Because I Was Apparently WILD in High School

Tyler: So I learned more about the world today.

Laura: Okay.

Tyler: So there's these kids, who go to parties. And they don't drink at the parties. They do drugs. Ectasy. I can't really remember what they're called.

Laura: Raves.

Tyler: What?

Laura: They're called raves.

Tyler: How did you know that?

Laura: People from high school went to raves.

Tyler: Not at my high school.

Laura: Tyler, we went to the same high school.

Tyler: No, cause you always know all this stuff. Maybe you learned it in fifth and sixth grade when you were at a different elementary.

Laura: I learned about raves at Upland Terrace?

Tyler: I think so.

Laura: Tyler, you don't know about raves because of your adorable naivete.

Tyler: [...] Could we maybe call it my hot naivete instead?

Because Laura Needs a Little Help Getting to 10 Posts This Month

The way I see it, the iPod Touch is the absolute antithesis to those cute family-promoting Mormon commercials.

Daddy: Talmage, which do you like more: Daddy or the iPod?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: Wait, I asked it wrong. If you only got to keep one, Daddy or the iPod, which would you keep?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: No, wait. What if the one you didn't pick went away forever and ever, and you never saw it again? Which would you pick then: Daddy or the iPod?

Talmage: The iPod.

Daddy: Well, if I had to pick between Talmage and the iPod, I'd pick Talmage.

Talmage: I'd pick the iPod.

When Trying to Decide Whether or Not You Like Your New Haircut, Don't Mention in the Same Breath That It Looks Just Like Your Sister's.

It won't go over well. Trust me.

Is It Really True That It Took Me Two Months To Finish A Fantastic Book That I Love? Yep.

Do you have someone you look up to? That you think of when you make mothering decisions, that you hope to emulate when decorating your house? That you choose the same favorite color as, just because she's adorable when she talks about red?

Hi Sarah! It's nice to be your sister-in-law.

Now first off, I'm surrounded with amazing people, namely each and every one of my sisters and sisters-in-law, my mother and mother-in-law, my cousins, all my friends. I'm blessed like that. No buts about it.

But Sarah somehow crams her day full of all the things I hope to accomplish, and I'm not sure how she does it, and that kind of balance just kind of floors me. I'm not jealous, and I promise I don't feel inadequate, and I'm sure Sarah struggles, too, but I would like to refinish my front room table, read Anna Karenina, raise beautiful (seriously beautiful) children, weed around my hastas, and kiss my doctor husband goodbye as he spends days (and nights)at the hospital, all in the same 24-hour period. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Sometimes it takes her 48 hours.

Sigh.

I'm not there yet.

So I've done a MUCH better job at housekeeping in the past few months than is typical. I'm very proud of myself and I'm pleased at the homey feel it brings to the Howe home life. But I don't read all that much anymore. Maybe when Tyler finishes this program. Maybe.

My cousin-in-law Cheree has a mother who raised something like 12 children. And that kind of mothering required serious cleaning, so much so that in her older life when she wanted to take a vacation and needed a passport, she had no fingerprints to speak of. SHE HAD NO FINGERPRINTS. Scrubbing her children's smudges and marks and smears, wiping the grimy prints off her walls and tables and chairs, she washed off her own, losing her identity, her self in her great sacrifice to her home. Okay that's my more poetic rendering of it, but doesn't a small part of you want to be the fingerprintless woman? To make such a home?

I looked forward to reading An American Childhood at the end of everyday, caught up in the words and images. I loved keeping company with Annie Dillard, nervous that at some point her mother was going to die, or her sister was going to get cancer. And they didn't. She had a beautiful childhood. And she wrote a beautiful memoir. I mentally highlighted several passages, but the following quotation seemed to strike a chord in my 12-year-old heart, my reading-on-Saturday-morning-(or afternoon, or evening)-when-I-should-be-cleaning-my-room heart. (And it made me proud and grown-up that even while 29-year-old me longed to still be reading instead of vacuuming the rug, I was, instead, vacuuming the rug.)

Parents have no idea what the children are up to in their bedrooms [...]. They are reading the same paragraphs over and over, dizzy with gratification as the young lovers find each other in the French fort, as the boy avenges his father, as the sound of muskets in the woods signals the end of the siege. They could not move if the house caught fire. They hate the actual world. The actual world is a kind of tedious plane where dwells, and goes to school, the body, the boring body which houses the eyes to read the books and houses the heart the books enflame. The very boring body seems to require and inordinately big, very boring world to keep it up, a world where you have to spend far too much time, have to do time like a prisoner, always looking for a chance to slip away, to escape back home to books, or escape back home to any concentration--fanciful, mental, or physical--where you can lose your self at last. Although I was hungry all the time, I could not bear to hold still and eat; it was too dull a thing to do, and had no appeal either to courage or to imagination. The blinding sway of their inner lives makes children immoral. They find things good insofar as they are thrilling, inso far as they render them ever more feverish and breathless, ever more limp and senseless on the bed.

On a side note, how on earth do you write like that?



So again, due to my beautiful friend Hana who regularly leaves me books on my doorstep, I've been reading a lot of fantasy. I remember reading Robin McKinley as a child (I'm pretty sure I read The Hero and the Crown (a Newberry winner) and Beauty) and I liked reading this book because it felt straight out of my childhood. You know, juvenile fantasy before Twilight. A little slower, a little less sexual tension.

I liked it.

If You Think This Email Exchange Is Funny, You're Probably a Paulsen

Friendly Ward Member: Just a reminder for the Breakfast with the Bishopric activity on March 6th at 9am in the church Gym. Will each of you make a list of 10 fun facts about you that we can use in a get to know you game? I need the list as soon as you can get to it. Thank you all!

Dad: I don’t think there are any fun facts in my character. What would you suggest?

Laura: Loves to read, but only nonfiction. The only fiction I can remember him ever reading is Harry Potter.
Has run everyday of his life since he was 25.
Is allergic to peanuts.
Believes water while exercising is for wusses.
Is 1/2 Norwegian.
That grumpy look on his face? It's only for show.
Can muscle his way through just about any food. Expired milk? Sure. Just not the peanuts.
Loves to hike and backpack. And read while he's resting.
Has no interest in fashion, whatsoever.
Only owns black socks.
Loves his daughter Laura the most.

Sean:I think he also read Eragon.
Is occasionally whimsical, albeit in an unvarying way: "See you in the funny papers!"
Has gone so far as to voluntarily take a day or two off work at his own initiative on the holidays instead of being told to do it by his wife or forced by the hand of fate in the form of a wedding or a funeral.
Skis old school on long boards (impresses the crusty oldster ski bums at Alta)
Used to read while freeway driving until it dawned on him that it just might not comply with either common sense or the subtle nuances of the legal code.
His favorite t-shirt reads, "So many books, so little time."
His favorite t-shirt should read, "Engineers do it in CAD first" or possibly "You know you're an engineer if you have no life and can prove it mathematically"
Loves his semi-beautiful daughter Laura.

Scott: Once offered to mortgage the house to help finance his oldest daughter's college education.
Actually did have to mortgage the house to finance youngest daughter's college education.

Oh Well, Daddy's My Favorite, Too

Words Asher has tried to say:

1. Uh Oh
2. Da-Da
3. Lu
4. Woof
5. Ball
6. I'm Hungry (Mmmmmm)
7. Night-night

Word Asher has no interest in even attempting:

1. Mama

Presenting the Many Talents of Asher Howe

Asher Turns 1

Dizzy

To Which I Responded "My Humor Doesn't Translate Well to Four Year Old."

"Daddy, you're like one thousand funny. Mommy, you're like two. The number two. Two funny."

Thoughts While Doing Wednesday Night Dishes

Citrus roast chicken,
mesquite barbeque pork loin,
peppers
zucchini
red onions and
squash,
all oiled and salted and
dripping
dripping
dripping
their juices and fat
down to the bottom of this roasting pan where it
bakes.
Here I am
scraping and
scraping and
scraping and
flaking minute little pieces of charcoaly food,
wondering aloud,
Isn't my life
worth more than this pan
another of which I could probably purchase
from Williams Sonoma
or Home Goods
or Smiths?

Get Dressed

Crawling

To One Who is In North Carolina. Or Maybe It's New York. I'm Not Really Sure and That Pains Me.

Dear Shelley:

I'm sorry to tell you that my husband doesn't like pickles. He is, however, very much like we imagined our husbands to be. He is fine, and he is handsome, and he treats me very well. He is not the twin of your husband, something I distantly recall being in the plan. My two sons, however, both adore pickles, and that came as a bit of a shock. At least it was a shock in Asher's case after I plopped a pickle down on his high chair tray when he grunted for it for a solid five minutes. "There. Let's see how you like that," I condescended with all the confidence of a mother who knows how things would turn out. Because mothers ALWAYS know how things will turn out. I was wrong.

Has it ever occured to you that the best parts of our friendship have always been written? When we've been distant, it was always a letter that reminded me how much of me you formed. Or it was a journal entry that you trustingly shared with me that let me know how deeply you cared about whatever it was you cared about. Or it was a late night tome that we addressed to some kid in Vermont that you met at the Hill Cumorah pageant. Who else gets hyper and then decides to write letters? No one. That's the truth.

And now you have two children that I barely know and one I don't know at all. Most of the time this is okay, because Tyler is now my best friend, as I know Matt is yours. It is good to have husbandly best friends. But there's just something about the original, you know? The best friend you imagine when you see the broken-in-two best-friend heart necklace and think, I should give this to my BEST friend. Or the best friend you imagine when you want someone to talk you into going rollerskating; because that's what best friends do. Or the best friend you imagine when you want to write a blog post to your best friend. Somehow I don't see Tyler wearing the heart necklace.

You and I are bad and being friends at a distance. There. I said it. But you know what? I've been improving myself lately. I aced day one of cleaning my kitchen nightly, and I've written three daily blog posts in a row. So I think I'm ready to give it a try. I am very sorry for ten years of distance. Will you forgive me the letters I didn't write you on my mission and the letters I didn't write you on yours? Will you forgive me the correspondence I failed to keep up while you were in Manhatten falling in love with your husband? Will you forgive me the questions I never put in to email when we were trying to figure out how to be mothers? Will you forgive me the cards of sympathy I didn't send when Matthew was in the hospital with botilism?

Otherwise, I'll continue thinking of you everytime I open up a jar of pickles. Because one really needs a best friend who loves pickles.

Love,

Laura

So I'm Gonna Blog More. It's Still Not a New Year's Resolution.

I was never so beautiful as I was in Brazil.

I like to think I'm pretty attractive. I'm tall. My nailbeds are stunning. I have blue eyes and blond hair. (Despite what my hair looks like in my new profile picture. Marissa called me at 10:00 last night and said, "I was nervous to call you late, but it was an EMERGENCY. Did you dye your hair reddish brown?" Nope. It was a trick of the light.) Blue eyes and blond hair work pretty well for me, much like they work for 78% of the Utah population.

But in southern Brazil, where I lived for four months after I graduated from high school, blue eyes and blond hair were downright HOT. I was the most attractive person the Brazilians had ever seen outside of the movies. Scratch that, I was maybe the most attractive person the Brazilians had ever seen, inside OR outside the movies. That attractability earned me and my little sister Marissa (who also has blue eyes and blond hair) all sorts of ardent admirers.

That ardent admiration was expressed primarily through loud catcalls from passing cars. Marissa and I ran in the morning to the tune of "I lovee you." Only slightly less ardent was the other profession of undying devotion: "The book is on the table." Every Brazilian took an English class in school and they all know that (even though they don't remember any other English) if the earth collides into the sun, that book will still be on the table. And also, they know that if you ever run into a blond-haired, blue-eyed American, shouting "The book is on the table," maybe accompanied by a few Anglo expletives, will guarantee your way into her heart.



Don't you feel both beautiful and wooed?

My New Year's Ruminations

So, I'm typing this while sitting in my living room, staring at my mantlepiece with the letters N O E L displayed proudly. These festive greetings are surrounded by glittery bows and gold and red baubles. Hanging from the mantle are four green and red stockings. One for Daddy, one for Mommy, one for Talmage, and one for Asher. There is also a basket of Christmas books. And a large Santa Claus.

And you know what? I have no immediate plans to take the decorations down.

The tree went down December 26. That is because the tree died circa November 28. Tyler has a tally of trees I keep alive vs. trees I kill. The way he figures, I've got one more year before he nips the fire hazard in the bud and buys a fake tree. The way I figure, Santa Claus will be placing a lump of coal in his stocking. But of course that threat looses it's teeth when it's January 20. Which brings us back to my original point: It's January 20 and I still haven't undecorated my house.

On a semi-related note, I didn't make New Years Resolutions this year. Not that I don't believe in change, because I do. Is it arrogant to say that I'm pretty satisfied with my life right now? I feel like I achieved a pretty good balance this year and I'm satisfied with my health habits, my spiritual habits, and my mothering habits. That my be the first time in my life I can really say that. Well, now that I think about it, I could probably make better goals in my serving others habits. And maybe some better dog-owner habits. Perhaps I could establish better wifely habits. My housekeeping habits could always use some work. I guess I could blog a little more frequently.

And maybe I could take down the Christmas decorations. But you know what? For tonight I going to choose to be satisfied. I'm going to embrace this Wednesday night when I feel balanced. I might even put on a little "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas." I'll talk to you about the ornaments come February.

Mulan - And Two Tone-Deaf Howes

This is an audio recording done a few months ago that I just stumbled across tonight. Unfrotunately, Blogger doesn't let me do an audio file alone, so I had to make it into a video. Consequently, the video portion is extremely uncreative--sorry.

Snowshoe-ing

Howe Thoughts: The Good Parts Version

My little sister Marissa teaches a fourth-fifth split at an elementary school. This means that for the first half of the day, she teaches both fourth graders and fifth graders literacy, and then the classes switch while she teaches just fifth graders math for the second half of the day. Most of her students have two teachers.

Her students were kind and generous with gifts before Christmas break. Her colleague's students were even more kind and generous. "Did you see what Tommy gave us?" her team teacher asked. Marissa followed her over to her stack of loot to see a large assortment of Harry and David gourmet foods.




"I don't remember a gift tower," Marissa said hesitantly. "Maybe I'll go check again."

Marissa went over to her stash to find Tommy's gift to her:



A chia pet.

For my own personal cataloging history, I wanted to chronicle my favorites of 2009 (at least my favorites of the things I track on this blog).

Favorite Books I Read This Year(in no particular order):

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
A River Runs Through It and Other Storiesby Norman Maclean
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Fablehaven (particularly the third book in the series) by Brandon Mull
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Tyler's videos:

Asher: Five Posts in One Day
Hide and Seek
Why You Want to Live at the Howe Home
Asher Begins to Laugh
Happy Fourth of July
Stand
Talmage Turns Four
Our Very Own Maradona
Weight Lifting
Turkey Bowl

My favorites of my own writing. I know this is totally self-serving. I'm doing it anyway. (Is it a shame that I had to reach all the way back to September before I found an entry I liked?):

On Nursing and Panicking (The Hallmarks of New Motherhood)

What to Expect would describe Asher as more of Gourmet. He'll latch on for about 5 seconds, get my milk flowing, and then pull off and try to enjoy the firehose squirting his face at his leisure. He'll sample a mouthful of Mama's Milk (the newest rage at all the finest newborn restaurants) smack his lips satisfactorily, and then maybe spit it out like a wine-taster after he's fully analyzed the bouquet and body. I feel like I've given birth to a snobby Parisian milk connoisseur and at one point he's going to send the milk back if he doesn't find it to his liking.

Just Pretend the Date Attached to This Entry Reads March 17

The most obnoxious thing about this family history obsession is that I am aware of how complex family relations work and feel obligated to explain them to you. "This is Joan," someone might introduce me. "She's my mother's cousin's granddaughter. She's like my fourth cousin, or something." "No," I'll correct. "She's your second cousin once removed. Would you like directions to the Family History Center? My name is Laura."

Here’s My Advice: Stick to Your Standards

If I had to point to one thing wrong with the world, one thing to blame all the ills of society on, it would be the ubiquitous white truck who prowls the street in the summertime looking for pudgy faced kids and their helpless and hapless mothers. Sure, there was a time when I, too, felt a rush of excitement when I heard the tinkly chime of "When the Saints Go Marching In." That was before I realized the militant persistence that qualifies ice cream men to make their $6.55 an hour. I have successfully ignored one stubborn worker who made four tours around the south parking lot of a playground, only to have him enter the north parking lot immediately after. There's only so much stiff mothering you can dole out before you cave and spend $4.50 on a Mickey Mouse Ice Cream bar whose red dye will permanently stain your clothing.

In Memoriam

In the last week, Mom encouraged Grandma to say I love you to her grandchildren. When I said goodbye to her Sunday night, she said "I love you, Laura," after I kissed her on the forehead. It was nice to hear it vocalized. But I almost preferred our previous goodbyes. I'd talk to her on the phone and ask her about her day, her friends who took her to lunch, her meeting at the DUP. I'd close by telling her that I loved her. "Okay, cupie," she'd laugh. Then she'd be gone.

To Compete With Tyler’s ADD

I prefer the description "so creative she has her fingers in many things and can't stop to deal with trifles like shoes." And anyone who has lived with me for longer than fifteen minutes can attest that living with me is an ADVENTURE. Who knows when we're going to leave somewhere because Laura can't find her keys? They could be anywhere! Let's play find Laura's wallet! See? It's fun.

As I Direct Result of Absent-Mindedness I Outlined in a Previous Post. Or Maybe it Was Just Laziness.

What we weren't anticipating, however, was The Attack of the Bad Seventies Information Program. NBC, in place of programming, is sending on an analog signal an explanation of analog vs. digital TV, created in the style of the calculus programs from the Utah Educational Network. Tyler noted that they had to have filmed the program recently, since it speaks to such a current issue, but they must have dusted off their three-piece polyester suits for the explanation.

When I Was Three All I Talked About Was My Little Pony

My first step in potty training was naked time, where I stripped Talmage in hopes that he wouldn't pee on the furniture. It was wildly successful, and Talmage spent large chunks of the day without clothing on. Being naked became a habit at our house. I know what you're thinking. For the sake of strangers showing up unannounced, I needed to dress my child. But he was my little itty-bitty baby boy! Little itty-bitty baby bums are adorable!

The day after Asher joined our family, all I could think was "That kid needs some pants. Somebody should tell his mother."

Much to the Chagrin of Our Friends and Family

So we did an online search. And people? YOU LIED TO ME. Cell phones cost upwards of forty dollars a month. And that's the cheapest plan we could find. And even more shocking? NONE OF YOU ARE SHOCKED BY THAT. How on earth do you pay that, people? Do you have any idea how much orange juice I could buy that I currently avoid at the store because it's too expensive? A WHOLE LOTTA ORANGE JUICE. And not even the concentrate stuff. I could buy the straw in the actual orange, fresh from the fruit stand, with enough pulp swimming around so the viscosity measures somewhere around molten glass, orange juice.

Stratego

The most all-consuming activity of Talmage's and my Christmas vacation.