My soul mate turned 36 last week, so that must mean it’s time for another colonoscopy! Happy birthday, honey!

I signed up Tom for his first colonoscopy at 33 because his maternal grandfather died at age 43 from colon cancer. They found a polyp that was pre-cancerous but advanced enough to warrant a repeat in three years. We are fortunate to have good health insurance, but after paying all four bills (hospital, anesthesia, doctor, and lab) it will probably be about $400 out-of-pocket.

The most striking thing this time around was the nurses’ attitudes before and after the exam. Before, they were a little surprised as to why such a young man had voluntarily gone through the fasting, bowel cleansing, and breezy-hospital-gown wearing. I smiled serenely through their curiosity just as I had cheerfully (and perhaps callously) ignored Tom’s whinging about the entire bottle of laxative he had to drink. I even cooked him a fabulous last meal, complete with home-grown rhubarb crumble 36 hours before the exam.

After the exam the nurses were a little hushed and serious-faced. Tom slowly woke up and was his usual slightly-goofier-than-normal-post-sedative self. He said several times that he’d love to take that drug every night at bed time. (Finally I told him propofol was what killed Michael Jackson and that sobered him up a bit.)

The doctor came in and said they’d found one polyp again, less advanced than last time, but still concerning, and then he said that if Tom hadn’t started coming in this early to get checked out he would’ve been looking at cancer in his forties. When the biopsy comes back they’ll decide whether he needs to come back in three years or five, but he can never, ever, ever (I swear he said it like five times, but probably it was only twice) go longer than the 3-5 years without an exam.

We stopped at In-n-Out Burger (could their fries taste any healthier? yuck) on the way home and then Tom had the rest of the day to nap and contemplate the meaning of life. Mostly he is glad he married me, he says.

“Why were you so adamant about me getting a colonoscopy the first time?” he asks. “Was it because your dad is a doctor?” “How did you know my grandfather died of colon cancer?”

I stare at him, unbelieving. “Your mom told me.”

“But I don’t know that sort of thing about your family” he says.

He does know, of course, or at least he’s heard it all before, from me and my family. We see them often, and we talk about that kind of thing. It’s just that Tom is a Mary and I am a Martha. Maybe lots of couples are like that, with the husband secure in leaving mundane details of daily/household life to the wife. I don’t usually mind; I have a good memory and I like taking care of my people. I like being in charge and responsible. The only problem is when I forget our roles (like forgetting to remind Tom to bring his driver’s license to the hospital — who doesn’t take their wallet with them?) and then we both suffer–me from frustration and him from the force of my wrath.

But back to the mushy stuff. Tom kept asking why it was so important to me that he get tested and I stopped. “Dude, you act like this is some favor I did for you, when really it’s in my best interest to keep you around. I love you.”

(Not to mention the kids. I am not raising them alone.)

“I think I was really meant to marry you,” he says, “because you’re a doctor’s daughter so you know about these things and you trust doctors, so you got me to get a colonscopy and you saved my life.”

I shake my head. You were supposed to marry me because you are my soul mate. The life-saving thing is just a bonus.

Tom with his littlest girl

Sometimes my husband is the annoying partner on the group presentation. I always preferred working alone because the partner never gets all the crumbs when he sweeps the floor and why for the love of everything holy is he even sweeping when the vacuum is right there and then he might have some chance of getting that piece of bagel petrifying under the breakfast bar? Does he work at doing everything the wrong way or is obliviousness an Olympic sport now?

Once he did do something worse than just not reading my mind, an actual wrong thing, except not really a thing-thing but a principle-thing, but still a thing worse than leaving me with the kids to go play basketball — s0 I do know the difference, but still it’s the everyday things, like slurping your soup, that slowly smother romantic love. Or as Irving Becker said, “If you don’t like someone, the way he holds his spoon will make you furious; if you do like him, he can turn his plate over in your lap and you won’t mind.”

I think what he really meant is that when you love someone and they slurp every single time you sit down at the table, even when they know it hurts you deep inside where you simply can’t overcome the buggingness of it on a cellular level, it’s grating enough that you’d rather they dumped it in your lap.

It’s like Fiddler on the Roof, and one day you’re the Motel and Tzeitel couple, giving each other a pledge and knowing the world would end if you had to marry the stinky rich butcher. And then two (or thirteen) years later you’re Tevye and Golde, even if it wasn’t technically an arranged marriage, even if it was wild and crazy and Motel and Tzeitel to begin with. Even if this isn’t tsarist Russia and we have the leisure to sit around debating the relative merits of romantic versus companion love.

Tom has always been The One, ever since I read his literary biography (it was college, we were English majors, being pretentious was a requirement) and then met him in person on Valentine’s Day, which is funny because we are not romantic-type people, until you realize that having someone to laugh with about how absurd the mechanics of sex really are is actually the most romantic thing ever. Someone you can tell anything to, who won’t be shocked (or worried) when you admit your doubts, someone who lets you change your mind and is patient when really you’re the same old person no matter how much you want to change, or don’t want to change because change is hard.

Last week I tried church lady zumba. I thought my uterus was going to shake right out, I don’t think hips were really designed to do that, except in active labor, maybe. I meant to take some ibuprofen, but then I started watching hulu and the medicine cabinet seemed far away from my comfy bed. Tom snuggled up in that way he has, that way that means he wants to love me, head on my shoulder, and since he let me finish NCIS first, I was willing.

I was so relaxed and happy afterward I forgot all about the ibuprofen (until the morning, when I surely did remember).

If I had known thirteen years ago what I know now about Tom, about our kids, about our marriage and our life and the sex and his patience and hard-workingness and even if I had known that he wipes his nose on the sheet on his side of the bed (probably when he’s mostly asleep but still) and thinks I won’t notice (I do) . . .

I would’ve proposed on our first date, instead of waiting for the second.

That afternoon I picked Dick up from work and drove to the boys’ apartment. I suggested he call to make sure the boys were ready to go, but Dick will sometimes do anything to avoid talking to people on the phone. After we’d waited a few more minutes and I nagged a bit more, he went in search of the boys (because that’s easier than actually making a phone call).

The boys weren’t ready. They weren’t packed, they hadn’t sewn on their patches. And they hadn’t made their tinfoil dinners yet. Dick was pretty ticked. Can you believe those boys hadn’t SEWN ON THEIR PATCHES or MADE THEIR TINFOIL DINNERS? I wondered if their mom was able to help, and Dick said their mom doesn’t know how to sew, and anyway, the boys SHOULD TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEMSELVES.

So I reminded Dick that I had:

A) procured his shirt,

B) shopped for and assembled his tinfoil dinner,

C) bought the boys’ shirts and patches that were not sewn,

D) reminded Dick to get his sleeping bag and tent from my parents’ house,

E) reminded the boys the previous day that they should make tinfoil dinners and sewn on patches,

F) picked Dick up from work, and

G) washed and folded his clothes that he wanted to take.

You’re so right, Dick. Boys should learn to do things for themselves.

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But I have every confidence that he always will. He is pretty fantastic, in a super-nerdy (working up to the cool-er geeky) sort of way. We’re celebrating 10 years next week! Also my warm feelings are increased by the fact that he’s been on a business trip since Saturday. Sally cannot wait to tell him, in accents of grievous grievance that Mommy yelled at me in the meanest voice ever, to SHUT UP. I told her she should also be sure to tell him that I let her sleep with me at Grandma’s house, and that whenever I woke up during the night, I reached over to stroke her hair.

Anyway, I’m writing to ask you, my dear readers, to go check out Dick’s guest post at Poewar.com. Dick, inexplicably writing under the name Tom Johnson, has a heartfelt exploration of Why My Attempts at Nonfiction Essays in Grad School Bombed. It explains a lot about you, Dick.

 Thanks!

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Oh, not for me. Dick and I fought like pole cats the first couple months of our marriage, ten years ago. We fought about the usual things: money, sex, how to spend our free time and who should be home cleaning the toilet on a fine Saturday morning. I said the “d” word once and Dick looked at me with hurt eyes; I hadn’t accepted that I could hurt him. But for him divorce was a real thing, because his parents were divorced. For me it meant “I’m really mad at you and right now I think not being married would just be simpler.” Neither of us has said that word, in relation to us, since that day.

But on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at approximately 9:43 am, I found out that divorce can happen to anyone. It wasn’t me so I wasn’t hurt. It was someone I love, so I was mad. I wanted to pull newly-grown hair and smash Christmas ornaments and throw dinner on the floor.

In college you hear a lot about paradigm shifts. Adolescence could probably be characterized as that stage in a person’s life when (they think) they’re experiencing massive paradigm shifts between each class. My middle-aged humanities professor shocked me by saying that it had been a long time since he’d read a book that actually changed the way he thought about the world, and OH! How I pitied that man.

Threat of divorce has shifted my paradigm. It makes me feel rebellious. No one should have to turn herself into Clean House Barbie to keep her husband happy, or pretend to enjoy Jazz basketball or not to mind when the kids are not fed and in bed on the one night I go to the library after dinner. When I told Dick I felt like never cleaning again, he panicked, made me promise that I was just joking. Then I had surgery and had a medical excuse anyway.

I could probably turn into a model wife, for a week or so, at least. If I did, if I woke up and made lunches and saw him off with a kiss and a stack of French toast, and kept the house clean and kept up with our finances and never used the mean voice and picked up socks without asking, “Did you want these socks washed or were you going to wear them again tomorrow?” And if I made one of his five favorite dishes and had dinner on the already-set table and three happy, clean, and sweet-smelling children lined up to throw themselves at his legs at 5:52 pm. If I didn’t yell at them or let them hear me swear, would he love me more and think that I had lived up to the promise of my 30-pound lighter, not-stretch-marked, adoring, twenty-year-old bride-self?

Love me more: I don’t think so. Think I lived up to the promise better: probably. We did both promise to be our best selves. That’s not true. There was nothing in the actual sealing about setting goals or maintaining our figures or cleaning the toilets before doing fun things together on Saturday morning. Instead, though the LDS ceremony is slightly different, it including something about loving, honoring, cherishing. And while it didn’t say anything about in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, it did say forever, eternity. Which pretty much includes all the rest. And you usually think that the hard times would be the sickness and the worse and the poorer. But maybe those are the easy times — the times when you know you couldn’t possibly make it without your spouse at your side.

Without a man who will wipe your armpits with baby wipes when you can’t shower. Or laugh when your milk squirts him during an otherwise romantic, amorous moment. Or not even shout when you kill a laptop with your bare hands.

I didn’t really mean to write about what I don’t do to make my husband happy. And I meant to be humorous and light. Go read Marie’s Making Men Happy for a great, funny list of things men (at least the Ask.com men) want in a woman. And for proof that Google might be getting in touch with it’s feminine, nurturer side.

What I do try to do is: communicate to him that what he thinks and feels and does is important, significant, relevant. Make him know that he is the big tuna in my life, and always will be. That even though I wouldn’t actually rather get sick myself than see him sick, his health and comfort and life and happiness are vital to my own.

I would promise, like Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, to always be yar. But I know I’ll use the mean voice again. I’ll get mad that he is Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout. I’ll wish at least one of us were independently wealthy. I’ll even, heaven forbid, swear in front of the children again. But with my paradigm forever shifted, I’m seeing the sickness and the worse and the poorer as opportunity to thank God for knowing better than I what was good for me.

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I think this week (month?) has been hard for a lot of people. Hard to smile when terrible things happen. Loraine has a post, Still Trying to Smile After Sunday, that nigh unto broke my heart. I usually feel pretty darn callous. What do I care about someone I don’t know? But determination to find something, anything to smile about is irresistible. My favorite line? “Likewise, Mekare finally cleaned off the coffee table- wait, one of the kids already threw her hoodie on it.” That’s my life, in a nutshell.

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To participate in the brave new world of the Makes-Me-Smile Monday carnival, write on today’s topic “How to keep your husband (or other loved one) happy” and then follow these guidelines.

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Before you object, let me say that I believe that if anyone is in a relationship with an addict or abuser or adulterer or abandoner who is not 100% committed to changing and to the relationship, they should get out. Even (especially?) if you have kids and even if the abuse or abandonment is emotional rather than physical. Staying in a bad relationship on the strength of what once was is too Rose for Emily-ish. Get out.

It being the month of Love, Dick and I have been communicating more than usual. I lie: we communicate pretty well all the time. I could hate my life, hate Dick, hate the kids, hate . . . don’t know what else there is to hate, but I would tell Dick about it first. We talk.

We even have stupid endearing nicknames for each other. He calls me Scrappy, I call him Dickie Boy (only with his real name instead of Dick). And other nicknames for other things that I won’t share in public. As I said, we talk, and, uh, snuggle.

Today I google talk’d (like IM) Dick around 10:30. I wrote, “you there, hot stuff?” because I had no idea he was, at that moment, giving a demonstration on his laptop to the general counsel of this very conservative company. I don’t think I’ve ever used the phrase “hot stuff” before in my entire life.

They had a good laugh. Dick still has his dream job. And I’ll be a little more cautious in my communication from now on.

A certain well-meaning father told his daughter that she could not start a blog, that she could not have a blog of her own. Because, as I heard it fourth-hand, he was aware that some girls use their blogs to discuss (brag about? encourage in others?) unseemly behavior, including the kind of stuff that I certainly hope to steer my own girls away from as they grow up.

Ban the books! Burn the computers!

My first thought was that Dick’s reaction to our daughter’s desire to start a blog would be opposite to this father’s. Not that he would attempt to make a unilateral decision like this in the first place. Dick knows what aspects of our lives he’s in charge of; I’ve told him what they are.

If Sally were to tell her father that she wanted a blog, Dick would be delighted. He’d help her set it up, pick a platform, choose a theme, brainstorm topics to write on, work through any technical difficulties, support her in taking pictures for uploading or scanning schoolwork for posting. And what does that translate into right there? — lots and lots of time spent together.

As Sally posted and explored her own thoughts, feelings, experiences, goals, frustrations, triumphs, what would we do? We’d comment on her posts, encourage her in her goals, congratulate her on her triumphs, commiserate with her frustrations. In short, we’d know even more about what’s going on in her life, what her hopes and dreams are, and we’d know how her writing, reasoning, and reading skills are coming along, and we could probably figure out ways to challenge her to improve where needed.

If we thought she could use some more spirituality in her life, we could suggest that she post a favorite scripture or inspirational quote each day, or that she use a meme or other writing prompt to examine where her life is now and where she wants it to go. She could write birthday wishes to friends and family members or post a goal each Sunday and be held accountable for her progress on it as she reported each day.

We could keep track of links incoming and outgoing and comments made. We could make sure she never used her real name or any identifying information and only posted pictures that represented her in a way she would always be proud of. And if any mistakes were ever made, or bad things happened, we would do whatever is possible to fix them. It isn’t a perfect world, and the world of blogging isn’t perfect either, but it’s worth living in.

But you don’t have to take my word for it: I have it on the best authority (Dick heard it from someone who heard it from someone who knows) that the Apostles of the LDS church have an internal blog where they can share their thoughts and experiences with each other. I hope that’s true (and I wish I could read it), but either way it sounds good to me.

And here’s something I’ve been thinking about since I taught the R.S. lesson on “The Women of the Church” from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball:

Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world. … Thus it will be that female exemplars of the Church will be a significant force in both the numerical and the spiritual growth of the Church in the last days. (my emphasis)

Perhaps it is incorrigible human nature to be afraid of new technology (ipods terrify me). But if we’re willing to concede that not all books are bad just because some books are very bad, I think we need to explore web 2.0 (as Dick would say) possibilities. It is not only our right, as women of the church, to have blogs of our own, but, as they provide unsurpassed opportunity for developing our articulateness, it might just be our duty.

And then I saw, again and again, the surprised look on her face. Unfortunately, Sally is used to that sort of treatment from me. I’m still working off guilt from the time I whacked her with a hair brush when she would not sit still now to get her hair done a couple years ago. She is not used to it from a wonderfully indulgent and usually-playful grandpa.

So here’s to marrying up. I listed a few of the reasons that I love Dick for our anniversary in June. Here’s one more. His first, unguarded reaction (unlike mine) is a question or a gentle reproof or a pretty long-suffering patience (though I do know how to get to the end of that patience, if I do say so myself). Dingity-dangity, I love you!

Dick requested a Rocky Road Ice Cream Cake (Marcy-style), and got chocolate cake (from a box) with awesome toppings: Rocky Road Ice Cream, pecans, marshmallows and coconut.

Dick: Do you want to hold a garage sale this Saturday to try to sell our furniture that way?

Jane: we’d get even less that way, that is if we could get people even to come to our neighborhood to buy stuff. you mean so we could do the shipping method after all? what?

Dick: Look at the timestamp of my original message – I sent this before we decided to cancel the auto-shipping.

Jane: oh, sorry

Dick: You’re impossible.

Jane: well, unfortunately, none of “moving,” “new job,” “relocating to boondocks, usa,” or “possibly foreclosing on our nice little house in the crime-infested ghetto of south saint pete” begins with A, so they’re not covered by Dr. Laura’s 3 A’s that justify divorce. So I guess you’re stuck with me.

Actually, considering the stress level, we’re pretty ding-dang (to steal a phrase from June Cutoff-Cash) civil. I don’t trust those smiley faces though: they can cover a multitude of covert nasty feelings.

Ding-dang (what would be the form of this for a regular expletive rather than an adjective?), I feel so much better now. Cheerful, almost. Could be the second Mountain Dew I am drinking (this one chilled) or the three Ibuprofens I guzzled with a gallon of water. Or maybe it is just the restorative properties of blogging.

Dick called me after church today to ask if he was there that Sunday and/or if I knew why he couldn’t remember her speaking. I reminded him that that was the day that Spot was sick and so he was wrestling both Sally and Susan during the service. Apparently it’s hard to pay attention when you’re in charge of two (or three) kids.

In other news, Dick is missing us excruciatingly and counting the days until he joins us. He feels, quite frankly, that an important part of himself (one might even say the best part) is absent. Susan has realized that daddy isn’t just “at work,” and said today, “I want my daddy.” Me too.

I love your patience.

I love that you will usually take out the trash after I ask a mere seven times.

I love that you love our daughters.

I love that you have the “intense listener with questions” mode mastered, even though you might not remember a vital detail the next day.

I love that you only yell at me after I have yelled at you for about a year; actually, you probably haven’t even yelled at me nine times in all.

I love that you compliment me on my new slimmer self and that you never complained or criticized my more zaftig silhouette.

I love that you didn’t hover over me with each pregnancy screaming “don’t eat that” and “don’t do that,” even thought this might have been because you didn’t know what I wasn’t supposed to eat and do.

I love that you are a strong and a mighty man and firm in the faith of Christ.

I love that you are eight inches taller and eighty pounds more muscly than me; it makes me feel feminine.

I love that you risked severe embarrassment and fainting to be with me at each birth.

I love that you want to have companion prayer with me every night.

I love that you are guileless and that I trust you completely, just not to get my shoulder back in the quickest, best way.

I love that you are kind to a tantrum child and gentle with a sick one.

I love that you’ll change the crib sheets in the middle of the night without waking me, even if it means I find them inexplicably in a wad later on the next day.

I love that you encourage me to write, and nagged me into starting this blog, and supported me in making it my own.

I love that you listened to me nine years and four months ago and agreed that getting married sounded like a good thing, and that even though you got cold feet, you came to your senses pretty darn quick!

When our house was broken into a while ago, the responding officer congratulated us on the type of minivan we have (Honda) because they are harder to steal thanks to the embedded microchips. Yippee! Such security comes at a pretty high price.

Obviously, we aren’t mad at “Lampa” in any way, because a) he was doing Dick a favor in driving him to the airport, b) it was Dick’s idea to give him the whole key ring, and c) we are (a little? very? — I leave this to Dick, “Lampa!”) behind in our payments on the no-interest, no-late-fee loan that he made us two years ago for the fence and appliances at our new house.

Moral of the story:

1) Do not lose your high tech keys.

2) Do not make no-interest, no-late-fee loans to close relatives.

Just a fun post here. I was having a mock interview with my 6-year-old, who just graduated from kindergarten. She has already learned to ask tough interview questions, particularly for those who work with computers?

Dick has been preparing for his Minneapolis STC conference by playing with the recording equipment for his podcasts. He is so cute in geek-gadget mode. The recorder he bought (with funds from his first “membership campaign”) looks like a Geiger counter or something from Ghostbusters. We were half-worried that Security at the airport would be suspicious, but I guess they see weird stuff every day.

A real patriot knows she is living in a Kafka novel, but still defends America to the French. –Jane Johnson

On March 9, 2007 at 7:21 am (according to my car’s clock and NPR), I got a speeding ticket. I was lasered going 33 in a 35 mph zone. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. On my ticket, the officer alleged that I was going 33 mph in a 15 mph school zone. But school starts at 7:15, and I am 99.99% sure that the blinking yellow light was off. I pointed this out to the officer (leaving out the .01% chance that I could be mistaken), and he said that they could write tickets for up to 15 minutes after school starts.

That ticket was worth $306.21 and points on my recently-pristine record. (It’s pretty easy to keep your record clear when you don’t drive at all for five years (in NYC and Cairo).

Also on March 9, 2007, sometime between 8:30 and 11:30 am, our house was broken into, probably by hooligans looking for easily pawned items (not much luck at our house. They got Dick’s wedding ring, which he hadn’t worn in 9 years and our digital camera, which was pretty much obsolete anyway).

I pled not guilty to the ticket and suffered an agony of indecision, exacerbated by an extremely intimidating notice of my court date that threatened assessment of court fees on top of my fine. Basically, I should drop my innocent stance or risk losing everything.

The hearing was scheduled for April 24th at 7:00 pm.

Dick was supportive; I didn’t tell him about the .01% chance that I could be mistaken until 20 minutes before my hearing. But Dick had his own run-in with the law after mine, and he responded differently. In one of his periodic attempts to clean up our neighborhood, Dick made a series of calls to the police tip-line, the littering department and the Section 8 people to complain about our unsightly block. Dick’s calls and emails were rewarded; nuisance and misdemeanor violations increased.

Dick got a parking ticket. For almost two years he has been parking on the grass between our narrow street and our sidewalk. He got a “tree-line” violation (there are some beautiful old trees in our neighborhood. His car was not parked near any of them). Dick now says that he fumed at the time for a day and a half. I wouldn’t call that fuming. I would call it mild irritation. But he paid the ticket promptly, and we were rewarded, again, this time by massive clean-ups of the vacant lots near us. And everyone is now parking in the street instead of on the easements. (Which isn’t so great for driving).

The day of my hearing dawned this morning. I felt sick, then giddy, then sick. I stopped on the way home from picking Sally up from school to photograph my “evidence,” as I had been instructed to bring all my witnesses and evidence to the hearing. Sally was curious and I explained the whole thing (she’s too young to understand about that .01% chance, right?). She wanted to go to court, too, and to see the judge.

I had planned to take Spot anyway; she would be in the Baby Bjorn on my chest, eyeing the judge as I pled my case (and she might need to be nursed right then, too; you never know). Then I realized that today is Tuesday (Chick-fil-A free-kids-meal-day), and that the courthouse is just a couple blocks away. It’s always best to combine good food and good fun.

At 6:45 the whole family filed into the courtroom, past the armed guards and x-ray machines and through the metal detectors. Sally had dressed up in last year’s Easter dress, and Susan was proud of her loud shoes (“I making music, Mommy”). The judge, clerk and bailiff welcomed us; the clerk said she thought the officer wouldn’t show and that would be that. I changed Spot’s diaper (to Dick’s chagrin) and nursed her (to his further chagrin). At four minutes to 7, my officer appeared; he said that if the lasering officer didn’t arrive in time, he’d motion to dismiss and that really would be that.

Thus passed the longest four minutes of my life. Well, except for that time when Dick said he wanted to be “just friends” about 9 years ago. Luckily things turned out well that time, too.

The laser-er didn’t show, and we walked out. I was almost disappointed. Didn’t they want to hear my argument? See my “evidence”? But even I know when it’s a bad time to argue (really, I do), so we scat. Though I did stop outside to get a paper confirming the dismissed status. My officer was out there too, getting his mileage approved. He couldn’t resist a little lecture, which I meekly endured (despite my innocence).

Here’s my evidence (since it didn’t get a day in court):

I was really happy with how these pictures turned out, since I took them from inside my minivan. Notice the composition of the top picture: how prominent the 35 mph sign is. And, on the bottom picture, you’ll see that the sign reads “15 mph when flashing” not “15 mph when flashing and for 15 minutes thereafter.” I rest my case.

p.s. This school zone is outside a high school, and there is that lovely bridge over this massively dangerous street. If public high school students cannot be trusted to cross a street by themselves, then I think we’ve got bigger problems than the occasional, .01% chance that I am speeding.

And I have to thank him for nagging me into blogging. It soothes the repressed English major deep in my soul. Bless Dick for knowing she still exists!

I’ve been scanning in old wedding photos recently; unlike those Arizonians, and others married since videocams were invented, we never had a wedding movie. Well, big deal, now we have a wedding slideshow. You can view it here. Parents magazine (thanks, Tara) recommends onetruemedia.com for photo arranging/sharing, but I find it much less user-friendly than rockyou.com (of course, I also didn’t have Dick to yell at, I mean ask for help, so that could be a factor too).

I think it will tell a lot to see when (if–he better!) Dick checks out what we’ve been up to while he’s gone.

I made several trips to the mall in search of the perfect Easter dresses. These trips were torturous in the extreme, mostly because Tara has moved back to Arizona and isn’t here to see me pretend to enjoy shopping. On my second trip to Macy’s, I saw that the bibs I’d bought for Spot had been discounted 25%; I was incensed–one day later and I could have saved $3.50 (I know, expensive bibs, huh? but they were kind of free, and also they were supposed to be waterproof, which they weren’t, which was even more maddening than the $3.50).

I dithered, but finally, on my third trip to Macy’s (there was also the matter of finding a Macy’s with Spot’s dress in the right size–size 12 months for my 6 month old dumpling), I marched up to Customer Service and asked humbly for a price adjustment. Imagine my delight when I was also adjusted for the shirt I’d found for myself on that first trip.

Now I had two Easter dresses, a cute shirt, purple bibs (including a striped one!), and a $10.22 price-adjustment gift card to show for my original $50 reward. Then Dick had Good Friday off today, and we went to the mall. I self-sacrificingly offered him the $10.22 towards a new pair of sandals, his old pair (dating from our honeymoon) having been lost at sea (literally–Sally threw one of them off the pier while fishing last fall).

Dick is very picky, which, since it led him to being satisfied with the same pair of flip-flops for 8 years, isn’t such a bad thing, but also led him to reject everything on offer tonight. So I got a new pair of flip-flops. At first he was a little not-supportive, since they were marked at 29.99 and we had just bought a new digital camera (did I mention we stopped at Best Buy on our way to the mall?).

But the god of shopping (goddess?) was smiling once again, and my husband-defying-purchase paid off when the cashier rang me up for $14.43. Don’t you love my new $4.21 shoes? I could almost (almost) wear these puppies to church. Plus they make me taller.

I think our new camera (a Nikon 6.0MP) should be tax deductible as it replaces a stolen item. I told Dick we were not discussing whether we could buy a camera, but which camera to buy. The girls are getting older every day. If we don’t take pictures today, that picture will never be taken. Don’t you love my shoes?

Last month I was reading through the emails from our courtship in search of the purchase date of my wedding ring for the ultimately-unnecessary insurance claim. First, I have to thank my mom for printing out and saving all those emails, and second, I have to wonder why she bothered.

I’m glad to say I never compromised BYU’s reputation as a very dry campus, but I must have been high to use some of those big words whose meaning is now lost in the post-pregnancy brain cell drain. (even so my vocabulary still has fewer holes than Dick’s–thanks to all those Saturday mornings spent reading while hiding out from my mom, who wanted me to do chores; now I hide from Dick and the girls).

The closest reference to my ring was a fictional sketch Dick had written about our meeting with Tim (owner of Sierra West Jewelry), in which he used words like tits,* which reminds me that Dick was once one of those fiction writer-types interested in things like voice and mood.

Was I ever that young? Did I ever really think my life, my ego were that important? Was I ever that optimisitic? That hopeful, that idealistic? Thank God (literally) that I still think that marrying Dick was the single most significant, right decision I ever made. And bless Dick for being surprised when I mentioned over dinner that we had changed so much as to be unrecognizable.

Motherhood, for those of us who make it a career for a large part of our lives, has changed me more than being a wife has. So maybe Dick hasn’t changed as much, since he’s always had a career outside. We both enjoyed Elder Oak’s talk about divorce last Sunday, partly because we like such a relevant, modern topic, and partly because we’re happily hopeful (smugly satisfied?) that it isn’t relevant to us personally.

On a rare joint trip to Wal-mart a couple weeks ago, I learned that Dick’s favorite brand of toothpaste is Aquafresh. Who knew? I had assumed for nine years that he preferred the same kind I like, Crest.

When we got family pictures taken at Christmas time, the lady never suggested a couple pose, and I was so (%$#!) frazzled that I didn’t think of it. So at our Easter session with Auntie Liz I made Dick wear the same clothes from Christmas and we tried to get some shots. Guess we’re not that photogenic (not to mention technologically challenged) in our old age. We’ll have to try again sometime. After all, we are still a couple, even if we’re also a family.

*Endnote: Dick is horribly upset that I’ve repeated this word (but it’s in that story, I can show you). I am horribly upset that he would want to censor our lives (censor my writing!). He doesn’t remember ever writing a story like that, and now he is a staid married man, a technical communicator rather than an artiste, and I am compromising his dignity. Holy cow! Prove my whole point for me, would you!

I need to learn how to prioritize my life — balancing the Suncoast chapter with my ITT-Tech side job, freelance, basketball, Jane and the two kids, the upcoming baby, and of course my full-time RJ job. I am planning to attend weekly meetings on Wednesdays instead of playing basketball. I will start jogging during lunch or something and get my exercise in then, because there’s no other time that I will get that in. My fear is that by trying to do too much, I will end up doing everything mediocre. That’s not what I want.

I have another theory about the multiple activities — at some point, they begin to fuel each other. The leadership skills I learn from being a second counselor will help me do a better job with the Suncoast chapter, and so forth. Maybe I will learn to pray about chapter issues! And perhaps the scheduling of the Suncoast chapter will help me do better planning with the branch.

I was planning to create the site using WordPress, but I found that integrating a shopping cart into WordPress proved to be either too difficult or just not technically feasible, so I created the site using Sitebuilder and using Yahoo’s merchant plan. The guy I made it for really liked it, and so do I.

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I especially like the green gradient sidebar, which is a color I matched using photoshop’s eyedropper tool on George Bush’s green shirt as he was rallying the troops in Iraq. That or from a green glass ball from the sea that was for sale on eBay. I can’t remember.

Here’s a closer look at the banner. Those are actual fish that I caught (2 with the flickerbait lure, and 1 with just a regular spinner). I think the fish look pretty cool, especially the one coming head on at you.

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It’s a role that I hardly understand and don’t have time for, but I felt it was a career opportunity that I could not pass up. This role will not only help me develop my knowledge of tech comm, learning new skills and deepening my understanding of different concepts, but it will also help me expand my connections with other top-notch professionals. I want to put as much into this as I can.

Here’s a picture of the old president, Joanna Castner, on her last day at STC-Suncoast. As it generally works, she’s extremely happy to be leaving, and I’m extremely happy to be arriving. In time she will be sad that she left, and I’ll probably be sad that I’m president.

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