I’m Not So Great

DIY Panties

May 18, 2013 · 3 comments

in Craziness (hildie's), Embarrassing, Family, Funny, I'm Not So Great, Making Stuff, Other People, Paint

Back in the early 80′s when I was an awkward pre-teen I fell in love with some animals. They weren’t real animals, they were much better than that; they were Critter Sitters. These were soft, adorable illustrations of animals dressed up all cutesy doing things that animals clearly aren’t meant to do: why would a koala rake leaves or talk on the phone? I never asked myself that question once. (Who decided there was anything cute about raking leaves anyway?) None of that mattered. I was madly in love with Critter Sitters.

I managed to get a few critter sitter folders since they were cheap and easy to find.

I also got a nightshirt that I wore to all slumber parties and sleepovers. I felt so attractive in it; like I was actually as adorable as the animals printed on the front. The holy grail of Critter Sitter items was, in my mind, panties. I saw a pack of panties with Critter Sitter characters on them and my heart nearly stopped. Now this was back in the day when everything came plain and you had to pay extra for cartoon characters. Nowadays it’s the opposite and I have to search high and low for plain, non-character clothing. Most of the underwear my mom bought for me was waist-high briefs printed with tiny rose buds. There was a pair with pink roses, a pair with blue roses and the most disdained: the pair with yellow roses.  I don’t know why I didn’t just spend my allowance and buy some critter sitter underwear, but that wasn’t even in the realm of possibility in my feeble 10-year-old brain. So I decided the next best option would be to paint Critter Sitters onto my own underwear. I was born uttering the phrase, “I’m sure I could do that. How hard can it be?” Now that I’m an adult, that viewpoint has really come in handy. But preteens are not so good at doing stuff.

I got out a pair of silky white granny panties and the only paints I owned–watercolors–and set to work. Within a couple of minutes it became clear that, as brilliant an artist as I was, I would not be able to recreate the Critter Sitter artwork in any way. Instead of shrugging my shoulders and tossing the panties in the sink to rinse them out, I had that furtive sense of guilt that kids always seem to have. My only option seemed to be to throw the underwear into the woods behind my house.

It was a wet, muddy morning but I slipped out the siding door in my socks and flung the underpants into the trees as far as I could. (Knowing me, that was about three feet.) I thought I was home free until I noticed my little brother Ben watching me. He was old enough to know something odd was going on but young enough to not be able to speak intelligently. That kid sat next to the sliding door pointing and making babbly toddler noises until finally my dad decided to go check out what was out there in the woods that Ben was so fascinated with.

My father came back inside a few minutes later holding a dripping pair of panties. “I don’t know what Ben was so interested in, but here’s some underwear I found outside,” he said, tossing them to me.  I froze and looked down. Instead of wondering why my underwear had painted stick figures all over them, my dad had only seen a pair of panties that had been rinsed out in the rain. I nearly fainted with relief. The idea that someone might find out that I had tried to paint my own underwear seemed beyond foolish and absurd; buying them at the store suddenly made perfect sense.

Now to come up with a plan to ride my bike on the freeway to the mall . . . . (oh yeah. It happened.)



S’More Trouble in the Kitchen

May 17, 2013 · 4 comments

in Bad Things, Baking, Birthdays (everyone else's), Craziness (hildie's), I'm Not So Great, Kids, Recipes, Why Hildie's tired, Yum

Arabella loves to read my cookbooks and pick out things for me to make. My kids are all sugar addicts like their mother so her recipes are usually in the dessert category. A couple of weeks ago she picked out this beauty from my Cooks Country magazine that she wanted me to make as her birthday cake; it’s a S’mores Ice Cream Pie:

I seriously love s’mores.  Not the biggest fan of ice cream, but it was a hot day yesterday, so I was OK with it. Birthdays are always a huge deal around our house and require a massive amount of work: make the requested breakfast, take the child lunch at school, make a birthday cake, make the requested dinner (or hope they want dinner out) and usually buy/wrap a bunch of presents.

I figured an ice cream cake means no baking or icing so it would be a lot less work. Uuuuggggh. This dessert was so much trouble! The graham cracker crust needs to be baked, so the oven does have to be turned on. Then there is a layer where chocolate is melted and combined with heavy cream and corn syrup. But because I was making this when the babies were walking in the door from school I forgot everything but the chocolate which, when frozen, became hard as a sheet of metal. Then a layer of marshamallow fluff was spread over that. Do you know what a pain it is to spread marshamllow fluff? A horrendous pain, not to mention incredible messy and sticky. It tasted super yum, though, so everyone ate their ice cream off the top and then held the crust like a sloppy chcolatey cookie to eat at the end.

Also, when the pie is ready to serve, the ice cream is covered with marshmallows and broiled quickly to brown them. It was a delicious step and one that really made the dessert taste like s’mores. Unfortunately it also made the pie start to melt and by the time the graham crackers were affixed to the outside and candles were lit, the whole thing was melting like crazy. I ended up throwing the dripping pie onto the table and screaming at everyone to hurry up and sing, for Pete’s sake the stupid dessert is getting chocolate everywhere.

So if you have all day with nothing going on and really feel like undertaking an arduous task (and you like s’mores a lot), this might be a good dessert to try. Also, make sure that there are a lot of people who will eat this instantly because an ice cream dessert in a springform pan with the sides removed is probably not the best idea. It was super delicious, though. I mean, it tasted really good and was very smore-y.

Arabella was extremely happy with this, even though I put the leftover pie in the freezer, slammed the door and yelled, “I hate everything!”  (good thing Arabella had scurried off to look at her presents). Not my finest cooking moment but the birthday girl felt loved and that’s the whole point.

 

 

 

 

 

Airhead

May 11, 2013 · 2 comments

in Bad Things, Embarrassing, Family, I'm Not So Great, Kids

This is where I park my minivan, Betsy, every day. Right here in the driveway. Yesterday afternoon I walked out to get in my car to pick up my kids from Middle School. Only, this is what greeted me. No car. Before you ask if it was stolen let me assure you that it wasn’t.

I met my friend, Anna, at the Middle School in the morning after we dropped off our kids. Anna and I go to an exercise class together most mornings and it’s better to take one car instead of two, right? After the class we played hookey from our motherly cares and saw Ironman 3 in all our sweaty, stinky glory. We were so busy talking afterwards that she drove me home and I completely forgot about my car.

Until the afternoon when I went outside and there it wasn’t. Mister’s old truck was in the driveway so I jumped in with the babies and made it over to pick up the middles in time. I drove up and found them milling around Betsy peering in the windows and trying to open the doors. They were thoroughly perplexed. “What happened? Where were you? Is the car broken?” Finn asked.

No, Finn, the only thing broken around here is my brain.

Something I’m Good At

May 2, 2013 · 4 comments

in Craziness (hildie's), I'm Not So Great

To keep going with my second Post-A-Day in May, my assigned topic is to talk about something I’m good at. My first response to that was, “Wow, I’m good at so many things. How am I supposed to pick?” That sounds so egotistical but I’m 42. I’ve had a bunch of years to work on hobbies and stuff like that. If you’d have asked me that same question when I was 22 I would have come up with a big fat blank.  I can only imagine how many great things I’ll know how to do when I’m 62. (Oh my gosh. 62 is only twenty years away???? I’m going to freak out. I can’t ever be that old! But I will be! Unless I die first. What if I do die first? What if I die soon? What if I already have cancer and I don’t even know it???)

Here is a list of things I’m good at:

1. Baking stuff.

2. Being jokey (always trying to be funny. Especially at inappropriate times.)

3. Being a mom (Due to lots of practice.)

4. Pissing off my husband (This would have made my list when I was 22 also.)

5. Making small-talk

6. Cursive

7. Manipulating any disagreement so that I’m not the one at fault.

8. Painting fingernails

9. Exiting parking lots (it’s a real art, knowing which exits are best and why.)

10. Talking to people about preparedness and food storage.

11. Painting walls.

12. Coming up with excuses for why I’m late.

See what I mean? I’m so good at so many things.

If you feel like playing along and doing a post every day in May, leave me a link!



Hi, I’m Hildie and I’m a Procrastinator.

February 23, 2013 · 2 comments

in Bad Things, Craziness (hildie's), Feeling Sorry for Myself, Holidays, I'm Not So Great, Making Stuff, Why Hildie's tired

It’s currently 9 am and I have been up for four hours already. Instead of finishing India’s pioneer skirt way ahead of time like a good girl, I was up hemming it at 5:00 this morning. But I made good time and got the apron done too. I even had time to add pockets. Everything was finished on time and we made it out of the house at the appointed time at 6:45. I really would have liked to sleep in today. I have ward council at 7:30 am tomorrow so no sleeping in for another week. Blech. It’s my own fault, I guess.

Honestly I don’t know why I didn’t make the skirt months ago. Or even a week ago. Why do I always wait until the last second? The same thing happened on Valentine’s Day. I planned the kids valentines and ordered the supplies a whole month in advance. But I waited to make them until the night before. And of course I was so tired that I figured I’d finish them the next morning–forgetting that the kids hand out Valentine’s first thing.

Sometimes doing things early does backfire. I finished a few Valentines and Ada put them in a box on the table (each one had a homemade chocolate chip cookie. Texas is totally cool with homemade food being brought to school. I really like the idea of the kids getting at least one treat that isn’t chock full o’ chemicals.)  Of course Margaret, my dog frenemy, pushed a chair out so she could climb up and ate several cookies.  So sometimes doing things early is not so great. But I should know better than to keep edible things where the dog can reach them.

Here I am 41 years old and I swear I’m still as bad a procrastinator as I was when I was 21. When will I learn? Are you a procrastinator? Were you ever? I seriously need to learn how to motivate myself not to put things off. I’m driving myself batty!

Here are the valentines. They turned out really cute even though I waited til the last minute to put them together. I am, as ever, a Valentine’s Day overachiever.

photo 0c84a242-3c98-4142-af64-cc5954d26978_zps4a33f0eb.jpg

Tarts and Spankings

February 1, 2013 · 11 comments

in Baking, Craziness (hildie's), Funny, I'm Not So Great, Other People

One of my very favorite things growing up was to come home and find my mother not there. She was very bossy and we fought a lot but that wasn’t the reason why; I loved to make baked goods while she wasn’t around to tell me I was doing things wrong. She also would make me share anything I baked and that was entirely distressing to a sugar-crazed glutton like me.

The year I turned 11 I learned how to make pie crust. I suppose my mother taught me or maybe I just went through her recipe files and taught myself. Either way I figured it out. At first I stuck to making rolled out dough sprinkled with cinnamon. It’s still one of my favorite treats to this day. But eventually I decided to incorporate one of my other favorite ingredients: strawberry jam. It wasn’t homemade. I don’t think I knew that homemade jam even existed. I used plain-old Smuckers to make tarts. I called them tarts as they looked like pop-tarts. This is how they looked in my nursery rhyme book too (“The Knave of Hearts, he stole some tarts”). Nowadays, though, tarts are just teensy pies. The things I traditionally think of tarts are called hand pies. This term is horrid. If an apple pie is made of apples and a lemon pie is made of lemons, what conclusion would you draw of a hand pie? Exactly. If you know a better name, please tell me.

I could barely wait until my jam tarts were out of the oven before gobbling them up. Usually I didn’t wait and would burn my tongue on the steamy filling. Once I added a spoonful of marshmallow fluff to each jam tart but that was gilding the lily a bit, even for a passionate sugar-lover. I would happily eat an entire batch of tarts, wrapping them in the prettiest dishtowel I could find and sneaking them throughout the evening. Everything would be cleaned up meticulously before my mother got home. Not that she would have cared, really, but I liked having secrets.

Not all my goodie-making experiments turned out so well. Once I tried to melt chocolate chips in a saucepan thinking that they would magically become hot fudge. Instead I completely burned the chocolate and could not get it out of the pan to save my life. Panicking, my solution was to throw the pot into the snowy woods in my backyard. My idea seemed to work and nobody noticed. I’m sure my mother tore apart the kitchen looking for her pan but nobody thought to ask me, seeing as how I was only nine.

Then spring came. The snow melted. And one day my very angry father came storming into the house wanting to know who had left a pan outside. My brother was just a baby so my sister Arianne (who was six at the time) and I were told to stand on the steps so that our faces were at the same level as my father’s. Over and over he demanded to know what had happened. There was no way I was going to fess up. I knew that irate look on my father’s face well. It meant one thing: Spanky-town.

Arianne and I both adamantly denied any knowledge of the pot. Had I half a brain I should have blamed it on one of our terrible babysitters. But all I knew is that I wasn’t about to get in trouble. And no child was as stubborn as I was. My father continued grilling us for an eternity. Finally he announced, “well, I’m just going to have to spank you both until somebody admits it.” This was too much for my poor, tenderhearted sister. “I did it! I left the pan outside!” she wailed. I could not believe this brilliant turn of events. I looked at my sister out of the corner of my eye and remember thinking one word: sucker. I then skipped happily off to my bedroom while I assume my sister got laid across my dad’s knee.

I never felt bad for an instant. Looking back I can’t believe how horrible I was. Apparently those years of Sunday School lessons bounced right off my forehead.  But I did learn to use a double boiler when melting chocolate.

 

*The picture is from one of my very favorite blogs: Aunt Ruthie’s Sugar Pie Farmhouse. She has a delightful–gulp–hand pie recipe that you might want to try.

Car Shopping

January 8, 2013 · 6 comments

in Bad Things, Cars, Embarrassing, I'm Not So Great

Mister owns a truck. It’s not the hugest truck but it’s big. Big trucks are fine for the country or even the suburbs but notsogreat in downtown areas. He’s cursed it when he’s worked downtown because it’s rather like being an elephant in a movie theatre. It’s simply too big. Parking is a nightmare and driving on skinny one-way streets is almost as bad.

Mister found out that his company will be relocating from just-outside-downtown Austin (where parking and traffic are reasonable) to downtown Austin in the next couple of months. The time has come, we have decided, to move away from a truck and onto something more manageable.

While he doesn’t want something small (he carries equipment pretty often due to his job as a video producer), he does want something with good gas mileage. And it has to be reliable.

Mister has been wanting a Prius since they first came out and has taken me to test drive them probably a dozen times (all I really care about are cupholders and how easy it is to listen to my songs). But last week we went to test drive a Prius–again–and I told him I wanted to drive it. While Mister and the lady selling the car were talking, I took the key and tried to start the car; “tried” to start the car. These newfangled cars!  They’ve changed a lot! (Obviously we haven’t bought a new car in ages).

Now you don’t even need a key for the ignition. You just press a button. That seems utterly crazy to me but I guess that’s how it’s done these days. I tried and tried to start the stupid Prius. I could not get it to drive. I could start it but not get it to go into “D”. After then tenth time of turning it off and then on again, I got out of the car in a huff. As usual, it turns out I am just dense when it comes to all things technical. Nobody mentioned you have to press the brake before you even start the car! Picky, picky!

Here’s a weird thing about driving a hybrid car: every time you come to a stoplight or slow down to make a turn, the car engine turns off and the battery turns on. Meaning the car goes from sounding like a normal car to sounding like nothing. In other words, I kept thinking that the car had just died. I grew up driving absolute crap cars that regularly died at intersections. I suppose I have some sort of residual Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder regarding this. After the fourth time the Prius went quiet at an intersection I gave up. I was sweating and panicky and I made Mister drive the rest of the time. I like my cars quiet all the time or noisy all the time. None of this half and half business.

The lady showing us the car mentioned that Prius drivers are 35% more likely to get tickets and break the speed limits than other drivers. She wasn’t sure why. I think it’s because there are too many air bags and seat belts. I think if there were a giant dagger in the middle of everyone’s steering wheels that we’d all be much more cautious drivers. Instead we have these airbags and sensors that make us feel all cuddly and safe inside our cars. We need something to make us feel edgy and unsafe all the time. That’s how to improve people’s driving.

Perhaps I’ll jot a note:

Dear Toyota,

Please make your cars noisier, more unsafe and more understandable for technologically idiotic people.

Thanks in advance,

J. Hildegard

stretch prius

I Did It! I Kept My Resolution!

January 3, 2013 · 6 comments

in Feeling Sorry for Myself, Holidays, I'm Not So Great, Serious

I posted this over at Segullah today, but thought it was pertinent to everyone. At least everyone who is celebrating a New Year. If you celebrate Chinese New Year instead then maybe you shoud skip this (and ni hou to you, by the way).

As a person who constantly fails at New Year’s Resolutions, I rarely make them anymore. Last year something clicked and not only did I make a couple of resolutions, but I actually kept them. One was to go all year without drinking Mt. Dew. This is a really big deal because I’m pretty much an addict. I can turn down other pop but not The Dew. So I drank an entire 2 liter bottle last New Years Eve and did not have another drop for 365 days.

The other goal I kept was to hang my clothes up every night. I always stay up too late (the house is so beautifully quiet!) and end up stumbling to bed ready to pass out. I drop my clothes on the floor and slide into bed. You would think that the 90 seconds it takes to hang up my clothes wouldn’t be such a big deal. But it has been. It wasn’t until I finally could say, “it’s not like I’m going to want to hang these up tomorrow either. I should just do it now,” that the light bulb turned on. And we all know how piles of clothes beget piles of clothes. Better to nip it in the bud.

This New Year’s Eve found me dreamily imagining the great things I would accomplish this year: meaningful scripture study? Never going to bed with a messy kitchen? Restricting the time I spend online? Not eating sugar all year? It wasn’t until yesterday that I thought of something I’d really like to accomplish: I want to be more creative.

I constantly see cute projects everywhere and think, “I’ll bet I could do that!” But I rarely do. I almost never try. Doing creative projects—whether artsy, craftsy or even writing—makes me feel selfish and indulgent. Creative acts make me feel vital and alive and really work out the stress in my life. However, that naggy, rotten voice in my head pipes up and tells me what a waste of time it all is. I should be sorting laundry and throwing out rotten leftovers. I haven’t earned the right to do something fun—which is how creativity feels to me.

But I’m telling that voice to shut up. I’m making Craft Hour from 9:30-10:30 every morning. There will not be appointments scheduled or sinks scrubbed. This is the time when I can let loose the creativity I keep shut away. For once I’m actually thrilled about a resolution. I already have today’s project laid out on my entry hall floor (new living room curtains!).

Are you telling that negative voice in your head to just shut up this year? Are you setting goals? Do you find the whole thing ridiculous? Is failure your middle name?

Mouse in the Trash Can

November 19, 2012 · 10 comments

in Bad Things, Craziness (hildie's), I'm Not So Great, Yuck

Finding this in our driveway last week jogged my memory of having a smidge of a mouse problem when we lived in Utah many years ago.

rat in dustpan

 

Our house was down the block from a huge vacant lot meadow. As you can imagine the critters living in nature sometimes got cold or wanted something tasty to eat so they snuck their way into human houses (it was our neighbors too, not just us) and struck gold in their garbage cans and trash compactors.

Every day when I’d open my trash compactor (a drawer full of old food! A mousey dream come true!) a mouse or two would scurry out, back into the netherworld behind my cabinets. Rodents do not bother me at all but this was getting disgusting. Who knows if those mice were breeding back there or something.

Mister bought several different types of mouse traps which the insanely clever mice managed to evade. Even the ones sitting right in the middle of the trash compactor. Our cat Sophie was idiotic about catching them as well (She was pretty much idiotic about everything, though). I’m sure if we’d had a video camera going it would have looked like an episode of Tom and Jerry. We had no choice but to try some of the more “humane” traps. I was completely happy killing the mice but that didn’t seem to be working so what the heck.

We purchased one trap that looked like a small plastic tray. Apparently the idea is that the top of the tray is incredibly sticky and the mouse’s paws get stuck to it and that’s that. So humane, right? No snapping of the neck or violent killing involved. Mister placed the trap in the trash compactor and left for work.

Within a couple of hours I went to throw something away and there was a mouse stuck to the trap. Hooray! Success! Only . . . now what? Do I let the mouse sit there until it starves to death? That hardly seems humane. What if the mouse panics and chews its hands and feet off trying to get away? I could picture a bloody scene with four little mouse paws stuck to the trap. A horrid scenario, but not out of the question. Should I toss the mouse and accompanying trap in the garbage can outside to roast slowly in the hot Utah sun? That seemed unkind, not to mention smelly.

What to do with a squirmy, trapped mouse? I came up with a quick and non-offensive way to put the poor little mouse out of it’s misery: I tied the trap with the mouse attached in a plastic Target bag, then rebagged it into another Target bag. I then placed the bag on my driveway directly behind one of my car tires.

You know what came next.

Although running over the mouse felt incredibly awful, it seemed to be the kindest option. It died quickly (I’m guessing. I didn’t check.) and I didn’t feel anything as I ran it over.

So be warned if you start getting mice in your house this winter. Not all traps are created equal. You may be forced to commit mouse-cide yourself.

Abortion–How I Arrived at My Opinion

September 5, 2012 · 12 comments

in Bad Things, I'm Not So Great, Serious

Abortion is quite the subject du jour with half the people in the U.S. screaming that it’s an unborn child, you selfish murderer! And the other half saying that terminating a pregnancy is the greatest gift ever to women-kind. Before we get all wrapped up in the whole discussion (that will be tomorrow) let me tell you a story of what happened to me about twelve years ago.

I was pregnant with my fourth baby. At 17 weeks I went in to have my quad screen test where the doctor checks for chromosomal defects, abnormalities and such. I had had three perfectly healthy babies and no miscarriages (Ah, the hubris of a woman with no fertility issues!).  A few days later the doctor called to tell me that my levels were alarmingly low. Low enough that it looked like my baby had Trisomy 18. Trisomy 18, as it was explained to me, meant the baby would be severely vegetative if it were even born. Pregnancy loss with a Trisomy baby is not uncommon.

Gulp.

My view on abortion up to this point was more of the “I would never do it but it’s not my business if somebody else wants to”. But here I was faced with the decision of possibly carrying a baby to full term that would never live much of a life, if it lived at all. To my 27-year-old brain this seemed unfathomable. I asked my doctor about terminating the pregnancy. Not that I wanted to, necessarily, but I wanted to know what our options were. Even though we have always been very devout Mormons, would an abortion be considered OK in this situation? Nobody is prepared for the tidal wave of emotion that hits you when you’ve been given a diagnosis like that. You imagine what you might think, what you might do, but you really have no idea.

My husband and I prayed and read words of the church leaders about the subject. It was all a terrifying mess. I certainly didn’t want to end my baby’s life, but what kind of life were we even talking about? The words “severely vegetative” replayed over and over. Who wants to be pregnant just to end up with . . . you know. A stillborn? A baby who never even has a chance? Up til then my biggest worry about my babies is that they would end up with my ugly chin. And now here we were facing this unbelievable diagnosis.

I just wanted the pain and indecision to end. While I couldn’t commit to an abortion–I really felt like it was baby not a fetus. And I wasn’t about to kill my baby–but I just wanted the torment to be over. I was young and foolish enough to think that maybe having an abortion meant an instant end to the emotional anguish. I hadn’t realized yet that no sort of pregnancy loss is a quick-fix. Whether you are having an early miscarriage, an abortion or are giving a baby up for adoption, there is pain. We are women. We are nurterers. Any time a part of us has that taken away, there is suffering and torment. Guilt and sadness.

Within a couple of days I had an ultrasound to see how severe the deformities might be. As I lay on the table my decision was made for me: the baby had just died.

I felt numb. But doctors are usually all business and mine had barely wiped off the gel before he started talking to me about my options. I would need a D&E (as opposed to the usual D&C) which is necessary for a larger fetus. And not just any place can do a D&E. I would need to go to the abortion hospital if I wanted it done over the weekend (It was the Thursday before Memorial Day) or I could wait a week and have it done at the big hospital downtown. (I don’t understand doctors and the big rush they’re always in. Why not just let me take my time and let my body do what it felt like doing?)  Better to put this whole episode behind you, my doctor advised; the sooner the better. As if getting rid of the baby would get rid of the grief too.

So I opted for the abortion hospital. As I said earlier, “live and let live” has been–and still is–my motto. And I wanted this whole pregnancy over and done with. So Mister and I reported to the abortion clinic in Portland, Oregon where we were living at the time.

Have you ever been to a really seedy bar? One that just has a terrible, awful vibe to it? That’s how it felt walking into that place. “Stop being such an idiot.” I told myself. “A hospital is a hospital.”  After getting into a squabble with the receptionist (“I’m not signing a paper saying I’m terminating this pregnancy. It terminated itself! What if I run for office some day?”) I was shown back into The Big Room.

I’m not sure how most clinics are set up but this one had a large room with about a dozen beds. The nurse informed me that most of the women in the beds were recovering from their procedures. She handed me my hospital gown and showed me my bed. As I changed into my gown the lady in the bed next to mine asked me through the curtain how old I was. I told her I was 27. “Same as me,” she replied.

And then she said the words that almost made me pass out, “This is my tenth time here. How about you?”

Ten abortions?  What???? Had she never heard of birth control? I mean, I’m super fertile and I’ve never once had an ‘oops’ baby! What’s her excuse? They practically shower you with with condoms here! My head was still spinning as the nurse went over my health history and asked me what my future birth control plans were (“none. I want to get pregnant again as soon as possible.” Bet she didn’t hear that one very often.) After I met with the nurse I laid down on the bed and said a prayer, as I assume most people do who are about to have surgery. I asked God to bless the doctor to be guided to operate safely; and then I stopped. How would Heavenly Father be able to guide someone in this place? There is no way the Holy Ghost would be dwelling here. And if there’s no Holy Ghost, there’s no special help guiding any surgeons.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

So I got up, put my clothes on and apologized to the nurse. I’m sure they have women change their minds all the time so I didn’t really care. The nurse told me I’d probably miscarry before the other hospital could see me. I was willing to take that chance (I didn’t miscarry. I waited almost a week and there was never even a drop of blood.) As I walked into the waiting room I saw relief wash across Mister’s face. “I was praying and praying that you’d change your mind about being here. This place gives me the creeps!” He hugged me and I cried and we got Wendy’s hamburgers and I sobbed in my room for the rest of the week.

(To be continued tomorrow)

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