The Doldrums, or if you will, The Bell Jar

So, it has been approximately two months since I last posted on this blog. Needless to say, we have been busy. Moving is hard work. It has also not been kind to me.

Have you ever made a really big decision with the naive notion that it will solve all your problems? Well, maybe I moved to Texas with the big idea that somehow, it would make all the difference. We have been here for over a month, and it has made...well, no difference at all. If anything, I honestly spend about 50% of my time wishing we had never left Wyoming. Things are really, kinda, probably, that bad.

First, as many of you know there are certain relatives of Luke's (cough, his parents, cough) with whom I have maintained, at best, a rocky relationship. As many of you know, I have a wonderful relationship with my parents. My parents are living in Rock Springs, Wyoming right now. I, on the other hand, am living in Frisco, Texas, right next to mom and pops-in-law. And if I thought that moving closer to them might repair our relationship, I was laughably wrong. What may have previously been described as a necessarily polite, newsy and impersonal relationship has now degraded to an awkward, strained and sometimes hostile one. It is, naturally, all money related, as issues with Luke's family tend to be.

Second, we are so broke it is not even funny...and Luke doesn't start getting paid until September 15. That is about 6 weeks away. We sold our house and made some good money. However, not fully realizing that we would have to wait this long to get paid, we foolishly pissed all the money away paying bills. We also bought new furniture. That was extravagant, I guess, but we had never bought any new. Our whole house was furnished on hand-me-downs, and it felt right at the time. Well, we were stupid. Now, we have no money.

We also just found out that Luke's insurance through work is, quite possibly, the worst insurance in the world. The only plan we can afford monthly ($205/month...the next "affordable plan is $650/month) has a $4000 deductible. $4000!!!! I may as well not even HAVE insurance!! The only pal worth its salt costs $1400/month! On a teacher's salary!! Are they kidding!? So, I checked into independent insurance and quickly found out that since my son has a pre-existing condition and it is probably chronic, that no one will pick us up. Nice. So now, we pretty much have no insurance ($4000 is equivalent to none to me). Well, to add insult, we had not taken the idea of having a third kid (before I finish school) of the table. Well, now it has been taken off for us. I can't afford prenatal care, or delivery. Nice.

Also, since Texas is full of crazy people, Luke HAS to get his certification through a "Texas authorized certification agency." This basically means he had to drop out of his master's program in order to enroll in a Texas cert program. The catch? Most of the programs are not covered by student loans. Instead, they will be payroll deducting about $300 out of Luke's check every month to pay for it. If I haven't said it yet, NICE.

Lastly, I have had my feelings hurt by some people who are what I will now refer to as "friend impostors." I know it is so high school of me, to have my feelings hurt, but they are. We had some friends in the DFW area that we were pleased to be living close to again. Unfortunately, they won't even return our calls. We have seen one of them since moving here (he came over for dinner) and at that time, he informed me that we were (and this is a quote) "inconvenient. Not just in location, but because we have kids. We can't just drop everything and run off gallivanting around the city. We don't drink until we puke (like the girl the friend brought to my house did when she came for dinner!). We don't "party!" And so, we are inconvenient. It made me sad. Really, really sad. I don't think it is silly to want friends. Somehow, though, it seems to be this looming, daunting task that I am somehow incapable of living up to. Seriously, inconvenient?!

Now, if I was mean and nasty, I might say that what is inconvenient to "said friends" is the reminder that while everyone else around them is growing up and acting like adults, they seem to only be getting younger, more irresponsible and frankly, silly. Maybe it is inconvenient to clean your house or make money and pay bills. Maybe it is inconvenient to be sober sometimes. Maybe it is inconvenient to have meaningful relationships that require work. Growing up is frightfully inconvenient. So, maybe that is all he meant.

Lastly, to top it all off, I am sure you can surmise that this stress is taking its toll on Luke and I, making it 10,000 times more likely that one or the other of us will rip into the other over absolutely nothing. Not surprisingly, this seems to be exacerbating an already frustrating problem.

So, yeah, I am in The Bell Jar. If you want to send me mail, I am afraid you will have to find the address for the doldrums. Depression Lane, Blue Street. That's where I'll be.

Some News

First of all...WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!! Hooray! We close on June 28 and will be leaving for Texas that same day. July 1 is our estimated day of arrival in Frisco, Texas.

Second of all, we are probably bringing someone with us from Wyoming to Texas. Luke has a student who graduated this year who is amazingly talented, has tons of potential, and was going to go to our local community college because he has no support system to encourage him to do otherwise. So, Luke and I have offered for him to come with us and live with us for the first year while he goes to an actual college and gets on his feet, heading toward an actual career and living up to his potential.

Lastly, Luke and I are headed to Texas the 14th of June for his certification tests and we are compiling an ipod full of the best traveling, sing along car songs ever. So I am asking for your input. What are the best sing along car songs?

Why We're Leaving...

Well, now that I have a moment's peace, I will take a moment to explain why Luke and I are leaving.

First of all, it was not an easy decision. We love Wyoming. By Wyoming, I mean the beautiful, natural landscape, the amazing history, the cold (yes, I love winter) and the proximity of Yellowstone. However, I/We HATE Rock Springs. When we were moving up here, Tim helpfully, in so many words, referred to Rock Springs as the sphincter of Wyoming. He was so very, very right. Not only is the town itself a whole, but the population is radically lacking in any interest in culture, community, goodness, etc. We have lived here for two years. We have tried to be involved in so many ways. We are foster parents, we are members of a church, we tried to be involved in the community theatre (key word, tried), we have been involved with other community outreach opportunities, and yet, we find that we are in the same place we were when we moved here. I have one friend. Luke has none. Well, we have a few "friends" from church. They all out-age us by over 30 years, and we have nothing in common with them aside from church...so not really "friends". We kept waiting and waiting for this to feel like home, and kept waiting for things to get better, but they actually seemed to be getting worse...

At church, people stopped volunteering to keep the nursery. Luke and I are the only people with children, and after about 3 Sundays of just going home because no one was there to keep the kids, I was a little fed up. Luke and I also started running the youth group, and we had about 5 really interested and really spiritually hungry kids. However, no one else wanted anything to do with it, the "youth space" at the church is actually used by the Boy Scouts, and we had to keep our stuff out of the way of the scouts. We also tried to initiate multiple missions and outreaches through the church that NO ONE was interested in. Our church, it seems was a social engagement for a lot of wealthy old women, and not a church at all. Our pastor is amazing, and also really frustrated, but it seems he feels there is not a lot to be done.

Luke's job, the only thing really keeping us here, took a major turn for the worst around March. His tech director...he's an ass. It was not pleasant. Before we even decided to move to Texas, Luke turned in his resignation because of this situation. The administration refused to accept it and promised to rectify the situation. However, after the spring musical (which was attended by over 1200 people in this community), the issue was dropped without further mention. So Luke again decided it was time to go. He started looking for another job.

I love the winter. I love cold and snow. However, I am a stay-at-home-mom with two small kids in a place where we are home-bound for nine months out of the year. This town offers NOTHING for me to do with my kids indoors. There is a McDonald's play place. It smells a little too much like poop for my tastes and so we don't go there...and that's pretty much it. Again, I have one friend with children, and she and I exhaust each other going back and forth to each other's houses trying desperately to break up the monotony. I need more. I want my kids to have more. I want to take them to museums and zoos and playgrounds and have other women who are like me.

So that is roughly the "why."

The how is that Luke was offered a job in the district in which he graduated from high school. It is more money, lower cost of living and less work. In two years they are opening two new high schools, and want to give Luke his own department. For right now, he will be Technical Theatre Director/Teacher for Centennial High School in Frisco, Texas. Once he applied, they pursued him like crazy. He had four unsolicited letters of recommendation from various people in the district that have known him over the years. One of them is Head of Fine Arts for the district. He will finish his M.Ed. next year, and that helps a lot, too.

Our housing situation is sketchy at present. There have been some...isssues there. However, as soon as our house sells, we will be off to Texas and probably renting for 6 months until we find a house to buy. On a really great up note, we are selling our house for about 25K more than we bought it for, so we will have a nice little nest egg to buy with later. Not bad for buying less than a year ago.

So, yeah, I think that's it. Ask me questions if I haven't covered everything. Also, Tim and Scott, nice to see that you boys still drop by here from time to time. You other three boys... well thanks for always dropping by. Kelly and Dave, see you soon. Trav, come see us before we take off. Love to all!

editor's note: Also, it goes without saying that living in a bigger city is really, really nice. But since my son has really severe food allergies, and the closest health food store is in SLC, three hours away, living in a big city becomes a necessity. Not to mention that he has a pretty significant health issue, and his neurologist is also in SLC, so any emergency he has cannot be monitored by his specialist. Living in Dallas will have a great benefit on these issues as well.

By the way...

Have I mentioned that Luke and I and the kiddos are moving to Texas?

The Clock

This is a story I had to write for a class. I thought I would put it up on here and get some feedback. Thanks for the idea, Trav.



When I was small, staying at my Grandma’s house was an adventure. Long before Grandma’s mind was taken by Alzheimer’s and dementia, she was crazy in lots of other ways. A survivor of the Great Depression in a Dust bowl state like Oklahoma, and having lived through the rationing of World War II, Grandma hoarded everything. It was neat. Her cupboards were full mismatched Tupperware, butter bowls and Cool Whip containers with the labels scrubbed cleanly off. Under the flaps of corduroy curtains that covered each shelf in her pantry was a world of food the likes of which most have never seen. Mysterious cans with their labels ripped off, spicy scented packets of homemade soup mix, rows upon rows of homemade jars of jam and jelly and currant with drips of paraffin wax seeping out of the lids were placed too high for me to reach without the aid of a step ladder. But down below, she had stocked the shelves with treats for me to find. I would raise the dusty curtain and my nose would itch with anticipation. There, I could find bags of marshmallows, hard from exposure, jars of Tang, and cut-rate peanut butter with a spoon lying neatly next to it, an invitation to take a bite. There were nuts and salty snacks, cupcakes and breads she had made all waiting for me. Finally, with my belly full and the smell of dinner already hanging in the moist kitchen air, I would wander back to the playroom, her studio.
The walls were covered with half-finished oil paintings. Farmhouses and barns, waterfalls and forests, snow-capped mountains with clumps of pine trees, each with some deliberate portion left unpainted. I knew that later, under her skilled tuition, she would help me to fill in the blanks on some of these dusty canvasses, the smell of turpentine and paint and her big knobby fingers guiding my hands to create art. All around the room, on
every conceivable surface sat the remnants of her hobby, and all around those sat my toys. Broken dolls she had picked up at rummage sales, dainty dresses and roughly hewn sweaters she had sewed and crocheted by hand, wigs she had bought from the beauty college where she had her hair set and curled all sat out in tubs, boxes and crates of various origins. The shelf in the corner was filled with shoeboxes. Each box contained treasures my Grandma collected just for me. Boxes filled with thimbles, and spools, old lotion bottles and empty lipstick tubes. Boxes of paper and magazine cutouts, the leftover deposit slips from the back of her checkbook. The boxes contained shaving cream cans and aftershave bottles that reminded me of my Grandpa’s smell, though he died before I could even remember him. She put back the little orange spreading sticks that came in HandiSnacks cheese and crackers. She saved rocks and pinecones, leaves and pits. Together, we would build cities of bottles and spools that stretched down the long hallway to her bedroom. She was such fun.
She had quite a garden. Well, it was more of a small farm. She had fruit trees and corn and green beans and potatoes and carrots and berries and squash and peppers and every other vegetable under the sun. Her yard was her own little Eden on Pierce Street in the middle of Enid, Oklahoma. She would gather the food in baskets and make breads and jams and other foods and hoard them away in her basement, apparently awaiting nuclear holocaust or drought. Most afternoons, even in the dead of summer, her small hunched frame could be seen toiling away under the shade of the trees, lovingly laboring to see each plant weeded, composted, groomed and finally picked. The food filled her house. Cubbies and cabinets far and near contained some preserved food. She had three deep freezes to keep up with it all. They were as much an adventure as the rest of her house. Carefully moving logs of freezer burned Ziplocs in order to find last year’s blackberries was always an exploration into the unknown. If the Abominable Snowman had once leapt out at me, I would not have feigned surprise.
Her house was never fancy. Most everything she owned was second-hand, salvaged, painted and put back together. She even had used carpet. The knick-knacks were picked up at garage sales or the Dollar General. Her rugs were homemade rag rugs she had tied herself. However, her pride and joy was the clock. It was an original New Haven Clock Company mantle clock, an ornate, heavy mahogany beauty. The original label that still sits slightly adhered to the little door in the back dates it in the 1930’s. She would have been my age when she got it. Maybe it was a wedding present. Regretfully, I never thought to ask. The clock chimed gloriously at every hour and half hour. It resonated throughout her house, and I could know how soon supper was while inside my spool city because of that clock. When we stayed the night at her house and I woke up afraid, not knowing where I was, the clock would chime and I would remember and roll over to snuggle up with Grandma, breathing in her scent of Avon lotion and old lady.
When she died last February, after a desperate battle for her very mind and soul, my family went to clean out the house. What was once a magical land of make-believe was now just boxes and boxes of trash. Well-saved and well-intended fruits and veggies were now laid to waste, for who really wants to eat peaches canned in 1972? Each of us wandered through the house touching and caressing memories of Grandma, opening cabinets and smelling towels, pulling long strings of shiny beads from jewelry boxes and wearing them for no good reason, picking out the things we wanted to take home. My brother took a music box that played Green Sleeves. My sister took the dinette set that had sat so many Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter dinners that you could almost see the reflections of our growing faces in its varnished top. My mother struggled and finally took everything and to this day just has it in storage. I, on the other hand, walked purposefully and dutifully to the clock. I took its little key and wound it tight. It chimed the hour, and I knew that my Grandma was there, teaching me to paint and setting aside new spools and walking with me collecting pinecones and persimmons. I knew that, although in the end, she could not look at my face with the slightest flicker of recognition, in that clock was time. Lost time, wasted time, good time and bad time and in between time all showed at some point on the honest face of that clock. It is my memento, my keepsake of a crazy woman who in the end gave me the best gift of all: time.

On No You Di'n't!

I just heard the most appalling thing I have ever had the misfortune of entering my head...

I was listening to NPR during dinner, and when I got up to clear the dishes, Philip changed the radio station. The next station over is CSN, a Christian radio station. Just as I was trying to figure out why the NPR commentator's voice had suddenly taken on such an appalling bravado, I heard this "Public Service Announcement."

Pardon while I paraphrase. I did not commit the entirety of this stupidity to memory.

"There has been a lot of talk in the news lately about global warming, and how the earth is being destroyed. Now, I don't know anything about global warming, whether its heating up or cooling down. And I don't know what good it will do me to recycle or ride my bike to work, but I do know THIS. Everyone needs the loving salvation of God. What good will it do to save the planet if we don't save ourselves?"

Are you freaking kidding me? What good will it do to save the creation that Gods has so kindly LENT us to live on? Why should we bother taking care of something that God created, just as he created us? I don't care how you feel about global warming, but if you aren't doing everything you can to take care of this earth that God himself made, then you are being blatantly disrespectful to the Good Lord. He didn't just "GIVE" this world to us to piss away and do with what we will, He has the expectation that we would preserve it for future generations, and care for something that he created. And folks, Global Warming is a reality.

So I ask, what good does it do to disregard God's creation and unmercifully let people die and waste away as we plummet toward self-destruction? Is that a very Christian mind-set? "It's not my problem," was never a very Jesus-like response. Neither was "I don't care." It was also not his way to say incredibly stupid things, masquerading as social commentary, in the name of God. Blehch!

Oh, and check out the website. They have a fantastic section on how to be "Rapture Ready" and a "Prophesy Update" about the end of times. Neat!!

An Organized Sort of Fun

To my credit, there have been many changes in my behavior since I had children. I am decidedly tidier, sometimes to the point of obsessiveness, but I have let go of a lot of control issues. You have no real control over children. It is all an illusion.

I am a laid back, hippie mom who eats an almost strictly Vegan diet and does Yoga with her kids. We are learning about recycling and go on nature walks when it is warm enough. We spend a lot of time acting out wildly creative and elaborate stories while playing dress-up. We finger paint on old sheets. We build forts with blankets and the furniture. We dance...a lot. I make up songs. I only own one pair of jeans that doesn't have holes in the knees because I spend so much time on the floor with my kids. We have no TV channels. Yep, no cable and we live too far out in the middle of nothing to pick up antenna. We read a lot of books. I am so proud of the mom I have come to be. And yet...

I am compulsively neat. We do each of the above-mentioned activities one at a time. We put everything away exactly where it goes when we are done. And since OCD runs in my family, "exactly where it goes" is pretty severe. I have certain angles I like to prop the toys on the shelves. They are separated by age appropriateness, genre and sometimes, by color. This little bit of OCD has never really bothered me. I actually have found it helpful for keeping a clean house. My own little bit of personal crazy.

Today, however, we were playing on the big dinosaur mat we have with lots of little dinosaurs and a couple of My Little Ponies, Jesus and Noah. I was holding two toys, Jesus and a dinosaur, when Helen says, "No, Mama. One at a time." Apparently I couldn't hold two toys at once. It is against the rules. Then I look over at what she has done... All the dinosaurs and ponies were lined up in a straight horizontal line, in ascending size. One at a time, Helen was picking them up, letting them eat from the pretend tree and then carefully placing them back in line. When Philip came over and promptly destroyed the line (as boys will do), it made Helen cry.

Initially, I thought, my daughter is SO SMART! She lined all those up by size. But then I saw what she had done for what it really was, a mimic of Mommy's crazy. It was in fact, a very organized sort of fun. Not laid back at all, but very structured and rigid. And I felt that for all my hopes and dreams of becoming a big, nasty hippie, I can't let go of my control. For those who know me well, you know that perhaps lines of neatly organized toys is a far better exertion of this need than my many previous habits, but it's still not much better. I have a long, long way to go. But, hey, I haven't shaved in like 8 months, and that's gotta count for something, right?