An eye isn't THAT important... right?

I'm a bad mother... well, no, not really. Ben actually feels worse than I do right now. I think the reality of the dangers of being a toddler is something that I have been ready for for quite some time now. I'm actually quite suprised that Audrey hasn't done anything else or worse yet. She's been walking for about a month now and has only just given herself a black eye.

We were over at Grandpa T and Grandma Linda's house last night for Sunday dinner. They have a toy box chock full of fun things for her to play with and she goes straight for it every time we go over. Now, she didn't hurt herself right off the bat.. no... it took a while. At some point, she was standing up next to the box, reached down to pick something up off the ground, lost her balance and cornered her eye on the box... wow, did she scream. At first, I thought she had bumped her forhead or something, but the broken blood vessels started coming up right under her eye.. It didn't even bleed much, but it looked really awful. Ben sortof freaked out. He didn't go running around or anything but he definately reacted stronger than I did.

Poor baby... her first big injury from learning to walk. Lucky though.. she could have hit her eye square on and we would have spent the evening in the emergency room. She was already tired and cranky, but boy was she a real monster after hurting herself.. She cried all the way home, drank her whole sippy cup of milk and screamed for more, screamed when we put her to bed (for about 5 minutes) and slept until 9am this morning.

She was much cheerier this morning. It still looks bad, but her smile helps me to laugh about it a little better.

I guess I just have to anticipate that this won't be the last time she hurts herself.. I'm sure cuts, bruises, broken bones and who knows what else is still in my future... or more specifically.. her future..

I hope I have those magic kisses that my mom had. Everything in the world is just better after mom kisses a booboo.

What a little trouper!

Someone is making money and it's not me.

I keep promising myself that I will post something on my blog at least twice a week... How awful that I can't even keep promises to myself...
So, I went to the oral surgeon last week expecting to get one or possibly two of my wisdom teeth yanked out. I must say, at least their office didn't smell like disinfectant and fear. The first thing they did, once I did the obligatory wait time in a nearly empty office, was put me into a room to x-ray me. The first thing they asked was "Are you pregnant?"... "Uhhh.. noooo.." "Okay, stand right here and bite down on this. The machine is going to move around your head so DON'T MOVE." (weeee.) Really, the machine was cool but I thought it gave off a peculiar air of smugness.
Then we went into another room and waited to look at the scan of my skull.. really, it wasn't just one of those little slides with a black and white shot of your teeth.. it was a black and white scan of (at least) the bottom half of my skull... I think I might get brain cancer... As it turns out, I have the broken tooth (duh) and two other wisdom teeth have caveties.. stupid weak tooth enamel. So, they said that it would be a good idea to get out all 4 wisdom teeth and just get it over with. I agree.. but I also have major trust issues with dentists.. And they also told me that if I wanted to get Nitrous Oxide, I'd have to come back later... So, on July 11, I go to the gas chamber and come out with 4 less bones in my body... I hope it will make me happy.

But, I know it won't.

The Good, The Fun and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day....

Today is Ben and my ninth anniversary... it really is a wonder that it seems to go by so fast and yet filled with so much. It's also a wonder that I'm not a million years old with all the road (virtual & real) that I've walked. I gave Ben his anniversary gifts this morning: a hand-held Tetris game (which he positively beamed over as it's really the only video game that he likes and promptly forgot that I had another gift) and a peridot tie tack. Peridot is his birthstone and, strangely enough, no one has ever given him one. The other interesting thing about the tie tack is that it has one of those chains attached to it so you can fix it to your shirt (presumably so your tie doesn't go flying around). He said that he'd never had a tie tack with one of those either... so, it's a first for a lot of things today... He then put on a small frown and said, "Think about what you want so we can get it today.." He has been agonizing about my gift for weeks and I have been (as usual) completely blank on gifts for myself. I'm also promising myself that I WON'T get another video game... THERE IS A NEW WILL WRIGHT GAME COMING OUT TODAY CALLED SPORE!! AGGGHHH! Ugh.. I'm so disgusting.. I can't help my addiction to Simulation/Creation games.... Oh crap, I just looked up the Spore website and now I REALLY WANT that game.. there goes another year of my life... sigh..

I'm the Senior Activity Days Leader for my ward. Senior only because my partner has been doing it for 5 months instead of 1 1/2 years. Activity Days is a program for girls 8 to 11 years old. They come to the church twice a month and we have some sort of activity that encourages talents, living the gospel and serving others. I was really, honestly afraid the first time I got up in front of those girls and tried out one of my little ideas on them. Now, my fear has slowly become a calm panic that builds the 2 days before each activity and crests just as I'm getting into the Primary Room. After that, I'm typically okay.
The reason I bring this up is that we had an Activity Days yesterday and I am just sooooo proud of myself... well, as proud as someone as unpretentious as I can be. Two weeks ago I assigned the girls to research a famous artist and bring a short report on them. They were not pleased. School just got out and here I was assigning them homework! I laughed a little on the inside..
Starting on Monday (I think.. it's been a positive blur) I realized that there would be girls that showed up that didn't have anything to report. These girls can be a bit forgetful and their mothers end up finding out about assignments the day after they were due...
So, I started looking up pictures and biographies on all the artists I'd assigned so that I would have something for everyone to report. It took forever and I soon discovered that biographies are varied and prone to the biographers personal impressions and not just fact. The pictures were a challenge as well as most of them were about the size of postage stamps online and tended to pixelate when enlarged. By Wednesday morning, I was in a positive meltdown and frantically trying to get everything together before my early afternoon dental appointment where I was sure they were going to rip out two of my teeth. I had everything done before Audrey went down for her first nap... siiiiiiigggggghhhhhh....

Speaking of which, I've had a broken tooth for 4 1/2 years... bottom right wisdom tooth. I broke it while eating mashed potatoes on my lunch break at Walgreens.. I was on the phone with Ben and promptly burst into tears when I realized that part of my tooth was missing and that I had EATEN it... I was very good and went to a dentist as soon as I could. Unfortunately, the dentist balked when I informed him that I was on some herbal remedies: Kelp and St. John's Wort. He said that one of them was a blood thinnner and he was concerned that I wouldn't clot if he pulled out the tooth... so, he wanted me back in a few weeks.. we ended up moving in the interim.
So, 4 1/2 years later, pain brought me to a new dentist who asked me a battery of questions, looked at the tooth, was amazed at my capacity for pain and promptly gave me a referal to an oral surgeon... He also gave me an Rx for antibiotics because he said the hole in my face was infected.. surprise, surprise...
I now get to wait a week for the horror.. the smell.. the sounds.. the panic attack of another dentists office..

Catch Up

Wow.. time just flies and I haven't been posting.

First things first. If I hadn't been there for the actual birth, I wouldn't believe that Audrey is my child. She doesn't like chocolate milk!! I am completely boggled. We went out to eat and got her some chocolate milk, just to try it out. She started drinking, stopped, looked confused and let it all dribble out of her mouth onto her bib.. thank heaven for bibs! She must have got her chocolate aversion from her dad.... and here I am with a can of Almond Roca and Ghirardelli White Chocolate at my fingertips... sigh.

My Rant: What is all this I keep hearing about people "Compartmentalizing" their lives?? The line usually goes something like this: "Well, you see, he/she is compartmentalizing his/her life so that it's more manageable and that's why he/she is behaving that way." It sounded a little shady to me... but wait, here is the back story, with the names changed to protect the losers involved.

John and Mary have been married for many years. They have 5 children (all young enough to still be at home) and seem to be relatively happy (at least in public). Don't get me wrong, they have had their problems like all married couples do. Fights, comfort spending & eating, etc... But, overall, they seem to be trying to have a good marriage and raise their kids right. I, personally, look up to them as examples of good, moral people who have something to teach to others by way of example and experience.
An unfortunate conversation with Mary reveals that John a few years prior participated in an indiscression with a female coworker, but that he confessed to Mary and they have been working it out (with the assistance of some councelling). The result was the birth of their 5th child and everything seemed to be hunky-dory again. I mean, would you have a child with someone you don't want a relationship with, really? (Maybe I'm just naive.)

Anyway, when everything blows up, a bunch of us are having a party. We're all having a good time and waiting for everyone to show up. Mary and the kids are already there and waiting for John to get off work to join us. We're starting to get worried because it should only take about an hour to drive and it's been several hours.. we're just about to send out a search party, when he finally shows up. At this point, the story gets fuzzy for me because I was in the back yard and got the story second hand. Apparently John says that he is late because he was at his girlfriends house... at his girlfriends house!! So, things just go downhill from there and I won't get into any of the gory details, but everyone is shocked and Mary is especially distraught.

This all happened several years ago, so the usual stuff has already happened, divorce, yelling, shouting, awful things being said about both sides of the marriage. Mary decides to move to another state that is significantly far away and John says he thinks that is a good idea. (Several of us disagreed, but we weren't able to comment as it's really none of our business after all.)
Through the years, John has made a rather feeble effort to visit his children, saying that it is difficult to get the time off work and drive up there (flying doesn't seem to be an option for some strange reason). He also says that calling is difficult because Mary keeps moving and doesn't give him the new numbers/addresses. (To our knowledge, she has only moved once and there are several people who she notified of the change.)

All the while, John is living with his girlfriend who, incidentally, is the female coworker from several years ago. She has a little girl, who I feel awful for because she really is an innocent in all of this drama.
Anyway, so for the past few years, anyone who knows anything about all this is trying to ignore it and John has been pretty successful in avoiding everyone. So, my feelings on all the goings on are still pretty raw since I haven't had a chance to deal with it all.
Come to find out, John and "the other woman" got married in Vegas last weekend. Thank heaven I wasn't there, I would have had some choice words.. small miracles.
The whole thing just disgusts me. Okay, so if you don't love your spouse anymore, be honest about it and go about it the right way. Sneaking around behind their back, and then letting it slip at some point.. just horrible.

AAAAANYWAY.. the whole compartmentalizing thing. I was talking with John's mother about how weird it was that John wasn't making much of an effort to deal with the issues in his life: seeing his kids, etc. She said that he was "compartmentalizing" his life. She said that he puts things into little boxes so that they become more manageable. The idea, she said, is to deal with each item separately from the others. It sounded kindof hokey to me, so I got an unbiased opinion. My mother, who knows nothing about the situation at all.

She said that people like to put "cute" names on their bad behavior to legitimize themselves. She also said that he is trying to get others to buy into his delusions and that his mother is rationalizing for him or that she feels guilty. Ben said something of the sort when we were talking about it. He said that this mother doesn't want any of her children's behavior to reflect badly on her, so she excuses it the best she can. She doesn't want to take responsibility for the possibility that her parenting may have had an effect on this man's ability to deal with problems or responsibility.

I think what makes me angry the most is that I really looked up to this man and went to him for advice, especially as a new wife and possible mother. And now, I have to look back at everything he ever told me and analyze it to see if his skewed moral outlook tainted it in anyway. It makes me angry that I trusted him. Sorry, this is a super long post, but I do feel better for venting it out.. I'll be on happier topics next time.