning the more they'll have to pay by having a grumpy mommy during the rest of the day. but the saturday morning sleep in was delicious. yesterday i went to rosalyn fleury's wedding. actually, i just dropped in but i saw lots of her family. i saw leanne, who looks exactly the same--just a little bigger. and tommy, who now goes by thomas, also looks the same. melanie was a little harder to identify, mostly because she now has ash blonde hair. she is the hair dresser in their family. and i would never have known josie, but maybe that is because she was so little still when we moved away. it was kind of weird to see people that i used to know so well over 20 years ago. i wasn't even sure if leanne would remember me. but she did. i used to sleepover at her house quite a bit, so i guess she should. and laura, do you remember serena from surrey? you were friends with her younger sister for awhile. well anyways she made friends with leanne at the '86 youth conference and she lives in terrace still. leanne lives in maple ridge now, but she lived 32 years in terrace. can you imagine? i can't imagine living so long in one place, let alone in terrace for so long. she told me that for years after we moved away, girls still asked her if she knew anything about layne. he always did have quite a following...i also saw susan robinson. i wasn't sure what she'd think of when she saw me--like maybe she'd remember the beehive sleepover at her house where i was hyper and broke one of her plates. but if she remembered it, she never brought it up. i always find it to be kind of a strange experience to meet up with people from your past and to see that you are so different then you were then. and to see how different their lives are from yours now. i would never go, but i guess that is kind of how a highschool reunion would be. well, it is late and i feel like i will be able to go to sleep easy enough tonight, so i'm going to end my ramblings.

yesterday i had a very...let's say eventful day. here are some of the things i learned:
1. i don't do well with losing a lot of blood. although i should have known that because i have never been very successful at donating blood.
2. when you dial 911, expect a lot of people to be in your house in just a matter of a minute or so.
3. riding in an ambulance isn't that exciting and not actually that different from riding lying down in a van. the plus is you get help and a bed right away in emergency.
4. there really isn't very much to look at when you lie flat on your back.
5. doctors in "merg" don't keep their voices down and don't seem to be that worried about the patient's privacy. i must say that that does actually provide with some entertainment to break up the monotony of lying on your back for hours.
6. in nanaimo, most of the people in the hospital are elderly. i saw only one that wasn't.
7. in general, health care workers are a very kind, caring, compassionate sort of people.
8. quizno's makes a very yummy brocoli cheddar soup.
9. one eventful day can be just that: an eventful day. and then one's life can go back to being completely normal again. it is kind of a weird feeling.

my life feels like it has become so stagnant and still since i last posted. i 've been sick (not from running in the rain, mind you. that is an old wives tale perpetuated by jane austen) Since i've been sick, i've done nothing but lie around the house and watch the mess accumulating around me. yesterday as i lay on the couch to play with natalie i couldn't keep my eyes open. i dosed off but managed to make jasmine say something whenever natalie would complain that i wasn't playing with her. although one time i knew even as it left my mouth it would make no sense to her because it had to do with what i was dreaming. michealah and nat each got polly pocket-type disney dolls for christmas. nat has belle and mic got jasmine. so i always have jasmine when i play with nat. i enjoy making her talk in an indian accent and calling belle "bellie bellie." nat now asks before we start playing for jasmine to not call belle "bellie bellie." haha, but sometimes i just can't resist it. every day brent comes home and cooks dinner and does the dishes. i feel quite guilty about this, and it is quite hard to let go of my control and let brent do things his way. (like the other day when he decide to make roasted potatoes and dumped about a cup of olive oil on them and then cooked hamburger with canned tomatoes to go with it.) this is especially hard because he is not as frugal and careful about using things up as me. but what can you do when you are sick? i just want to get it over with already!!!

running in the rain

my new mantra should be "i love running in the rain." i really do enjoy it but for some reason every time i face running in the rain i falter. today for example, i got already to go on my run and then brent got called to go to a meeting at dad's house. i knew i wouldn't have time when he came back to go which meant that if i did go on a run i would have to take natalie. then brent said he would take nat with him. as he left i saw that it was raining. "not very hard," he told me. still it became so much harder to get out the door. i was warm and cozy. i dragged my feet, staying inside as long as i could. brent took nat so i could run. i had to do it now. when i finally left the rain pelted me mercilessly and the wind buffeted me. i could feel each ice cold drop hit my legs and feet. just hurry and get this over with i told myself. but then as i run a change gradually takes place. as i warm up, the freezing rain and wind actually feel good--in a cool refreshing kind of way. i feel srong. i can conquer the elements. a little rain isn't going to keep me from running. i could run a marathon. dreams and goals fill my head and feel more tangible as i run. i could do a triathalon. i could run in a race and place well. i could defeat the laundry room. my hair no longer blows in the wind. it is too heavy and wet. i'm soaked. i know the reason i can't feel the rain hitting my legs anymore is because my skin is numb. but i keep running. i am a machine. i am woman. i am strong. nothing can stop me. i can accomplish anything.

you asked for it

to be honest, i find blog writing a little difficult. when i have something to write about life is too busy and then when i have some time it seems too far in the past to bother-yet i have nothing inspiring to write about when i have time. and by inspiring and don't mean inspiring for the readers; i mean something that inspires me to write. so i'm sitting here feeling tired and nothing is coming to me. yesterday brent came home. he had been gone since monday. he caught the 7:00 ferry but the girls were still awake when he came home. he called on his way home and the girls came down to ask if i was talking to daddy. they'd been in bed for an hour, but i knew it was hopeless. they were determined to stay awake until he came home. it was a hard time for brent being away. he was completely by himself and had no money. he stayed in a hotel and ate peanut butter sandwiches and cold pork and beans. i had to cheer him up a few times and i hate having to do that because it drains me. it is like i give him all my faith and optimism and than i am left with my own doubts and all of his weighing down on me. anyways, i had a big stew waiting for him when he came home. i couldn't wipe the smile off my face when he came in the door. i guess i really missed him. we stayed up late talking, which although might be hard to believe for laura, is not something i do very often--especially with brent. even though i was awake past one, i still set my alarm for 6. i was determined to still go on my run and afterall, i wouldn't have to push nat in the jogger because brent was back. when the alarm did go off, i decided i didn't want to go on my run and that i'd be too tired. the problem: i couldn't fall back to sleep. so finally 20 minutes later i got up and went on my run. i did fartleks and it tired me out. the rest of the morning passed in a blur as i slept on the living room floor and nat played around me. then in the afternoon i slept some more. and now i know i've wrecked my sleeping pattern--i feel like i have jet lag. i'm tired now too, but i'm afraid that when i actually lie down in my bed i won't be able to sleep. i'm a bit of an insomniac at times. i wonder if that means i'll be like grandma b when i'm old. i'm supposed to do my long run tomorrow. the good thing is is that i won't have to wake up early to do it, but what if it wipes me out again? anyways as you can see i really don't have anything to say besides ramblings about my day so i'm going to stop now.

things i learn from running

evidence that blood doesn't circulate as well in fat: after going for a run, my stomach and my butt are by far the coldest bawdy parts. not my fingers or my nose. in fact my stomach is red when i finish a run.
evidence that i have a fatty stomach and behind: they are the only parts of my bawdy that do not warm up on a run and become as cold as it is outside...actually maybe that means that those regions are cold-blooded...

laundry room part II

yesterday i told brent that i had to get the dryer accessible for dennis. so i come downstairs from doing michealah's hair and i hear all this crashing around in the laundry room and sure enough brent is in there "cleaning." now if you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll recollect that brent just moves stuff when he is cleaning--he actually doesn't put things away. this is why the laundry room is a problem at all--it is where brent moves things too. so yesterday he started moving things out in an angry martyr sort of way. he kept loudly complaining about what a mess it was in there. i finished my breakfast hurriedly and made him stop. i absolutely detest that kind of "help." it took me about 15 minutes to clear brent's mess. when he came back from the bathroom he asked me where i put everything. away brent, i put it away. later he asked dennis if the dryer was accessible enough and dennis told him that they already did our house from the outside vent. the stooopid person who wrote the note didn't know what she was talking about. then brent couldn't push the dryer back into place. it probably took about 20-30 minutes just for him to do that. at least i can walk into the dryer instead of climb and i can opent the door all the way.

aaaahhh! the laundry room!

alas! the weekend has flown by and i have not accomplished some things that must be accomplished. last week i had a note that said this left in my mailbox:
"as a regular maintenance procedure your dryer vents will be blown out on monday, december 5th, 2005 [the year is given just in case you think they are giving you a year's notice, which by the way wouldn't be such a bad idea] beginning at 9am and continuing throughout the day. please ensure the laundry area is clean and the vent is accessible." aaaaahhhhh!
first of all, if this is a regular maintenance procedure, why oh why have they never done it the whole 5 years that we've lived here? second of all, and most importantly, nothing is accessible in my laundry room. so you know, i have been sort of working on getting the area cleared out and saturday was supposed to be my big day to get it all accomplished. did NOT happen. i went on my run (first time since the snow--it was time to give up that excuse) got out of the shower and realized that the girls had to be at a party in 35 minutes and we didn't have a gift yet. the party was only an hour and a half so brent and i had a little minidate during that time. then we rushed back to pick up the girls and ended up staying all day. i mean ALL day. the girls were having a good time and playing so nicely and we just seemed to have a lot to visit and talk about. i guess we are a dangerous combination with the meades--we're all very talkative. we stayed til about 7:00. then we had to come home and feed the girls and get them in bed. and by that time it was too late to start something like cleaning out the laundry room. oh well. i guess it is guaranteed to get done tomorrow. hopefully dennis won't start at our end of the complex. i need karen. i miss karen.
i was quite irritable at church today. i guess it is the time for grumpies. i just can't seem to not be critical of certain people and their testimonies when i'm like this. for example: we had ample time for testimonies in relief society--20 minutes, in fact--and there were brief breaks when no one got up and then just when linda is about to stand up and end the meeting (because, HELLO, the time is up!) sis sheppard had to get up and give crying-while-pausing-in-the-midst-of-tears-to-smile testimony. so i was bugged. i didn't even hear much of what she said. and then sister salway's duck hair. why? why must she have a duck head? why do i care? i don't really, it just bugged me to see it today. then i came home and read the ensign. this is a sunday tradition to enduce a sunday nap. anyways, i read an article about christmas hurting and cried my eyes out. i have been feeling very thankful for the many way i am blessed in my life. i have really been enjoying spending one on one time with michealah and natalie. i feel this urgency to do as much as i can with natalie before i lose her over to the school system. i can't stand that it is less than a year away and i'm not ready for it. it just isn't fair. i got six more months with michealah than with natalie. try to have your babies born early in the year. that is my advice. you get to have them longer that way. sometimes i look at michealah and my heart aches at how much she has grown up already. i remember a girls weekend where she called sarah wara and bethany betatentententen and sarah held her and ran around with her while playing tag. that wasn't that long ago. anyways, before i get myself too worked up, i'm going to stop...it is afterall too late to be awake.

i went and saw the harry potter movie with brent tonight. it was a waste to go with brent--he doesn't like them, but he wanted to go for some reason, so we went. i thought they did a pretty good job on most of the things. i didn't like the way voldemort was portrayed--i didn't think he was commanding enough. lucius is scarier and more commanding then him i think. ah well. i enjoyed the humour. it was unexpected, but good. deborah brooks babysat for me. she is just so nice to me. i don't know what i've done to receive so much kindness from her, but she just keeps laying it on. today she drove out to deliver a gingerbread house kit that she bought for the girls. i was outside playing in the snow with natalie. first she made snow angels. the snow was so dense that she hardly even made a mark in the snow. then she wanted us to throw snowballs at each other. she kept asking me to make her big ones for her to throw at me, but she usually tried so hard she would crumble the ball before it left her hand. she kept saying to me as we were playing "see, isn't this fun?" then we made a snow man. he had prune eyes, a carrot nose and a raisin mouth. afterwards i saw her putting more snow on it and i asked her what she was doing. she said she wanted it to have what i have right here and pointed to her chest. so that was revealing. nat actually noticed that i have a padded chest. michealah made a little one right beside natalie's. they were right in front of our house with complete faces and hats, but that didn't seem to mean anything to some kids who smashed them both less than an hour after mic finished her's. how rude.

the case of the missing cds

a long long long time ago, we went to the temple and tannis babysat our kids with dough's kids. we let her use our van to get around in and brent was rightly concerned for the safety of our stuff in the van. so he "cleaned" it out. brent's favourite way of "cleaning" is to stick anything that is not in its place into the laundry room. this is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. he puts more stuff in there then i can keep up with and consequently our laundry room is filled--almost to capacity. i can hardly get into the dryer and often when i do so i feel like swearing. i don't though and settle for calling brent a few names under my breath (or even a little louder if natalie isn't around). anyways, one of the things he took out of the van was our cd case that was full of our best cds. this was going overboard i felt because it was kept in a drawer under the front passenger seat. it was perfectly safe there. well after we got back we couldn't find it. i searched the laundry room and the outside storage (another of brent's favourite dumping grounds) it was nowhere to be found. i left it for awhile until i cleaned those places out. a year past and still...all our good cd cases remained empty. i cleaned the outside storage. no cds. (brent has already started to fill that space again) i started the mountainous task of cleaning out the laundry room several times. no sign of the discs. then a couple of weeks ago i was asked to sing something with my sisters at the ward christmas party. i thought it would be fun to do an arrangement similar to one that the rankin sisters did and i had their christmas cd. i got it out, opened it up and you guessed it: empty! arrgh! i once again cursed brent in my mind (he was there so i didn't want to be too vocal) and went back to the laundry room with new vigour. i searched every where i could think of: the shelves, the pile of stuff on the dryer, the pile of stuff on the cedar chest, the stuff wedged between the chest and the washing machine, and the floor. but no. frustrated and disgusted i left the room and sat down in front of the computer and tried to download it. i couldn't find anything. later that night i went back in and checked all those places again more thoroughly. i climbed up on to the washing machine and looked on the high up shelves. i looked behind the washer and dryer. it must not be here i thought. maybe brent put it in something that go thrown out--or it is one of the boxes of mission keepsakes or something. i was losing hope. in my prayers that night i asked for help in finding the discs. then yesterday morning brent said he thought he put in my hope chest, so i stopped my church preparations and ran down to check. no. he didn't. but then i started thinking maybe he put it in the cedar chest in the laundry room. so last night when we were done our visiting and all was quiet in the house i went into the laundry room with renewed determination. i took most of the stuff off the cedar chest and lifted the top. there was the sewing machine. i have used it since the cds went missing. i felt all around it. no luck. i emptied the craft box. i climbed up on the washing machine again. no cds. the growing doubt that those cds were in our house anywhere plagued me all the while. i left the laundry room and checked the coat closet ignoring the fact that it isn't full of stuff and i know exactly what is in there. maybe i saw it in there and didn't pay any attention to it because i was getting my toque or something, i thought. nope. it has to be here somewhere. (karen would have put an s on the end of somewhere. she also would have been using the word "buddy" in here too.) i decide to look under the cedar chest even though it was too narrow opening for the case to fit in. i found a few papers and a children's card game. i didn't like sticking my hand under there because i could see a spider web--what if i touched a big black spider? i put my head right down on the ground and shone the flashlight under...and then, i saw something! forgetting all about spiders, i stuck my hand right in and pulled out the cd case. it was full--every leaf had a cd. now watch the disc won't even be in here i thought to myself as i rapidly flipped through the case. i saw beloved cd after beloved and much missed cd. at the very back was the currently much sought after cd. i ran victoriously upstairs and woke up brent with the news. afterall why should he sleep? he was the one who lost it in the first place. now after listening to the disc i don't know if it will be much help.