Leaving Los Angeles

I recently saw a buzzfeed-ish article going around Facebook about what it's like to move away from Southern California. Some of it rang true and some of it made me laugh. But I thought I could do one better. Maybe it won't be as universal, but it will be much more therapeutic for me, as I face another week of sub-zero temperatures.

Ten Things You'll Miss When You Leave L.A. 



1. Mexican Food. 

Tacos de Lenga. Que delicioso!

Finding a good mexican restaurant became my obsession when we first moved to Brooklyn. We lived in a latino neighborhood, but every restaurant we tried was very disappointing. We were especially confused by all the ones that claimed to serve Chinese AND Mexican food. (Chimichungas that taste like egg rolls, our friends discovered.) I'll never forget the day we were driving to IKEA and we passed the ball fields near the projects in Red Hook and I saw . . . taco trucks! Taco trucks! I made Adam pull over and we got huaraches and pupusas. Oh happy day! It was like being home.

2. Espanol. 

I used Spanish in the workplace all the time when I lived in the west. Sometimes the Hispanoblantes would be a little surprised, but in So Cal, you have to know a little Spanish to get by. When we moved to Brooklyn, every time I'd try speaking Spanish to my vecinos, they would look at me like I was loco in the cabeza and then answer back in English. Even Angelinos who didn't take four years of high school Spanish (the fools), throw in words here and there. And the rest of the country would be wise to catch up. Salsa has ousted ketchup as the #1 condiment in America. Espanish is here to estay. 

3. Smog. 

Okay, you won't miss it, but you will miss whining about it. Someone was complaining to me once about the bad air quality in New Jersey. I just looked at them like they were crazy. I mean loco.

4. Freeways. 

It's a freeway, right?

WRONG!

When we first moved to the East Coast, I called everything "freeways" and, of course, used the ubiquitous "the" in front of all numbered roads. It got pretty confusing. Because nothing in the East Coast can be simple or relaxing, especially not driving anywhere. There are expressways. There are highways. There are beltways. There are routes. And, the most horrible thing of all, some of them have STOP LIGHTS. You think you're on a freeway. There are multiple lanes going in each direction. The speed limit is 55 mph. And all of a sudden, a stop light. 

5. Free Freeways. 

TOLL ROADS. Hate them. Hate them. Use them and have an EZ Pass cuz I'm not dumb but still. HATE THEM.

6. The Real Ocean. 

The Hollister store in Midtown Manhattan. It's live feed of Huntington Beach mocks me.

You will miss the pacific ocean like a lost limb. The first time we went to the beach on the East Coast, I kept waiting to feel that beach feeling, the drop in temperature, the increase in humidity, the scent of the sea in the air. I kept waiting as we parked the car, walked across the hot-as-fiery-coals sand, and I waded into the water. I can't tell you how bitter my disappointment was when I stood knee deep in lukewarm water as the sun beat down on me when I realized this was as beachy as it was going to get. I'm sweating. I'm in the ocean. I'm sweating and I'm in the ocean. What the blazes is wrong with this ocean?!?! 

7. Quality produce at a decent price. 

Every time I pay through the nose for avocados, I cry a little inside. If I find navel oranges for 2/$1.00, I'm thrilled. And then I eat them and they have no taste. 

8. Dry Air. 

Yup. That's what it feels like.

Everyone knows the East has terrible humidity. But what they don't explain is that the East also has a lot of really old houses and apartment buildings. And old houses and apartment buildings don't have central air. So not only are you living where it's hot as hell even when you're in the shade, you're also living where the only place you'll find relief is right in front of your window unit when it's turned all the way up, or Target. 

9. People Who Talk Normal. 

Man at grocery store: "Excuse me, miss, you left your pocket book in your carriage." 

Me: Miss? Am I a miss? What is a pocket book? Is he talking about my purse? Did he just call the grocery cart a carriage?? Oh. Thank you. 

Of course, even my husband, East-Coaster that he is, makes fun of me for slurring my consonants and overly-emphasizing vowels, like in this SNL skit. "Whaaudoinere?" And sometimes I overdo it with "dude." Okay, to be honest, I find the different accents fascinating. And I've gotten to the point where I use "shmutz" without feeling like a poser.

10. In-N-Out. 

Five guys, overpriced. Shake Shack, decent. But nothing can replace quality you can taste. It's the first place I go when I go home and the last place I eat before I leave. I find it infuriating that they opened restaurants in Utah AFTER I left BYU. Rude. But it's been TWO YEARS since I've been home, guys. TWO YEARS. Who wants to overnight me a double double?

So there you have it. Did I forget anything? Maybe next time I'll do ten things I'll miss if we ever leave the NYC metro area. Maybe.

Adam's Book of Love

Monday, January 20th was Adam's 32nd birthday. This year, I decided to do something a little different. Christmas was somewhat of a disappointment for him; I think I put too much thought and effort into the kids' gifts and Adam felt like mine weren't very thoughtful. Plus, I basically bought myself a bunch of gifts and had him wrap them and give them to me from him. But that's just making it easy for him, right? Anyway, I wanted to do something a bit more meaningful, so about a month before his big day, I started contacting all of Adam's family and friends that I could find info for. I asked everyone to send something personal, a note or a letter, an mp3 or some photos, anything that would make Adam feel loved, and I'd put it all in a book for him. I was very pleased with the results. 

I had Elizabeth decorate the cover. She's pretty amazing when it comes to arts and crafts, if I do say so myself.

I just put the letters and pics in sheet protectors. The kids each colored a portrait of Adam (Elizabeth's is showing). 

Other people got creative, too. Two of the former missionaries that served in our ward when Adam was the Ward Mission Leader made these. I love them.

A tribute to Adam by Skyler Thiot

Our family illustrated by Crys Kevan Lee

Aren't they amazing? 

Hernan, who stayed with Adam a few years ago while the kids and I were in California for a few months, sent him a huge CD of songs and this photo collage.

I also received a lot of awesome pictures from Adam's earlier years, like this gem:

as well as this pic that I'd never seen before, sent from my aunt:

Just having the digital copies of so many old pictures was a great blessing. There was even a hand-crafted card and a Oscar Meyer Weiner whistle awaiting Adam in his Book of Love. I think he was also really touched by all the heartfelt letters people wrote. All in all, it was a lot of fun to put together, as I hope it was for everyone who contributed. So here's to Adam and all the 32 years he's blessed our lives. Happy birthday!

Letters for Maddie

As some of you know, my friend (and next-door-neighbor) has a bright, spunky, talented, sweet 9-year-old girl who has an aggressive form of lymphomic cancer. She's about six months into her two-year treatment and has shown an amazing amount of courage and patience. Not only is she a little hero, but she's also one of my kids' favorite people. They're like little Maddie Minions. 

Maddie is collecting letters to Santa to give to Macy's. For their Believe campaign, they will donate $1 for every letter to the Make-a-Wish foundation. (That same foundation that turned San Francisco into Gotham City for a kindergartener with cancer.) Make-a-Wish has already started making arrangements for Maddie's wish, a family trip to Disneyworld, which has given Maddie something to look forward to that's fun, exciting, and has nothing to do with spinal taps, poison pills, or overnight stays in the hospital. And now she wants to give back.

If you have time during all the rush of Christmas, please send a letter (or two or a hundred) to Maddie. You can send them to me and I'll walk twenty feet and deliver them to her. I'm such a philanthropist. (I'll gladly email you my address if you don't already have it.) Do you have any contacts with children groups, schools or church groups? Please spread the word. Let's help Maddie have a wonderful Christmas as she turns to helping others in her own hour of need.

Mother I Am A

I'm sorry this isn't a blog post w/ cute pictures of the kids. You can find that on Facebook. You're not on Facebook? Embrace the madness. This is yet another post where I try to work something out in my head and my heart. Don't feel obligated to read on. I can't help it. As Jo March says, "Genius burns!"

Okay, one cute pic.

The other night, as I sat next to Eddie's little toddler bed, resting my head on his pillow, I took his hand in mine and had a revelation. Every night, as if it's part of his bedtime routine, he asks me to stay "just five minutes." Sometimes I can bargain him down to one minute, giving him the excuse that I have to go do the dishes (which is a lie, since Adam does them almost every night.) But some nights I agree to the full five minutes. That night, like every other night, I was tired to my core. The dinner/bedtime marathon was almost over, but I knew I had three more kids to go. So I didn't mind sitting still for a few minutes, my face a few inches from Eddie's. I could smell his shampoo. I could hear the tiny sucking sounds from his mouth and thumb. (Those melt me.) I took his hand in mine and that's when it hit me–just how small his hands were. His room was almost completely dark, so I couldn't see his fingers, but I could feel all the tiny little bones. I rubbed my thumb over them. They felt so small, so delicate, so easily broken. And it was a shock. He's such a small child. Not small for his age; he's just small. 

It took me a while to figure out why it was such a shock. Again, it came to me one night like that, when I was sitting again, for "just five minutes," with Eddie in the dark of his room. I realized Eddie's delicate little bones were surprisingly small only when I compared them to mine. It was all about scale. All day, every day, I'd wage these epic battles against the Three Tyrants and their Ring Leader. The frustration, the anger, the tears, the noise, everything going on in the microcosm of our home felt larger than life, especially the kids' personalities. In the dark, quiet room,with only my touch to inform me, Eddie wasn't a force to be reckoned with. He was just a tiny, little person, whose little hand was completely enveloped in mine.

*        *        *

Not long ago, I reposted on Facebook (There it is again. You really should get an account.) a video Adam's college roommates had made of him dancing. It's hilarious. It's awesome. I could watch it all day. And it inevitably gets a lot of attention. Someone suggested I make a response video. I filed the idea away, thinking it would be fun to do. I'm a good dancer. I've got some moves. It'd be nice to be shown a little internet love. So yesterday, I put on makeup, squeezed into some pre-triplets jeans, and set up the camera. I figured a video of just me dancing wouldn't be nearly as fun as a video of me and the kids, so I invited them to join me. When we watched the results, I thought it was a failure and refused to put it online. 

I showed it to Adam, (who later insisted on uploading it to YouTube) and watched with growing agitation as he watched. He laughed at Elizabeth as she lip sang and twitched her hips. It was really funny—her expressions were so exaggerated and she was obviously enjoying herself. I laughed a little, in spite of myself, but that only made my heart feel harder, and by the end, I was stone-faced and giving Adam the Look of Death. He, understandably, was utterly confused. Why was I so upset? All he saw was us having a dance party, and Elizabeth acting goofy. What did I see? Mr. Photoshop helps us peer into my twisted mind:

Seeing the video in Emily-Vision

But that wasn't all. As I watched Elizabeth upstaging me (literally and figuratively), I knew the only appeal a video like this would have would be her and the kids. Because, the little shoulder devil said with red, hot pokers in my heart, the only good thing about you is your kids. That's all you do. That's all you are. 

I remember a conversation I had with a kind soul when the babies were just a few months old. It had finally dawned on me, as I sat in her car peering out at rows of night-dark trees, that I was from now on going to be known as "The Triplets' Mom." I struggled like all first-time mothers with my new identity when Elizabeth was born. Heck, it almost sent me over the edge. But I emerged with me intact. Having three more kids (not to mention at once) has almost wiped me out. Wiped me out—made me tired, but wiped me out—dry erase board. And what hasn't been wiped out has been changed almost beyond recognition. I have scowl lines between my eyebrows. My abdomen looks like a war zone. Ever heard of twin skin? Nothing short of surgery will ever take it away. And my eyes look tired and puffy all. the. time. Sometimes I do a good job of looking at the acres of stretch marks and thinking about them as battle scars, or my Badges of Awesomeness, or something sunshiney-barfy like that. But sometimes I just cry and want to hide. That night, watching Adam watch the video, I felt so angry and impotent. 

I left the office and went to the dining table where I'd laid out some tools, a bead board, and an assortment of beads. I got to work, and an hour later, I'd made two pair of earrings. When I went to show Adam, I felt almost giddy. (The poor man must suffer from whiplash with my mood swings.) "I made these!" I told him. "ME!" It felt really, really good.

The Island

The Island, by A.A. Milne

If I had a ship,
I'd sail my ship
I'd sail my ship
Through Eastern seas;
Down to a beach where the slow waves thunder -
The green curls over and the white falls under -
Boom! Boom! Boom!
On the sun-bright sand.
Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land,
And climb the steep white sand,
And climb to the trees
The six dark trees,
The coco-nut trees on the cliff's green crown -
Hands and knees
To the coco-nut trees,
Face to the cliff as the stones patter down,
Up, up, up, staggering, stumbling,
Round the corner where the rock is crumbling,
Round this shoulder,
Over this boulder,
Up to the top where the six trees stand....

And there I would rest, and lie,
My chin in my hands, and gaze
At the dazzle of the sand below,
And the green waves curling slow
And the grey-blue distant haze
Where the sea goes up to the sky....

And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea:
"There's nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me."

Breaking the Tenth Commandment

I have several more fun posts to write, cute pics of the kids to share, and all that good happy stuff. But I'm gonna take five minutes to keep it real.

We went to Michigan for a family trip a few weeks ago and coming back from that has been really, really hard. When we lived in Brooklyn and would take trips to see family (and escape the city), I'd always be filled with a feeling of dread on the ride home. As the years passed, the feeling lessened. And when we lived in Rutherford, I noticed I was eager to get home after some time away. But this time, our first trip while living in our apartment in Fair Lawn, the feeling came back with a vengeance on the ten hour ride home. (For the backstory on why we left our house in Rutherford and moved to an apartment in Fair Lawn, click here.) It was probably exacerbated by my having to continually climb back and forth between the front seat and the back row to cater to my children's every whim, but it couldn't have been all of it. (Any advice on that one? I can't reach the two kids in the back two seats and they're strapped down in their seats so tight they can't reach anything on their own.)

Once we got back, I started having problems with insomnia again. I don't think I've had a good night sleep since. Adam has done his best to help me sleep better by getting up with the kids and letting me sleep in on Saturdays. And he's always trying to tidy up our bedroom because he knows that contributes to my anxiety. But I still can't seem to just fall asleep, no matter how early or late I go to bed. 

The fridge still sucks and we're hoping to get a new one when the Labor Day sales come around. The neighbors downstairs still smoke like chimneys, outside AND inside their apartment. And Tot Lot and Elizabeth's "free" swim lessons are over so now the summer perks of our neighborhood are all but over and gone. So all I'm left with is this deep and persistent despising of where we live. Up until a few days ago, I've been really, seriously pissed off at God for telling me we were "supposed" to live here. And I've gone through the whole rigamarole of wondering if he ever really did, or if it was just my imagination, and if so if every spiritual witness I've ever felt wasn't real, and if so then my testimony is invalid and I should leave the church and turn in my temple recommend and give God the one-fingered salute. 

But those feelings finally passed. I'm okay with not knowing why I felt like we should live here. I'm trying to be more humble and put it on the shelf. But I'm still far from peace. And this is why:

Lately, there are times when I'll walk through the neighborhood, or drive around town, and every house I see fills me with this overwhelming hatred, anger, and jealousy. It's crazy. And awful. But it's true. I literally hate the person, whoever they are, who owns and lives in that house. I hate them because they have a big, beautiful house and I don't. I hate them because they can afford it and I can't. I don't think those words consciously, but I've started to recognize the feeling when it comes. On the bright side, at least I've been able to step back and look at the feelings and go, "Huh. That's weird." But that's as far as I've gotten.

Thou shalt not covet, the Lord commands us. And I firmly believe he doesn't give commandments just to be bossy, but to help us be happy. And there's nothing happy about coveting. 

So what do I do?

Summer Fun

July was hot, hot, hot. But that didn't stop us from having a lot of fun. Here is a re-cap of our month in pictures. Aunt Megan came to stay with us for almost the whole month. But for some strange reason, we got very few pictures of her. But she was a joy to have in our home and, as I said in my last post, she wins Aunt of the Year for helping me potty train the triplets. 

Okay, picture time. 

Fourth of July Parade. Our friends and now next-door neighbors, the Pascuals, invited us to watch the Glen Rock parade with us. Glen Rock is the town just north of ours. North Jersey is filled with towns, or boroughs as they call them, all packed tightly together but each one has their own small-town feel. There are only a hand full of actual "cities." The boroughs/townships each have their own school systems, usually just one high school, and their own police and fire force.

Anyway, here are some pics:

We're having so much fun.

That hair.

Waiting for the fun to begin.

 My friend, who is also named Emily, also is a mother of multiples. She has a 9-year-old girl and 7-year-old twin boys. Elizabeth is currently in love with one of the twins, though she'd be hard-pressed to tell you which one.

The best part of the parade for the kids was all the candy the paraders threw at the crowds. We were at the very front of the parade so the kids got a ton. Emily's kids knew from experience to come prepared, and each walked home with a grocery bag full.

When Tot Lot (the neighborhood drop-off playgroup) started at the beginning of the summer, the only way I could convince Eddie to go was to let him bring his blankie. Now it goes with him wherever he goes. Even during a heat wave, he sports it like a scarf. It's also been a cape, a shawl, a turban, and a whip. He's turning into a regular Linus.

Finishing a lollipop, wearing his favorite accessory.

Here's that blankie again. He's also started doing this really adorable side smile whenever we tell him to smile for the camera. This was at the branch president's house where they hosted a BBQ. 

That night, Megan was good enough to stay home and babysit so Adam and I could go see fireworks. (She got to see some the following Sunday. Basically every town in NJ does fireworks on a different night so you can spend the whole week of Independence Day going to fireworks. Awesome.) This was in Leonia near Overpeck County Park, home of the best playground in the world.

One of the best parts about our new neighborhood is the Radburn Association. Besides a whole summer of Tot Lot and swimming lessons, they do a Family Day with everything from carnival games to pie-eating contests. It was very hot and muggy that day, but we brought lots of water, stayed in the shade, and had a lot of fun.

Charlie asked for a butterfly. 

The finished product.

Eddie asked for Batman. Didn't think he knew who that was. I still don't.

Rainbow!

Rainbow II!

Train ride!

Megan was the one who figured out it was just a dressed up lawn mower.

Feeding a calf.

Here's Elizabeth mourning the loss of this duck's dignity and freedom.

Free snow cone!

Elizabeth concentrated on perfecting her bounce, while Charlie gloried in the fleeting elation of being airborne like his totem, the butterfly.

 

Another great date night was our concert down in central NJ to see Guster, Ben Folds Five, and Barenaked Ladies. 

Guster was amazing. BF5 was good, though disappointing that he didn't play a single song from the one album I have, and we left before Barenaked Ladies because, well, beating traffic and getting home at a decent hour totally beat sticking around and listening to songs that were overplayed in the 90s. Adam has wanted to see Guster live as long as I've known him, so this was a real treat. They didn't play long enough for our liking, though. Just 45 minutes. But after BF5, on a bathroom break, I heard a song that sounded familiar. And live. I wandered over to a small crowd and couldn't believe my eyes/ears. Guster was doing an extra set out there next to the merch booths. I ran and got Adam and we got back in time to hear a few more songs. We were just feet away from them. It was epic.

We ended the month with our branch's Pioneer Day celebration. We got a surprise visit from some former members of the branch who'd moved away almost a year ago. Their daughter, Callie, was our first mother's helper when we moved to New Jersey. She is still remembered and beloved by our children. 

"Stop talking, Mommy."

Let's hear it for old school.

For those of you unacquainted with Pioneer Day celebrations, it usually involves some kind of bicycle parade for the kids in the ward (congregation.) If my childhood memories of growing up in Utah are accurate, kids usually decorate their bikes and even dress up in pioneer costumes. I think in a nod to that tradition, our branch has a bike parade. Or, in our case, a scooter parade.

Yes, it was a hot but fun July. And to end the post, the best pic ever of the best branch president ever, President Nick Bria: