Adjusting Reality

I have two friends with daughters getting married. Hearing about their preparations, the inevitable problems that arise and having just had my 15th wedding anniversary, it has caused me to think back to my wedding.

With weddings, and with life, I think there is a gap between expectations and reality. The gap is called experience. We all have certain expectations, say about our wedding, that we have accumulated over the years. From other weddings, movies, books, bridal magazines. We all want the Princess Diana fairytale wedding, but more than likely end up with a Meet The Parents experience. Because Meet The Parents, or Father of the Bride, even though a bit over the top, are the reality of weddings. Something is bound to go wrong, tensions are running high, plans don't work out, miscommunications happen, something gets lost, overlooked, ripped, stepped on, dirty, whatever. Reality is something will happen that will cause the bride to stress out.


Real life is the same way. What our perception of what life is supposed to be and what it really is are two different things.


Motherhood is a great example of that. The idea of having a baby and actually having that baby were two totally different things to me. It was not like babysitting, something that I loved to do when I was a teenager. I came home from the hospital and thought, "Now what do I do?" My expectations about what kind of parent I was going to be has been somewhat obliterated as more kids came along, each with their own personality. The disciplinarian I thought I would be has slowly eroded, being worn down by persistent kids.


Taking care of the house, another completely different reality. Most houses, with kids, do not look like a page out of House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens, or Martha Stewart Living. Even with kids in the photos of those glossy pages, I've decided that kids don't really live in those houses. My house is lived in. Very lived in. Reality is even if I clean and organize my house to look like a page out of one of those magazines, it doesn't stay that way. That is not a realistic expectation for me. I can't keep it up. I've had to adjust my reality that my house is more in a "lived-in" look than a model home look.

In life, at church, at work, wherever, I think it's easy to look around and see someone else that seems to have it better than me, or more together than me, or is more spiritual than me. But appearances and perceptions are not reality. There's always the trade off. Or the counter reality. Someone may be wealthy, but not healthy. Someone may be successful job-wise, but never has enough time to spend with the family. Or maybe someone is beautiful, but doesn't have any self esteem. I don't know of anyone who truly has it all.

But. By adjusting reality, realizing our expectations and perceptions may not be how things truly are, I think we can have peace. I can make peace with the fact that I will never be a Martha Stewart. I really don't want to be, anyway. My house is not going to look like a page out of a home magazine. Experience has taught me that is definitely not my reality.

I think if we adjust our reality to what is realistic for each of us individually, there is so much more happiness to be had than holding ourselves up to unrealistic, perceived expectations.

Timing is Everything

So we all know I wrote a book. So far, that's been the easy part. Now to get it published.

When I started out on this project (sorry, can't say process or journey. The Bachelorette has ruined those two words for me), I naively thought it'd take a couple of months. Publisher websites generally say you'll hear back from them in 8-12 weeks. The secret, though, is the longer it takes, the better your chances are. Who knew? But back to being naive, I hoped a publisher would receive my manuscript, happen to leaf through it upon it's arrival, get hooked and have to read the whole thing immediately. I know I'm not alone in the delusion. But that is not how it went.

First publisher: eight weeks and three days I got my manuscript back and my form rejection letter. Sad. :( I had written "no, no! Don't send me back!" on the back of the return envelope, hoping that might influence the decision. Obviously it did not.

Next I turned to Becca Wilhite, since she had two books published. I asked her how long it took to hear back on her books. She said seven months. I thought: Holy moly!

Then I went to the Utah Valley University Book Academy, got some great advice from Kirk Shaw of Covenant (my original first choice), did what he said (minor things, you know, like change the title and cut out 50 pages) and sent it to Covenant around Thanksgiving.

Patience is not my virtue. Especially since instant gratification is so easy to achieve.

I heard back after twelve weeks that they had received my manuscript and it was going to go through their evaluation process. Add on another 4-6 months. Okay, I won't complain because at least it wasn't an initial "no thank you."

Another 8 weeks later, I hear back (luckily this is all done by email, so it's more instant that snail mail), and my author questionnaire was coming up blank, so I needed to redo it and send it back to them. Yay! A small glimmer of hope, meaning it made it past the evaluations from outside readers.

Now I'm back to waiting again. I check my email an obnoxious number of times everyday looking for an email from "Submissions." I dare say I'm obsessed.

My whole point in this is if I step back and look at the situation, I know that timing is everything. Everything will fall into place when it's supposed to. When I started writing the book, I got the idea in August, Eve started preschool in September, and I actually had time to write. It all worked out perfectly. By the time I do hear, (hopefully a yes), school will be starting soon, or maybe already started, and I will have time to work on it while my kids are in school.

At least that's my plan anyway. But I do realize that it is not my timing, but the Lord's timing, and I just need to be patient.

Now if I could just stop checking my email 50 times a day . . .

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Two vomiting kids, possibly two to go. A broken dryer. Gross, pukey laundry. When it rains, it pours. Or when it pukes, it spews. So getting up this morning, I figured we'd go buy a dryer, a hit to the pocketbook, but we'd get over it and have dry clothes once again.

Then Steve called on his way home from work to say his car broke down. Like died. Like possibly it needs to be put to rest. It has 184,000 miles on it, so it's not like this comes as any big surprise. But really, today? Of all days!

The clutch went. Fun. and expensice to repair. Is it even worth repairing at this point?? But buying a dryer for a few hundred bucks is a lot easier to swallow than buying a car for many thousands of dollars! Ugh!

Last night I could laugh at the irony of having a broken dryer and puking kids. Today, after the car news, not so funny any more.

Luckily, Steve was able to fix the dryer by replacing the belt. One crisis averted. There might be a small chance he can also fix the car. Hopefully. But if anything else breaks this weekend, I might have a mini-breakdown! :)

Puke. Yes, Puke.

So I didn't win the Totally Cliche contest. :( Then my kids started throwing up today. And my dryer broke, too. Lovely. I'll spare you the picture (since i know how to do that, note Alice pic below), but not the details.

. . .Sorry, just had to go help comfort said sick child after another round of vomit. Lovely!

Anyway, the day started out with one child saying her stomach didn't feel good. Maybe she was hungry? Or, at least I was hoping that. I didn't know of anyone having the stomach flu, so that wasn't my first guess. We had survived Emmett sitting next to a kid in the car who started throwing up on a road trip. We had survived the stomach flu when it went around church. But I guess, in the end, their is no escaping it.

Then there's the dryer. I did a huge load of whites, towels, socks, underwear. You name it, if it was personal, it was in there. The load became unbalanced and practically shot out the laundry closet before I got to it. Rearranged, restarted, viola! But no. Not so simple. When I took the laundry out, it was very soggy. Almost as if it had skipped the spin cycle. I thought of sending for a respin, but then decided against it. I would just set the dryer temp on high, problem solved.

Fifteen minutes into drying, I hear a huge "Clunk", and the dryer shuts off. At first I thought it was my daughter, who was in the bathroom puking. I thought she passed out, hit her head on the toilet, and I would open the door to find her lying in a pool of her own vomit. (Okay, I know, graphic, and you get the picture. I'm just being dramatic!) I check out the dryer to make sure there is not a fire (the johnson's have had a dryer fire before, as have the Rex's). No fire, but it smells like something is burning. I watch for a minute to make sure no flames burst forth from the back (again, I'm having fun with the drama. I have to laugh or I will cry.)

First vomitting child seems better by 8 pm. We sit down, have subway, watch a movie. I share my subway with Evie, she has some milk, some Doritos, snacks on this and that. She falls asleep at 9pm, only to wake up at 9:30 hurling. Really colorful, since she ate all that lovely stuff earlier. We clean up, only to realize we have soaking wet laundry in the washer (I finally did a re-spin) and no dryer to dry it with. Plus, we have a whole load of laundry that absolutely needs to be washed. Great.

So, I guess we're buying a dryer tomorrow. Happy Fourth of July to us! Alot more is bursting forth in our house than just fireworks. At least there will be holiday sales. Take my advice and be preemptive: Replace your appliances after twelve years. Average appliance lifetime is 13 years (of course, unlucky 13). Our house is 13 years old and in the last year, we have bought a new washer, a new water heater and now a new dryer. Next will be the oven, then the dishwasher. Probably dishwasher first, since we use that A LOT more than the oven. :)

Vomit is very commanding. It makes you drop everything and attend to it. It's not just one of those things you can ignore. Since I have two more kids and two more adults yet to be cursed with the stomach flu, I have a feeling I'll be answering it's every Beck and call, or hurl and heave.

But I guess I'm going to get a new dryer. Yay?

School's Out For Summer

Today was the last day of school. While my kids are celebrating, I am lamenting. I love school. School is a good thing. There is not one bit of homeschooling desire in this mom. Not that I don't like my kids, cause I do. But I also know how this is going to go: the kids will sleep in tomorrow til about nine, watch a little t.v. and then around 11:00 am they will announce that they are BORED!

By 11:10 I am going to look like Alice Cooper.

And thus, summer has begun.

Summers in Vegas are long and hot. Hot, like 112 degrees hot. Granted, it's a dry heat, but when you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, what type of heat it is seems irrelevant. Hot is hot!
We don't have a pool (I promise I am not whining!), or that big of a back yard, so going outside is out. We are not going on vacation this year (again, stating a fact, not whining!), so there's nothing to look forward to.

I know I sound like I'm complaining, but if anything, I think I am just voicing my longing for the good ol days when school was year round. Oh!

But, other than the fear of resembling Mr. Cooper, I still have things to look forward to, like hearing about my book. So I will continue sending out good, positive thoughts about getting published, and make sure I get some good make up remover, so my eyeliner does not end up resembling Alice.

Picky, Pickier, Pickiest

So I wrote how my kids were picky. Had another shining moment dealing with that this weekend.

We went up to Provo, Ut. for my husband's niece's wedding reception. When we arrived at my brother-in-laws house, they brought out the left over pizza for dinner. Yay! It was Papa John's. Every combination you could imagine. But combination pizza toppings are something I have yet to expose my kids to. We hardly ever buy Papa John's except if we have really good coupons. Mostly because it is Expensive. Not that I don't love it, cause I do. I really, really do! Little Caesers, on the other hand, is $5 a pizza and hot and ready to go. Plus, it is right behind my house. Literally. I look over my back wall and there is the back door of the Pizza place. I could probably safely slingshot myself there faster than I can walk.

Anyway.

Since we usually stick with Little Caesars, we usually stick with cheese or pepperoni. Since they weren't willing to try any of the pizzas, they were a little hungry going to bed that night.

Speaking of going to bed that night, our hotel reservations were totally screwed up. Instead of two queen beds, we got one king. Not really appropriate to be sleeping with out twelve year old boy and ten year old girl in bed with mom and dad. Esther slept over her cousins, Emmett ended up with the roll a way bed that you could litereally feel every spring (they had another one for Audrey, but it was totally "Ghetto". I'd hate to see how bad that was). So Audrey, Eve, me and Steve slept in the king bed. Rather unhappily, I might add.
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But the visit got better from there. I was able to visit my friend Katrina, who moved down to Vegas same time I did, but moved back to Utah since theng. I got to do a little shopping. I got yards and yards of deep purple satin ribbon from my niece's wedding gifts, since she had no use for yards and yards of purple ribbon. I can't say I have a use for it, either. Yet. But I will find a use for it!

I found out that deodorant is flammable. So if you have a solid stick of deodorant that you are particularly fond of the scent, stick in a wick and light it up! Obviously not while applying it to you underarm, since underarms can be flammable, too.

And, last, but not least, the nieces and nephews gave me great stories about dates, school and what life is like now at their age. I don't know if they understand how much I love hearing all of it.

Overall, it was a good visit.

Picky Picky Picky

My kids are picky eaters. When did this happen, I ask myself. They ate their vegetables when they were babies. They ate sweet potatoes and green beans and lasagna. Something happened between the puree and actually having to chew the food that things went downhill.

I don't completely blame myself.

It happened when they started feeding themselves. It happened when they actually had a choice and control over what was going in their mouths. It happened when more siblings came along and I was too busy trying to choo-choo a spoonful of mush into the babies mouth and wanted (and needed) the older ones to eat something (anything) on their own.

I don't get it. I love to eat. I love vegetables. I could be a vegetarian if I didn't love meat so much. Some food tastes so good I have a hard time not eating too much of it.

It must be my husband's genes. He hates vegetables. He used to throw his vegetables under his brother's chair at the dinner table to get out of eating them. I thought that was pretty ingenius. Unfortunately, that wouldn't have worked at my house, since there were only three kids. There were eight kids in his family, so it was easier to get away with that stunt.

I guess I should be grateful they don't have extravagent tastes, because when we go to a restaurant, they want the mac and cheese. The kicker is that it's Kraft, and for the price they're charging, I could buy a whole case of it myself!

Last night I fed the kids pulled chicken from Fresh n Easy. I knew they would complain, so I did them a favor. Instead of buying hamburger buns, I bought those teeny, tiny slider buns. The deal was they had to eat their tiny sandwich (meat included, not just the bun) and their rice pilaf. The older two, after initial hestitation, ate it and even admitted it wasn't too terrible. The younger two we had to resort to threats and sending them to bed to get them to eat some. Although, they did eat the rice pilaf without too much complaining.

There was an ad on t.v. for dog food on later. This dog was chowing down on this "treat" that looked like dried raw chicken jerky, or something stolen from the "Bodies" exhibit on the strip. And the dog loved it! I can't get my kids to eat real food, yummy food, and this dog is eating a nasty looking version of real food. Is it just cause it's a dog and they'll eat anything??

I guess I could count my blessings. Is picky eaters worse than overeaters? Is it harder to force my kids to eat than to stop them from eating? I don't know.

On the upside of this, my kids have learned an important life skill: foraging for food. They know how to go and find themselves something to eat.

But, since man, woman, and child can not live on Ramen Noodles alone, this obstacle will not be backed down from (sigh). Sometime in the next seven years before my sons leaves for his mission, we will get these kids to eat what is on their plate.

Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it. I better eat up to build up my energy.