Be My Valen-Crime

It might surprise you to know that we don't go looking for trouble.  It might also surprise you to know that sometimes we catch ourselves and reign it in when we recognize the potential for trouble.

For example, when Kearstin got her iPhone she began receiving calls regarding a warrant for the arrest of  a guy named Miles Davis.  Then Miles Davis's mom started calling for him.  That's when Ron thought he could "set up a sting" and use the mom to lure Miles Davis to the police.  And I said, "Or, Nooooooooooo we won't do that."  And we stayed safely uninvolved where we belong and for all we know Mr. Miles Davis is still at large. 

But sadly, there are those occasions when we stumble into some trouble, become deeply enmeshed, and then it's too late.

Which brings us to the 2nd grade Valentine party of 2015.
More specifically, the take home treat bags.

When I headed down to the massage room for my last client of the day, Caymen was happily sifting through her treats from her class party.  An hour later, when I returned upstairs, Ron and Caymen were waiting for me in the kitchen.  "Look what she found in her goodie bag!"  And there on the counter was an unmarked pouch of clear liquid.

On the outside, I stayed completely rational as I praised Caymen for doing the right thing by bringing us something that didn't look appropriate for a treat bag.  Then I took a picture and calmly sent it to her teacher asking for her input and then naturally I posted the picture to my facebook asking 'What the crap?'  As you do.

All the while on the inside I'd spun wildly out of control, plotting the end of any and all take home goodie bags now and forEVER and became a person rivaling any Jehovah's Witness who demands the ban of all things good and fun.  And I was totally okay with that.

Obviously, this was a serious matter and the teacher acted accordingly.  The Superintendent was contacted and of course the police would eventually become involved so that forensics could determine what was in the pouch.

And just that quick, we're throwing around words like forensics.

I sat texting the teacher back and forth as we tried to get to the bottom of this potentially disastrous situation when you stop to consider how many other kids might have received one.

Ron sat googling 'What does Heroin look like?'  I can only imagine what Homeland Security thinks of us at this point.

I was uncomfortable having it in our house, so the teacher suggested I put it in a plastic baggie, we'd meet at the school, and she'd take it from there.

I asked Caymen to describe to me exactly how she came to find the pouch.  She said, "I opened the bag in the bag of the bag that (so and so) gave me."

Ron looked up and said, "How pissed is that kid's parents gonna be when they find out she gave their stash away in goodie bags?"  Sometimes Chuckles should just stay quiet and google.

Before she could ask what a stash is, I asked her what she did with the bags and she said, "I threw them all away...even the one with the instructions." 

Whoa.  Baaaaack the drug bust up.  Instructions?

Off to dig through the trash we went.  She pulled out each of the bags and lo and behold, the smallest bag was made of foil and had instructions:
1.  Smack the Pack 
2.  Watch and Wait
3.  See the Surprise...a Balloon inflates before your eyes.

Sooooo.  Maybe, that wasn't Heroin, but Helium?

In summary, we involved the guidance counselor and superintendent...sounds about right...then met Caymen's teacher in the school parking lot at 10:30 on a Friday night to pass her a baggie through our mini-van window that quite possibly contained the pouch intended to inflate a tiny Valentine balloon.

I'm fully expecting to receive a few follow-up calls Monday morning.

I'm also fully prepared to blame this whole thing on a Mr. Miles Davis.  If you know him, tell him his mom's looking for him.

22

Today is our 22nd anniversary.

Twenty-two of the hardest, but most wonderful years of my life spent with my best friend.  Our lives so intertwined that I can't tell where mine ends and his begins.  Joy in the memories we've made, excitement for the adventures to come, and contentment in our here and now.  

And yet, I'm finding this post hard to write. 

On the heels of a year where we witnessed the effects of Satan's marital grenades hitting too close to home, I'm sitting here with so little to say, yet so much that could be said.

I could talk about the collateral damage that ensues when you watch marriages end and it occurs to us that we might be a happily married couple today, but at some point might decide we're not so happy after all.
Paranoia.  Distrust.  Fear.

I could talk about watching the marriages that battle back and win.
Forgiveness.  Hope.  Victory.  

I could talk about the things we do within our own marriage to guard against potential areas of attack.
Safeguards.  Boundaries.  Accountability.

I could talk about the things everyone already knows in how to stay connected with each other.
Dating.  Intimacy.  Communication. 

But here's the deal.  Only God knows the intricate details within a marriage.  There's no formula or blanket statements that apply to everyone as a whole and it's not for anyone on the outside to judge.  The only thing I do know is that each and every one of us will answer for our own actions and the ripple effects that those actions cause.

So for me personally, at the end of the day, it all boils down to this:
Am I going to do what I vowed to do 22 years ago?  Even when it's hard?  Or on days I'm not happy?  For better or for worse?  For richer, for poorer?  In sickness and in health?  Till death do us part? 

You're damn right I am. 

Ron,
Thank you for your unconditional love and please forgive me for all the areas where I fall short.  It's my honor to faithfully spend the rest of my life by your side.  Your best friend, your lover, your wife.

I love you.

'What God has joined together, let no one separate.'

Mark 10:9

iPrank

Parental fail.
You recognize it when you're in the middle of it, but by then it's usually too late.

So let me tell you about Kearstin's 'big gift' for Christmas 2014.
I'll start by listing all the things we did right.

1.  We bought her an iPhone 5S.

Yep, that's pretty much the only thing we did right.

As you know, the goal with any Christmas gift, much less the big gift, is to see their face when they open it with the family at Christmas.  Her current phone had to be mailed back within 7 days of receiving her new phone.  The dilemma arose when we received her new phone 2 weeks before Christmas.  Crap. 

How do we get her old phone away from her for a week without telling her about her new phone?

We discussed options:
Tell her about the new phone?  (Unthinkable!)
Ground her and take away her phone?  (Hard to justify doing that to a 15 year old who gets straight A's and shows zero signs of teenage rebellion...knock on wood...) 

That was pretty much the end of our options list.
Until one night, an option presented itself.

We were leaving her basketball game on a cold rainy night and she didn't want to get her cheer shoes wet so she jumped into Ron's arms and he carried her out to the van.  Somewhere along the way, she dropped her phone and while Ron and I searched the dark parking lot, an idea occurred.  "Let's not tell her when we find her phone!"

It doesn't matter whose idea it was, okay?  Why throw around names?  I mean, history would indicate that it was Ron, right?  So let's just go with that.

Get off my back, it was me, alright?!?  IT. WAS. ME!!!

When Ron found her phone, he slipped it to me, I hid it in my purse and we climbed back into the van explaining that it was too dark and told her someone would surely find it and turn it into the office.

As I gave Ron a sly smile and a thumbs up, the sobbing began in the backseat.  What the...

I looked back to see tears streaming down her face.  Ron gave me his frantic what do we do gesture.  I answered with my how the crap am I supposed to know gesture. 

By the time we arrived home, we'd decided that as much as it pained us, we had no choice but to fess up and give her the new phone.  I mean we couldn't have an honor student sobbing around the house for a week acting like a normal hormonal teenager.  Geesh. 

While she lay in her bed crying, Ron and I unpacked the new phone and he said, "Oh, no...this isn't her phone...this is yours.  Merry Christmas."  Son of a !!! 

So we headed to her room to crush her soul twice in one night.  I put a phone in each hand and both hands behind my back.  In my cheeriest mom voice I said, "Hey Kearstin, pick a hand!"  She looked at me like I'd just said, "Who wants to go to the doctor to get her shots?"  It took 5 long minutes of convincing, but she finally decided to put an end to this psychotic game and pick a hand.  I pulled out my arm and revealed her old phone and smiled and said, "It's not lost!"  and waited for her to jump out of bed and give me a hug.  Instead she screamed "WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!?"   I said, "Wait!  Pick another hand!!!"  and she screamed, "GET. OUT!!!!"

Holy crap, we've unleashed the teen years.
I whipped my head to Ron who shrugged with his deer in the headlights look.

If our bottom-of-the-parental-barrel "pick a hand" move isn't solving this, we're screwed.  

So I pulled out the new phone and put it in front of her.  The sobs stopped as her eyes adjusted to what she was seeing.  She looked up at me with her tear stained face, gave me a huge grin and said,
"Is this mine?!?"

"Well, no, this one's actually mine."

We totally rock this parenting thing.

Remembrance and Resolution, 2015

The only resolution I felt God telling me last January was to 'Be still.'  I didn't understand why or know what it meant.  Looking back, I see it as the warning I didn't heed.

If my life were a snow globe, 2014 was the year somebody picked it up and shook the crap out of it, or as I call it, 'The year my children tried to kill me.'

I survived, albeit with 8 extra pounds, 12 new wrinkles and countless stray grays popping out of the top of my head every time I look in the mirror, but I survived.

Event after event after event and in between events was all the prep work for the next event.  Bridal showers, graduations, marriages, baby showers, holidays, birthdays, receptions, parties, work,...life...and the panic within of what mine would look like when the snow in my globe finally settled to the bottom.

My remembrance of 2014 is as the year of change.  On every level.  Change.

Half of my children moved out of our home.  We're a family of 4.  They each married their best friend.  We're a family of 8.  I left my job at the salon, cut my massage hours down to one day a week in my home office and in a leap of faith, jumped into the world of Freelance Writing.  I still don't know what that even means, but I know that God told me to do it.  Other aspects of my life that I won't share were suddenly altered.  Things around me that I never thought would change.  Boom.  Changed.

Basically, most of 2014 spun wildly out of my control and let's just keep it real here.  Although a lot of it was good, I spent most of it in fear.

Then, on November 12th, something amazing happened.  My son and his wife welcomed a son who will call me 'Sassy.'  And with that, we're a family of 9.  Different.  Natural.  A new normal. 

There are two images in my mind of this past year that I want to carry into the next.  The first is an anchor.  On the surface, I might feel like a ship rocking wildly out of control as life's storms rage and the waves of circumstance crash against me.  But as long as I'm tethered to the One who is holding me firmly in place, I'm safe.
'We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure'.  ~Hebrews 6:19~

The second is a seed.  What good does it do to keep it held tightly in our hand where we think it's safe under our control when we're actually preventing it from becoming what it's ultimately meant to be?  The harvest of the seed comes after it's break through the shell.  We have to let go.

Growth through pain.
Beauty from change.

As I sit in my office recliner with my laptop on my leg and my grandson in my arms, the crashing waves have settled to a relaxing ripple that soothingly sway me in the calm after the storm and I look ahead to the new year of unknown.

My resolution for 2015 is to practice really trusting God.  Sounds simple, but I'll have to constantly remind myself that nothing is going to rock my world that He doesn't already know about, hasn't prepared me for, or won't bring beauty from in the end.

Therefore, I'll allow Him to unclench my fingers and spend this year with open hands, sewing seeds into the roles that He's entrusted to me; wife, mother, sassy, writer, massage therapist and yes, zumba instructor because as Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is most certainly a time to dance. 

Aaaaaand I'm gonna lose the 8 lbs, find a super powerful face cream, diligently visit my hair stylist...and most of all, the next time I feel God telling me to Be Still, I'm gonna freakin crawl into bed and sleep till it passes.

Hey, I can't let go of everything at once here, people.

A (Birth) Day In The Life

With my birthday falling a couple weeks before Christmas, it's not uncommon for my gift of choice to be family portraits.  Therefore, it's also not uncommon for my birthday to end in disaster.

You might remember our attempt to include our gassy dogs back in 2002 that infamously went down in history as Family Photo Day.  Ron swore off dog-inclusive family portraits after that one.

You might not know about our experience last year because it's taken me a year to muster the courage to go public with it.  A photographer rented out a space in Walmart for 'Antique Canvas Photos' and Ron decided to surprise me.  It was scheduled 2 weeks post-tummy tuck.  Still not able to move around well, I was hopped up on Vicodin and made the fateful decision to venture out of the house without my safety net...the velcro wrap that squeezed me tight.  There was snow on the ground and as we left the house Caymen said, "I won't get snow on my dress, will I?"  and I said, "Not if everything goes well."
Why didn't I just say "Yep.  Vomit too."  Sometimes it's like I've never met us before.

Ten minutes down the road, the gagging started for who knows why.  Ron pulled over and Zac started videoing, because he's been in this family long enough to know.  (click here to watch if you dare.) It began with Caymen jumping out of the van and falling down.  Snow on dress.  It went down hill from there.  Mind you, this video will win me no Mother Of The Year awards, but I've accepted it for what it is.  I'll blame my gag reflex and the Vicodin.  But if you're appalled by this and you read my blog at all, you've probably already decided that we shouldn't be friends anyway.  I can't blame you.

Anyhoo, if you listen closely, you'll hear Ron swear off family portraits.  Again. But unlike last time, we didn't turn around and go home, because you might've also heard Ron say, "I paid $20 for this!"

So we walked into Walmart; Ron disgusted, me slightly bent at the waist and moving slowly, Caymen permeating a foul odor in her now splotchy white dress and all of us disheveled.

But thanks to our inappropriate sense of humor, it all turned around when the photographer had Ron get down on his knees and then she turned to me and said, "Mom, you'll go down on dad here."  I think we maybe could've held it together but then Zac said, "I didn't realize it was those kinds of pictures"...and we lost it.

As it turns out, Antique-style canvas completely disguises vomit, but this photo has yet to be displayed in our home.

That brings us to this year.  Our family now includes a new son-in-law, daughter-in-law and grandson, so it only made sense that for my birthday, I would want family portraits.  When Ron groaned, I explained that the photographer would come to us this time.  We don't even have to leave the house.  That makes it fool-proof.

Aaaaand, since we're talking fool-proof, we may as well include the dogs.

There was no way I could've known they'd be covered in mud when we let them in from outside.

Merry Christmas...

 ...from what Ron promises to be our last family portrait session ever.

Gramm-o-mam

The words have become synonymous.

Annual. Mammogram.

No biggie.  Because in my mind, this little ritual has absolutely nothing to do with my age, but rather the distant connection of breast cancer in my bloodline.  It's a completely non-age-related formality to put my mind at ease and that's all it is.  The fact that this became an annual tradition the year I turned 40 is neither here nor there.  I mean, come on, their first question to me when I check in is always "Do you have breast implants?"  Not yet, but that's so sweet of you to think I might.

This, my 3rd annual mammogram, pushing my 43rd year on this earth, was not a big deal.  I still run, I still Zumba, I still lift weights and still buy my clothes in the Kohl's Juniors Dept...I mean, really, nothing has changed.

Sure, half of my children got married and moved out this year, we have a grandson, our 3rd child is getting her driver's permit this week and our baby Caymen has an adult tooth pushing through her gums that we fear might be larger than her face, but other than that, no change.  Nada.  Everything.  Same.

I showed up to my mammogram last month with no dread...and no deodorant and no lotions and no perfume and no powder and no jewelry...and no dread.  I'm going to put on a gown blouse, a very nice lady is going to throw me the implants question, I'm going to feign surprise and humbly thank her for the compliment, then she's going to apologetically invade my personal space, place each boob between 2 pieces of plexiglass and flatten them beyond all recognition while I tap into my socially adequate side and attempt small talk, thus making this process way more awkward and uncomfortable for her than for me.  This ain't my first rodeo.

So when the technician came into the room and I couldn't tell if it was a woman or man, let's just say I was thrown off my game.  As quickly and as casually as I could, I glanced down to the name on the smock.   

Pat. 

Holy crap, I've stumbled into a Saturday Night Live skit, and the theme song started through my head.  While my mind sang, "a lot of people say what's that...it's Pat..." I realized I was being asked a question.

Um, could you repeat that?
Barely hiding frustration, Pat repeated, "Do you have regular menstrual periods?"

What. The. H***. Is that supposed to mean.

My socially inadequate side that is my comfort zone wanted to say, I'd like to ask you the same thing...aaaand, if I had my Victoria Secret bra on, these things would be standing 6 inches higher and you'd be asking me about my implants right now.  Boom.

But instead, I said, "OF COURSE I DO!" because I've been working on the Fruit of the Spirit of self control.  You're welcome, Pat.

What followed were 15 of the most awkward minutes of my life and that says a lot because I've had an awful lot of awkward minutes in this life.

If you know me at all, you know I was dying to ask.  I had to clamp my teeth on my tongue to keep not asking.  Fifteen long minutes, face to face, while I was man-(woman?)-handled when all I wanted to do was ask Pat one question.  The question.  I wanted to know.  I needed to know. How could I leave there without asking...

DO YOU REALLY THINK I'M OLD ENOUGH TO BE IN MENOPAUSE?!?!

In silence, I let my boob roll off the plexiglass and smack back into place before jerking my gown closed.

Now if you'll excuse me, Pat.
I have a grandson next door in the birthing center.

Good day, sir...or whatever...

Tuck-date

Yesterday marked the anniversary of my tummy tuck.  People still tell me their stories and ask about the procedure.  Ron says he's not sure which is scarier; how freely people ask to see my stomach or how willingly I show them.  I guess I don't hesitate because it still doesn't feel like me.  It's more like I'm just showing them my new ironing board.

So I thought a little anniversary update might be in order.

My final follow-up with the doctor was last January.  The nurse asked me if any stitches were coming out.  I told her those were all taken out in December.  She explained that sometimes internal stitches make their way to the surface and will begin to protrude through the incision.

Well, THAT'S not going to happen because Jesus loves me.

So when the doctor came in to look at my incision and said, "You've got stitches coming out,"  I questioned my entire existence.  Again.

Two nights later, while climbing out of the bath, (note that all bad tummy tuck related incidents happen after bathing), what appeared to be a knotted piece of white fishing wire had broken through my incision.  Enter Ron armed with a pair of tweezers, scissors and a manic grin on his face.  When he asked if I thought I would "actually pass out" if he just kept pulling the stitch until it broke off or if it would open my incision like a zipper, I explained that the future of our marriage rested solely on this moment.

I'm still trying to forgive him for the delay as he mentally weighed the risk and reward before quickly and uneventfully snipping it off while Caymen watched.  Oh the things our children see around here. 

But that was the last of my recovery drama.

The surgery had it's desired effect.  I'm still not miraculously a size 4, but I don't have to debate whether to button my jeans over or under my roll anymore, either.  I still face a life long battle of a love for food, an addiction with the scale and a compulsion to exercise, but it is what it is. 

I still don't have much feeling, especially around and below my belly button.  Which, speaking of the new belly button, nobody is allowed to touch it, pretend to touch it or talk about touching it, and Zac describes it as "That things not natural."  I consider that my penance for ruining the one God gave me.

And while we're on the topic of that's not natural, my emotional attachment to the velcro girdle lasted through May.  I thought I could do without it for a weekend away in April, but ended up in a full blown anxiety attack that finally ended when Ron wrapped a towel around my midsection and squeezed me.  That gesture speaks to his unconditional love for me, which makes it easier to overlook him saying, "You know you're a freak, right?" while we stood swaying in the hotel bathroom.

Side note; much to our surprise we were informed by our accountant that my procedure qualified as an out of pocket medical expense and we claimed it on our taxes, so I guess you could say it was tucks deductible. 

Barring any unforeseen freak of nature surprises, this should conclude the Tucks Series which works out well because I've run out of ways to inappropriately use the word tuck.

If my doctor noticed a decrease in business because of me, I offer my deepest apologies.  But if he happened to gain some new patients and would like to offer me a discount on a couple of implants, I'd be more than happy to blog that experience and do my best to rack him up some more.

Stay tuned, because just maybe, the breast is yet to come...

Your final look at my new stomach...unless of course you ask to see it, in which case, I'll apparently whip up my shirt and happily oblige.