Meant to be

Have you ever dreamed of what your life might be like, if things had happened differently? Or thought about the whole reincarnation thing, and wondered if you would remember something or someone, even if you were living a new, different life?

I was taking a nap. I dreamed that I was back in college, but my life was different. I dreamed that Elizabeth had never died, that my parents were still together and satisfied. I still had a relationship with my parents like the one I had as a child, one where I could call my mom about anything, thinking she could fix any problem for me, that she would be there for me no matter what. Jennifer and Kara weren't there because Elizabeth hadn't died, but I wasn't very close to her or Brad. I was far away from all of them.

I was in college and feeling so alone and wondering, who's missing? I went through all my family members, checking them against this hole in the heart, but nobody matched up. I knew there was supposed to be someone who I turned to when I needed to talk, when I needed a hug, when I needed a shoulder to cry on, who I shared everything with. But I couldn't find them. I thought Matthew for a moment, but that didn't make sense. Had I dated my cousin? The age gap was way too big. Where was my boyfriend? I visited jail, thinking, I have an uncle who's in jail, maybe I'm missing him? I got tangled in that for a while, tangled in his schemes to help get him out that made only dream-sense, but I was still so sad and frustrated.

And I woke up and knew that I was missing Matt. Matt usually plays on my laptop right next to me in the bed at night. I fall asleep with him next to me. But he was in his little office playing on his computer, so that I could take my nap. I found him and asked for a hug, and as soon as he put his arms around me, I started crying.

I've always had strange dreams. I've dreamed that I was in a group that, like Lehi and his family, found the tree of life, and felt that I gained my own spiritual message from the dream. But I feel like, with this one, that I would miss Matt, that I wouldn't be whole, if my life had gone any other way. And somehow I'd know that it hadn't gone right, because I was missing the most vital person in my life. I am so lucky to be married to my best friend and the love of my life. And I am so happy that things have turned out the way they have.

Woohoo!

I'm sitting on Matt's parents' couch right now, typing on my new laptop I got for Christmas. Santa was very good to me this year. And Matt. And Natalee. Santa still has a present waiting for Natalee at our apartment, something that was too big to bring in the car with all of the presents we had to bring with us. And Natalee has a new mattress waiting for her from Grandma Julie that we need to purchase a bed frame and maybe a foundation for. Hopefully we'll find a good deal this coming week. I'll be off until the 5th, so I'll have time to write more hopefully, in between finally organizing the new apartment, finishing unpacking, hanging things on the walls and switching around the contents of the closets, getting ready for company on New Year's Eve and making the food for it, and being a lazy bum. Hopefully I'll have pictures then, too.

New places, snotty faces

So, we're moved into the new apartment. Hurrah! A little farther north now, so it only takes me ten to fifteen minutes to get to work, and Matt about fifteen to twenty. Mucho improv-a-mento (<- bad Spanglish) over the hour drive. Though there are days like yesterday when there's traffic and wrecks and it still takes me an hour to get home. The new place is really, really nice. It's on a keel with the first apartment Matt and I had, pre-Natalee, if not nicer than it. My uncle still loves me lots (and my cooking and baking) and hired some day laborers and a flunky or two to haul our stuff to the new place in his trailer, and then haul it up to the second floor and put it where I told them to (usually). We're starting to settle in, though the dining room has a layer of boxes in it rather than a table. I actually need to get those unpacked today for Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's seeming to become a tradition for some odd reason, that when we move into a new place, it's always within a week of Thanksgiving and we cook and invite people over for it. Despite the boxes and oddly disposed belongings and the incipient exhaustion.

There's an added hurdle this year because Natalee has been sick almost non-stop for a week now. She threw up last Thursday, she's had a fever all week, her nose is in a marathon and leaves its tracks all over her face and in her hair when she sleeps, and she's hacking and coughing now. My poor baby. They say it's a virus, but I'm taking her back to the doctor today (b/c the fever's lasted so long) and will ask if it could be allergies. She's just been sick SO much lately. I know it's to be expected, starting out at daycare, but Matt and I have already missed nearly ten days of work altogether. Plus there have been quite a few days that Mom has taken care of her. She's been sick a lot! We can't afford to keep this up, for several reasons, not even considering how wearing this is on her poor little body. If it's allergies, we need to find out and take care of it. Or figure out whatever the heck keeps making her sick and if there's anything we can do to prevent it. And the medicines we can give her for all the different symptoms are so hard on her, too. Argh. I wish I knew how to make her better. In some ways I miss the days when I could solve her problems by just putting her to my breast and feeding her.

We also have to finish cleaning up the old apartment before the first. Matt's been working his tail off trying to spackle and paint and clean over there when he gets off from work every day, but there's still a lot to do. He cares more about cleaning it all up than I do, seeing as how badly the complex has treated us over the past year, the problems that are inherent to the apartment, and the fact that after three years of living in the place, the likelihood of getting any of our deposit back is nil. Bleh, oh well. We'll be putting on our 'cleaning caps' and getting to work after Natalee and I get back from her doctor's visit.

There's still a lot to be thankful for. Like a nice, new apartment. I'll be spending tomorrow with my mother, her new husband, and my baby sis. I have a nephew we're waiting for to be born any day. A good, loving, funny family. And sharing my life with my best friend and the most wonderful little girl the world has known.




Oh!oh!oh! and turkey! And the leftovers are mine!!!! Bwahaha! *victory dance* I knew there was a good reason to be happy. Happy Thanksgiving!

Smug

Smugness is finding the $5 and under section of http://www.bn.com/ when you have a $50 gift card for your birthday. With $6 tacked on to that, I ordered nine books with free shipping. All brand-spanking-new books, sans suspicious yellow stains, odd smells, and/or mouse poop. (I found out I'm allergic to mouse poop in college from mysterious used books.) They should get here by Tuesday of next week, if not before. How frickin' awesome is that? I'm fighting not to grin like an idiot or do a pointless booty dance in my computer chair. I feel like He-Man must've felt after winning a battle. There must have been a reason for that silly looking grin of his, right? Oh, yeah....

*grin*

Post Ike

I can't believe I can say I've lived through a hurricane. I think, I was in a hurricane, what? And then I remember Saturday around 4 a.m., hearing the wind blowing outside our apartment, hearing things being picked up and hurled outside our windows. And then I know, yes, I've lived through a hurricane. I knew those winds were around 100 mph and not just 80 to 85 mph. And I didn't dare look out the window to see the devastation the winds were causing because I was afraid of that being the moment something came crashing through the glass. We moved to a pallet in the hallway around 2 a.m. when the winds started picking up and Natalee woke up scared. We pulled the mattress off of her bed and stuck it in the end of the hallway; she slept after that as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The power flickered on and off for a few hours before it finally went out around 4 o'clock.

When it was bright enough to see outside, the parking lot was filling with water. Leaves, twigs, and branches were (and still are) everywhere. The ground seemed preternaturally green with the leaves. Leaves and twigs were jammed between boards on the buildings and glued to cars and windows. The gutter on the neighboring building was ripped off and leaned against our neighbors' porch at a low slant. Nothing crashed through our windows, thank God, but an ornamental tree maybe a foot and a half away from our front window lost the top half of its main trunk. Its secondary trunk is still attached, but the winds were so crazy and violent that the little trunk was twisted around and around before it finally shredded and fell over. With its top trunk sticking up into the air broken and the other trunk and branches leaning down to touch the ground, it looks like the tree is flipping us off.

It rained hard for 12 to 13 hours straight. We got about 18 inches of rain in less than a day. The water in the parking lot was starting to spill over the curbs and was reaching over wheels when a group of residents pulled open a storm drain in the middle of the lot. I thought it was the worst kind of stupid at the time because all the debris would start washing down into the drain and possibly block it up worse, but I was wrong and the open drain kept the lot from flooding the whole complex. We've always had a problem with Natalee's closet leaking when it rains hard. This time the water reached almost to the door of her room, covering 3/4 of her floor. Where the exterior rebuilding crew hammered holes through our wall and cracked portions of it, water leaked through onto our bedroom floor under our bed.

Being without power got old fast. I grew up in a family that went without power for a few days at a time when we couldn't afford our electric bill, but I don't remember it ever being this hard dealing with the food situation. Or dealing with the amount of things to be done with little ability to do any of them. And we usually had a phone line growing up even if we didn't have power, or vice versa. It was rarely both. But we have digital phone service now, so when the cable/internet goes down, so does our phone. And the cell phones all over were (and I think still are) in digital roam. So we lacked a way to contact our family to tell them we were okay (without incurring huge charges) or to check on family or friends who weathered the storm. Matt has a tv/radio/lantern combo that we watched TV on for updates on the storm and the power. We have windup radios to listen to the news and music on, one of which we loaned to a neighbor who had no way to hear the news about boiling and conserving water and other updates. We napped a lot in the humidity and rain. I finished Kara's baby shower invitations with embellishments. Natalee decorated an envelope, too. We took a walk but had to turn back almost immediately because of downed powerlines and debris blocking the way. We tried to leave in the car around dinnertime to see if there was anything open, to survey the damage, etc. We got about 50 feet before we had to turn back - huge knocked down trees blocking our way, and power lines dangling from posts and trailing across the street like jungle vines or ribbons. I got terribly antsy, being trapped inside the apartment with all the windows closed because of the rain and no air circulating, and so many things to be done and no way to do them. We finally made a stirfry on the butane-powered single burner stove I bought Thursday. It seemed sinfully luxurious to eat a hot meal. We finished it off with melting ice cream from the freezer. We caved and called family to check in briefly. And just as we were settling in with our melted ice cream, watching the news in black and white on a three inch screen, the power came back on.

We have been so truly blessed throughout this. We are all safe and well, as is my family. My grandfather is still without power, but has a generator. My mother's house didn't lose power during the storm, but yesterday when they fixed the lines so all of their neighbors got their power back, they lost it. They have a generator, too, though. Gas lines are awful, but more and more stations are getting their power back, so more will be opening. Please understand, when we got our power back after 18 hours without, there were still 16,000 people without it, and closer to 2 million in Houston without. Only after last night did our town get most of its power back. We were able to buy groceries Sunday. We felt guilty, able to buy food that has to be cooked, when so many people are struggling to find food that doesn't have to be heated, or can be heated on a little charcoal grill. There were no frozen or cold items at the store. None. No milk, no eggs, no meat, nothing. But the line to check out was still 30 minutes long. A small portion of our town never lost power, so for my birthday on Sunday we were able to get Arby's sandwiches through the drive-thru after waiting half an hour. (That's all they were serving - Arby's roast beef sandwiches in three sizes, fries, and soft drinks. Chili's was packed with a line out the door and down the sidewalk in the late afternoon.)

Matt (and I to a smaller degree) spent the past few days pulling up carpets, drying up the wet padding and the concrete below, airing rooms out to get rid of the mildew stink, shifting furniture around to accomodate the carpet clean up. Matt still doesn't have work today. And Willis ISD, where I work now, is closed through the end of the week. I'm hoping nothing terrible has happened to the school where I work, or to any of the kids or employees. I know Willis residents are still without power or phones. Hopefully they have running water and sewage. So many people are without even that. It's seemed like a vacation, all being home together, and sleeping in, that I occasionally forget the reason. I feel like a terrible person for that, watching the news and seeing what so many people are dealing with and going without, but there's not much I can do to change that. We don't have money to share - I'm not getting paid for the work we're missing. We've offered our home to friends and family and coworkers with no result. There's not much else we can do. So I'm enjoying this time with my family and thanking God with a very sincere heart that we have so very much and that we made it through the storm without harm.


I've been teasing Matt that getting our power back was God's birthday present to me. Because He loves me. Don't know about Matt. :-p

Ike

Friggin', stupid hurricane crap...

(moment of silence for bleeped out rant)

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Hopefully I'll have more to tell you after the storm. Hopefully I'll have power after the storm. Cross your fingers and say some prayers for us, please.

hmmurrrphretickingschmurfinmuckerstinkingoinwidoutpoweronmybirthdayikeblurginflurpin...........

Baby Shower

My sister Kara is having a little boy in December. And I told her I'm throwing the baby shower. Fun thing, I haven't been to a baby shower in around fifteen years. And I was a kid in the background then. (My baby shower(s) didn't happen, not for lack of trying on friends' and family's part - some of them.) So I'm trying to remember what all you do at baby showers, what's cool, what's not. Where the heck to hold the shower if we can't use Kara's ward's Relief Society room. (Boy, Relief Society looks weird when you write it out. I always pronounced it Reeleeephssuh-sigh-eee-tee as a kid. It wasn't two words; it was one nonsensical word smush. It wasn't meant to make sense. So I now that I write it down and look at it as an adult, I think to myself, "Huh? A society for relief? When did that happen?") I don't have oodles of money to spend on some posh banquet room or even enough to pay for everyones drinks and food at a decent restaurant. If I had to hold it at some kind of restaurant, with the cha-ching going in my wallet, we'd be having it in the McDonald's playground, and everyone would be ordering off the dollar menu. "What? They don't have cheese on the double burger here on the dollar menu? Can you add cheese for more?......No." No fun all around, if you include shrieking kids running amok around you.

Soooo....what to do? Any advice? Anything you loved or hated at a baby shower you attended? And yes, you'll be invited, Steph. I run the show this time, so I get to invite who I want. I'm going to make this cake hopefully:

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/recipe.aspx?recipeID=45539&Source=SearchResultPage

Our friends who are supposed to teach me the fine arts of cake decorating are finally coming over this Friday. And there's even a video to show you how to make the cake. (Kara's theme for little Tristan Nicholas is ducks.) So, I figure if I really want to go cheap, I can buy one or two cake mix boxes to make the cake, make my own frosting sans trans fats. And make the rest of the refreshments or beg a few off on a few other people. I know I want to make a brownie pie. And I'm thinking I'm going to buy a couple cute little ducky ice cube trays, set up a cute punch bowl with little rubber duckies on top, and just serve water or blue Kool-Aid with duckie ice cubes, possibly flavored ones. That way, my budget can go for decorating the room so it won't be quite so blah. (Church rooms always seem so blah at a party, to me at least.) And for the prizes and Kara's gifts. And stamps and invitations. And party favors. Gack. The cheaper I can do stuff, the better. If I have to, I'll send round the hat for donations from family members if the costs build up too much. Or just tell someone to do something. *coughjennifercough*

I found a pretty cool website that's helped me plan so far.

http://www.babyshower101.com/index.html

It has a lot of great games. I've already gone through and picked out some for review by my shower sidekick. I just know, if I don't go through and plan out and do a bunch of this now, things are going to happen in between, and then I'll have an avalance of things to do the week before the party. Which will be mid October.

And Natalee's getting her pink princess glove off on Friday. She got a buckle fracture in her right wrist three weeks ago from falling off the bed. So she's had a pink waterproof cast on since mid July. We call it her princess glove. She hasn't minded it so much - she's gotten lots of attention from it. Kids at the playground come up just to ask about her owie. And adults always seem to have stickers or cookies or candy tucked away somewhere for her and kitty cat since this happened. There's a long story about why she broke her wrist, and I could rant and rave for a while about the evil apartment complex and the new manager. But I won't, and Natalee's been doing okay with the cast.

I have an interview tomorrow. Hopefully it'll go well, and it'll be something I want. And maybe I'll get some more invitations for interviews in the next week or two. We'll see. Wish me luck.