a.rose

Words have different meanings to different people.  Take the word dog, for example.  A dog is nothing more than a cute, furry mammal.  Unless you're talking to someone who never emotionally recovered from the loss of a beloved pet.  ... someone who has a severe allergy. ... someone who trains German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers to be guard dogs. ... a blind person who relies on a dog every day for guidance. ... someone who was attacked by the neighbor's dog as a child.  See, when you talk to these people about dogs you will also find love, disdain, respect, devotion, fear. Saturday is the day after Friday, and the day before Sunday.  My favorite moment of each week is falling asleep on Friday.  Because I know that when I open my eyes again (assuming that both babies sleep through the night... it does happen, and I am ever optimistic) it will be Saturday.  The day that Devin will sleep in (until Hallie wakes him up at 6:40), and the...

I think there are really two main groups of people in the world.  Those that give out compliments like Tootsie Rolls at a Memorial Day parade, and the people who give out rare compliments like Scrooge McDuck sharing his gold with the Beagle Boys.  Or something else that happens infrequently. I am clearly a card carrying member of the Tootsie Roll group.  Particularly with Hallie, I honestly worry that I praise her too much, like she's going to start tuning me out soon. Then my approval won't mean anything at all, because hey, mom always approves.  I'm hoping that that isn't how it works, but should I back off a little? Then there is the Scrooge McDuck group, and I like the way this group operates.  It's like inflation in the economy (except, obviously I don't like inflation. Right? Inflation is the bad guy in economics? So maybe it isn't really quite like inflation. I never did well in my economy classes.  What was the name of our professor Stacy?)...

(A small departure from our regularly scheduled and planned Pride and Potential postings because I finished one of my posts that I tried to write mid-brain mush.) Yesterday I was filling out one of those "getting to know you" type forms. Answering questions like, "if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?" (Australia, Egypt, Brasil, Vermont)  "what's your favorite book? (The Little Prince, The Girl of the Limberlost) "what's your favorite movie" (The Importance of Being Earnest), etc. One of the things that I learned from this task was that I don't really know myself that well. The questions were hard to answer.  There was one that was easy though.  It was about siblings, specifically how many you have, or rather, since I was filling it out about me, and not you, it was how many siblings I have.  Right.  So I wrote four.  But I don't have four siblings, I am one of four siblings, so I really only have three. Two ...

There's a movie called The Huggabunch that I remember watching when I was a little girl, and recently a friend of mine reminded me of it.  I watched a short segment from it on YouTube, and it was just as creepy as I remembered it being.  The main character at one point meets a witch type woman who stays forever young and "beautiful" by eating some sort of peach that she keeps under lock and key.  The queen (witch) says to the young girl, "You are rather pleasant looking yourself.  ... Say thank you, child."  and the little girl responds by saying, "My mother told me not to say thank you when people tell me I have a pretty face. You're just born with it, and it's all luck." (If you want to watch this clip of the delightful movie yourself, click here .) Thomas S. Monson in last month's Ensign wrote an article called, "Canaries with Grey on Their Wings."   In it he emphasizes again the importance of reaching our full potential.  Th...

Where have I been?  I've been wading through brain mush trying to get back to coherency.  See, you have no idea what that means, and that means that I am still slightly incoherent.  I have about ten half written blog posts, but my brain is struggling to complete sentences, and when I do complete them I have trouble remembering them long enough to write them down. Even in spoken conversation lately I have started a thought, and then not remembered how I wanted to finish it.  "I don't remember what I was going to say."  I tell the people waiting for me to finish my thought.  "Um, what was I talking about?" I ask them for  help... they get me going again and I somehow manage to make it most of the way through my intended statement. Some of you know, and many of you probably do not know, I have hypothyroidism.  (It's hy-po-thy-roi-dism.  But don't worry, you'll probably never have to read this post out loud.)  I am supposed to take a l...

It's funny the twists and turns life takes, how one small action leads to this which takes us there and teaches us that.  Know what I mean?  For instance, the person I'm going to talk about right now I may never have heard of if I had not moved to Maine in the summer of 2005 and met a guy named Marc. Us, in Maine, summer 2005.  Sorry Nicole, I wanted to use the first picture I could find... The thing is, I DID move to Maine in the summer of 2005, and I met a guy named Marc. We became friends, and stayed in touch.  Then I married Devin, and he married a woman named Kaiti.  Hallie was born in our family, and Truman was born in theirs.  Truman had some trouble when he was born (coartation of the aorta) and needed heart surgery pretty immediately.  Marc and his wife started a blog and I read it to stay updated on what was going on with their sweet little guy.  One day his wife posted a link to another blog that had a video showcasing other childre...

Yesterday I was buckling Hallie in to her car seat. I was nervous.  It reminded me of how nervous I had been a few weeks ago - ok, that's not how I want to start this thought. Let me start over. Um. Well, maybe that is the best place to start.  This is getting awkward now. I was nervous because Hallie was not wearing a diaper. And she was not wearing pull ups.  We were on our way to church, and she was wearing her big girl panties.  That's a full on just over three hour commitment we were heading off to, one that was unlike going to the library or the store because I wouldn't want to have to come home if there were an accident.  We took two extra pairs of clothes, and three extra pairs of panties.  Still, it was a pretty big leap of faith.  Trusting that she would remember to stay dry until we could get her on the potty.  Hoping that she would not be afraid of the big potties at church, unlike last time when she cried and cried when I put ...

Hallie was pretty much completely average when she was born.  Her due dates were January 5 and/or January 7. (I had two doctors and a midwife during that pregnancy. Yeah, it was in that time of life when we were moving a lot... So I'm just thankful two of the experts agreed with each other or I would have had three due dates. Yikes.)  I went into labor on January 5, and 26 hours later she was born. Hanna was pretty much completely average when she was born.  Her due date was January 20, and I went into labor with her on January 13.  She was born four hours later.  Hanna weighed a few ounces more than Hallie had, and was an inch or two longer. I am not exactly sure of the details, and I refuse to go check. I will not go look for the exact same reason that is keeping me from going down there now, even though Hanna had her six month checkup yesterday and I am dying to run downstairs to my files in the basement and see what Hallie had weighed and how tall she h...

You can have Robert Pattinson (is Taylor Lautner more your style?) and you can have Justin Bieber. Or if you prefer Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake or George Clooney you can have them too. OR if you prefer Sean Connery, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Richard Gere, you can have your pick of them. Take whoever you want.  I've got my manly man. I know it's not our anniversary of anything, or his birthday, or Father's Day, but can I tell you a little about him, please? He gets up every morning to go running, be it rain or shine, sleet or snow.  Injuries notwithstanding, he wakes up and works out.  (He'd make a great postal delivery person, am I right?)  He's itching to run another (his 20th?) marathon this fall, but we just can't find one. I told him to organize his own.  Why not? He works hard at his job and is fast on his way to becoming seriously world famous. No, I mean it. Can I brag (more) about him for a second? He had a meeting with ConAgra (flour) a w...

You may think less of me after reading this. First of all, let me begin my saying that I have lived a quiet, simple life.  When I order something to eat, I rarely and only recently ask for special considerations (as in, no tomatoes.)  If the food comes to me not as I ordered it, I don't think I have ever sent it back.  While driving I am more likely to stop for a yellow light than speed up to go through one.  I hardly ever freely offer my opinion, especially over controversial matters.  I don't speed, I don't lie, and I don't stop people from cutting in line in front of me.  I can see you, sitting there, smirking, thinking that I am a complete pushover, absolutely lacking in assertiveness.  And you're pretty much right. (Although, there are a handful of Sears and Sears Mastercard employees that have recently discovered thanks to a fiasco involving an LG washer and dryer that when messed with over something I think is important I have steel in my back...

A few posts back I wrote about all the things that are filling my life with beauty and happiness. This is not one of those things. This is something that I realize will come eventually, an irrevocable, undeniable, unavoidable fact of life.  I just didn't see it coming quite this soon.  Maybe I should have.  I thought I had 15 to 20 more years, easy.  After all, that's about how long it took for my thoughts to start moving in that direction when I was growing up. At the temple Hallie picked a flower.  She carried it all over as we walked through the cemetery, across the street, past the visitors center, and across the parking lot.  Then she stood in front of our car, as seen above.  She said, "Daddy, I want to give my flower to a boy."  (There might have been one or two prepositions missing. Otherwise, it is word for word.) I think my heart broke into tiny little pieces, even as I laughed.  There were plenty of boys around, in fact the...

I used to love music. (still do.) I used to have music playing all the time. (can't. 2 year old won't let me.) I used to be constantly finding and listening to new artists, thanks to awesome friends, Craig, Heather, Pete the ol' Cheat... Now, I don't think I have had a new song on my computer or ipod since... 2008.  (and that makes me sad sometimes.) BUT there's good news at the end of this tragic tale.  Remember a while ago I discovered the likes of CJane and friends?  Well, thanks to CJane and friends, I discovered Mindy Gledhill.   Ahhh... and it's just the kind of music I like. Now I'll let you see what you think. Seriously just love the clapping. And this one was in the YouTube video about Stephanie Nielson . Now, let us be clear about how much I like Mindy Gledhill and her music. I haven't purchased an entire album since... easily before 2005.  I will be buying her album when it comes out. I may buy one for everyone I know.  Ok, a qu...