Jinxed by Jackie

I got home tonight and after checking in on the one tax deduction that I have left, I made my obligatory stop over to check on Nancy.  She was on the phone face timing Jackie down in St George. Jackie has just had all the carpet in her house replaced because of faulty pipes in her house. I am so envious, I would love new carpet, so Jackie said, "Well you just need a leaky pipe". Well, I came home, talked for about 10 minutes with Scott and walked into my bedroom to hear    drip    drip    drip   I  looked up and there was a bubble in my ceiling.  Sure enough the upstairs sink is leaking........yeah thanks Jackie.

Dunkirk

A few weeks ago we went to see the movie Dunkirk. It was pretty tough to watch for several reasons.

1) I just went with Erik to register for selective service and most of those boys on that beach looked like him

2) Where were the Americans during this horrible time of the war? Oh yeah...we were pretending it wasn't going to affect us and Joe Kennedy was saying Hitler was a good guy

3) I have a ton of English blood in my veins, all those people look like us.

Anyway,  it was a great movie, the whole family enjoyed it.

The Awesome Awful of a Pioneer Heritage

I come from a long line of LDS (Mormon) pioneers, now when I say that, I mean a lot from both sides!! Not only do I have a lot of ancestors that joined the saints in this life, but since I have lots of generations, those that weren't baptized in this life have no doubt been baptized by proxy at least more than once.  So I grew up with lots of family stories about these larger than life people that survived angry mobs, buffalo stampedes, famine, drought, plaque, and grasshoppers. Yes, it's a pretty impressive legacy, after all who wouldn't be impressed by an ancestor that stole the Connecticut charter from King George's governor and hid it in the Charter Oak? Or the ancestor that while settling Manti, lived in a dugout at the bottom of the temple hill - only to awake in the middle of the night to rattlesnakes dropping from the shelf above them? Or even a larger than life Grandpa that helped get Glen Canyon Dam built by testifying to Congress?

It's awesome, and it's awful.

Who can live up to that? What's left for me in my advancing years as I look at my accomplishments? After all what will my descendants say about me? "She did analysis for the EPA's Information Collection Rule" or "She was still getting bucked off horses into her latter years" In the modern era it's pretty difficult to accomplish "great" things...my life is pretty domesticated. Honestly, if the truth is known, I don't know that I have the desire to do great things.  Maybe I'm comfortable in my little corner of the world, with my animals, lab work, and family.

If the whole truth is known, maybe my ancestors would not necessarily want to be viewed as legends either.  They did what they needed to, after all, what choice did they have when faced with their options.  They were just human and they bucked up, went forward, survived and raised their children.  At the end of our lives, I think we just want to know that we made some difference in the lives of the people we love.

Landless...

We went off the land line about 6 weeks ago, it's been a pretty big adjustment. Mostly for the 3 people that still called me at home. Scott on the other hand has been thrilled, he never checked his cell before and he still doesn't. So if you are looking for him, apparently you have to go through me. I have however still not gone through my house and remove all the cordless phones yet. So that ought to confuse anyone that visits!

The 24 year Malaise

It has slowly been increasing, not that I was ever a "dinner every night at 6 sharp" kind of wife. In fact when we lived in Roy, if the door bell rang after dark, Emily would yell, "Dinner's Here!!!", please realize she was only 3.

Well it got a little better for awhile, but the truth of the matter is lately I have absolutely no interest in cooking. So my little family usually mooches off one or the other of the Fuller families, because they both still cook. Now, lately I have been a little (lot) stressed out, so much so that I have actually taken a little time off work. The other morning, while discussing my current craziness, Scott asks me what responsibilities he could take off my shoulders. I said, "Cooking" he said, "I hate cooking". In fact it has gotten to the point that mostly what we eat is bread (in some form of sandwiches, toast, or plain) and we really don't even have food in the house, except a freezer full of pork, cupboards full of spaghetti sauce, and you know other ingredients....

So we still haven't resolved the issue, but today we are sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, watching food poon in the form of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We aren't so much being inspired to cook as we are about going out to dinner, If only is wasn't Sunday.

Parent Failure #138765

As previously mentioned, I love watching Dr. Pol, it reminds me both of my childhood and the decision I made to not become a vet. Anyway, I was in my room watching and episode when Erik came in to talk to me about something. In the middle of talking to me he looks at the TV and sees Dr. Pol fishing around inside a cow looking to get a twin lined up for delivery.

Erik: UGHH...Mom, you know I don't like watching this
Me: What, Dr. Pol, or delivering calves?
Erik: Delivering the calves, I don't EVER want to see something like that in real life.
Me: Really?? What about when you child is born, don't you want to be in there with the wife and see the baby?
Erik: OHHH...thanks for that mental image Mom!! My wife laying there and some guy with his arms up to his elbows in her vagina!


.....ok........

1) Where did you learn the word vagina? And when did it become so comfortable in your vocabulary?

2) Little tip for both you and your wife, if a Dr. is reaching that far up there, that baby isn't ready to come out and you should stop him.

The Epitaph on my tomb stone

I am currently in the process of swearing all my relatives that they will be sure to have "She should have known better" on my headstone. Which leads me to my newest adventure, it started out as any normal crazy day. I had a dentist appointment (nitrous oxide is the very best part of this day), then Erik had drivers ed, but had forgotten some paperwork. So my casual morning of shopping turned into a rush home to get a paper packet and rush it back into the driving school. At that point I realized that the dentist had left the filling a little to high, so a quick stop back to the dentist for a quick grind down.

At this point I realize my day has been an absolute waste, so I decide to head home. On my way home, while passing the radio towers between Whitewater and the turn off, I noticed a person on her hands and knees out in the weeds, down by the fence. No apparent cars around, so I back up and walk on down to where a teenage girl was sobbing. I start talking to her and she was obviously coming off something. She asked if I could help her and if I was a devil, I assured her that I didn't think I was a devil and asked her is she wanted to say a prayer before I took her to the hospital. She said yes, so we knelt together and said a prayer.

SIDE NOTE: This is the turning point when this could be an awesome story...

I get her into my car, and she is all scratched up in her itty bitty shorts and tiny tank top, she kept thanking me, then she started talking about Lucifer, demons, angels, and if this was hell. Then she asked if we had to keep living this life over and over, if that was hell. Then she began to talk about how Satan had been an angel and that God forgives everyone, but not her, she had been to bad. This went on for about 5 minutes, crying, and crying, then she needed a drink, which fortunately I had a fresh bottle of water in the truck, then she needed a bag to hurl in. So I gave her a Taco Bell bag (Note: she never actually hurled, thank goodness).

At this point we had made it to Orchard Mesa, and I was thinking I was going to make it, drop her off at the ER and call it good. All that changed however, after we went through the stop light at 28 1/2 Rd, that is when she went bat guano crazy. She started kicking the dash, the window, me, she threw water bottles at me and grabbed the wheel of my truck, while I was going about 50 mph. Thankfully, she was pretty little so I did manage to pull the truck over into the barrow ditch without flipping it (which I was complimented on by both a sheriff deputy and a couple of witnesses). As soon as the truck stopped, she was out running around on the frontage road. Screaming and carrying on, knowing my cell was just about out of juice I decided to go ahead and call 911, but just then an older couple stop to help me stare at her and keep her from getting run over since she is now laying in the east bound lane of the frontage road.

Of course, the 911 dispatcher wanted all kinds of information that I didn't have. I just wanted her to dispatch someone. She asked me the girls name, age, then asked if she was black...I hadn't mentioned that. So... what did the dispatcher know that I didn't. I asked if someone had been dispatched, and if they were running lights, because you can almost see the OM fire station from where we were. Dispatch informed me that fire/ambulance wouldn't be there until law enforcement because the girl was violent... curious, hadn't really mentioned that either. In the mean time, the old people were busy keeping her from getting run over since she was laying flat on her back with her arms out in the middle of the lane. She kept mumbling about demons, then she looked at me and informed me that I was a viper, that I pretended to be all Christian. But God knows! Then she told me that God loved her, my response, "Yes He does, but I'm not real fond of you right now." Finally the officers got her in handcuffs and asked her if she had had something special today, she said she did but they would have to guess!!!

The first deputy said "Mushrooms", "Nope, try again" she said. The other deputy said "Dabs?" "YUP!" she got all excited again, then promptly attempted to pass out. That's when they escorted her over to the ambulance.

After the deputy came back, he told us what daps were, apparently they are super concentrated THC mixed with some type of substance like candle wax, which gives them basically an overdose of marijuana. The deputy told us that this was the 10th case of daps this week. Plus I was the third person to have kicked this particular young lady out of the car. The last guy she ripped his sunglasses off his head while he was driving and called him a cyborg, in fact that was why the deputy's response took so long, he had been out looking for her on the highway.




Later, he needed my contact info, this made me hesitant, so I told him my name, then when it came to the address I gave him the street and saw the tell-tale tightening of the lips. "yeah, I know, I should have known better". He asked if things had quieted down on our little Mormon family street, I told him it had for awhile after they had gotten Lisa, but recently another cousin had started seriously growing marijuana, and things had gotten a little worse.

In the end, yes I should have just called 911 from the highway...I should have known better.