TOP TEN THINGS I WILL NEVER DO AGAIN:

1. Experiment on how to remove nose hair by putting Nair hair-remover up my nose.
2. Get permnanent "make-up"...it's a tattoo people...MY LIPS ARE TATTOOED!
3. Accompany my husband to "work"...installing satellite dishes...I aged 8 years in the front seat of his truck WAITING while he vainly attempted to get the KOREAN channels because we all know how important and relative Korean TV is for the average American viewer.
4. Experiment with my electric muscle generator...it's like EKG pads that you put on sore muscles or joints and then crank up the electric voltage...I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I applied them to my head...I'm not kidding...DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, IN THE GARAGE OR ANYWHERE...
5. Menopause-any body function that takes longer than orthodontia is NOT HEALTHY
6. Sunbathe...sigh...
7. Be with company and laugh with my bladder full...not even half full...how about a boat trip and two bus rides away from full...never...
8. Sneak into reputedly haunted insane asylums from the last century and photograph orbs in the hallways...okay...busted...I plan on doing it at the end of August...AGAIN...HAH
9. Be a 1-900-Psychic...really...
10. Jump on a trampoline...please see #7.

How 'bout you? me out

Ahhhh, good fun

Well, I'm having difficulty posting photos from Eli and Abby's recent trip here to California. We had a grand time...visiting the root beer store where way over $100 was spent in the stuff (Eli is a connoisseur of fine root beer)...shopped thru old town Temecula visiting stores such as Jack's Nuts (not kidding) and the cheese shop...spent the day on the pier in Oceanside, played with babies, laughed till we hurt, ate Easter dinner together (I say next year we do a Passover seder) had an Easter egg hunt because nothing says resurrection like candy filled rabbit eggs...and people are shocked that men couldn't translate the bible correctly?...we couldn't even separate symbols of fertility from the original passover...what ev...watched American Idol...go Archeleta go...and just had a blast...I'm heading to Ohio in April so I get to do it again, only minus Emmy (huge frown)...hope the lilacs are out!!! me out.

MANNISH SPANISH...OY VEY-O

I did not take the above pic...but isn't it adorable?

Well, I was semi-immersed in the beautiful Spanish language this weekend.

Friday night, the hubby got a phone call from a friend in the Spanish speaking branch in Palm Springs, asking him if he would give a talk at her mother's funeral the next day. He knew this family from when he served his mission in that area and afterwards. So, naturally, he accepted thankfully but I had no idea what he had to do. He searched on the internet for appropriate remarks, which he copied down in long hand in English...and then he had to translate into Spanish and then DELIVER the talk. I had no idea until I got there that it was a Spanish service...bless his heart.

The sister was quite distraught with loud, copious weeping throughout the service except for when P. gave his talk. She was actually quiet and listening...I was amazed at what I saw. This is a relatively quiet man but when he spoke, his arms and hands were moving in a flowing, engaging manner and his face was beautiful. His speech seemed flawless. I suppose this is why he was the President of the Spanish branch for over 5 years...I was amazed.

At the graveside, the poor sister flung herself on the casket and had to be pulled off...very distressing...the plan of Salvation is such a comfort during these things. I was told later that the sister wasn't a member...we're planning on going to her home with a gift to speak with her.

And the next day, Saturday, we were late for our noon session at the Redland's Temple so we rescheduled for the 2:30 one...which we found out as we dressed was a Spanish session...I was way cool with it...it had subtitles and all...it was actually quite beautiful...

Guess I'd better get my Spanish CD's out huh? I thought I heard a Scottish mission coming our way but perhaps it's Spanish...oy

DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS...

Well, I am torn between two grad schools....one has a magnificent, rather self-indulgent curriculum but only gives me a Masters degree in psych...but the other is 18 months longer but awards me a PhD...what to do what to do what to do

I'm going to the temple tomorrow to pray about it...and by the way, I realize what a great quandry this is...and I feel blessed to have to make this decision at all...that I'm even at this point...YAY for mortality!!!!

I'm sure I'll be studying it out more and will post further on this subject...ooooo, bet you can't wait....oooooooo

LAID OFF, LAID BACK...S'ALL GOOD

KEEPING IN THE PINK!

The hubby got laid off yesterday. He's never been laid off in his life. So, after receiving the pink slip (and why do they make that slip pink?...because it was originally used to inform women that their presence was no longer needed in the factory...ouch!)...he went to his former employer and applied, bearing nothing but his good reputation of hard work and personal integrity...they were very happy to see him and we will know in the next few days if they have any work for him. Luckily he's versatile and can do several different types of work; however, not a lot of people have extra money right now for fancy internet connectin' and such...so, we remain calm...we'll continue to pay our tithes and do our callings and all will be well. The older I get, the more I realize that all things are exactly the way they're supposed to be...EXACTLY...no more and no less...and this has such a calming effect, I can't even tell you...all is well right now, no conditions, no problems...all is well...

MENOPAUSE DEFENSE...I'LL DO IT...OH YES I WILL...

The other night...Thursday?...I woke up about 3:00 AM (the usual) and heard a man talking...plain as day...but it sounded muffled, like it was outside my window. Now, when this happens, my first impulse is to lay quiet and let it play out...I have to do reality checks on things like this because of their frequency in my life...I will admit that my children and I are a hypnopompic/hypnogogic group and we see/hear weird things in our sleepy states...so here I was once again hearing things like a man talking. My reality check consists of these two major bullet points:

* Is it loud enough or real enough for the hubby to hear it (he's a very very light sleeper)

* Are my dogs barking at it


Following my above checks (the hubby did not wake up and the dogs did not bark), I listened to his voice for awhile and then drifted back off to sleep...believing that the voice was all in my head, or spirit or whatever....so I didn't even say anything the next day...business as usual (is my life weird enough or what?)

Anyway, the next night about 4:00 AM, the hubster jumps out of bed ninja style, fully awake, back hunched over...I sit up and all he does is the "SHHHHHH" motion and points to the window...and I say, "Oh, you heard the voice too?"....*INSERT PUZZLED HUBBY FACE HERE*...but he gracefully, almost ballet-like, slides thru the house, throws on lights, calls the police and checks his gun(S)...now fully loaded...I'm all, "Hey, it's just a voice, I'm not sure it's real because the dogs aren't barking so come back here and talk to me". Well now, I've got his attention...he asks, "You've heard this voice before? You don't think it's real? This voice that woke me up?"

SKIP TO THE END FOR HOW THIS TURNS OUT IF YOU WISH TO AVOID THE WEIRD HISTORY...

I explained the following: "Peter, the dogs didn't bark, it's possible that you heard a voice that doesn't have a body attached to it. This happens to me and you may be stuck being involved with it. When Jette was a baby, we both heard the voice say "Hello" to which baby Jette said, "Hi" but no one was there. Another time, sitting at a card table playing cards with the kids' dad, we heard, "Hello"...my husband at the time says "Hey, come in", to which I reply, "Don't bothering getting it, there's no one there"...he looked at me like I was crazy (which actually became a common occurrence with he and I) and when he answered the door, sure enough, no one was there...just the usual disembodied voice...skip forward a few years and we're at another house, sleeping upstairs with the four kids in the two rooms below us. I wake up hearing lots and lots of children laughing and even sounds like furniture is moving...I am upset with the kids because I know they're going to get in trouble and why in the world would they make such a bad judgement as to play loudly like that in the middle of the night-but sure enough, their dad jumps out of bed and storms downstairs, prepared to put that crap to an end. Suddenly the laughter stops, the furniture sounds are silent and I don't hear a word from their Dad. I hear him walking thru the house and NO WORDS ARE SAID. He comes back up and unbeknownst to him I was awake and the first words I ask are, "Who was up and playing that loud". He is surprised and responds with, "You heard all that too?" I said that of course I heard it, which of the kids was doing that and he said, "None of them. They're sound asleep and everything is quiet. I even checked to see if they were faking but they're deep asleep. I went down to the basement to see if a radio or TV was on but there's nothing going on down there." I asked him what he thought the sound was but at this point, we were both a little creeped out. We laid back down and sure enough, I heard the laughter again but it faded rather quickly. I discovered years later that this has happened in other areas of the country to other people, which wasn't exactly comforting but it was what it was...

So I explained all of this weird history to the hubby and BLESS HIS HEART, he gives me credibility and allows for the possibility that perhaps there was "no one" there.

AT THE END OF THE STORY...DOWN HERE!!!

Back to that night, the cops come and they found our next door neighbor's vacant house has a storage shed with the door opened slightly...

Turns out there was a homeless man caught Saturday morning walking into people's houses and in the last incident, he was taking a shower in someone's bathroom with the people home. So, the guy was caught...thing is, instead of being calm about my little spiritual experiences, I was now ANGRY and I could have killed this man. I was just so stoked and angry that some one would take that much liberty with my home and my people...I just became angrier and angrier and the sweat poured off of me and my hands were shaking and I said to the hubby and the 16 year old irritant, "Mark my words, if I catch ANYONE near this house, I will pop them in the ass and drag them inside and no one will convict me because I am menopausal...I'LL DO IT!!!!

When I left I heard little Eli lean into his dad and say, "Dad, she knows your guns are loaded. Don't make her mad".

Yea....

DISTURBING THINGS THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK...

While sitting at lunch with several friends from church after attending the Redlands Temple, the server asked me if I would like the "senior discount". I asked her, quizzically, what the age was and her reply?....60. My friends tutted and smirked and told me, "It's just your hair"...and THAT was supposed to make me feel better.

Little Eli told me that he saw a white-haired homeless woman on the corner and she "looked just like YOU"!

While taking little Eli to apply for his first job, I sat with him as he filled out the paperwork...he misspelled HIS OWN MIDDLE NAME...and THAT is something that I am planning on, nay obligated, to remind him of for the remainder of his mortal journey...or mine.

I just took an IQ test that my daughter Emily sent me...I am educably retarded...and that makes me "Mootard, the underwhelmed and inadequate"...

A transcript of an actual telephone conversation with my husband...

/\
!
!
!

THIS IS AN ARROW POINTING TO SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME

ME: You stole my marble.
PETER: You mean my magnetic marble?
ME: It's not a magnetic marble. I found it in the dirt when I was cleaning my rocks. You saw it on top of one of my rock stacks and you took it.
PETER: It's my marble.
ME: It is not! I found it in the dirt and had to clean it. You just snatched it up because you like round, shiny things.
PETER: I'm at my next job. We'll discuss this when I get home.
ME: Fine!

It's so on...

Salsa, grapefruit and the power of the mind...

Well, two things are on my mind right now...

The first is that I made a delicious fresh salsa just now. Yums. I used plum tomatoes, a while onion, tomatillos (sp?), garlic, a shake of curry, cilantro, fresh lemon, ground black pepper and kosher salt. It was so good, and fun, I had a blast chopping and tasting all the way thru it. But this brings me to my second thought...

I thought, "Hmmmm, why don't I just go outside and pick a lemon off the tree and use that; my thought was that it would taste good and also keep the avocados green when I slice them and throw them on top of the salsa...So, I go out back, pick a nice sized lemon, came in, cut it open, and whatta ya know, it was a juicy pink grapefruit! I didn't even know I had a grapefruit tree in the back...and it's loaded! I took a bite and it was sweet as sugar...what a great way to get my vitamin C today!

But here's the kicker...some of you (probably all of you) may recall my early experience with visualizing in the late 70's. I had just read about it and thought I would experiment. The idea is that you concentrate hard enough and visualize something very thoroughly, it will be manifested into your life...remember, this was 30 years before "The Secret"...so I thought I'd give it a try. It was the dead of winter. I wanted to visualize something that I would never place in my life, so that I could really do a reality check on it...if I visualized diapers, well yea, diapers would come into my posession because I had two infant daughters...so what could I visualize that would be "pure", not greedy or financial, etc. So I visualized a grapefruit. I didn't particularly like grapefruits and I would never ever buy one, especially since it was the dead of winter in Ohio, 30 years ago. Not a heck of a lot of chance on stumbling upon a grapefruit in my house. So I visualized a grapefruit...I really really saw this thing, the pores, the yellow and pink skin, the curve of the shape, etc. Anyway, I can't say for certain how long afterwards, but it was quite soon that a package arrived on my front porch, right there at my door and guess was it was?...yep...an ENTIRE CRATE of grapefruits. How? A friend of my mother-in-law sent it to me from Florida...I hardly knew this guy...but there it was!!! Not just one grapefruit, an entire crate.

Which brings me to today...not just one grapefruit, but an entire tree, right here at my door...hmmmmm....oh dear, here comes that magical thinking thing again...that thing I do...this would be good to ponder over salsa....

Daddy-O

I can't explain how weird this afternoon has been for me. I was sitting around surfing TV channels looking for Project Runway and lo and behold, there is my dad's old movie, Body and Soul. Oddly, this same thing occurred when I was in Columbus in January while Mom and I were sitting around in her livingroom...great timing. It was so bizarre watching my father as such a young man...I think he was about the age that my sons are now. In one scene, I saw my son Eric's eyebrows, even a facial expression that he does when he's trying to knit his eyebrows (always unsuccessfully). The same eyebrows, the same position...so bizarre and tender. I saw my son Eli's eyes, lips, hairline and brow. I saw, perhaps for the first time, that my father had a dimple in his chin...just like my daughter Jette's and my grandaughters, Emma and Mae.

The movie even took place on the "east side" of New York, my father and John Garfield's old neighborhood. They grew up together and Mr. Garfield got my dad the job. It was just such a great hour and a half...a gift...

Hi Dad...eternal love...

Wicked fun...

I'm reading a great book right now...called "WICKED" by Gregory Maguire. It's about the goings on in the land of Oz and regions thereabout and the citizens...it's GREAT...It's actually written, primarily, from the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch that chases Dorothy and company. She is fabulous...bright...funny...dark...and incredibly human. She and Galinda, whom we know as the "good" witch of the north, are roommates in college...I'm not giving too much away here, as I'm only on page 80. I am so enchanted by this book, I can't put it down. Again, this is further confirmation of my fascination with psychology and the human psyche, this proclivity I have for understanding the souls of people we would rather hide away from, or hide away from us. This has been going on in my life for as long as I remember and it's deliriously wonderful to have the time to pursue it. Oh, my sweet young friends, when your children are gone and your home is quiet, you will follow your passions and become incredibly wise(R) women and your life will take a direction you perhaps never saw coming but you follow that yellow brick road...skipping most of way...

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK!!! Oh yea...

Saturday was a rare and wonderful day for the hubby and me. First, we slept in...this only happens a few days a year and it was loverly. And then we decided to drive up to Joshua Tree National Park and enjoy. We loaded up the dogs, my folding rocking chair, books and food and took off. It was cold and blowy up there....way cold...which is nice considering our seasonably warm winter of late. The clouds were magnificant, I couldn't find the reservoir but the search was fun and the trees...always the trees...valleys and valleys and acres and acres of these odd tree. They got the name JOSHUA TREES from the Mormon Pioneers who felt they resembled the prophet Joshua raising his arms to heaven.

The sun casts a different light there. I've said this before but it's true...It's a whiter, purer, cleansing light that compels one to think and behave creatively. Many artists come to the desert expressly for the light...not so much to create art but more to be inspired to create art...some way to externalize what is felt when experiencing this light, these rocks, this vegetation, even the animals...we had a coyote following parrallel to our car...very cool...but I kept my littlest dog, Buddha safely separated from our traveling companion, whom I'm certain smelled a possible feast.

Well, we stayed unil after dark so we could watch the light show....it always, always, always, takes my breath away and I do give a little gasp when I get out of the car and look up. All those stars together, giving their little individual light and when combined with the other stars, the cosmic music starts and we enjoy the light show.

All in all, great day...and night...me out