Memory Monday: You Spin Me Right Round

Sorry it's been nothing but Memory Mondays around here.  I promise I want to post more than once a week.  My days keep getting away from me...

I was traveling back to school from either Thanksgiving break or Christmas break my junior year of college...give me a sec to think of the year...late 1999, or barely into 2000.  Now that I think about it a little harder, I think it was back from Christmas break, because I remember that a couple of guys my roomies and I hung out with, Shawn and Sheldon (brothers, from Hawaii), had stopped by our apartment and left us a note, along with one of their new roommates Morgan.  Little did I know that Pete was going to be their other new roommate.

Dun-dun DUNNNNNNNNN!!

The drive from Idaho Falls to Logan is not too bad.  I would get some Alanis or Phantom blasting in my little Neon, and sing at the top of my lungs.  I no longer do this, mostly because I don't drive alone.  Because alone, I have a fabulous voice and can hit the notes as well and as high as Sarah Brightman.  But when I'm in the car with, like, Pete, I realize that he has a better voice than I do, and so I just hum quietly along to myself, usually.  Unless by some bizarre twist of circumstance we'd be playing some Beatles music, then I be-bop along as loud as I please.  But Pete hates Beatles, so it doesn't happen very often.

Now that I've derailed twice from the topic, I'll get back on the story.  So.  Driving along.  It's only a little bit over 2 hours from one destination to the other.  I was singing along, and noticed my exit coming up.  It had been snowing, but the road was mostly dry, with just a few wet (not icy) patches here and there.  Snow was blowing every so slightly across the freeway, but there was no reason to fear the weather on this particular day.  I turn on my blinker to indicate my exit from the freeway, and...then totally lost control of the car.

I don't know if I hit an icy patch, but it seemed unlikely since it wasn't icy.  But my car started spinning.  I can't remember if it started spinning to the right or to the left first, but it ended up doing both.  I was spinning onto the exit ramp, toward a lamp post.  Suddenly, I was spinning the other way, back on to the freeway.  Suddenly I was spinning between the freeway and the exit ramp.

I swear to you I wasn't touching the steering wheel.  Well, I'm sure I was touching it, but I wasn't steering, or over correcting, or...anything.  It's as if my car was driving itself, and I was on a horrible car roller coaster ride.

I kept thinking: oh no!  I'm going to stop on the freeway and someone is going to bash right into me!  Oh no! I'm going to run into the exit sign!  Oh no!  I'm going to fall in between the two roads and the car is going to roll! 

I kid you not that my car made at least 10 full circles.

Suddenly, and I mean SUDDENLY, my car stopped spinning.  I was sitting in the middle of the off ramp, car facing the right way.  As if I had just stopped a little early of the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp.

You know on "The Wizard of Oz", where Dorothy is in her house and it's spinning around in the tornado, and the furniture is moving around, and it's super windy and loud, and then instantly it all stops?  All the wind and the movement, and the house just lands there?  It was like that.

I know, absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something-more like someone-stopped my car from spinning.  Someone saved my life.  Someone reached down, grabbed my spinning car, and placed it in the right place, without any harm done to me or to my car.

Of course I started crying.  I immediately said a prayer of gratitude for being safe on that day.  Because things could have turned out really really bad.

Now, I know that people have been in more dire circumstances with their cars than I was on this day.  They'd be like, spinning around?  Psh!  That's nothing!  And hey, I've ridden in cars where the driver is doing donuts in the church parking lot, and that's basically what this felt like.  But the instant stop, the instant safety, this little miracle in my life, is what was so wonderful about this memory.

Just Can't Get Enough!

A couple of Sundays ago, this happened:

How, you may ask? Pete sat down. Yep. Just plain old sat on Ivy's bed, and the frame broke. Just add it to the list, my dear. Here's a closer look:

We "fixed" it. It's very white trash, but we turned the bed around so you can't tell. (We drilled long boards along the frame on both sides. I should submit it to the website There, I Fixed It.)

That day at church I was joking with a couple of friends about "what's going to break next? a kid's arm?"

...

...I shouldn't have done that.

Because then our cute little Tuna decided to up and croak. This is all I have left of it now:

It was about time, I guess. It should have probably lasted only about 6 years, and it lasted 12 years. My stomach started getting all churny at the thought of having a car payment again. Ugh.

But.

Look at Tuna's replacement!

I think this car was especially meant for us. It's a Chevy Cobalt, it has five million buttons in it (including seat warmers-how cool is that?), we got it at a great price at a great rate... I'm still trying to think of a name for it. But our minivan doesn't have a name, so maybe it will be nameless for a while.

In the non-broken side of my life, my parents decided to be all awesome (like they always are) and got me some new trees for my backyard!

I can't wait until they're all big and pretty and giving us lots of shade.

This one has lost a lot of leaves, though, in the insanity we Idahoans call "wind". (If I could, I would seriously dome my whole backyard. Like a big greenhouse or something. Stinking wind. Which blew all five copies of my Sunday paper all over my neighbor's backyard yesterday. Sheesh.)

So, back to the whole "what's going to go wrong next?" You know, besides car wrecks, and sickness, and broken air conditioners, and cameras, and other car deaths, and beds. That's right! The fun hasn't stopped there!

Pete is back in the the hospital today, with his 6th kidney stone. (No matter what/how much he drinks, he will always produce stones. He's just lucky that way.) You can read about his last experience here and here. Pete went in last Thursday, and the doc told Pete to take some drugs and he should pass it on his own. Things seemed fine, until last night, when his pain came back with a vengeance. After a few very frustrating hours at the hospital, and a 2 a.m. call to our urologist, Pete got admitted to the hospital in the wee hours, and he'll be getting surgery tomorrow.

Today I had this song running through my head. (I can't POSSIBLY imagine why. *sigh*)

(P.S. Young Dave Gahan looks like Shia LaBeouf. And 80s dancing is really funny.)

Getting Pruned, or, The Silver Lining

Unfortunate occurrence #1: the car wreck. I missed my red minivan. It was gone for two weeks. (It's back as of Friday-hooray! But it was making funny noises, so it goes back in tomorrow-boo.)

The silver lining: Since we're kind of homebodies anyway, it wasn't the biggest deal in the world to be without a car. I got a few things done around the house, like fix a sprinkler drip line, and weed a lot, and clean a bit, and replace light bulbs, etc. I half-heartedly attempted to potty train Ivy, who is totally okay with using the potty before baths. But when I tried to get her to go, say, in the morning, she sat there, and yell-cried at me, giving me this look of utter contempt. Maybe I need to show her the Tinkerbell undies that I got. (Ivy loves "Tee-beh".)

In the meantime unfortunate occurrence #2 happened: our air conditioner leaked. Kind of a bit, onto our basement floor and onto bottoms of boxes.


(You can't really see it on this picture very well; it's just the still-wet cement two days after getting it all sopped up. Who knew cement stayed wet for so long?)
The silver lining: Fortunately, I've kept our cat's food and all that near there; if I hadn't, who knows how long it would have been before discovering the awesome wetness, and who knows how much further it would have spread.

Because I was stuck at home, my schedule was wide open to have the fixer guys come. And they fixed one part of it for a small fortune. Then, it leaked again the next day, and the guy came and fixed another part of it for another small fortune. I think it's good to go now.

But the leak turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It forced me to pull out all our boxes and go through things. And because I'm a minimalist, it was way super awesome to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we haven't used in a long time.



I also pulled out a bunch of books and put them out on our bookshelves. They had been in boxes because little hands kept bending them. But those little hands have grown up a bit, so now I feel safe pulling all those books out again.


And also, because I love to organize, it was awesome to put a bunch of things back in place and all together. I can Tetris the crap out of anything. And since I got my car back, I was able to haul off a bunch of stuff to D.I. and to the dump. I feel lighter!

Which is ironic, because I just read this scripture the other day: Helaman 15:3-...yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also hath he chastened them; yea, in the days of their iniquities hath he chastened them because he loveth them. I looked "chasten" up in the dictionary, and it says "... to prune of excess, pretense, or falsity, refine; to cause to be more humble or restrained; subdue." So, monetarily, we've been chastened in the last couple of weeks. But maybe it's because I needed to get pruned of some of my excess.

*sigh* I love blessings in disguise.

Vampires, Wrecks, Money, and Blessings

Vampires.


No, I'm not talking about these vampires.


Nope, not these guys either.



I'm talking about these vampires. You know, the people that only come out in the early morning or late at night. They aren't searching for blood, but for good deals. They aren't armed with venom and sparkly skin, but with binders. Binders full of coupons. Coupons that can get them cheap stuff, or even stuff for free.

I've been bitten by the coupon bug. And I like it. I think I might be addicted. I talked about this bug briefly in this post. And I must say, it's been going really well. I haven't necessarily taken money out of my bottom line yet, but I have been getting way more stuff for that same amount of money. And my heart does a little leap of joy.

The habits of the coupons ladies, I have discovered, is that they shop early in the morning, or late at night. I've joined those ranks, mostly because I stand in the aisle of the grocery store doing math in my head, and pulling coupons out of my binder, and arranging my groceries into transactions in my cart. And I don't want too many people staring. (Yes, there are times and stores when you have to do more than one transaction. I never would have thought that I'd be the type to run to two different Albertsons, just to find some cereal.)

So yes, it's a lot different than how I used to shop even two months ago. But it's been paying off. I've even gotten some stuff for free.

And, in general, I've saved 50-ish% on my groceries. (Well, right now, like I said, I'm spending about the same. So I guess you could say instead I'm getting twice as much stuff.)

Wrecks.

Sad to say, today while I was leaving Albertsons, and heading to Walgreens and then Smiths in my quest for cheap grocery items, I got in a wreck. Not a huge one-we were in the parking lot. But the lady hit me in just such a way as to make my car immovable: she T-boned my front passenger wheel. I don't know for sure yet, but it looks like we might have to get an axle replaced. YAY for expensive car repairs! Oh, and we're down to one car for the next who-knows-how-long, because our insurance doesn't cover car rental, and there's no way that I'm going to spend $50 a day on car rental. Because that's not a racket.

Money.

However. I read this awesome book called The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. This is an awesome read for anyone and everyone. I loved reading it, and not just because I'm into finance stuff. He had some really interesting statistics and great stories. Basically, he sets out an order of things to do with your money-baby steps, if you will. And because I had started doing the baby steps, we have enough money set aside to cover our car insurance deductible in what is called...wait for it...an emergency fund. Imagine that. Not that I'm looking forward to having that money leave us, but at least it's there, for this very scenario. I think I might have to write Dave a thank you note or something.

Blessings.

Now, even though I got in a wreck, (and let's be honest, who would want to get in a wreck?), I'm glad for several things that at least have occurred to me.

1) I'm glad I was alone, and not in a wreck with my kids in the car with me.

2) We were in a parking lot. No one was hurt. I had even felt prompted to pray last night really hard that we would all be safe. And I think that that's why this wreck was not a big deal-my Heavenly Father was looking out for me.

3) My dad came and got me. I have awesome parents.

4) I realized that I have so very much, including a car that gets to get repaired.

5) I have been feeling prompted, to the point of overwhelming pushing, that I need to get our finances in order. This feeling even started before reading that book, but it's been at the forefront of my mind for a while now. And I'm so very glad, because if I hadn't been feeling that way, we absolutely would not have had money sitting in the bank for emergencies. (Stupid, I know, especially for someone that graduated in finance.) The company for which Pete works has a contract at the Site, and in May 2012 that contract ends; we have no idea at that point whether things will dramatically change for us or whether things will stay the same. I don't know if that's why I've been pushed, or if there is something else in our future that is coming our way that we need to be ready for. But I'm so grateful for being pushed to save, and pushed to be smart with our money.

And for being pushed to become a "vampire".

"Gay" Aerobics and Other Random Life Events

Random 1:
Yesterday I:
-washed 6 loads of laundry and folded 9 loads
-unmade, then made 4 twin beds and a king bed
-patched a hole on my jacket, and darned some socks
-went to part of mutual
-vacuumed my whole house
-loaded and unloaded my dishwasher, twice
-did a little sudoku
-took out two huge bags of garbage
-cleaned up two dead mice in my garage
-along with the usual (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dirty diapers, fixing hair, fixing lunches, helping with homework, etc.)

I just wanted to document how I pretty much rocked yesterday, so I know that I actually can have the energy and time to get a whole lot done.

However, I did not exercise, because my back was killing me. I think from making the beds. Oh, and from P90X.

Random 2:
One day, Pete came home from work and said, "We should start doing some gay aerobics", and did a little disco-esque move. And I thought, Richard Simmons? But he meant just some sort of aerobic exercise. So we got a copy of P90X, and have been working out ever since. It's a lot of yoga, with some weights, and a whole lot of push ups. Each day of the week is a different workout, and it gets jumbled up after three weeks. I could barely do parts of the ab ripper one, we only did about half of the 90-minute yoga night, and my "weights" for the arm day were little tomato sauce cans. (Hey, when you haven't worked out in who knows how long, you gotta start out slow.) And even though my back was killing me last night, it's been good. It's only been a week, and I feel like I'm sleeping better, and I have a bit more energy, which is probably why I could do so much yesterday (though today, not so much).

Random 3:
The other day I decided that I need to take more pictures of my kids. The spur of the moment ones are the ones that seem to really capture my kids' personalities.

I love this picture of Brock and Jakob. My kids were all taking turns telling "secrets" (mostly just whispered nonsense words) at dinnertime, into each other's ears, and into mine.


I also love this picture of Ivy and Troy. Taken the same "secrets" night. Blue eye heaven.


Random 4:
I'm getting the urge to paint rooms again. I don't know why I get motivated to do inside improvements when I should be feeling the need to work on outside stuff. Though it's still been too nasty and cold and freaking windy to do anything outside, anyway, so maybe it's just fine that I want to do inside stuff.

Anyway, I'm hoping to paint Ivy's room, this weekend. Stay tuned for that! (And I promise I'll be faster at posting. I've been sucking it up lately.)

I also want to paint my downstairs family room, though that's going to be quite the undertaking. I'm hoping for maybe next weekend...ish. (Hey, if anyone out there reading this likes to paint, and you aren't a crazy stalker, feel free to come help me.) And other future projects: making new bedspreads for my three boys, and painting their rooms, too.

Random 5:
I checked out community classes for learning guitar. Turns out they don't teach beginner guitar in the summer. Grrr. So hopefully this fall...

Random 6:
Just spent oodles of money on our minivan on Monday. One of the break pads was totally worn away. And we needed new tires. I really hate spending money on things like that, even though it's inevitable.

Random 7:
I'm starting Brock and Troy on chores-cleaning up toys (which they already do) and helping me dust and windex. They were REALLY gung-ho about it. And Important Kid #2 (Ivy) had to help as well. She cried and cried until she got a rag, and absolutely fell apart when we were all done dusting. Yesterday she was pointing and kept saying "bill! bill!", and I thought she was looking at something outside. Finally she got down from the chair, pulled out a washcloth from the drawer, went back to the table, and starting wiping up the spill that was there that I hadn't seen. Such a little cleaner. Are all girls like that? Because my boys sure as heck wouldn't have cleaned up a spill-they would have spread it around and made the mess bigger.

Random 8:
Memo is getting declawed tomorrow morning. The stinking cat sunk her claws into our new couch. She'll probably hate us for a while, but I'd rather have that than clawed up furniture. (We've tried the claw stand thingies. She doesn't care about those a smidge.)

Well, I'm off to do some more "gay" aerobics with my hubby. I think it's legs and back tonight. Hoo, boy.

Broken

I love my boys. Really, I do. Which is probably why they're still alive right now.

Just kidding. Well, not about the love thing....

Okay, let me start over. Lately we've had a lot of things break. Some of it has been the kids' fault, some of it is just the nature of "stuff". But it always seems to happen all at once. I already mentioned our car's woes. But now our other car has joined in, with an almost flat tire, a broken seat belt, and the glove compartment refuses to shut. Fixed the tire, but the other stuff not so much.

My boys have discovered a new hang-out: under the kitchen sink. And they've taken the phrase "hang-out" literally, and probably hung on the sponge-holder thing, which now refuses to close all the way.


Here's my sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree. See the ribbons clumped? And the anti-ornamented spot at the bottom? That's why the tree came down the day after Christmas, my friends.


Plus, I didn't want any more ornaments to meet the same demise as these two did:

The snowflake on the left my mom attempted to tape back together. The star on the right was one of my favorites, and Memo chewed the arms off. (Although I think I liked it more when I thought it was wood; I then discovered it was styrofoam. But still.)

Our doorknob on the back door broke, so we were sporting this fine, white trash, duct tape look for a while. The front door deadbolt broke the day after. Luckily I'm somewhat of a handywoman (cough! hack! -sorry, give me a minute to collect myself after the laughing hysterics stop), and they've both been fixed. (In my case, "fixed".)


We can't even keep cookies unbroken around here.


Other stuff in the broken category: a picture frame for Pete's diploma, the door on our entertainment center, Pete's headset to the computer, crayons-always, a few of the kids' books that I put on the bookshelf (silly me, thinking books belonged on a bookshelf), a couple of drill bits from my attempt at hanging a shelf in our garage (handy, remember?), half of our toys because it's apparently the cool thing to hit toys with other toys...the list goes on and on.

But...things not broken: three little boys' chicken necks. Yet. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

Merry Christmas, Tuna!

This is Tuna.

Tuna got a new battery. And a new alternator.

Isn't Tuna lucky?

It's like the equivalent of me getting...new jeans. Really expensive new jeans. (Yes, I want new jeans for Christmas. Probably not happening now, thanks to Tuna's break-down. No, I'm totally not bitter. Not that my jeans would cost as much, but every little penny blah blah blah.)

Yes, it could have been worse. Yes, it's a 10 1/2 year old car. No, we don't have a monthly car payment, so I need to count my blessings. But still, Christmastime? I guess I would prefer around tax refund time, so we would actually have the extra money.

Tuna

My beautiful 1998 Dodge Neon just passed 100,000 miles. I would have gotten a picture right at the mark, but it was busy doing its duty of taking Pete to work at 5:30 a.m. It's been a wonderful car. My sisters dubbed it "Tuna" because of the cool color. I think it's technically called "platinum metallic", but it tends to look like different colors depending on the light it's in. Is it beige? silver? gray? gold? Fabulous! I wanted a cuter name for it, but Tuna stuck from the get-go, and Tuna it will stay. I know it's filthy dirty-my pregnancy nesting hasn't reached the garage or its occupants yet. I love my Tuna, and hope it lasts another 100,000!