May 26
Everyone,
On Monday it started with a tickle. Just a minor irritation. Enough that I dug around and found the Halls that are probably expired (at least 2 years ago) and threw away all the really sticky ones. I had one and threw away the rest. Really expired. No menthol action at all! My voice was all husky and tired by the end of the day.
On Tuesday I had a scratchy throat and voice. I found yet another bag of expired Halls and took them all in hopes that it would put off the inevitable. By the end of the day, I was carrying around my water bottle and drinking it every 30 seconds because swallowing spit by itself was just too painful. My voice was all but gone. I was achy. I went to bed before Butterfly did and had a fitful, drool filled night.
Today I had zero voice. Nothing. Zip. I showered and tried really hard not to swallow. Juice convinced me to go to the doctor after he looked in my mouth and saw the leprosy that was breeding back there.
The last time I have been to the doctor because I was sick and not pregnant was YEARS ago. Seriously, I’m thinking it was before the boys were born? Either way, the doctor heard all my symptoms in my squeaky breathy voice and wrote me a prescription. Then she said, “Huh, better make it official and swab your throat.” Okay!
Strep test was negative but I have all the classic symptoms and there’s always the 24 hour test.
I got my dollar’s worth of antibiotics (seriously, it was a dollar!) and took some before I left the store. One hour nap later (the boys actually slept too!) and I feel 50% better.
I love antibiotics.
Safire
Safireme., medicine, Sickness 2011 me, sickness
May 22
Everyone,
This week’s question at the Multiples and More site is an intriguing one.
Write a letter to your 18 year old self.
Here we go! (I have to preface this and say that I started college when I was 17, and turned 18 about 3 weeks into the school year.)
Dear Self:
Isn’t college AWESOME? And I am so proud of you for trying new things. The proudest things? Asking a complete stranger out on a date just because you thought he was cute. AND! You did it with such style. This boy is amazing. And his roommate and their friends really save your sanity that first year.
You know how to study. You know how to work. Learn how to play a little! Once you work out the life/work/study/play bit, you are going to be sitting pretty.
One of those places you’ll be sitting is on your very own horse! True the school owned most of her, but you get to take care of her like your own. Enjoy it. I know you will.
Be kinder to the boys. As cute as you think some are, they just aren’t interested in you. And the ones that are interested? Be more interested in them. It’s okay to let yourself get a little closer. And don’t put such high ideals onto them. They won’t understand.
Marriage will come soon enough. Yes, marriage! And moving! New states, new friends, new challenges. You have trials. Big ones. Try hard to hold onto your faith. While we’re at it, start building that up now. Being married to who you are (no, I’m not telling!) will help you out, but it’s only in you that can help yourself with this.
Enjoy yourself, and I’ll see you in 12 years!
Safire
Safireme.
Mar 13
Everyone,
This week’s question at the Multiples and More site is all about me.
What have you done for yourself this week?
I’ve had my editor open all evening while trying to figure out what, exactly, I’ve done for myself this past week. I even got my calendar to see what I did this week and see if any of it I did for me.
Once, and only once, I exercised this week. I’d say that is something I’m doing for me! My friend Lolli came over and we danced, albeit half hearted, to Just Dance 2. What a fun fun game that is!
I do have to brag just a tiny bit here. From the beginning of this year, I have lost 20 lbs. And I’m still loosing more. I’m finally starting to feel a little like myself again. And I can see the weight loss in my face.
That’s a pretty awesome thing to do for myself!
Safire
PS- Seriously the most awful picture of me taken by Juice during our Saturday morning clean out. BUT, it’s the most recent picture so I share it here with you.
Safireme., questions Safire, weight loss
Jan 23
Everyone,
This week’s question of the week at the Multiples and More blog is about sleeping. ME sleeping.
What keeps you up at night? What helps you get to sleep?
So, let’s start with the first one! What keeps me up at night? Well, lately, oddly, I haven’t had problems sleeping. I am just so exhausted by the end of the day that, when I am actually able to go to bed, I drop off pretty fast. It wasn’t always like this. I used to sit up for hours and think.
I thought about the grocery store and what I needed. I thought about the things I needed to do the next day. I thought about things that I wasn’t doing in the day. Things would just swirl and swirl and nothing would stay still. Lists upon lists upon lists would pop up and more things to worry about would come up with all new lists.
That brings us back to the second question: What helps you sleep?
I have a routine that I do at night. I take out my contacts, get my glasses, say my prayers, get in bed, read a chapter in my book and then turn out the light. I use a book light so that I can read in the semi-darkness. I think that helps me sleep better. I didn’t always have this routine. I used to watch movies to help me go to sleep. But then Juice was not sleeping well (I would fall asleep long before the movie stopped, he would get interested and watch the whole thing) so I weaned myself off of tv before bed. I think it’s actually helped me sleep a little better.
What is your night routine? Do you have one?
Safire
Safireme., questions, sleep me, questions
Dec 16
Everyone,
In English this year, I was determined to have one friend to talk to. I picked English because, well, I did the work in record time and knew I would have some time for talking and note passing. So when we sat down, I turned to the girl behind me and asked a simple question: Do you want to be my friend?
I think I surprised her. I surprised me with my boldness in asking. It was VERY uncharacteristic of me to do that. But I did it. And honestly, I believe this was a turning point in my life. It was because of this friendship that the rest of my life changed. Mel and I became fast friends quickly. So quickly, I have no recollection of the awkward becoming best of friends phase. We just were.
It was because of Mel that I started liking going to church again. In my church, we are split geographically and stay within those boundaries. But I hated my ward and the girls in it. I felt like an outcast. So when I went to church one Sunday with Mel, I felt at home. She introduced me to all her friends, who in turn became my friends.
We hung out with Kris mostly, and the 3 of us were best of friends. School was more manageable. Church (at their ward which my parents allowed me to attend every week) was good. I rode my bike everywhere. I was starting to get the hang of Utah.
And according to my journal, this is where I became COMPLETELY horse crazy.
Safire
PS- Cool picture of my brother and I at Christmas:
Safireme., my past my story
Dec 10
Everyone,
I’m recording my youth one year at a time on Thursdays. Follow along at Mommy’s Piggy Tales!
My 7th grade year was the start of many things. It was supposed the start of middle school for me in Colorado. My 2 best friends and I had our schedules worked out that we had things like lunch and PE together so we could talk. We toured the school one day. I was pleased to see a big open courtyard with places to sit and lockers!
But instead, we moved. We moved to Utah and lived with my grandparents for awhile. My parents and brother were downstairs, and I slept upstairs in the room next to my grandparents. I had a big bed and an old fashioned alarm clock with bells on the top. Every morning when it woke me up, I thought it was charming. Kind of a nice thing to wake up to! I also had a really old black and white tv in the room that I watched Rocky and Bullwinkle on every morning while I was getting ready. It was the only thing on at 5am besides the news that the tv would pick up.
I started a new school knowing no one but my brother. This was the first time we were in the same school since I was in 2nd grade. My very first class was reading. It was also my homeroom. While in homeroom, our teacher took roll. She asked us to tell us our elementary school so she could write it down on the list. When my turn came, I answered here and gave her the name of my elementary school: Cherry Drive.
“Cherry Drive? I want your school not your address,” she said this with a lot of scorn. The whole class laughed and I turned BRIGHT red.
“Cherry Drive Elementary School is where I went. It is in Colorado. I’ve just moved from there.”
“I’ll have to check on that.” I could tell she was displeased.
Once reading started, she gave us a reading aptitude test. She said that this is what they give to college kids and didn’t expect us to finish it at all. She would also take it with us because she found it was helpful to keep up on her skills. The test was simple. It was green and multiple choice. You had to fill in the little bubbles with your #2 pencil. I flew through it. I hit a question somewhere in the 200′s and had to stop because there was no more to do. I raised my hand and kept it up for awhile before she noticed me.
“Yes?” She didn’t even come over to my desk to not disturb the class. They all looked up and looked at me. I remember feeling silly because I was wasting their test time.
“I’m done.”
“You can’t be done. I’m not even done.”
She got up now and stormed over to me. She grabbed my paper, and looked through it. Then she looked down at me and asked, “Who did you cheat from? You can’t be done!” She stormed off with my paper in hand and I slid lower into my desk. I pulled out a book from my bag to read and got yelled at for that too. So I put my head down and tried very hard not to cry.
Turns out I tested at a college reading level. But I think I upset the teacher so much she didn’t report it or move me into the advanced class. I was stuck in regular reading. The class did get better when the teacher was in a car accident and hit her head on the windshield of her car, causing her to be in the hospital for a long time. The school called a substitute. A brand new teacher. I ignored her, flew through the books and assignments, and spent the rest of the time reading very large books about horses and writing letters to my friends in Colorado.
Things kind of hit bottom this year for me and stayed that way. School was awful. The kids were awful to me. The teachers were angry and bored. I was taller than almost everyone in my school, except for my brother and a few other 9th graders.
There were a few good things about this year, though. We had never lived close to any of our family. And suddenly, we had both sides of the family to hang out with! It was amazing. We got to know our cousins. I babysat a lot for “the little boys” who were my cousins several years younger than me.
It was nice to finally be involved in all of the activities and celebrations of a large extended family.
I believe around Halloween time we moved into our own house close to my aunt’s house. The one with the little boys. Those boys were obsessed with Batman and I spent many hours watching/playing Batman with them. We also ate a lot of microwave popcorn with real butter melted on it. Yummy! The middle boy asked me to marry him, when he was my age and I was his. Too cute!
This was also the year that I started writing in my journal a lot. And by a lot, I mean every single day. I have a lot of entries of how much I missed Colorado, how lonely I was, and how much I wanted a really good friend. My first day of 7th grade all I put on the page was an enormous unhappy face. On the second day? 3 words: worse than yesterday.
When the summer came I was desperate to get out of that jail of a school. (It had no windows…we used to call it the dungeon.) I spent a lot of time on my bike or in my room that summer, hoping that next year would be better!
Safire
Safireme., my past my story
Oct 22
Everyone,
Thanks to my Mom for being super helpful with this and scanning all these old pictures for me!
Mom, Brother, and me at Mt. Rushmore. I LOVED that outfit I was wearing. And I think my Mom had that coat for 10 years or more. She also always refused to zip it up.
Me advancing from Daisy Scouts to being a Brownie scout. Notice my sash has no badges on it. That was short lived. I had badges all down the front AND the back when I was done.
Here I am at the Flintstone Village thing. I loved Dino.
Me learning to play the violin. We were called the “Pre-Twinklers”.
Me and the girl from next door. We got these rocks from between our house. We then painted them, polished them as best we could, and then wanted to sell them. For 15 cents each. Would have been a steal.
Safire
Safireme., my past my story
Oct 21
Everyone,
What do I remember about 1st grade? I remember I was in Mrs. Duran’s class. I remember feeling like she didn’t like me very much. I remember not liking her very much either. But I must have done okay in class, because my report card showed I had all S’s and H’s. (Satisfactory and High)
My biggest memory when I think of first grade in school is playing on the computers in the computer lab. It was a dark corner room with no windows. We had those big floppy disks to save our work on. And when we got done with our work, we could play The Oregon Trail. I loved being a pioneer, which reminded me of my own pioneer ancestors. Also, there was a lot of tense moments to see if our wagon made it across the rivers without tipping or loosing our flour.
According to my documents, I lost 2 teeth that year! In school! I don’t remember this at all but in March and in May, both on the 4th day of the month, I lost a tooth.
That year my friends were Cara, the girl next door, and Missy, who was my friend in kindergarten. We had a dog, Nicky, who was huge and white. I used to feed him chocolate milk from a spoon in the back yard.
I was a princess for Halloween that year. I had a pink cone shaped hat that we got at the Ren Faire. I got a bike with PINK tires that year for Christmas. I got to ride my bike that morning. The weather was beautiful that year. My friend Cara from next door got an identical bike and we spent many hours riding around the neighborhood. We also spent many hours painting and polishing rocks and trying to sell them on the side of the road.
For my 6th Birthday, we went horseback riding. Even then, I was totally horse crazy. I remember saying on my invitation to wear pants and not a dress. One of my friends thought it was the other way around. I remember riding with my dad on the horse and him fighting with the horse to stay moving away from the barn. If I remember right, he had a hard time keep the horse trotting back to the barn. We got a different horse for everyone else’s rides.
That summer was the summer my family went to Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota. We ate horse meat while we were there. I remember having some and finding out what it was. I was horrified! But also happy that I had buffalo meat as well. (See above comment about being a pioneer.) We also went to some kind of Flintstones Theme Park. The car was always full of bugs and my dad was constantly yelling at us to keep the door shut to keep the bugs out.
That was the year I started Brownie Girl Scouts, dance, and violin lessons.
I was one busy girl!
Safire
PS- This is part of a series I’m writing about my past in conjunction with Mommy’s Piggy Tails. Click through to read other people’s histories!
Safireme., my past my story
Oct 14
Everyone,
It’s Thursday again. And that means my story! This week is all about my preschool/Kindergarten years. And frankly, I don’t remember much.
But there are stories that I feel like I should remember because I was told so many times.
Like that my first word was “Hot!” or “Cracker!” My first sentence was “More cocoa?” I walked the first time the day before my first birthday.
Or that my older brother and I emptied a whole box of cereal on the floor in the front room. We had a little push car that you put blocks in. It had a steering wheel with a horn that beeped. We (my brother and I) called it the beep-beep. We drove the beep-beep all over that cereal in the front room. What a mess!
We went to Disneyland when I was not yet 3 years old. My parents were thrilled to get me in for free. We went with neighbors and good friends of my parents. Their kids were so bratty and everyone had a horrible time. (Good thing I don’t remember this one!)
My 3rd Christmas (I was 2 years old), Denver had a HUGE snow storm. It snowed everyone in. My parents walked to the grocery store down the street. They put the food in garbage sacks and drug them on top of the snow to get home.
When I was 2 years old, my Aunt got married. I was her flower girl. In my family, we give a horse shoe to the bride to wish her good luck. I was very unhappy about the whole process and threw it at her head instead of giving it to her nicely. My mom took this picture of my brother, me and my cousin staring hard at the wedding cake. My mom could never tell if I had actually put my fingers in the cake or not.
I loved to play with My Little Ponies and Little People. I loved animals.
I was a tiger for Halloween one year, wearing the same hat that my mom had when she was a little girl. Butterfly wore the same hat too!
Things that I DO remember:
My neighbor spent most of her days at our house. My mom watched her while her mom was at work. She was only a few months younger than me. She also had an older sister. Our families spent a lot of time together.
She and I even took dance lessons together. We started Daisy Girl Scouts together. But I made the cut off for school and she didn’t. So I went to school a year before she did.
My first day of Kindergarten was the first day of the new school being opened. The school was so new, it didn’t have a proper name. We had too many Kindergartners that year so they put us out in the portable classrooms. There was no bathroom in those portables. I remember having to line up and walk through the snow to the big school to have a bathroom break. My teacher was named Mrs. Jack.
Every year we drove to Utah to visit my grandparents. My Nana bought this charming little cardboard house that we “sold” candy out of every time. That is, until we left it out in the rain one year and it got ruined.
Every year at Christmas time we would ride the horse drawn carriages through downtown Denver to see the Christmas lights. When I was 4, we did it for the first time.
I remember spending a lot of time with my brother. I didn’t mind it. We were so cute together! He was a great friend and always willing to play Voltron with me.
Or maybe I was willing to play Voltron with him!
I remember being terrified of the beeping sound that a tractor makes when it backs up. Terrified. To this day, it still makes me a little nervous. Maybe I was terrified of it backing over me? I have no idea.
But look at this little lady!
This little lady said that there was 2 weathers when the sun was shining and it was raining. This little lady said that in church, they should say mommies and daddies too, not just Brothers and Sisters.
This little lady is growing up!
Safire
Check in next Thursday for my next installment of my story. Go to Mommy’s Piggy Tails to read more stories or find out how to join us.
Safireme., my past me, my story
Aug 29
Everyone,
This week’s question at the Multiples and More blog is more of a writing exercise.
Write a list of 10 surprising things about yourself
It didn’t say whether it was 10 surprising to me or to other people. So you get 5 of each. Starting with the surprising things to me.
- I love being a mother. This one surprised me because I liked kids. But before Butterfly, I was not interested in having them. At all. I wanted to do things with my life. But then I had Butterfly and I was surprised how much I loved being a mother. Oh I loved her, but I LOVED being a mother. And the boys made it even more fun for me. That surprised me.
- I have turned into a night owl. I used to love to get up early in the day before everyone was up. I used to be able to get so much done before 9am. Now I’m hard pressed to even get out the door before 10am…10:30am…11am. Guess that will all change tomorrow with Butterfly starting school!
- Swimming in the ocean kind of creeps me out. Oh it’s great and beautiful and I love it. But swimming in water I can’t see the bottom of scares me.
- I worry. A lot.
- I am so disorganized since having kids. I used to be so good at keeping things together. But now…I’m lucky if I can remember what day it is.
Okay, 5 surprising things to other people:
- I have a temper. I rarely show it to anyone. And really, those of you who know me in person, know that I’m pretty even keeled. It’s like a sleeping volcano.
- I can’t spell. And I was an English major. Thank goodness for spell check.
- I am a pack rat. Boy do I hold on to things. I always seem to find uses for things years later.
- I love science. I love how organized it all is, and how everything tends to have it’s own place. I didn’t make it my career because I hate math.
- I used to jump horses. Once I jumped a 5.7 foot fence and it scared the crap out of me. Thrilled my teacher though.
Safire
Safireme., questions me, questions
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