The resurrection

And then ... almost 7 months later ... I resurfaced. 

Several things had changed in my world. Nearest to my heart was that my baby had turned into a little boy.

 ... who had learned how to draw smiley faces ...

 ... and developed an obsession with cars that borders on the clinical (we'll delve into this later).

His hair had also turned into the most beautiful hair that any human has ever had. I'm sure there's a psychological term for coveting something that you yourself created.

 Also, my darling husband had lost nearly 30 pounds. SlimFast testimonial pending.

 And then he had parted ways with his beard after 2 years of loyal companionship.

 As a family we had become the proud owners of a 2004 BMW 325i sport wagon in alpine white, and I had discovered, for the first time in my life, the ecstasy that can indeed exist behind the wheel of a fine automobile.

We had enjoyed many adventures. Too many to explore here.

 Including, just last weekend, a solar eclipse over the Pacific Ocean.

And apparently, I had also done gone and got myself pregnant.

Right around Dec. 9, 2012, our merry little band will be joined by another, and Jethro's got all his money on a girl. 

JEM

Sci-fi for every guy (and gal)

This is so dang awesome. I can't wait to put it to work.

http://m.box.net/shared/static/a6omcl2la0ivlxsn3o8m.jpg

JEM

This has to up my coolness by at least 3 percent

OK, so normally the celebrity Mormon thing really doesn't mean anything to me, and usually I think the obsession with it makes us look a little needy. That said, I'm totally geeking out about this "I'm a Mormon" that my dad told me about, which probably means I'm the last person on Earth to see it.

My other Brandon Flowers connections:
— He's in the same ward as my college roommate (hi, Chelsea).
— He graduated from Jake's high school, but they missed each other by one year.
— I've liked the Killers for a long time.
— I've driven by Sam's Town on a number of occasions.

So pretty much, we're, like, best friends. He'll call me for a jam session any day now. I'm just sure of it.



JEM

The Trekster

For anyone who has ever questioned Jake's and my abilities as parents:

Your concerns are justified.



JEM

JEM waxes emo

Anyone else feel like their blog is this milk cow that's tied up in your front yard that's always moo-ing at you, like, "Come milk me before my udders burst and you lose all 13 of your followers!" And you're like, "Shut your fat pie hole, cow. I've got stuff to do." But it just keeps moo-ing and you think, yeah, OK, I'll do it. And so you go out to milk her and lo and behold she's got this new format that looks  really nice, but you can't find where in the heck her teats are now and by the time you sort of figure it out, Jethro's up from his nap and insisting on a round of hide and go seek, so you give up. But then later, you think, "Oh yeah! I've got this fancy phone now that has this really great cow-milking app that should make this a breeze!" So you start messing around with it and find it to be really cumbersome, so you just put some bright pink lipstick and hipster horn-rimmed glasses on the cow and take a pseudo-polaroid picture of it with your fancy phone and then can't figure out how to post it with multiple pictures in a single blog post?

Anyone else feel like that?

So anyway. A summer happened. Did you see it?

Summers go so fast now. It seemed like, when I was a kid, summer lasted forever. You'd get back in school and see kids you hadn't seen over the summer that you had actually FORGOTTEN about. Like showing up for the fifth grade and saying, "Oh, yeah! I remember you! We sat by each other in the fourth grade!" as though your paths hadn't crossed in 10 years.

Speaking of which, one of the significant events of my summer was my 10 year high school class reunion. What a strange experience that was. Good to see old friends and fun to dance around in my high school cafeteria again, but strange. I went and participated and mingled and laughed, and when it was all over Jake asked me how I felt and I said "Kind of sad." I couldn't work out why, but the whole thing left me with a bit of a hole in my gut. I think it made a little more sense a couple of weeks ago when I saw this at a friend's house here in San Diego. It's a series called "The Voyage of Life" painted by Thomas Cole in 1840. It hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It covers the four major chapters of life:

Childhood

Youth

Adulthood

Old Age

The last time I saw most of my high school classmates, we were in youth mode. Everything was wide open and beautiful, smooth sailing to that awesome cloud castle thing. (I love the young man with his hand up in the air like, "Let's rock!") But now we are fairly recent inductees into the realm of adulthood, where the waters are fast and rough and treacherous and the stakes are very high and hope sometimes seems dim. We may be new to the scene but we've seen enough to know that life isn't what we thought it would be when we were 17. Most of the people I talked to seemed to be scraping by. The ones who had families were all desperately trying to make ends meet and do right by their spouses and little children, having let go of their youthful ambitions in lieu of love and survival. The ones who were single seemed lonely and searching for meaning. Boys I remembered as perpetually buzzing with energy and goofiness seemed somber. Everyone had this look that wasn't there in high school, this thing in their eyes that suggested they've tasted a little of life's struggle and heartache. I guess it's the very early beginnings of wisdom. I don't mean to sound like everyone from the class of 2001 is miserable now. If anything, it was the opposite. Most people seemed happy and content with life and themselves. It's also not that our lives are especially rough. In fact, that's the point: the realization that every life, even the best, happy life, is rough. That's the nature of the journey. It's the same realization that hit me right after Jethro was born. I'd always sort of assumed that if I played my cards right, I could lead a virtually painless life. Childbirth made me realize that pain and life are eternally intertwined. A painless life isn't really a life. Maybe I was the only one getting this feeling, but it seemed like there was a silent understanding among us. Sort of an "oh-so-that's-why-our-parents-were-the-way-they-were" feeling.

Well, enough from emo-JEM. That little person who lives in my house just woke up and is trying to eat my nose, so we'll have to pick this up later. I'll leave you with a few photos that will hopefully reassure you that I think my life is awesome and that I do not require antidepressants:

 

The "Decorate Your Favorite Bono" craft from a recent U2-themed family home evening.

JEM

This is a blog post

Due to an exceptionally bad hair month I've been unable to post on this blog. Please accept this as an apology:





JEM

My brush with Mitt

I somehow found myself at presidential candidate Mitt Romney's La Jolla beach house last week. 

I can't really explain how it happened. I get this baby shower invite in the mail a while ago for a girl whose name I don't recognize. Facebook sleuthing revealed it was a nice, beautiful, pregnant girl from my ward with whom I've had one actual conversation. I assumed it was a hey-let's-make-the-newish-girl-feel-welcome gesture, and I was happy to take the bait. I got a little gift and couldn't find an attractive box  to wrap it in, so I ended up sticking it an empty garbage bag box before wrapping it up with paper and ribbon, figuring it would do the job and get a laugh when she unwrapped it. The day of the shower I looked up the address on Google Earth, figuring it would be somewhere in the ward boundaries. The satellite image revealed a mansion in a neighborhood full of mansions with the La Jolla beach as its backyard. I start feeling like maybe I should've gone with the empty Cheerios box instead.

I park the car a few blocks away thinking I'll be able to navigate the narrow streets better on foot. As the sound of the ocean crashing into the beach gets louder, the houses get bigger, and I'm seeing other girls with gifts approaching. Really beautiful girls. In dresses. And I'm starting to sweat pretty bad in my battered canvas Airwalks and wishing I'd gotten a haircut so that my do was less reminiscent of a 13-year-old boy miscreant, which is coincidentally also sort of how I had dressed for the affair. 

I walk in with one of the beautiful guests and tuck my trash bag box gift way back behind all of these adorably wrapped gifts that undoubtedly contain the most en vogue onesies anyone has ever beheld. The house is spacious, though not the enormous mansion you might expect, and lovely and filled with family photos I don't take much notice of. What I do take notice of are the millions of beautiful girls that I do not know. Finally I spot a familiar face, another girl from the ward who whispers to me, "Do you know whose house this is?" Suddenly the patriarch's face in all the family photos jumps out. Sure enough. It's our pal, Mitt. And let me tell you, this guy's got a sensational view from his back patio. But the faucet in his guest bathroom is a little tough to figure out. 

In case you don't believe me, as I expected you might, I took a couple of sneaky photos with my phone. 

You always wonder how you will react to a brush with fame. Turns out I'm one of those creepy people who takes sneaky photos and posts them on the Internet. Did we expect anything more from me? Mitt's two super-chic daughters-in-law who were hosting the shindig probably saw me take them and thought, "Ugh. Why did we have to invite these plebeians? She probably wrapped her present in a trash bag box."

Isn't it great when stereotypes are right?

JEM