'Twas Brillig

In case you missed it...

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:21:00 +0000

Brillig doesn't live here anymore. She lives HERE. Go on. Go clicky-clicky.

Sometimes Things Hit Me On The Head And They Hurt

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:03:00 +0000

I have been a bad blogger these last few days. I'm hardly posting here, I'm hardly replying to any comments, or even acknowledging comments to new visitors to my site (who I love!!! Welcome!!!) I've been reading all my favorite blogs on my google reader, but not taking the time to comment. And little updates here and there have been ignored. I mean, Scooby has been two for several weeks now and Lil' Dude is not only 10 months old now, but his nickname has been changed to "Fuzzles." But have I updated that information? No. And when was the last time I updated my bloglights? It's been weeks!

How do you people put up with me?

By way of explanation, I have a confession.

Brillig has a secret.

Acknowledgement of this secret on my part will require a little bit of work on your part. Still wanna know?

Today is my three month bloggiversary, and to celebrate, I'm going to dump it.

I feel quite savvy with Blogger. Everything you see here, I did myself. My banner, my color scheme, my buttons and slide shows and widgets. I can hardly bear to dump all of this and go on to the unknown world of my own site, and yet I feel that it is time, once and for all.

Many of you know that I've been contemplating the dump for some time now. And, in all honesty, I'd bought myself a domain quite a while back that I've just been sitting on. Okay--not just sitting on. I've been tinkering away at it like mad. I wasn't, and am still not, quite geek enough to just buy a domain and have it up and running the next day!

Today, it is finally "up and running" as it were. Don't get me wrong. It isn't aesthetically pleasing nor is it very high tech. Yet. I'm really just getting my feet wet. But if you're willing to put up with my tinkering and template changes and page additions, then I'm ready for you to make the great leap with me.

So, here it is in all its glory:

Twas Brillig

Now, won't you change your bookmarks and your link lists for me? PLEASE? Even though I've been a very bad blogger for the last little while? (And yes, I will be obsessively checking my technorati to see who's playing. hahahaha.)

And now, by way of disclaimer, I must throw in a word about WordPress. I think WordPress and I are going to get along swimmingly. But as many of you know, if you host your own site and put WordPress on it, your easy options are extremely limited, as opposed to sites that have wordpress.com in the URL. So please be patient with me while I try to get my site looking cool without all the magic that comes included in the wordpress.com sites! Keep in mind that I'm doing this all by myself... and I'm not very smart!

As for the title of this post, these are the very words that I uttered last night while Hubby was giving me some geek-pointers and a lamp suddenly fell over and hit me in the head. I was in a bit of shock, after feeling quite frazzled anyway, and the utterance was intended to be profound. Hubby, being the kind, supportive, understanding man that he is, busted up laughing at me. So I give it to you now, so you know a bit about what this blog-switch is doing to my brain.

Hey. What are you doing here still? Go! Hie thee forth to my new blog!

(Please?)

Separate Beds

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 05:52:00 +0000

I can barely recall when I was very little and my parents actually shared a bed. It was a giant king size bed that we all loved to jump on.

But soon they went to separate beds. Twin beds, scooted right next to each other. That way, each could feel free to toss and turn without fearing waking up the other or having their blanket stolen.

My mother had her own room right next to mine--a study, where her computer and books and endless piles of professor-stuff all lived. At some point, a bed was put in there. And then, slowly but surely, her clothing and other personal items began to migrate there. Eventually she just began sleeping there full time.

I never worried that my parents had stopped liking each other or anything like that. Believe me, there was no mistaking their mutual adoration. But my dad liked to stay up late watching TV and sleep in in the morning while my mom liked to go to bed while the sun was still up and wake up long before the sun rose in the morning. Plus, Dad snored, and Mom had to pee twelve or thirteen times a night (okay, that's possibly a slight exaggeration, but still...) so the separate bedrooms thing really worked for them.

I understood why they did that, but I thought, "man, when I'm married, I'll want to snuggle next to my husband all night long. No WAY would I want separate beds, let alone separate bedrooms!"

When Hubby and I were first married, we went to an out-of-town family reunion and stayed in a hotel. Hubby's sister and her husband, who'd been married for nearly ten years, were in the room next to us. Each room had two queen beds. Hubby and I put our luggage on one, and slept together in the other. So we were FLABBERGASTED to see that Hubby's sis and her husband decided to each sleep in their own beds. Hubby made a comment, poking fun at them, and they both exclaimed over how wonderful it was to spread out and have their own beds!

Anyway, the years have gone by and I love Hubby even more than ever, but I also enjoy spreading out in a big bed all by myself. I certainly don't sleep snuggled up next to Hubby when we're in the same bed, the way I'd romanticized things as a teen. No--we each claim a side and once it's time to sleep, no one crosses the imaginary line between us.

But this last week (as I have mentioned ad nauseum) I've been sick. I keep us both awake all night with my constant coughing and puking and tossing and turning. So I've sent him to the guest room so that he can get some semblance of sleep before he has to show up at work in the morning (he gets the guest room because he thinks the mattress in there is more comfortable, not because I've banished him there against his will or anything...)

And guess what? We're enjoying it. LOVING it, in fact. I see, talk, play, and snuggle with him all I want to, but then at bedtime we go our separate ways. Right now, we're just doing it because I'm sick. But once I'm better, will we go back to the old way? I don't know! I really think that separate bedrooms means more freedom with my time (and my overhead light and TV remote) and we both get a better night's sleep, and our relationship doesn't suffer--in fact, it may even benefit from it.

So, Mom. Dad. Sorry I laughed at you. I get it now. I really do!

Doctor Trippin'

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:07:00 +0000

Well, I went to the doctor on Friday, after having the night from hell. I suspected strep, since it's the only thing I knew of that could go from sore throat to puking and back to sore throat again. ("Sore throat" doesn't even really seem to scratch the surface of what this feels like!) Fortunately, my dear mother-in-law watched the kiddos for me so that I could go a little more easily.

On my way, I decided to stop in at my old house to gather some more stuff up and I was going to clean out the van and get the oil changed (just because a girl is sicker than a dog doesn't mean she doesn't have things that simply must be done!) Upon arriving at the "old house," I had to go to the bathroom--and thank goodness I did! Heretofore unbeknownst to me, I was covered in blood. Sweet little Aunt Flo had picked just this moment to express herself--all over my jeans. I had no back-up for such a thing. It was totally unexpected. I haven't had a real period since my latest miscarriage three months ago. I felt like I was in Jr. High school again. What to do? I couldn't go out like this, but I couldn't just not go to the doc either!

I scoured the basement to see if somehow I'd left anything wearable. Finally I found something. An old box full of clothes that I was way too familiar with.

My maternity clothes.

In desperation, I found something that hopefully didn't make me look too pregnant (though with my current configuration of body fat, I pretty much look pregnant all the time...) and off I went to the doc.

After sitting in the waiting room for a FULL HOUR, I was seen. The friendly nurse stuck her little magic wand into my ear and cheerfully announced that I had no fever.

I considered beating her to a bloody pulp.

Because even the slightest touch to my forehead would confirm that I did indeed have a TERRIBLE fever.

Stupid nurse. But the doctor was actually really great. She commented on my obvious fever, and even said, "oh wow. Oh WOW!!!" while she looked at my throat. Somehow I needed that validation! I needed her to look at me and say, "of COURSE you feel like crap! You're SICK!" In the end, it was determined that both of my ears are infected and I do, indeed, have strep.

I called Hubby with the news, and learned that he too was feeling sick and had a sore throat. He wasn't nearly to the stage that I was, but I still made him go to the instacare on the way home and get tested for strep so that he could start on an antibiotic before he got too much worse. His strep test came up negative, but the doc gave him a prescription of antibiotics anyway because if he had a fever and a sore throat and his wife had strep, what were the chances that he didn't?

Yesterday we went to a big family party at Hubby's parents' house--a Father's Day celebration. I didn't think I could miss it. By the time we came home, after hours of chasing and disciplining children, cooking, setting up chairs, socializing in those high-pitched cheery "oh-you're-so-darling" tones, cleaning up, and single handedly washing all of the dishes, I was dead. Though I do not have first-hand experience, I suspect that I felt the way one might feel after cooking in a microwave for a few hours.

Therefore, wasn't it a lovely treat that Scooby decided that he too was sick last night. Hubby was up with him for the first half of the night and I took my shift for the second half. He screamed and screamed and tugged at his ears. His skin felt like a furnace.

So this morning, when my other dear children "pleasantly" surprised me by waking up at the crack of dawn, I knew that I'd have to make some phone calls and take Scooby in to the doctor--an adventure that seemed absolutely unconquerable, since I didn't feel like I could even put one foot in front of the other, let alone haul four little ones all the way across town.

But it had to be done, so I did it.

And wouldn't you just know it, that by the time we got to the doctor's office, he'd made a miraculous recovery. POOF! In what can hardly be called an "examination," the doctor determined that he had no fever, no sore throat, no sore ears. "Call us if he acts sick," she said, trying not to sound condescending (but failing). With an office full of doctors and nurses staring at me with that look of, "why did she even bring him in here?" I trotted off with my healthy children.

Of course, now that he's home, he has a fever.

Gotta love it.

Oh, and that pile of hair on the floor? Yah, that's mine. I'm ripping it out by the handfuls right about now...

Chadding Along

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 05:08:00 +0000

Soap Opera Sunday and Chad part 2 (part one is here)

I know that some of you were casting bets that Chad was gay. I'm so sorry to disappoint, but he wasn't. Believe me, a big chunk of my life would have been a lot easier if he had been!

No, actually he'd fallen for me. I'm not sure how or why, especially since every girl in the apartment complex, not to mention anyone who had a class with him, or, well, anyone who walked past him in the hallway, had a thing for him.

It made me the object of much cattiness and snippiness. Stupid, silly, girl-stuff. I didn't mind, at first. It just meant that they were all jealous. But because BYU operated on an "Honor Code" system, we were all sort of encouraged to spy on each other and report when someone broke the rules. And having a group of girls with a grudge against me would turn out to be an unfortunate thing.

Chad and I began spending a lot of time together. A lot. We never "defined the relationship" or anything silly like that. We were just having fun. On the surface I think that we thought we had a lot in common, but the more we got to know each other, the more we realized how completely different we were.

One night, he and I were at my apartment watching a movie and I fell asleep. I woke up to hear my roommate interrogating him. I could hardly believe that she thought it was any of her business to ask him such things, but since I too wanted to know the answers, I pretended to still be asleep as I listened in.

What I learned from their conversation was that he'd stopped believing in God. He wasn't sure he'd ever believed. What you need to know about BYU is that nearly everyone there is Mormon, and on top of that I knew he'd served a mission for the Church, so I had just made assumptions about his beliefs--that they were identical to mine. But I realized we'd never actually talked about it.

As their conversation continued, he admitted that he was finding himself falling completely in love with me, but he knew that I was extremely religious and that I would want a certain kind of wedding ceremony and a certain kind of lifestyle, but going through with that would feel like total hypocrisy on his part and he couldn't do it.

At some point, my roommate told him, "well, I don't think she's even thinking about marriage right now! I mean, she just turned 18!"

"WHAT?!?!?"

Ummm, ooops? I guess I'd forgotten to mention that part. I hadn't tried to hide it. In fact, I was quite proud to be the only female freshman in the Foreign Language Housing. It was a true honor to be there for anyone, but it was almost unheard of for freshmen to be admitted*. I just assumed he knew that about me. He was 25. Apparently our 7-year age difference was a little too much for him.

*Before you are impressed with my accomplishment of being accepted, please know that it had nothing to do with my own merits, and everything to do with who my Daddy was and who his connections were. My Italian sucked. I had NO business being there and I was painfully aware of it. Still, it made me LOOK smart and talented.

Looking back, I think I would have been ready to break up with him if I hadn't heard this conversation. We really weren't very good together and we really didn't have much in common. Making-out was fun, but not worth staying together over.

But sitting there, listening to him give my roommate his list of objections over me, was the same as him issuing me a challenge. I said to myself, "My religion bothers you? My age bothers you? Hmmmm. We'll just see about that."

Picture me, then, arching my eyebrows, tapping my fingertips together, and chanting, "he will be mine. Oh yes, he will be mine."

Let the unhealthiness begin.

Happy Father's Day!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:50:00 +0000

Just wanted to pop in and wish a Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads in my life. Each one is so amazing in his own way.

First, my own Dad: The smartest, kindest, gentlest man on earth. He's in Spain right now--I just got an email from him. My heart aches for how much I miss him. I'm definitely Daddy's little girl, even at 28 years old!

Next, my Father-In-Law: I never expected to love "someone else's Dad" so much, but I do. He has been such a great friend to me and so generous and helpful. My children adore him and he adores them back. I love him for being such a devoted Grampa.

And then, of course, my darling Husband: I thought I loved this man with all my heart the day I married him, but I didn't even know what love was until the first time I saw him holding our first baby. I cry every time (including right now!) I think about the way he walked around with her, moments after she was born, singing "Getting to Know You." A new life was born that day, along with a whole new depth of my love for him. And with every baby, that love just deepens. He is Super Dad. He takes his turn getting up in the night with sick babies, he helps put them in bed, he spoon feeds, he takes them on outings. They love him as much as he loves them. How could they not?

Happy Father's Day, Guys!!!

Flashback Meme...yeah

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:14:00 +0000

It started as a sore throat a couple of days ago with a bit of a cold, and yesterday the fever hit. Then the diarrhea, of course, because life would be too easy without that. And then, the vomiting began. I was up all night throwing up.

Somewhere during the night, I had the strange and rare pleasure of blowing vomit out my nose.

Gentle Readers, I am sick.

I can barely talk which, frankly, is good news for my children because they're driving me crazy but I can't scream at them!

Also, I don't have my scanner set up here yet, nor do I really have any idea where my pictures are, so rather than Flashback Friday, I'm going to go with a meme that Paige tagged me for. It's kinda flash-backy, and requires much less effort and thought from me in my thoughtlessness today.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was not quite 19 years old. Oddly enough, I was living in the city that I've now just moved to. I was finishing up my freshman year of college, going to summer school and taking my first Spanish class. I had just been thrown out of the Foreign Language Housing and very soon I would be thrown out of BYU all together. Ahhhh, the sweet memories. Hahaha. Oh, and I was making out with everyone. Okay, not everyone. I had two criteria--they had to be male and they had to be hot. Still, there were PLENTY to choose from. Hahahaha.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
One year ago I was 6 months pregnant with Lil' Dude. I was traipsing all over the place with my little kiddos and my big fat pregnantness.

Five Snacks You Enjoy:

chocolate
string cheese
saltine crackers
chocolate
Dr. Pepper

Five Songs That You Know All The Lyrics To:

Um, since I know all the lyrics to pretty much every song I listen to, how 'bout I randomly pick the first five songs from my iTunes--I'll put it on shuffle.

Phantom Limb, by The Shins
I Will, by the Beatles (okay, fine. This one didn't come up on my iTunes--it's right where Paige wrote it. Still, it's one of my favs and I didn't think I could just delete it... )
Lonely in your Nightmare, by Duran Duran
Change Your Mind, by The Killers
Chocolate, by Snow Patrol

Five Things You Would Do If You Were a Millionaire:

Travel--show my kids the world!
Donate a big chunk to my Church
Buy a summer home and a winter home
Buy cool stuff for my summer home and winter home
liposuction, baby.

Five bad habits:

I only talk about my good qualities, which leads my readers to erroneously believe that I'm cool
My writing is full of typos, but I'm always correcting other people's grammar and punctuation
I eat too much chocolate
I drink too much Dr. Pepper
I scream at my kids

Five Things You Like To Do:

eat chocolate
read
blog/read other people’s blogs
Snuggle with Hubby
Take the kids out to play

Five Things You Would Never Wear Again:

Florescent t-shirts
floral prints
skin-tight anything
a bikini (I'm okay with all my stretch marks, but I don't have to honor the world with them)
sleeveless, strapless, too short, too low, etc.

Five Favorite Toys:

On-demand TV
digital camera
All of my kids
My Blog
Your Blog

Five people to tag: (apologies if you’ve already done it)

Instructions: Remove the blog from the top, move all blogs up one, add yourself to the bottom.

A Beautiful Life
Absolutely Bananas
Smiling Mom
42
Twas Brillig

Not My Mama's Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:42:00 +0000

My mother, who I love dearly, is crazy.

First, let me review. I have mentioned before that my mother is one of those exceptionally beautiful human beings. Every day, people come up to me and exclaim over her gorgeousness. At 65 years old, she still turns the heads of many--I have watched men flirt with her all my life, including men that you would never expect to see "flirting" due to age and station in life. My dad jokes that he looks more like her father than like her husband. hahaha. He's not too far off, poor guy!

A large part of her beauty can be attributed to good luck and the laws of genetics. The rest should be attributed to daily yoga, meditation, and all the crazy crap she eats.

My mother is mostly vegan and won't eat any salt or fat. And she has a bit of an obsession with the word "organic." Anything processed, refined, altered, or "unnatural" is OUT.

Beauty is just a pleasant result of this craziness. She does it because she's obsessed with health. But, as I have learned, even obsessions with health can be incredibly unhealthy.

Every once in a while, I've tried to eat the way she does. I've come to the conclusion that it's not humanly possible. I mean, I'm all for "healthy" but she has taken this to outlandish extremes.

This week, I am the lucky inheritor of her kitchen. She removed much of her food, but left some stuff around "just in case" I might want it. She then instructed me to throw away anything that I think I won't use.

Brace yourselves, Gentle Readers.

This is a fair sampling of things that I found in her cupboard (minus the long list of crazy herbal tea that had already found a new home in the garbage can before I decided to take this picture). Organic everything, of course. But it's not just "organic"--it's Organic Sauerkraut. Seriously???? Or the Organic Almond Butter, with the $29 price tag still on it. And I have no idea what Organic Sesame Tahini is, but I have a strange feeling that I wouldn't like it very much... And the goat milk. Don't even get me started on the goat milk. I encountered probably twenty cans of the stuff. Because apparently, if you MUST drink or cook with milk, it should ONLY be organic goat milk...

The fridge and freezer were filled with similar treasures, like organic whole grain wheatsprout bread, tofu of all varieties, and let us not forget the wide variety of home-sprouted grains.

You'll be happy to know that I'm keeping some of this stuff! You'll also be happy to know that I'm tossing most of it to make room for macaroni and cheese, rice-a-roni, Lucky Charms, and ice cream!!!!

My mother would have a heart attack if she saw how I've disgraced her kitchen. Sorry, Mama, but this ain't your kitchen anymore...

Really, I love the idea of being beautiful like my mother, but NOT at that price!!!

Poor George

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:08:00 +0000

~The most lamentable and disastrous tragedy of George the Monkey-Pillow~

George (how we will choose to remember him)

My intentions were good. I thought I was being so helpful. O, foul wretch that I am, I never meant for this to happen.

Frankly, George stank. A lot. "He needs a bath," I explained to his friend and owner, Scooby. I've given George a "bath" before and it was inconsequential. He came out sparkling clean and smelling less like... well... a two-year-old boy's favorite toy.

George was given his name because, as far as Scooby is concerned, ALL monkeys are named George. He is my son's beloved friend, confidant, and bodyguard. George can do no wrong. And I appreciate George too, because of the level of comfort that he gives to my Scooby, particularly during difficult transitions (moving from one home to another, for instance...). George is a constant companion, and sleep comes to a screeching halt when he's missing.

It took much convincing for Scooby to allow me to bathe George. As you all know, reasoning with a two-year-old is an exercise in futility. Grudgingly, Scooby eventually allowed me to put George into the washer. But he was NOT pleased with me.

And thus, Gentle Readers, you can only imagine my horror when, upon opening the washer half an hour later, I found soggy bits of George, strewn here and there, no longer attached to each other.

George is dead.

I murdered him.

His ~~cotton filling~~ blood stains my hands.

Now he is dead, now he is fled, his soul is in the sky.

I shall take up this stuffed animal and bear him to the tomb.

And then... I'll have to find a way to let Scooby know of his mother's villainy.

There are likely to be many, many sleepless nights around here.

So Behind

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:06:00 +0000

One of these days I will post a real post. One of these days I will tell you about the sliver in my daughters foot that sent us to the Urgent Care after-hours place an hour away, because I couldn't get it out the old fashioned way. One of these days I'll catch up on reading and commenting on all of my favorite blogs, as well as making the correct changes to my blogroll. And one of these days I'll tell you about my father-in-law's retirement party which I'm just now getting back from, that I hauled all of my kids to all by myself with the youngest two snugly nestled into the stroller only to find out that the party was on the top floor and there was NO ELEVATOR. And one of these days I'll catch up on my soap opera Sunday about Chad that I started last week but didn't do anything on this week! And maybe, just MAYBE, one of these days I'll tell you how the move went--but first, I'll have to move. (Tomorrow is the BIG DAY!!) And maybe at some point I will do something about all my children--who I can hear screaming their heads off. And maybe one day I'll even post some pictures.

But not today.

But I did want to pop in and post a great big THANK YOU to everyone for all of your emails and your notes and your well-wishes. I have the absolute greatest blog-buddies ever. Thanks for being so wonderful! How did I survive for so many years without you?

To Scooby

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 02:26:00 +0000

It's Flashback Friday and Scooby's birthday!!

When I was ten days past my due date, I'd had it. This was the longest pregancy ever.

For the first six months of the pregnancy, I puked every single day, multiple times a day. And on top of all the puking, I was spotting. Since I'd already had a handful of miscarriages by this point, I was freaking out. Both the severe dehydration and the bleeding sent me to the Emergency Room on various occasions. And you may have gathered by now that emergency rooms and I don't exactly get along...

But the hardest part was being so sick while taking care of two very energetic toddlers. Fluffy and Bubba were 3 and almost 2 and were next to impossible. I was almost too sick to keep up with them, which meant that they were causing even more trouble than they would had I been well enough to be more diligent.

And on top of all of that, Hubby was not only working full time, but feverishly working on his Masters Degree. He was gone all day long and well into the night almost every single day.

I was sick, exhausted, hormonal, lonely, and extremely overwhelmed.

So making it to my due date and then going beyond it seemed so completely unfair.

We had decided not to find out the baby's gender. We already had a boy and a girl, so we were prepared for either one. Still, Hubby and I were both convinced that it was a girl. Her name would be Sophia. I couldn't wait to cuddle my little girl in my arms.

And so, on this day ten days past my due date, as I was on my way to my prenatal appointment, I decided that I would ask my midwife to break my water. This was a huge thing to me, since I was so completely devoted letting nature take its course...

But, SURPRISE! My water broke on its own on my way to my appointment! There I was, on the freeway in my minivan with Fluffy and Bubba, gushing amniotic fluid. Upon arriving at my midwife's and looking like I'd been peeing myself, she checked me and announced that I was already dilated to a 7. Since my last labor had only lasted four hours, we expected that this baby would come any second. So I jumped back into my van with my kiddos and my midwife loaded her car with all of her supplies and followed me home, each of us gripping our cell phones, just in case it became necessary to deliver the baby on the side of the road!

Fortunately, we made it all the way to my house and even had time to get the birth tub set up, at which point I sat. And waited. And waited. The house slowly filled up with people--Hubby, my midwife, her two assistants, my mother-in-law, and then randomly two of my sisters-in-law and all of a sudden my FATHER-in-law (who stayed in the kitchen where he couldn't, um, see stuff...) AND my two children: Fluffy who watched in awe, and Bubba who wanted to get in the birthing tub with me and took off all of his clothes and screamed and screamed and SCREAMED and NO ONE WOULD TAKE CARE OF HIM, though they scolded me when I tried, saying, "oh, don't worry about him right now! We're here to take care of him!" And yet... they didn't. (He wasn't even supposed to be there, by the way. Babysitter had bailed last minute.) And there I was, post-transition and well into the pushing stage with mass chaos around me. It was so completely nuts. My quiet, tranquil homebirth had turned into a circus. However, I was way too focused to even be bothered about the circus. I had a big job ahead of me, after all.

I pushed for two hours. It was agonizing. I'd been through natural childbirth a couple of times, and it's NEVER easy, but this was different.

Finally the baby was born.

A boy.

It was Hubby's job to announce the gender. I nearly died when he said "boy." I had to look for myself, and then look again!

And, posterior. The last time I'd been checked, he was anterior. Somewhere in there he flipped and came out backwards. Hence the longer-than-expected labor and, well, the AGONY of the delivery!

But oh! how I loved him. Adored him. From the instant he was in my arms, he was the joy of my life--the piece of my soul that had been missing.

He didn't have a name--he wouldn't have a name for a couple more weeks! We couldn't exactly name him Sophia, after all...

After much war with Hubby over names, we finally settled on one. The PERFECT one. (And no, it's not "Scooby"--that's a nickname that Fluffy came up with during the nameless-interum.)

And now he's turning two! He's rambunctious and hilarious and darling. He's a little more crazy than his siblings, as evidenced in various trips for emergency x-rays and the like. Still, he keeps me laughing all day long. He's a middle child, but he never gets lost in the mix. He's so vibrant and colorful and delightful!

And so, on this very special day, I wish him a happy, HAPPY Birthday!!!!!!

Unchanged

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 01:08:00 +0000

As you know, I'm in the midst of moving and I'm being the crappiest blogger ever in the process. Please know that I have all of you in my google reader and I'm keeping up on reading your posts, but I'm hardly commenting anywhere. I know, I know. Reading isn't enough. Comments are the real validation for your writing. I get that. And I'm so sorry. One of these days I'll take an entire day and catch up on all my comments.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to share a story from today. My little Bubba has a "friend." We will call this friend "Brat." Bubba always begs to be able to see Brat and to play with him. Brat lives in the old neighborhood, where the house that we're trying to sell is located. So, since I was hauling all the kids down there today to begin moving the old boxes to our soon-to-be home, I thought I'd call this little friend and see if he wanted to come play with my son for a little while.

"He's changed! He's changed!" the Brat's mom said, unprovoked by any question on my part. Brat had been a terrible bully to my Bubba, though Bubba loved him anyway. At one point, about a year ago, I had informed her that Brat was not to play with my son anymore, because my kid was being taught that it was okay for Brat to beat him up, and that Brat's mom could be in the room and watch it and never lift a finger or her voice or anything--unless Bubba cried too loudly, in which case she yelled at Bubba, instead of her nasty rotten little abusive brat.

"He's not a bully anymore! I've been disciplining him and teaching him not to be mean! You'll see! He's doing so well!"

I was hopeful, but skeptical. This kid really is the world's biggest monster and his mother is the world's biggest enabler.

But, because Bubba really wanted to see him, and because I was willing to give the kid another chance, I invited him over.

Within a few minutes of arriving at our house, Brat comes running inside (he and Bubba and Fluffy had been playing in the backyard) with giant alligator tears streaming down his face, announcing that Bubba had shoved him. His mother looked at me like she was about to murder my Bubba.

But before she could accomplish her intended homicide, Fluffy (who honestly should become a reporter due to her dependably accurate and unbiassed tattling) came in to tell the real story. Brat had attacked my Bubba with a metal dump truck toy, whacking him in the head repeatedly, until Bubba pushed him away so he would stop it.

Sure enough, when Bubba was located, his forehead was bruised and scratched. Even so, Bubba apologized for shoving Brat (something I didn't even see as necessary! How proud I am that he shoved the kid away! What were his other options? Just sit there and take it?). But Brat didn't (nor was he ever encouraged by his mother to) apologize--though he did smirk with satisfaction when he saw the damage that he'd caused on Bubba's forehead.

Moments later, Scooby began screaming (TOTALLY out of character for him) and came running to me with his nose GUSHING blood. (I wish I could say that I was more worried about the nosebleed than I was about my carpet...) I gasped and asked what had happened. "Brat threw a shoe at him," said his mother, nonchalantly. She'd SEEN him do it. My son was screaming and bleeding. Still, absolutely NO discipline whatsoever.

I grabbed my keys and said, "I'm afraid we are leaving now." (Even though I hadn't accomplished one single thing...)

"Oh! Okay! But when you come back next time, PLEASE call us again! I think Brat and Bubba really had a great time! They love to play together SO much!"

You'll be happy to know that I restrained myself from poking out her eyeballs and frying them on a stick, though it is precisely what I wanted to do. Instead I gave a little half smile and said, "well, we'll see."

Needless to say, Gentle Readers, I'm not terribly impressed with the "changes" that she was so proud of. Nor will I be calling them ever again.

Moving Week

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:31:00 +0000

My blogging this week will be sporatic at best. One week from today we will move into our new home! But with four little ones and a billion tasks to complete before the big day, I'm not likely to be seen around these parts for a bit. I will definitely check in for Scooby's Birthday to post (as is my tradition) his birth story and of course I'll keep up on my latest Soap Opera Sunday series, and I may pop in if I have something BRILLIANT to say (and by "brilliant" I mean "mediocre") but otherwise I will likely be quite unheard from until I get established.

But! Do you realize that in a week I will have a wireless internet connection, instead of the dial-up that I've been using here? I'll be able to watch videos and hear soundbites!!!! I will no longer tie up the phone lines while I'm blogging! And my dear little laptop will come out of hiding too!

And I'll have TV back. Not just any TV, but my Dad's massive wall-size TV with uber-cable, as opposed to the 19-inch antenna TV with crappy reception that I've had here!

I will have SPACE! Room to put my STUFF, instead of piling everything on the couch, floor, tables, bed...

I will have my own KITCHEN! A place where I can cook and clean and not constantly feel like I'm in someone else's way!

And, as much as I love her (and I really do) I won't be living with my MOTHER-IN-LAW anymore!!!!!!!

Yeah, moving is good, even if it's a big fat pain!

Hanging Chad

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 05:07:00 +0000

Soap Opera Sunday, friends!

As I was trying to tackle this particular Soap Opera, it became clear that this one is just so many soap operas within a soap opera. Much too soapy to possibly fit into one post. So, I’m making it June’s Soap Opera—a series, of sorts, that will last the whole month. Unless it’s extremely unpopular, or if I get really bored with it. Plus, one day I may run out of Soap Operas! Then what would I do on Sundays? So I suppose it’s better to stretch it out, huh?

I was heading towards the laundry room in my apartment complex--not to do laundry, because that would have been totally out of character for me, but rather to buy candy. As I approached the laundry room, I could hear singing. Opera-impersonating singing. Not terrible, but certainly not professional. I thought there must be a hilarious gathering of people in the laundry room (not totally unheard of in these parts), but when I opened the door, there was just one person. One completely embarrassed person, singing while he was doing his laundry.

It didn’t hurt that he was gorgeous.

He laughed and introduced himself as “Chad.” We talked for a brief moment—he lived in the Russian House*, I lived in the Italian House. He’d heard that all of the girls in the Italian House were extremely pretty. I’d heard that at least one of the guys in the Russian House was gay.

He asked me what I was doing so late, so I explained that I had rented the movie “The Rocketeer” because some guys had told me that I looked EXACTLY like Jennifer Connelly in that movie, so I wanted to see what she looked like, since I hadn’t seen her in anything since Labyrinth. And now I was stopping by the laundry room to get some candy out of the vending machine, because who can watch a movie without chocolate?

“Well, I hope that you took it as a compliment—the Jennifer Connelly thing, I mean. As I recall, she was beautiful in that movie.”

“Well, I guess I’d better go see, then!” I headed out the door, but stopped to say, “Do you wanna come watch it with me?” (*gasp* Had I really just been that bold?)

“Uh, no.” He replied. “I’ve got this laundry… and it’s late.” (*gasp* Had I really just been brushed off?)

I reported this meeting to my roommates, all of whom knew who he was. And, awkwardly enough, they were all in love with him. And, by the way, Chad had been right. My roommates were exceptionally pretty women, so the competition would be fierce. Still, the guy was hot, and had that special, intangible something, so I wasn't going to give up just yet.

The next time I saw him was at a college dance. He was dancing. With a group of guys. To Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” Hmmm, okay. I guess he was the gay one, then. Well, that was that. Still, I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. He looked my way and smiled a few times, but stuck with his group of friends.

Later that night, when I got home, my roommates had a bunch of people over. Okay, they had a bunch of GUYS over (we didn't have very many female friends...) There were guys from the Italian, French, and Russian Houses. And yeah, Chad was there too. But I really didn't talk to him. There were many attractive young men in the room and there was much flirting to be done. hahaha.

At one point in all the chaos of a tiny apartment filled with a million occupants, Chad grabbed my hand and pulled me outside.

"Okay, I know it's last minute, but I was wondering if you would go out with me tomorrow night."

I was a bit stunned, but readily accepted, hoping I wasn't coming across as TOO eager...

So we went out. Apparently, he wasn't gay. Just a lot of fun. (I think that the only truly fun guys I'd known up until that point were gay, so this was new for me.) He was an art major--oh, how I dug the starving artist thing! And starving he was. He drove a clunker that was older than I was. He was on full scholarship, fortunately, but could barely afford his next meal. Still, he had a well-stocked "date" fund. The boy knew his priorities.

He took me to dinner and then "disco skating" (random, but really fun...). He was funny, flirty, charming, and (did I mention?) gorgeous.

When he dropped me off that night, I wasn't ready for the night to end. He walked me inside my apartment which had no lights on except for my roommate's crazy green lava lamp, which was strangely romantic in the moment. I remember being certain that he was going to kiss me. I remember the way he looked into my eyes, and then slowly looked down at my lips, and then back to my eyes.

But he didn't kiss me.

Instead, he said goodnight and left.

*We lived in BYU's Foreign Language Housing, where you had to be proficient in both English and at least one other language. (Most of us were Americans who spoke foreign languages, but there were a handful of foreigners who spoke English plus their native language.) Inside your respective "House" you could not speak anything but your assigned language. In return, you got school credit and great language training, plus the "prestige" of living there, as the application process was brutal, and only a few were selected. It was a fun place to live, despite it being excrutiatingly demanding, because you knew that the people you met would likely be cultural, intelligent, and interesting. Though, of course SOME of us weren't. hahaha.

Perfect Post Awards!

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:14:00 +0000

Okey dokey, folks. Flashback Friday is on hold for today, because it's the first day of the month. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? It means it's time for the Perfect Post Awards!

This is the first month that I'm participating in the Perfect Post Awards, brought to you by Suburban Turmoil and MammaK. For more info and other Perfect Post recipients, check out their sites.

And, well, since it's my first time to award it, I thought it should be different. Challenging, in fact. And what is a challenge that I have not yet mastered? Why, iambic pentameter, of course. And so, without further ado:

Shall I award Kate for a funny day?
It was not lovely, nor quite dignified:
Of blisters popped and chin hair she did write,
And many readers likely were quite horrified:
Sometimes too yuck the skin confessions were,
And once a "happy trail" she did imply;
And every fair from fair therefore declined,
By zits or steroid's cream to rectify:
But my eternal laughter did not fade,
Nor lose remembrance of that fair she hath;
Nor was it so gross that I ran and screamed,
But rather thought a "perfect post" to grant:

So long as blogs shall be, or Brillig see,
So long lives this, which post gives laughs to me.

Oh my gosh. I did it. A full sonnett, all 14 lines, all in iambic pentameter. I must have really enjoyed her post. So, in case some of you missed it (because, let's face it, sometimes I had to stretch a bit and it lacked, well, meaning) I hereby award Kate of Walking Kateastrophe
May's Perfect Post for her post, "Just when I thought lazer hair
removal only worked on brunettes."

What are you doing still sitting here? Go read her post!

Acceptance, Soap, and Thuds

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Thu, 31 May 2007 03:35:00 +0000

Oh, the crazy "mommy moments" just keep happening around here. While I don't post about them too often, rest assured that they make up the majority of my life. And, after all, I WAS nominated as the hottest Mommy Blogger. (What's that? You haven't voted yet? Well, here. I'll make it easy for you. Click here.) So I guess from time to time I need to prove my Momminess. Right now, I will highlight 3 moments from yesterday.

1. I put my happy cherubic little baby on the floor upstairs so that he could roll around and scoot to his little heart's content. Then I ran downstairs to grab something, and in the meantime I heard, "*shuffle-shuffle*scoot-scoot*THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD*splat*WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH*" In zero seconds flat, he'd managed to make it to the other side of the room and fling himself down the stairs, causing me to feel like the world's best mom. He wasn't terribly hurt, besides a little bruise on the head, but it scared us both real good. "I only left him alone for a SECOND." "Yeah, yeah, lady. We've heard that one before. You're gonna have to come with us, now. And we're giving your children to the nice lady down the street with all the cats." You KNOW that's what's gonna happen one of these days.

2. Once the littlest boys were in bed for their naps, Bubba and Fluffy went upstairs to play while I, well, blogged. After a little while, I heard strange noises in the bathroom so I went to check it out. I found Fluffy, in the bottom half of her swimsuit, and Bubba, completely naked, in the bathtub, which they had filled and dumped all the shampoo into (besides the shampoo that was dumped all over the floor in the process, of course) obviously hoping for bubbles, but instead getting just icky water. And then... I heard extra giggling. Who else was giggling? Upon closer examination, I found the NEIGHBOR GIRL hiding behind the shower curtain, wearing a swimsuit, as though she'd been planning all along to come on over and jump in our bathtub. I DID NOT KNOW THAT THE NEIGHBOR GIRL HAD COME OVER AT ALL. Rather than throttling them all, which is what I was initially tempted to do, I handled it with great dignity, fetching Blake's swimsuit and the rest of Madeleine's and telling them DON'T SPLASH. Am I cool, or what?

3. Since my little princess is about to start Kindergarten, I'd really hoped to get Madeleine into a charter school rather than the regular nastiness that is the public school system, so I applied her to all of them that I could think of, but all of my attempts had been thwarted. Kindergarten is the hardest year to get a kid into a decent school--all the spots fill up SO quickly. I'd resigned myself to Public School. But LAST NIGHT! An email came from the charter school in the town we're moving to in a couple of weeks--I don't even remember applying to this school, because we never expected to move to this particular city! Anyway, they had ONE POSITION open up and her name was drawn! I had until 10:00 p.m. (less than four hours from when the email was sent--good thing I have no life and happened to be online!) to respond and accept the position or it would be given to someone else. I'm SO EXCITED! See, if this email had come just a week ago, I would have thrown it away, because there was NO WAY we were moving to that city, therefore the slot would have been wasted on us. So the announcement came at just the absolute perfect moment! It just feels like another concrete sign that we made the right decision. Yeay!

Okay, am I enough of a mommy-blogger for you now? Hey, did you vote yet? ;-)

Animated Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Wed, 30 May 2007 04:58:00 +0000

I just bought the movie Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses for my Fluffy, and fortunately her brothers don't yet know that it's not cool for them to like Barbie movies, so they're all happily watching it. We've all probably seen it about 57 times now.

And I have the most random thing to admit.

I think "Prince" Derek is HOT.

I would have included a picture with that last statement, but I couldn't find any, even through lengthy google image searches--which leads me to believe that I'm the only "grown up" who thinks that Derek is hot. Or, perhaps, that any animated character is hot.

Alas, it's not the first time. I always kinda had a thing for Eric from The Little Mermaid and Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty.

And really, I can't believe I'm writing any of this.

Still, I know I'm not entirely alone. I specifically remember a moment in college when I was hanging out with some guy friends who had just seen Disney's "Hercules" (it had just come out) and they were talking about how Meg was by far the hottest Disney character ever! When I saw the movie myself, I thought that she was definitely the skankiest of all of Disney's princesses (which is, of course, what these guys found so appealing). Still, the fact that ALL of them were saying this about an animated character makes me think that perhaps this is not totally unheard of.

So, fess up. Did you ever have a thing for an animated character?

(And is anyone gonna agree with me about Derek? Come on...)

Bloglights

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Tue, 29 May 2007 07:11:00 +0000

Well, yeah. I thought I'd add a new feature to 'Twas Brillig--because apparently my daily blogging routine was devastatingly uncomplicated. Or something.

So, here's the deal. In my sidebar, there will be a box highlighting three blogs. These will change every day (every day that I blog, that is...). My purpose is to tell how I met all the bloggers in my blogroll! I thought it would be fun, and challenging in some cases, since I'm not sure I even remember how I met all my bloggy friends!

And to mix things up a bit, I'm going to do it in reverse alphabetical order. Cuz, well, why not?

This would be a lovely chance for you, my dear bloggy buddies, to go to my blogroll and make sure that your link works, that it's going to the right place--and that it's there at all!

By the way, there is absolutely no anticipation of reciprocity here. This is just something I wanted to do, free of charge! :-D Everyone loves to hear about how their blog was found, right?

Of course, my blogroll isn't set in stone (even though it does seem to take me an eternity to update it). I anticipate meeting more friends along the way. Do not weep for them, Gentle Readers, for as I go along meeting new friends, I will certainly add them to the fun, even if their letter of the alphabet has already been featured. :-D

So, now, let the linky-love begin! Go check it out! You're likely to meet some new friends in the process!
********ETA:
Oh! And don't worry! I'll be filing all the bloglights into my blogroll so you can go back and see what I said about you or someone else, and you can see if someone's already been bloglighted or not, and also so that the linky-love is permanent, and not just for a day. :-D

It's Memorial Day, People.

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:53:00 +0000

PLEASE don't tell me you're sitting around BLOGGING this weekend!

Oh, wait... what am I doing? Sitting around blogging? Hmmmm. I'm SO COOL.

Do you think I could buy a life on e-bay?

Plays and Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Sun, 27 May 2007 05:09:00 +0000

Hello, Gentle Readers! It’s been so long since we had a Soap Opera Sunday! So, seek out your inner drama queen, and let’s go!

(The only thing Soap Opera-y about this one is that it contains all the angst and emotions of the high school world. No torrid love affairs, I'm afraid.)

My Freshman year of high school, I had a great group of close friends--a boy named Mark was an integral part of that group. He was funny, talented, intelligent, and (to my little fourteen year old eyes) drop dead gorgeous. Which, I suppose, is where the problems started. I liked him. A lot. And it was no secret. And, apparently, it was not reciprocated.

My passionate devotion to Mark burned him out. Slowly but surely, he began distancing himself from our group of friends and became, well, rude. And that caused me to freak out at him, which caused further distance and rudeness, etc. By our Sophomore year, we were barely speaking to each other (but speaking PLENTY behind each other’s backs, natch).

The trick here is that both Mark and I were also passionately devoted to one other thing: Theater. And we’d both climbed the totum pole to the top, so we often had to work together, but we weren’t nice about it. Every time the spotlight shone on him (which was all the time) I gagged a little, got nasty and gossipy about him, or furiously jealous. Whenever Mark saw me, I was at my snippiest, snottiest worst--which is so funny, because I wasn't really like that at all. Just around him. I just kept making it easier and easier for him to hate me.

It was so strange, to know each other so well and share happy memories and hilarious inside jokes, and yet feel so strongly negative towards each other.

By the time we were Seniors, Mark had his groupies, I had mine (Mark had, shall we say, a lot more adoring fans than I did….which, of course, bugged me too). Everyone knew that we weren’t very fond of each other, but almost no one knew that once upon a time we'd been best friends.

And then the inevitable happened. We were cast in the school play as romantic leads opposite each other. “Fine,” I thought. Sure, we’d be working even more closely with each other than we’d worked before, but we could get through it.

But this was different. Due to many factors (which are too long and boring to explain) this play was very emotionally charged and extremely stressful. Both Mark and I were feeling the pinch and, not feeling like we could lean on each other to get through it, we instead grew extremely antagonistic. Fortunately, we didn’t actually have that many scenes together, and when we did have scenes together, there was nothing too lovey-dovey. The words were lovey-dovey, but there were no *ahem* actions involved.

You could see ten feet between us at any given moment, no matter how
mushy the words that we were saying were.

During our final dress rehearsal, our director said to us (after weeks of rehearsals, and nary a word prior) “you two are going to have to kiss at that part.”

The theater, which was full of people, went completely silent, before it erupted into psychotic giggling. Everyone in that room knew how we felt about each other.

I couldn’t breathe and I think Mark was about to throw up.

(Part of the ridiculousness was that never in my life had I been surrounded by so many boys--in the cast and the tech crew-- who would have fallen all over themselves to be the one kissing me. For some reason, it was almost as if someone had hand-picked every boy who'd ever had a crush on me up to that time and put them in the cast and crew. And yet I was slated to kiss the one who found me utterly disgusting.)

I don’t remember what we said or if we said anything. But we never looked at each other or acknowledged to each other what we’d just heard. And we CERTAINLY never PRACTICED.

The next day at school, complete strangers were coming up to me saying, “Hey! I heard you and Mark are gonna have to kiss each other in the play tonight!” And they would heckle me and giggle and go on their way.

So, that night—Opening night, I wasn’t nervous about anything besides that kiss--that unpracticed kiss with a boy who loathed me--a kiss that all our friends, and even our non-friends, were sitting in the audience to witness.

I remember that right before that scene, I grabbed his arm backstage and shoved a breath mint into his hand. (Yes, I’m still snickering about that.)

We performed the play four times. I remember each night’s kiss distinctly, after all these years. Our first night’s kiss wasn’t remarkable. We were just in a hurry to get it over with. Our director’s notes after the second night were that it was “WAY TOO SHORT AND PASSIONLESS” which was SO true. You’d think we’d just given each other a hi-five with our lips or something. And so the third night we took it slower, as we’d been told to do, and it was… delicious. At least in my memory it was. I don’t actually know what Mark thought of that one, but I suspect that he was perhaps even more disgusted with me because he could sense that I was allowing myself to enjoy it a little bit. Haha. Anyway, the last night was the best. By far.

Because the whole school showed up to take a picture of it.

Clearly printed on the programs were the instructions not to take pictures. It didn’t matter. There we were, taking the “kissing position” and all we heard and saw were *clicks* and flashes. Hahahaha.

Not only did a thousand people take identical pictures, but this one was even
prominently featured in our yearbook. Hahaha.

In the moment that all those pictures were audibly snapped, I could feel Mark starting to laugh, which made me want to start laughing. Both of us realized how absolutely RIDICULOUS this whole situation had become, that there was so much real-life drama between us that people were turning up just to take pictures of us STAGE-KISSING!!! The audience didn't know that we were both on the brink of busting up laughing--we covered it well and moved on with the scene as normal. But we knew it about each other, and that was enough to undo a lot of the crazy years of anger and disgust. We now had something to laugh about together--ourselves. Stupid as it sounds, it was a really healing moment.

It was a turning point for us. For the rest of the school year, there wasn't exactly comradery, but neither was there hatred, disgust, gossip, and jealousy. We were just co-existing. It was marvelous in it's total unremarkableness.

Nowadays, I don't know where he is or what he's up to, though from time to time I hear things about him. Apparently, he pursued the professional acting thing--hey, if anyone can do it, Mark can. He really was that good--way, way better than I was. And, obviously, I made very different choices for my own life. But the point is (point? did someone accuse me of having a point?) that oddly enough, there's nothing but kindness and respect between us now, on both sides. I hope that wherever he is, life is treating him well and that he's happy. And I can say with 100% confidence that he hopes the same for me.

Taking Care of Business

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:59:00 +0000

I've been tagged. Multiple times. I'm going to try to catch up here a little...

In the Spotlight.

Jenny and Jessabean both tagged me for this one, along with a myriad of others who say "if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged" (not at ALL cliche...). I've seen it all over the web lately, and I've seen everyone answering DIFFERENT questions, so I wasn't actually sure what the real questions are. So I went right to the Source, (and asked the horse, she gave me the answer that she endorsed, she's always on a steady course, talk to Mr. Ed) and apparently there are several questions that I can CHOOSE from! So I guess I'll answer the ones that I feel like answering!

1. What makes your blog unique? Well, let's see. I'm a homebirthing, green-eyed, vegetarian, Mormon, world-travelled, "had-four-kids-in-four-years," poliglottal, mommy-blogging Democrat who lives with her mother-in-law and writes under a Jabberwocky-inspired pen name. I like to think that makes me unique.

2. When did you start blogging? I started blogging two months and two days ago, to be precise. Before that, I had a different blog that I occasionally wrote stupid (and totally unnoticed) posts on from time to time, but I wouldn't call it "blogging." Then I became Brillig and I've been frantically blogging ever since!

3. What do you hope to accomplish with your blog? Make a million bucks? Take over the world? Hypnotize wild animals? Complete the tower of Babel? Punish all who are literate? You pick.

4. What are your feelings on the "blog popularity" issue? HAHAHAHA. I had to put this one in, because the WHOLE POINT OF THIS WOMAN CREATING THIS MEME WAS TO INCREASE HER BLOG'S POPULARITY. Well done, brilliant Christy. Well done indeed.

And now I will tag-a-roo. Hmmmm, who should my victims be today? I pick:

Whiskeymarie from Never what you think it should be
Jewels from Blonde Canary
Rebecca of Rebecca James
Believer of Believer in Balance
Jennifer from The Verge

Okay. Now to the second one. This one came from Butrfly today.

Where did you get your kids' names from? (that's not really the name, but it works...)

1. Fluffy is actually the nickname my little girl has had since she was in utero. I can't for the life of me remember why her dad started calling her "Fluffy" and then when she was born bald (and remained mostly hairless until she was nearly 2!) it became just a silly name for her! Now her hair is actually quite Fluffy, so it works just fine. Her brothers all call her "Fluffy." Her REAL name came from when I was working in a bookstore while I was pregnant with her and saw the name on a book and fell instantly in love with it, presented the idea to Hubby, he loved it too, and it was a done deal. What you should know is that she is named (her first and middle name) after who I consider to be the two most controversial women in the Bible. Beautiful names, beautiful together, and my way of saying, "back off--those two women were AMAZING."

2. "Bubba" is just what we've always called him. His real name is his Dad's middle name, which was Hubby's grandfather's first name, which was hubby's grandfather's mother's maiden name. Got it? Basically a no brainer for me. But the name suits my little Bubba perfectly. Bubba's middle name is my maiden name, which also suits him PERFECTLY.

3. "Scooby" is what Fluffy started calling him right after he was born. Hubby and I had decided not to find out Scooby's gender before he was born, but for some reason we both firmly believed that he would be a girl. (If he'd been a girl, his name would have been Sophia Catherine. Isn't that pretty?) Anyway, he was clearly NOT a girl when he was born and it took us TWO WEEKS to come up with a name for him! The name we settled on is so cute and we love it. It's Biblical without sounding Amish... His middle name is Hubby's grandma's maiden name.

4. Lil' Dude is an obvious nickname for my lil' dude. I suspect it requires no explanation. As for his real name, he was my only baby born in the hospital and you have to name your kid before you can go home! We had NO idea what to name him. But I was desperate to get out of the hospital (hospitals in general make me feel that way...) so I kind pulled a name out of the air and Hubby liked it (after we'd been quarrelling about EVERY name up to that point), so we hurried and wrote it on the birth certificate app. and off we went! His middle name is yet another family name from Hubby's side. (There are VERY FEW PEOPLE in my family that I would EVER EVER EVER name a child after, so I'm glad that Hubby had so many great people in his genealogy!)

And now, I tag
Thoroughly Mormon Millie
Braveheart-does-the-Maghreb
Mom O Matic
The Dead Letters
Families are like fudge…mostly sweet with a few nuts

Phew! Two meme's down! Only about a thousand to go...

Passing Ports

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:48:00 +0000

It's another installment of Flashback Friday, Friends!

(I'm SO gonna end up in Guantanamo for this post. See why I use a nom de plume?)

I was digging through some of my old stuff the other night and came across my passport from when I was a teen. I was 12 when I got it, it expired when I was 17.

This wasn't just any passport. I've had a million passports (okay, probably not QUITE that many...) but this one...

THIS ONE was....

Illegal.

There's a raised stamp right over my face causing me to look "bumpy"... I just felt like
I needed to clear that up, lest there be any confusion. :-D

Okay, okay. Illegal is perhaps too strong of a word. Technically, it's against the law to have two active American passports (unless you're Jason Bourne, apparently) and this was my second passport--I already had one that I was using, and continued to use the whole time I had this second one. My acquiring a second passport was necessary because in order to get into some of the Arab nations surrounding the country of Israel, you aren't allowed to have ANY HEBREW IN YOUR PASSPORT. Which pretty much SUCKS if, say, you flew into Tel Aviv first and they happened to stamp your passport, as is the norm when you land in any country! Then let's say you were planning to travel to, say, Amman, Jordan.

Which I did. And I was.

And so in a little American Consulate in East Jerusalem, my shady passport was concocted. I've been an unconvicted felon ever since.

*snicker*

Even with the new shiny passport, getting into Jordan was no easy feat. Tensions were so high in the region (imagine that!) that even though Amman is only about an hour's drive away from Jerusalem, the border was closed. So, naturally, being the adventurous family that we were, we snuck in.

Okay, okay! Again, I'm being a bit over dramatic! We didn't "sneak" in, in that we weren't doing anything wrong. The four of us (my older brother, my parents, and I) woke up early in the morning and took a taxi to the southern end of Israel and from there we walked across the border into Egypt. Once in Egypt, we boarded a rickety old bus that took us across the Suez Canal and on to the Red Sea. From there, we took a commuter's ferry to Aqaba, Jordan where, since we were coming from Egypt and there was no Hebrew in my passport, no one was suspicious that perhaps we'd been in Israel just hours before. And we were let into the country without a scene.

What could have been an hour's drive was a 24 hour ordeal.

Anyway, the stamps in the passport include Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Austria, Italy, The U.K. (multiple times!), and, of course, the USA.

Not bad, considering the passport was technically illegal.

The End and the Beginning of the Limbo

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Thu, 24 May 2007 03:18:00 +0000

Nope. I didn't see this one coming. Not at all.

To catch you up, quickly, Hubby and I are trying to sell our house. In efforts to sell it faster, we decided to move out of it. We've been living in his parents' basement ever since (for the last two months). I'd had to pull my kids out of preschool and soccer and ballet and all that "important" stuff, and we've been really living a half-life here, in utter limbo, in a dark, crowded, small basement. We're terribly grateful to my in-laws for being so gracious and generous with us, but we've also been extremely eager to move on with life. We've had no success whatsoever in either the home-selling arena, nor the home-buying arena.

Good. Now you're up to speed.

My parents are moving to Spain for a couple of years. They need someone to take care of their house while they’re gone.

We had taken ourselves out of the running for house-sitting, because we were building a house. And, on top of that, we already owned a house. We really didn’t need to borrow anyone else’s house.

But, if you’ve been reading this blog at all, you’ll remember that we actually decided against the house we’d been building, for no reason other than that our gut unmistakably insisted that we walk away. And we’ve had a devil of a time selling our old house. We live in a collapsing market and our old neighborhood is full of beautiful homes for sale, not one of which is actually selling.

You can see where I’m going with this.

The matter of who would house-sit for my parents was resolved a while back, but my father reconsidered the situation and decided against the renter that he’d settled on. And today he called me. He’s in a pickle, needing someone to live in his house. I’m in a pickle, needing somewhere to live. After various frantic phone calls to Hubby at work and to my dad and to various realtors, the matter was decided.

We're moving into my childhood home.

And we feel good about it.

And that's all we've asked for all along--that when we finally make a decision, we can feel good about it.

This gives us time to sell our house the way we want to sell it, and not, out of desperation, entertain stupid offers from stupid people. When we do actually sell the house, we can then put our money in the bank somewhere and watch it grow as the market collapses, thus allowing us to buy an even more fabulous house than the ones we’d been shopping for. And we will be saving plenty of money, seeing as how we wouldn’t be paying any kind of rent or mortgage (my parents bought the house with cash. They’ve never owed anything on it and they certainly aren’t trying to make money off of us).

It also gives us a destination. I’ve been living in limbo, not knowing where to sign my son up for preschool or where to enroll my daughter for kindergarten.

Hubby is sold on every level. This is so exciting to him. So many things about this arrangement are so perfect, but I have a couple of concerns, large and small. The little concerns are about, for instance, my beautiful black grand piano. There’s no room in my parents’ house for my piano. I’m trying to find a sibling or someone else that I trust who might be interested in babysitting it. It’s quite possibly the only nice thing that I own and I treasure it.

Other concerns include Hubby’s commute. My parents’ house is half an hour away from where we are now, in the wrong direction. That tacks on significant time to his commute. He’s not the least bit concerned about this, so I guess I shouldn’t be either.

It’s also strange, the thought of going back to that neighborhood where I was a dumb kid. Back to that house, this time as Matron, not Child. My daughter will sleep in the bed where I slept as a girl, and my sons in my brothers’ rooms. It all feels a little weird, but no bad per say.

The bigger concerns, for me, are matters of pride. It’s silly, I know. My brain tells me not to worry about such things, but something inside still does. I’m a grown woman with a family of my own. My husband is very successful in his career. Outside of our mortgage we have absolutely no debt whatsoever. But we’re about to move into my parents’ house. It seems like such a maneuver is reserved for the kid who can’t quite get on his own feet—the kid who’s about to file for bankruptcy if Mommy and Daddy don’t jump in to the rescue.

But I’m NOT that kid! And my pride worries that someone might think that I AM that kid! Will the neighbors snicker? Will “friends” hear only snippets of the story and jump to conclusions about me or my Hubby? It’s one thing when people speak to you in person and you can rectify incorrect ideas. But you can’t correct the secret whisperings going on behind your back.

And no, I have no idea why I care. So don’t bother telling me how stupid that concern is, because I already know how stupid it is!

All in all, I’m pleased. I’m grateful for the way things worked out. My parents’ house is lovely and they have all the amenities we could ask for. It gives us plenty of time to decide what exactly it is that we want in the long run. It’s a form of limbo itself, but it also solves my current limbo. It allows me to move on with my life, while still giving me time to determine my future.

Deny Thy Blogger and Refuse my Posts!

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Wed, 23 May 2007 05:33:00 +0000

(For about three seconds, I tried this in Iambic Pentameter. It was a disaster. I gave up. Don't judge me--you would have given up too.)

Forsooth, there were a couple of posts here earlier. Each of them, one at a time, has left this world of bloggingness.

Dear, dear Blogger, I salute you in your plight to confuse me.

I especially salute you in deleting posts that, really, weren't my favorite. How did you know?

One of the deleted posts was about me wondering why no one is voting for me, the other was wishing myself a happy bloggy birthday. Both a bit narcissistic, I suppose.

Yea and verily, Blogger. I behold and hearken to thee, that Narcissus doth not bear fair blogposts. Oh thou foul Blogger fiend, oh foulest of bloggingness. Perhaps thou wouldst that I should blot out the whole blog... (I hate to point it out to you, but you left a few Meme's and interviews and "look at me, I'm so cool" posts behind. I almost feel like narcissism has won a few small victories.)

However, I daren't declare war, or even acknowledge that YOU may have already declared war. I refuse to see your glove at my feet, I refuse to see your drawn sword.

War with Blogger would be strategy at its worst. (I could make reference to that other war where strategy is, shall we say, lacking. But that would bring me off topic and have people jumping down my throat--and not in a good way--and this post isn't really about that.)

I spent many, many hours creating my banner and my overall design. I can just see you, Dear Blogger, out of spite, turning it flourescent pink. With flowers. And a chijuajua.

(Could you really hate me so much???)

We can resolve this. Peacefully. If you continue to lose posts that I really didn't like anyway, I see no reason why we can't keep things amicable. Perhaps you're just trying to do me a service.

Blogger: "Because I like Brillig so VERY much, I'm going to delete all of her crappy posts."
Brillig: "Thanks, Sweety. But you missed a few..."
Blogger: "I'll be back, darling."
Brillig: *sighs contentedly*

And so I continue to appease you, make friends with you, stay true and loyal to you even when the prospect of my own domain beckons me. Perhaps I will ruthlessly use you, steal some of your coding, and move on someday, leaving a void in this wretched Blogspot. Perhaps I will be here forever. I cannot predict the future. Nay, I dare not! Because we're really just getting to know each other still. And perhaps, just perhaps, you are the Romeo to my Juliet.

(Of course, they both ended up dead...)

Brought to You by Fluffy

noreply@blogger.com (Brillig) — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:06:00 +0000

On Saturday, my sweet little Fluffy went through a great big trauma.

Her earring fell out.

These are the stud earrings that her ears were pierced with a year ago and they have never ever been removed from her ear. As far as she's concerned, they are just a permanent part of her body. Just how they fell out, none of us are sure. But it happened when her dad put his hands on the sides of her face, so she is certain that it was all Hubby's fault.

And it wasn't just that the earring fell out, it was that the ear starting bleeding like crazy and blood was running all over her hands and onto the floor.

And, like any 5 year old of the female persuasion would, she screamed.

Oh, how she screamed--as though it had been her arm that fell off, not an earring.

The bleeding was the result of a horrendous infection, which we hadn't seen because it was only visible in the back of her lobe once the earring was gone. We've been treating the infection, which has been scary and painful for her, but it's looking much better.

And boy, did she milk this for all it was worth. We went to Target to buy new earrings. She got three pairs: pink, blue, and white "diamond" studs. She also got a new Barbie notebook, and a promise from me that I would take a picture of her with her new earrings in and put it on my blog.

Alas, you can't really see the earrings, but oh well. I have now fulfilled my promises.

The last of her demands was probably the funniest of all. She handed me her Barbie notebook and dictated to me what she wanted written down. It says:

"Daddy put his hands on my head and my earring fell out and it hurt really bad and I screamed really loud and then Mommy went to the store and bought me lots of new earrings and so I came home and I'm wearing my earrings now and I was really really sad when my earring fell out and Daddy made my earring fall out."

The best part is that she hands it to Hubby every few hours and requires him to read it to her. It's his penance, I suppose--even though we all agree that it wasn't his fault.

Really, she's had the whole household wrapped around her tiny little finger all weekend. I suspect that losing her earring was the best thing that ever happened to her.