The Great Debate

Our family has been officially conquered by the flu bug of death this past week.  It's taken us from this...

To this...

Hubs and I decided to be really morbid about it and weighed ourselves to see how much we lost in our two days of toilet cuddling.  Hubs is down 8.  I'm down 5.  This may be encouraging if I wasn't in my last trimester of pregnancy.  Also, not the most pleasant way to loose weight.

We didn't weigh the children because that would just make us feel sad.

Anyhow, this has brought on what I feel is a major crux of household peace.  How to properly load the toilet paper roll onto the dispenser.

Obviously there is only one right answer.  Because a picture is worth a thousand words, see below.

Still confused?

In closing I offer you the wise and immortal words of my father who made this comment in years past when he traveled for a living:  "I can go all over the world and stay in hundreds of different hotels and the toilet paper goes over the roll.  But I come home and no one here can get it right!" 

You just don't mess with the roll!

If someone in your family needs an intervention, or you just have extra time on your hands, I'd like to refer you to this helpful and informative article.  Happy wiping!

http://currentconfig.com/2005/02/22/essential-life-lesson-1-over-is-right-under-is-wrong/

Death by Meatball

In the dark of the night while trying to fall asleep I've occasionally wondered what exactly it will be that kills me.  Will it be a car accident, a terrible disease, a fall down the stairs, raising teenagers, getting another whiff of my stinky mutt dog? 

I don't typically linger long over it, but I have decided that I'd prefer it be quick and perhaps even doing something I enjoy.  For example:  My dad is hoping to jeep off a cliff and go in a burst of engine revving flames.  I say, why not? 

However, despite my love for meatballs, I never in a million years imagined that my obituary would read "Aspen Hadley - Death by Meatball".  Yet that is exactly what almost happened yesterday. 

My over-achiever sister, Emily, was in town this past week.  It was a delightful time spent listening to our kids fight and me begging Emily to bake something delicious.  She finally complied on Saturday and made home-made french bread and meatballs for meatball sandwiches.  (Pause while enjoying the sound of heavenly choirs singing.  Or better yet, I bet Adam Sandler has a meatball song...hmm...)

After finishing my first delicious sandwich I wanted a little more, but let's be honest, I was too lazy to heave myself off the couch and retrieve it myself.  I mentioned it out loud, the me wanting more part, no need to let them actually have verbal evidence of my laziness.  Emily just happened to be standing near and said she couldn't finish her 14th sandwich (slight exaggeration...perhaps) and offered to share half with me.   Zutalo!!

She successfully transferred the bread and cheese to my plate, but that wily little ball of beef slipped out, bounced off my rounded tummy and landed on the arm of the couch.  At this point I should have known that ball of deliciousness would be nothing but trouble.  Instead I forked it up and put it on my plate.  No lover of meat is willing to let even one tasty morsel go. 

Side note:  It's been a while since my mom yelled at me for spilling on her couch.  I don't like it any more in my 30s than I did in my teens. She even made me wipe it up.  I bet she felt guilty later when I almost kicked the bucket.

Anyhow, while I was enjoying a bite of that beefy goodness I breathed in either to laugh at something or to add to the conversation, but I accidentally inhaled a chunk of the meatball.  And it stuck.  I started patting my chest, but nothing was happening.  Hubs was sitting next to me on the love seat - oh, tender - and he said "You okay, babe?"  I shook my head that no, I wasn't and kept pointing at my throat.  Bless his heart, he's a bit immune to my spastic motions as I'm constantly getting myself in one pickle or another.  It took him a minute to realize what I was trying to tell him.

I believe him and my Dad realized at the same time, because my Dad jumped up from the other couch and was standing next to me by the time Hubs realized what was going down.  Hubs turned my back to him and then put his arms around me to begin the Heimlich.  And then he realized a terrible truth.  I am 30+ weeks pregnant.  Where, exactly, do you squeeze the unsqueezable?

My sister, Camille - the good sister who doesn't try to off me with her tasty food - stood up from the chair across the room and said, "Stand up!"  So I stood up and then Hubs was able to get his arms around me.  Dad was holding me on one side while Hubs was trying to squeeze...well... something.  My sis-in-law, Sara, was heard to suggest he squeeze above the girth, which he did.  I think someone was patting my back.  I don't really know.  I was busy trying to get air.

Meanwhile Camille brought a plate over and stuck it in front of my face to catch anything that might come up.  But... ha ha... she's actually preggers too and due three days before me.  So she couldn't bear to look at what might come up, too much nausea involved.  She stuck the plate in my face while facing away from me.  Still, it was the thought that counts.

My mom was standing in the kitchen wiping down the counter tops from the after dinner massacre and I do remember her looking at me, but then going back to wiping.  We later found out she thought I'd just choked on my spit, like she and her mother before her are fond of doing.  Nope.  When was the last time you saw four adults doing the Heimlich and crowding around someone choking on her spit?  Just sayin'...  (Love you Mom, don't cry after reading that!)

Anyhow, I remember thinking they were going to have to call 911, but I couldn't ask them to do it 'cause I couldn't breathe.  I also remember thinking I'd have to try to ram myself against a counter top like you see on the rescue material of what to do when you're alone.  But I'd probably bounce off it like a rubber ball.  Depressing.

About the time my vision started to darken and I was seeing stars, literally little bright spots, the food dislodged and I swallowed it down.  I was going to sit down and put my head between my knees, but then I remembered I haven't seen my knees since I passed the 25 week pregnant mark, so instead I dropped to all fours until I could breathe and see again.

There may have been some uncontrolled burping and heaving at that point.  J-Bear, my three-year-old body function boy, may have been giggling in the kitchen while nasty gaseous noises erupted from me.  Luckily all other children were off playing and didn't realize what was going down.

Anyhow, all ended well.  The baker of death, Emily, had been in another room and came in just as I was running to the potty to...well, go potty.  She hadn't heard anything.  My dad's reply was, "Well, that's 'cause I'm cool, calm, and collected."  I have to say, he's right.  It was the oddest things as I look back at it.  It was practically silent while my family just tried to help me.  This is probably why Mom took no notice of it.  No one was yelling or talking loudly to anyone.  In fact I'm pretty sure Sara just kept right on uploading videos to Facebook while watching from the sidelines.

The best part, though, was after I came back from the bathroom and Mom said, "So...what just happened?"  Ha ha ha.

I'll tell you what just happened, I just converted to vegetarianism!

Third Horror-mester

Not to cause a global panic, but have any of you been paying attention to my countdown pregnancy ticker on the side of this here blog??!!  Sca-ry!!  I am now officially in the third, and final, trimester of my fourth, and FINAL, pregnancy.  (No, really, if I have to go the surgical route this time I will.  Don't push me!!)

Not Me - but scary!

As the time flies I occasionally like to reflect on those little "miracles" that I'm so thoroughly enjoying about being pregnant.  I mean, really, a woman only has so many opportunities over the course of her life to experience these particular "joys"!  Here are some of my favorites.

* I love how I'm constantly kept on my toes by wondering just what ligament supporting my uterus will be strained to the point of pain at any given moment.  Will it be okay to move right, or should I shift left?  Will it hurt more to roll over, or should I stay in this safe but leg numbing position all night?  Will I be able to lift up my grocery bag or will I be paralyzed by sharp knife-like pains in my abdomen?  And really, it's pretty hit and miss.  I love the adventure of being zinged and incapacitated when I least expect it.

* Random hair growth.  If motherhood doesn't work out in the long run I figure I could always run away and join the circus as the bearded lady.  Either that or grow out my leg hair to donate for men's wigs.

* Flatulence.  Let's face it people, with a baby kicking your intestines all the day long you're bound to get some gas.  You try to hold it in when a foot is pressing down on your colon and literally putting the squeeze on.  An added, but non-pregnancy related, benefit is having a 3 year-old boy as my daytime companion.  He's obsessed with bodily functions and is happy to report any time some gas leaks.  And he's too honest to be used as a reliable scapegoat any longer.

* Random purple spots and bruises. I refuse to acknowledge that they may be the beginnings of varicose veins or something else that would just be nasty. Instead I'm using them as threats to keep the Hubs behaving himself lest I decide to visit the police station and blame him for some random bruising.   (Love you babe...don't forget that.)

 * Heartburn. Nope. Nothing good to say about that. 

* I've had a long running love of giraffes.  I think they are just lovely.  In fact, I'm apparently aspiring to be one as I'm now borrowing a technique of theirs.  Whenever I need to get something off the floor I simply assume the "splits" position with my legs as far out to the side as possible, and then bend from the waist to retrieve said item.  I'm lacking some of their grace, but the technique is solid.

* Swollen fingers.  Good news is that I love sausage.  So when I'm feeling down all I have to do is look at the ten little sausages I carry on my hands and suddenly things look a little brighter.

Yep, just compiling this little list has made me feel sad that I only have a little over 10 weeks left to enjoy this blissful time in my life.  {Sigh}.  Alas, all good things must come to an end.

The Sneak-Meister

Oh man, I had the most genius sneaky mom moment today and couldn't resist sharing.

I believe I've addressed the ragamuffiness of Cadie Lu on several occasions.  Well, perhaps one thing I haven't mentioned is that recently she's gotten into the bad habit of leaving clothing items of hers when she goes to play.  The other day we reach the pinnacle of this when she came home entirely dressed in her friend's outfit.  Apparently her clothing had been lost during a rousing game of princess dress-up and she was unable to even find a sock or her shoes.  Bad news.  (They were found a day later and returned to us.)

This, obviously, has extended to school.  Last week she left two jackets, a scarf and her umbrella at school.  Thanks to some serious nagging on my part we have gotten all but one jacket back.  However, despite my repeated begging she has yet to find that last one.  She insists the remaining jacket just puffed into the universe never to be seen again.

I'm guessing it wasn't in her direct line of sight and thus, in her mind, truly doesn't exist.  Either that or her teacher didn't hand it to her while grabbing her face and forcing eye contact and saying "Cadie Lu, this jacket belongs to you, please carry it home."

This morning I was out running some errands and decided to stop by the school and retrieve the jacket myself.  Luckily I happened by at her lunch time and her classroom was empty.  Said jacket was casually lounging on the coat rack.  Not in the back or on the floor.  Nope.  It was sitting on the rack directly above her hook.  It may as well have been on Mars as far as she was concerned. 

So, I grabbed the jacket and was preparing to walk out of the classroom when I had one word hit me.  Tears.  Today when Cadie Lu gets home from kindergarten she will start crying the second she sees me because she STILL won't have that jacket - which she hasn't thought about until the moment she gets home and remembers I want her to bring it home. 

And I am so tired of crying.  And I am so tired of scapegoating.  And I'm getting awfully tired of alien clothing abductions.  So, I went back to her classroom, found her backpack and zipped the missing jacket into it. 

I figure when she comes home it will be like Christmas morning as she unzips her backpack and "finds" her missing jacket.  She'll be so proud of herself for following through with my request.  She'll smile and high-five me and prance about basking in the glory of the moment.

And it will never occur to her that the jacket wasn't in there this morning when I sent her off to school.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow up:  When Ms. Cadie Lu got home and pulled her missing jacket out of her backpack her eyes grew wide.  Then, her surprise was quickly followed up with a smug smile and these words to me:

"See, Mama.  I told you I didn't leave that jacket at school!"

Hmm...next time I think I'll let her sweat it out!

Trips Gone Wrong

Warning:  Long Post.

This past week we went on a lovely trip to sunny St. George for the blessing of the newest member of the Ridges family.  Sweet baby Kennedy.  There were many great things about this trip, but what I think makes vacations truly memorable is the less than great things that happen.  (On this trip there was a brush fire in the yard next door to us and I forgot to pack any pants for The Hubs!)

As G & G Campbell, my mom, sister, The Hubs and I sat around talking late one night we began to share tales of our most memorable - translation: horrific - travel adventures.  We decided that we can always reflect with a smile on trips that went well, where you actually relaxed and enjoyed something, but the trips we recall with an odd little pang of fondness are the one's that were a disaster from top to bottom.

And so, I present with great nostalgia, one of my worst, and most memorable, trips ever. 

DISCLAIMER:  I've had zero contact with these people, aside from Brit, since shortly after this ill-fated trip. (Not as a result of this adventure, but due to geography). I have no way of getting their permission to publish this little tale.  So, I have changed names and will hope that if they ever do happen to read this post they will do so with a smile on their faces.

This trip took place 4th of July weekend 1998.  I had recently moved back home after two years at Utah State.  A few of my friends from USU called one afternoon wondering if I was up for a spur of the moment trip down to Zions for the weekend.  Of course I said yes.  I quickly recruited my BF Brit and as soon as we were off work for the day we began packing.

We met in SLC at a friend's family's mortuary.  Yes.  I speak truth.  This should have really been a bit of a warning light.  Second warning light should have come when Matt and Ken showed up in a topless jeep with Ken laying face down in the backseat suffering from a fever and some kind of  horrible cough.  But, press on we did.

After some argument - mostly from Ken - it was decided that we would leave my very comfortable car at the morgue and take two jeeps.  But first, we very wisely made sure both tops were off the jeeps.  We loaded up sleeping bags, a cooler and a tarp.  Yep, that's about it as far as supplies went.  We left SLC at 11:00 pm with the thought in our heads that we'd drive straight through to Zions.  Because we were college students and thought this would work.

It did work.  Until Fillmore.  At this time some crazy cold front had come in and we were freezing.  So, we decided to pool our money between the 6 of us and get a cheap motel.  Bad move.

As soon as the guys laid down on their bed one of the legs broke off and so the bed tilted at a crazy angle.   The next morning while I was taking my turn in the shower the shower head - including the pipe coming out of the wall - fell off in my hands.  I have naturally curly hair so I hadn't been planning on washing it having not packed any shellac, but it was like a fire hose and I was drenched within seconds.  I couldn't get the water off and I was screaming like a banshee.  But no one could come in because they were mostly guys and I'm not a fan of Brit seeing me nude.  I managed to ram the pipe and shower head back into the wall, stemming the flow of water, and got out.  One of the guys went in later and finagled the water into turning off. 

Once out of the shower I was sweating buckets from my exertion and went to open a window.  As I went to lift the window up the entire window, wooden frame and all, fell out of the wall and crashed onto the pavement outside our room.  For real!!!  There was total silence for about 2 full minutes...

while we just stood there staring at the giant hole in the wall where a window had been.  Then we all about died laughing.  The guys went out and by some miracle - our only one for the entire vacation - the glass had not shattered.  So they heaved it back into place and we got the heck out of that place.  What a nightmare.

The drive down to Zions worked out fine aside from the two times sleeping bags flew out of the back of jeeps and got ran over by cars following us.  Two of us had tire tread on our "beds" for the rest of the trip.

Zions itself was beautiful.  We hiked The Narrows and then that night we shockingly were unable to find a campsite.  Honestly, it was 4th of July weekend, why would we find a campsite open?  At some point desperation set in and we just pulled off the road, rolled our sleeping bags out on some dirt and slept there...until about 5:00 am when a park ranger informed us we couldn't. 

Since we were up and had nowhere to go we did two more hikes that day rather than the one we had been planning.  All was well until hike number two when Ken - who was probably seriously hallucinating at this point from some terrible disease he was fighting- decided to jump off of a rock into the middle of a pool of water.  Too bad the pool of water ended up being about 4 inches deep.  At first we all laughed at his abrupt landing, but then it wasn't so funny when he was howling in pain and we had to help him down the trail.  He broke his heal. 

I believe the broken heal, lack of sleep and need for medication is what finally convinced us to head back toward home.   When we pulled into Cedar City at the Chevron there was some sort of 4th celebration going on in a field next to the parking lot.  It was very crowded, so we couldn't get in the parking lot entrance and had to drive through another side of the field to get to the gas station.  The field was all muddy from who knows what and Matt may have slightly misjudged the depth of the mud, because about midway through the jeep sunk up to the door.  Bad luck.  Of course the hubs weren't locked.  So, I had to get out on my side and lock the hub while Matt was able to pull off some gymnastic monkey maneuver and lock the hub on his side.  I immediately became stuck in mud myself and it took Matt, Ken and Brit all pulling on my arms to get me back in the jeep.  Minus my shoe.  With mud from my waist down. 

Luckily locking the hubs did the trick and we were able to get to the station.  I had to walk around to the side of the station, find a hose and let Matt literally hose me down to get the mud off me.  It was both hilarious and humiliating as a bunch of the crowd was looking on and cheering for me.

By this time it was getting late and none of us wanted to try to make it all the way home that night.  We had lost our zest for travel and just wanted to sleep somewhere.  At first we thought we'd camp out again, but after a quick check we found that during our mud-bogging the sleeping bags had gotten covered with mud from the tires flinging it while spinning.  Lovely.  We stayed at a Best Western.  SOOOOO worth the money!!!

The next morning we all shuffled out to the car, barely even able to speak to each other any more.  Oh, but it gets worse.  Fates weren't done with us yet.  Somewhere between Cedar City and Beaver it began to poor buckets of rain.  I'm pretty sure that's the only time it's poured rain on the 4th of July weekend EVER in the history of Utah. 

Our jeeps had no tops. 

So, we opened up our muddy sleeping bags, zipped ourselves in, hunkered down and somehow survived. 

I occasionally think about that trip and even though we were pretty much suffering the entire time, I can't help but smile when I think about it.  It was a total disaster.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  But we laughed a lot and I know that none of us will every forget it.

And a month later I went with Matt and Ken to Moab.  But that's another story...