Thursday, December 11, 2014

The grumpy list

It's been a bit of an off week for us. Nate's students have been insane and also compulsively lying to him (I swear I turned in every single one of those assignments that has a zero! I mean, I um, lost all of them, Why won't you give me credit for work I didn't turn in?) , the kids have both had their 3rd GI ailment since mid-October, and I've been in a lot more pain and discomfort. So I made chocolate peanut butter fudge. But still, it's that time of year that's a bit of a mixed bag, especially since 2011, and being here hasn't helped make it any better, so I have decided to make a list of things that are currently making me grumpy at this point because it's cathartic. Also, I might mention pee, blood, and my uterus:

-CHRISTMAS ADS: I like Christmas- music (traditional songs, not the really annoying modern ones that are uber-obnoxious), but it's also unpleasant being punched in the face with "BUY, BUY, BUY" as soon as Halloween is over. Virtually everything that showed up in the massive amounts of black friday ads looked like garbage. The expectation for the size of gifts has gotten so out of control, I am just glad that my kids are still too young for me to worry about them demanding iPads, video games consoles, cell phones, and automobiles. And they will never get them even if they do, unless they want an old atari found at a thrift store or hot wheels. Personally, I think the best gifts involve either something edible, something handmade, or an event, like going out for ice cream or to a lucha libre. Or offering to take your kids for the night so that your husband can stay the night with you in the hospital after you have a baby so that you don't have to take care of an hours old newborn by yourself right after having your insides ripped out while also having psychotically painful contractions as your uterus shrinks.Which brings me to:

-BEING PREGNANT: I do not like being pregnant, but I keep doing it because I'm rather fond of the end result. It hurts really bad. I have really bad pelvic pain that gets increasingly worse with each pregnancy, and I am desperately hoping this is the last time I am pregnant because I am not sure that I can handle the pain getting any worse. I am also to the point where I have pretty much constant acid reflux, whether I'm lying down, siting, or standing, because I think my stomach has migrated into my ribcage. Or possibly to the top of my sternum. So far, this baby doesn't seem to be sitting on my sciatic nerve like Ian did, but I've still got 10 weeks to go. The leg cramps are unpleasant and back pain are unpleasant., and bending over to pick something else is an ordeal. I look at my belly and think, wow, it still has a lot bigger to go- I think all of my clothes are going to rip apart by the end of this. I got one of those back/belly support velcro bands, and that's hit or miss. It also puts more pressure on my bladder, but sometimes I wear it just to keep my pants up. I also miss my brain- I swear I can feel my brain cells taking off. About this time of the pregnancy, I also have unexplained issues, which takes us to:

-PEEING BLOOD: With every pregnancy I've had, I always have unexplained bleeding at the beginning of the third trimester. With Madelynn, the cause was never determined, but an ultrasound did reveal that I was having pre-term labor, so I was put on bed rest and medication to stop contractions. I still ended up being induced when I was full term because the doctor was worried about me going past my due date with the issues I had been having. With Ian, I had bleeding and contractions and had to stay the night in the hospital, but then they stopped and cause of bleeding was never determined. I was also induced 5 days after my due date with him (that was at my request, though, because I was desperate for my Dad to meet his first grandson before he died.) I thought I might escape it this time, but nope, last Friday I randomly started bleeding- not enough to warrant rushing to the ER, but enough to be concerning. Since we are only 10 minutes from the hospital and this seems to be a common occurrence, I insisted on driving myself to labor and delivery to get checked out so the kids wouldn't have to get dragged along and be traumatized. After tons of tests, I was told I had been peeing blood and had a UTI, and was sent home with a prescription for an antibiotic. But then was told a few days later after lab results came in that I didn't actually have a UTI either and they had no idea why I was peeing blood. So glad I get to pay a butt load of $$$ (and that's WITH insurance) to be poked and prodded and told that no one has any idea why I was bleeding.

-THIS IS THE PLACE- If you are from here: I had somewhat of an idea of what to expect when we moved here, since I had lived in this state for a few years when I was younger. I was hoping that the culture of being very insular and wary of outsiders had changed since then, or maybe it was just a Cache Valley thing. Yeah, no. If you're not from here, you are an outsider and most people are so involved in their own lives that they really don't give a rip about you. This is partially due to the fact that we chose the wrong area to live- the majority of the people near us are from here, have their entire families here, and why get out of your comfort zone when everything is already peachy? Madelynn has had 1 playdate since we've been here. I've tried to set up a couple others, but there hasn't been any follow through on the other end. Ian was the only kid in his preschool that didn't have a huge family gathering to go to, because our family is either dead or living in another state. We did get invited to dinner once, though- by one of Nate's old friends from high school that also happens to live here, which means that they were outsiders, too. People are perfectly nice here, but only associate with you within the context that they know you from. If they know you from church, they will talk to you at church, but you do not exist outside of Sunday between the hours of 9 and 12. It's kind of like the little kid that thinks his teacher lives at school. There also is a bit of a doomsday mentality here- I constantly here about how the world is terrifying, getting worse all the time, the end is near, so stay inside and stock up on your food storage and keep your children away from the evil influences of the world. And maybe home school them. I have heard multiple people refer to anything outside of Utah as "the mission field" WTF? To that I say- there has always been plenty of evil in the world, so go out and be the good influence. We are trying to find an area that is more receptive to "outsiders" (yeah, you wouldn't think a Mormon would be considered an outsider in Utah, would you). I am terrified of anything major happening to us here, because I don't know if anyone would help us out. I'm just glad this pregnancy hasn't had any complications, because I absolutely cannot go on bed rest here with two young kids, and I'm going to start freezing a bunch of meals at the beginning of February so we have something decent to eat.

-HOW MUCH IT COST TO GET HERE: We had paid off both of our credit cards. And then we realized we were moving to Utah, and had to spend a few thousand dollars to get here. Moving is expensive. It's not so bad when you move someplace that you are excited to move to, because then you can say it was worth it. I am still waiting for that feeling, right now I feel more like I spent a bunch of money so someone could give me a bad case of diarrhea. With what it cost to get here, we're not going to be packing up anytime soon, and are trying to make the best of things. Okay, it's not completely horrible here, but it's not home. And it's not green. And we're not 1 hour from the ocean. And I can't go out to my backyard for a snack when I get hungry; I don't even have a backyard to go out to. Taking a pay cut to move somewhere where cost of living isn't actually any different than where we came from wasn't so fun, either, but at least I am fairly fond of my job and it's significantly less stressful than my last one, so it's okay. We pretty much knew we were going to have to leave Oregon for one place or another thanks to something called the Spanish Orela, but that doesn't mean we had to be excited about it!

-TINY CHAIRS: Adult chairs do not exist where I work. The only people who get comfortable adult-size chairs are administrations and people that work at the district office. Teachers get whatever happens to be the size of the chair their students sit in, unless you teach really little kids, then you get an extra 1-2 chairs that fit 9 year olds in your room for your "big person" chair. You must bring your own chair (and then hope it doesn't disappear). I am going to start bringing a camping chair with me to work because I'm getting so big that it's incredibly painful for me to sit in the chairs built for preschoolers. I am usually given the option of sitting in the "big" chairs, but those are still too small and also painful to sit in.

-NON-EXISTENT MATERNITY LEAVE: Utah is a right to work state, which basically gives employers the right to screw you over. Utah was also ranked as the number 1 worst state for women due to discrepancy in pay, not enough childcare providers, and lack of women in high-ranking positions, to name a few. My district has no maternity leave policy- there's a big sign that says so in the workroom where my mailbox is. I am only protected to use up to 10 days of sick leave (of which I have already had to take from sick kids and being sick myself), have the option of using my personal leave, and can request and additional 15 days of unpaid leave. I am not protected under FMLA because I don't work full-time and I haven't been employed with the district for a year. (I picked the wrong country to have babies in). That means that basically I can take a little over a month off and still have my job protected. But I do not recover that quickly and am planning on taking a full 12-week leave. I could get fired if my boss felt like it, but fortunately she's also a mom and is understanding of people having babies and is supportive of me taking whatever time off I need, even though she doesn't have to be. Granted, in my field, even if I was cut from my position, I could easily find another one or do teletherapy.

-APARTMENTS: We really really really wanted to rent a house, or at least a townhouse, when we moved here. But alas, none of the rental companies would either answer there phone, return calls or show us houses because we weren't moving here for a month when we came to look at places. I have found that the not answering phones thing is a fairly common and irritating habit of many here. So, that meant we were pretty much stuck with getting an apartment, and drove around just hoping to find something decent. And of course, none of the communities had any available townhouses, so we were stuck with a flat. And those really obnoxious vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass doors and a carpeted dining room. It's super fun picking out cereal that has become encrusted in the fibers. We also seem to have managed to end up in the building where everyone around us smokes, which means that during warm weather, we can't enjoy sitting on our porch without inhaling turd air, and the laundry room vent picks up the smoke from the outside and sucks it into our laundry room. The neighbors above us also apparently have pet dinosaurs and are believers in the cry it out method with their baby, which is not very considerate at 3 am. And have some sort of piece of furniture that is constantly getting rolled across the floor, I have no idea what in the world they do up there, other than I know their children are fond of jumping off the furniture, but maybe they don't know because they're always outside sending us cancer clouds. I know that part of the issue is that the soundproofing between the our ceiling and their floor just sucks because it's a large apartment community and developers like to cut corners to save a buck or two, but there is no reason that it should constantly sound like a herd of dinosaurs stomping on our heads.

Well, I feel a little bit better. Sometimes I think I am a total ass for feeling upset and not particularly cheerful, but it's okay that I feel that way. We all have our struggles, and there will always be someone who has it worse off than you, but that doesn't mean that your feelings aren't legitimate. I think it's important that we recognize and accept how we feel instead of feeling guilty for feeling a certain way, and also recognize and accept how other people feel as well.










Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Confessions and rolls

I have to confess three things:
1. I love tootsie rolls. A lot. Even though we just went through way too much candy over the past few weeks, I bought a bag of tootsie rolls on halloween clearance yesterday- the big, chunky ones. I have been eating them all day while my son has been vomiting. Okay, not at the same time he has been vomiting, because that would be terrible.
2. I didn't vote today because I'm not registered to vote in the state of Utah. Nate and I really don't want to get Utah driver's licenses or license plates, and are holding off until we absolutely have to. We do have liberary cards, though! I also am pretty sure that my vote is meaningless in this state, where politicians show up to high schools and tell students that college is stupid and that the state actually has plenty of money that it could spend on education but it won't because of Common Core. (Read more about that in a future post on my other blog.) It's hard to put the effort into doing all of the things necessary in order to vote when you are a small blue dot in a sea of red and your ballot might as well be used for toilet paper. Were I still in Oregon, I would have most definitely voted. Also because voting by mail is awesome.
3. I am starting to like it here. Sure, there are things about this place that are messed up, like a lot of really psychotic drivers (I had a guy freaking out on my the other day driving behind me because I was going the speed limit. Through a neighborhood. I'm not really into hitting people with my car.), church is quite different here- rather than the "Be a good example and love everyone" mentality that I am used to, we get a lot of "The world is a bad place, the end of the world is coming soon, we're all being personally attacked, etc." It's really strange. And the view of the pillaged Oquirrh mountains is rather dismal. But, we are meeting some pretty cool people that I am pretty sure aren't insane, there's a lot of amazing hiking and skiing (even though I can't ski this year and doubt I will ever get back into alpine skiing since the last time I went I was 13), tons of fun events and places to go, great parks (our kids are obsessed with Liberty Park), and if we do need to escape, then the Salt Lake airport is nearby. Plus, yesterday it snowed a ton up in the mountains and they look awesome covered in white. A huge improvement in the areas that have been cut away for the sake of minerals and granite countertops. I sometimes feel like a fish out of water, literally, because I actually like rain and am probably really some sort of amphibious creature, but the increase in sunshine has been good for the mood. I get really sleepy and lethargic when it's rainy and overcast, as much as I love it, and I am better about being alert when there is more sunshine, even though it kind of burns.

Now, onto the part about rolls:

I have an amazing roll recipe that must be shared. It's from my maternal grandmother, and I use it a lot. They're great dipped in soup, slathered in butter and jam, and if you make them huge, they also make great buns for sloppy joe's. It's also a great dough to use for making cinnamon rolls. If you are part of the Fryer clan and haven't had these before, you are missing out! Mine aren't the prettiest, but taste pretty darn good. And here you go:


Grandma Fryer's Roll Dough
1 pkg yeast
2 cups hot water
1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
2 eggs
7-8 cups flour

*note: this recipe makes a LOT of rolls. When I made these a couple of days ago, I halved the recipe and still have a few leftover rolls.
Dissolve yeast with a little warm water and sugar. Combine hot water, margarine, sugar, salt and eggs in large mixing bowl. Add two cups of flower and the yeast mixture. Mix, then add enough flour to make a soft dough. Don't add too much flour-- it should still be a little sticky but not too hard to handle. Put in a greased bowl and let rise until double. Punch down dough and let it rest for 15 minutes before shaping into rolls or bread. Let rise again after shaping. Bake rolls at 425 for 12 minutes.

I sometimes get impatient and don't let mine rise enough, but they still taste good.

On a final, unrelated note, kids grow up too fast. Madelynn decided to start losing teeth this month, and has lost her bottom two central incisors. She's our little fashionista with opinions galore, is an amazing big sister (she took Ian to the bathroom this morning to throw up while I was in another room), has an amusingly high vocabulary, and likes tootsie rolls just as much as her mother. And now she is this big and is very proud of her new sparkly boots:



Sunday, October 5, 2014

About a blog


I love to write, and I've always loved to write. When I was in second grade, I would write these ridiculously long stories for writing assignments in class (we're talking pages and pages and pages) because I LOVED to write and was convinced that I was going to grow up to become a writer. I was fortunate that I spent the first 3 years of my public school education at a school with alternative education options and my parents placed me in those classes that were more learn at your own pace, self-driven, and had more differentiated instruction for different levels. I was able to thrive academically in that environment, which was why I was able to spend so much time writing ridiculous stories and reading The Secret Garden and other more advanced books with my reading group when I was seven, rather than beating my head against my desk because I was so bored. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have the greatest attitude about going to school, and some of this was due to the fact that I was ridiculously shy. You could say I was socially retarded. I am not kidding. I have no idea how I always managed to have a good amount of friends, especially back then, when I was too terrified to say "hi" back to anyone that greeted me. There was one time I saw one of my good friends at the store, and when they said "hi", I said nothing. My Dad looked at me like I was insane. But then I got better, the end. Okay, this whole first paragraph has steered completely off course from what I started off writing about. Let's try again:
 So, what all this rambling is building up to is, I am starting a new, separate blog. I have been thinking about doing this for a while, but haven't been totally sure what to write about. Or what to name it. Or who to target it to. This blog right here was originally created when we were doing a study abroad in Mexico in 2010 to post photos and write about our adventures, and then I just continued posting. I will still post in this one, but would like to keep it to writing about my family and personal experiences. Trips, adventures in moving, weird things my kids do, etc. This other one will be about.... other things. And perhaps a bit more controversial. Maybe. I don't know. I don't set out intending to make things controversial, but as I have from a few things I have posted and/or responded to on facebook a few years ago, there is always someone who can be offended. I have even composed hypothetical posts in my head and generated likely hypothetical responses and decided that it wasn't worth it. And yes, I have hidden a number of people's posts from my newsfeed because some of them  were literally completely insane and intentionally offensive or dirty.
I started working on a website three years ago because I thought it would be a great idea to provide a website with free resources for Speech-Language Pathologists. I've created a number of my own worksheets over the years, and thought it would be great to make available to others, as well as provide links to other great resources. I still think it's a good idea, but you know what? I'm not really all that passionate about it. I still intend to finish it and make it available eventually, but I don't find it to be an outlet for me that I am passionate about. I like being a speech path, but it's not my passion in life. I like my students (usually.....), and most of the parents I work with are delightful. However, it's not what keeps me motivated and driven. It is, after all, a job. A career that I have built over the years that I have been fairly pleased with, but trust me, but I don't spend my free time coming up with new and innovative therapy techniques. I spend my time off pretending I am unemployed, because I do not like to think about work. Sometimes I question whether I want to do this for the rest of my career. After last week, I was ready to up and quit my job and do telepractice to earn income. But I will save a detailed description of what working in public education actually entails for another post on another blog.
So what am I passionate about? I am passionate about my family, my religion, reading, music, food (I heart pinterest), but I don't necessarily want to write about them. Something else that I derive great please from reading, discussing, and writing about is...... social commentary. I love reading articles and blogs about things like racism, women's rights, international issues, public education, gun rights, corruption, healthcare, and income inequality, to name a few. I have a lot to say on those things, but I don't think Facebook is the correct forum for a number of reasons, one of them being that I do not want to alienate people, and another being that these can be pretty intense subjects that I think are better discussed outside of Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever the new, hip thing is today. I will post links on facebook so that people can make the choice whether or not they want to read the content and decide if they would like to share it. I don't intend this to be a rant where I just vent my frustrations to the world. I do have a couple of posts in the works and should have it up within the next week or two.
Here are a few things that you should know about me when making the decision whether or not to venture into this new project of mine:
- My intention is to entertain, inform, and to make people think.
-My intention is not to enrage and polarize. However, that being said, I can't guarantee that people won't be angry. I can't control that.
- I want to be a credible writer, and I want to be able to back myself up with legitimate, reliable sources.
- I will not use The Weekly World News as a legitimate source.
- I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's Mormon, peeps.
- I am liberal.
- I do not like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, or Fox News.
- If you post a link to a John Stewart clip on Facebook, I will probably watch it.
- I have gay family members and friends. I love them, and I support them.
- I might swear a little bit. I promise not to use the f-word. That word actually bothers me a lot.
- Being Mormon, AND liberal, AND working in education, I have friends, family, and acquaintances from very different places with very different beliefs that I may or may not share with them.
- It's okay if you think I am batsh*t crazy and refuse to read anything I write. In fact, if you think what I write might make you mad, just don't read it. I don't want to cause rage in your life.
- I will moderate comments. Please be nice. And write intelligent things. If you call someone names or insult them, I will suggest that you enroll in social skills training and your comment will be deleted. This may not be an issue, as I may end up with a readership consisting of my mom and somebody's cat.
- I like cats.
- I hope you like it. If you do, share it! If you don't, sorry. Well, maybe I'm not sorry.
And now for something completely different:

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Tell them to stop showing their mullets!


There is an unfortunate phenomenon here that Nate has to deal with on a regular basis known as the mullet. He sees them all over the place, but mostly in his classes. Yes, multitudes of teenage boys in Magna and West Valley City have decided that it is a good idea to have a mullet..... and they don't even play hockey. Madelynn overheard him telling me about this the other day and said "You forgot to tell them to stop showing their mullets!" I would suggest that he institute a hats required for all policy, but then he would probably have to deal with confederate flags and playboy insignias. My experience with mullets has mostly been seeing women with them. Is there a genetic pre-disposition with mullets?


While I am on the subject of hair, I noticed something else while taking Madelynn to dance class yesterday- lots of "blondes" with dark roots. I think I was one of the few mom's that hadn't dyed or at least highlighted their hair. I was expecting this, but didn't really encounter it much until yesterday with the dance moms. (Apparently most of the people I work with are either satisfied with their natural hair color or are too poor to do anything about it. We are, after all, working in public education. In Utah.) The size of hair, however, continues to be large. And always has been and probably always will be, though it has improved significantly since the 90s. It is entertaining to look at the photos on the walls of past teacher award recipients from the past few decades at the district office and see the evolution of big hair. There is probably a giant hole in the ozone directly above us from all of the CFCs released from "keeping up with appearances."
I have been hoping that after a month of being here, I would feel more content and welcome. Well, that hasn't really happened. I do frequently give myself reminders of "at least we don't live in_____" After all, there are much worse places that we could be.  I still consider Oregon home and have a hard time picturing myself feeling at home and belonging here. I WANT to like it here, because I am stuck here. I have hopes of eventually finding a niche to fit in. I don't see that happening where we currently live, and sometimes want to kick myself for signing a lease until the end of May at a mega-complex unfortunately close to the copper toilet bowl mines. I miss being able to drink water from the faucet without wanting to vomit. And I miss being able to open our windows to let in fresh air, since every person in our building smokes on their patio. Or just stands in front of our patio (one of the pleasures of living on the ground floor.) I miss having friends, I miss being surrounded by family, I miss having local places to eat close by, I miss being able to go on walks in my neighborhood (you can go on walks in a field of rattlesnakes here, though.) I miss being part of a ward that cares that we exist, I miss being able to turn right and only having to check for bicyclists, not cars speeding through the bike lane trying to cut everyone off. If you have a death wish, commute everywhere on a bike. Come December, I will miss  people pumping your gas for you. I miss not having sales tax, I miss feeling like my vote actually meant something (though many lost that feeling back in 2000...) I miss having a yard, I miss being able to get to the beach in an hour, I miss green everywhere, I miss my dad, I miss Nate being home (he's working 10-12 hour days now with teaching an extra class and coaching), I miss having a dishwasher that doesn't suck, I miss having a garden, I miss my kids having other kids to play with outside of school/church, but I never miss the toilet. That's more of a male problem. Ka-chow! Hopefully some of things things can be remedied next Spring if we can move to a not sucky area. So now that I have depressed/annoyed those who are still reading this, here is a list of happy things in my life:
-spicy vegetable sushi from Harmon's. I have decided to get a sushi mat and start making my own.
-I got to find out early that baby #3 is a boy! And I am completely terrified of having a baby here and being so isolated.
-the east side of the valley. My goal for next spring is to be there and not here.
-hiking. We have taken the kids on 2 hikes since being here, and they were awesome.
-I am loving only working half-time. I don't know if I'll continue to even do that much after baby boy arrives due to daycare being a complete headache here, but it works for now.
-Costco is selling pumpkin pie now.
-I got 5 boxes of Captain Crunch for $1.49 each at Smith's last night. I love Captain Crunch!
And with that, I am going to go make a dinner salad.

-

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Utah, from the perspective of an Oregonian

We made it to Utah on Monday. We were welcomed with rain and thunderstorms, which Nate was totally excited about because he has been craving a good thunderstorm for years. It was a looong and emotional day. I cried when we got to our new apartment because it made everything real and the entire day was a "what the *bleep* are we doing here" moment. Fortunately, my cousin's wife invited me and the kids over for the afternoon while Nate was transferring everything from the ABF trailer to a U-haul truck and made us a yummy dinner. I even managed to get there with the GPS on my phone dropping most of the time. The kids were psychotic monsters the majority of the day, and there was a lots of yelling, crying, and a little swearing, (all of them mostly from me).  It was my absolute worst day as a mother, and I felt terrible for how horrible I was being to my children. It didn't help that everytime the GPS actually did work and would tell me where to go, one of the kids would decide to scream, and on the way back, I got horribly lost and ended up at the airport, and Nate's phone died, so I couldn't actually get a hold of him or have any idea where he was. Also, the family dog that my parents got when I was 16 years old had a massive stroke and was put down within hours of us arriving here. Madelynn has been talking all week about how she misses Jack.

So now that the shock of being here is starting to wear off slightly, here are my impressions/observations of our new home:

1. It is not green. Well, considering that we're in the high desert, this is no surprise. But it's a difficult adjustment for me, because I love my trees. This isn't true for every area here; in Salt Lake itself, there are quite a few mature trees. But it's not part of the natural landscape, they were all planted. The further out you get, the more "native" the landscape gets. Compared to Eugene, it's rather desolate here. And we're in West Jordan, close to the Oquirrh mountains, so it is especially desolate out here. Even more so because we are unfortunately close to the Kennecott mine, where they have essentially raped the mountains and it looks like this:
 



2. The water is terrible. I suspect much of this is because we are rather close to the mine which has undoubtedly contaminated the drinking water. Which apparently doesn't seem to bother a lot of people here, since Daybreak (which was developed by Kennecott) is supposed to the THE place to buy a house. Even though residents have to sign a disclaimer. And I don't care if it's considered "safe" to drink. People are constantly told that their water is safe to drink after fracking. Even though they can light it on fire 

3. The Wasatch mountains are breathtaking! It's wonderful to see the big, towering mountains every day. Unfortunately, the area seems to be perpetually in a haze, whether from pollution or if it's on fire like Oregon is every summer, I am not sure, but it's still an amazing view:
 

4. Gas is cheaper. And you can pump it yourself and don't have to wait forever for someone else to do it for you. Win. Maybe not so much in the winter, but for now, it's a win. Groceries also seem a wee bit cheaper as well, though the quality of produce isn't as great.

5. Dry heat beats humidity. This entire week, it has been absolutely lovely here weather-wise. And yes, that include the random torrential downpours, because it reminds me of home. And on the warm, sunny days we've had, I haven't felt overly hot once. It has yet to get into the triple digits since we've been here, but it has sure made the transition easier. When we were here in June checking things out, it was in the 90s every day, and it still felt tolerable. And we have central air conditioning, as does pretty much every other place here, so when it does get uncomfortable, we can hide in our cool cave. We will probably be spending half the summers in Oregon anyway. So, if you want to come visit us in the next few summers (please do! we should be in a much bigger place by next spring!) plan your trip between mid-July through August. That's when Nate has to be back to coach.

6. Zoning appears to be non-existent. Once upon a time, the many cities in the Salt Lake Valley used to be completely separate entitites with farms and undeveloped land between them all. But urban sprawl has taken over, and the cities all run into each other north to south and east to west. I frequently have no idea which city I am in. And they weren't necessarily planned very well. I saw a few acres of farm right across the street from a massive shopping center. And you might see an apartment complex right next to a tire store. And then a school. Kind of like someone just took a city, threw it all together in a bag and shook it up, then dumped it out. Or a giant took a big crap and said, look, a city! Also, I have yet to be anywhere here besides Salt Lake that has a true downtown. Please tell me where these places are. A strip mall doesn't count.

7. Everything is generic, chain businesses. If you want quality local, you have to go into Salt Lake downtown and around Sugar House, where we did find a yummy Greek place. Now, many of these chain businesses are a good step-up from your typical Wendy's, McDonalds, and Wal-Marts, so this is a plus. I won't complain about having In-N-Out Burger, Culver's, Ikea, Cafe Rio, Five Guys, Famous Dave's and the likes nearby. But it all kind of looks the same. Well, okay, nothing looks like Ikea. And the food itself at these places is yummy, however, it would be nice to have more quirkiness around. You know, like an old victorian house converted into a  dessert place with tables dedicated to classical composers, bad service, live pianists and a scuba diver suit in the bathroom. Or an anarchist cafe. (Everytime I take one of those quizzes on facebook, it tells me I belong in Portland. But my checking account doesn't.)  The cost of living here is much more pleasing to our bank account.

8. Being close to Temple Square is wonderful! Temple square is like the Mormon version of the Vatican. We took the kids there on Friday, and it was really emotional for me. The last time I was there, I was there with my parents and sibling nearly 10 years ago. Or maybe it was even longer than that. We saw a lot of people coming out from the temple who had just gotten married, and I teared up remembering our own wedding 7 years ago in Portland, where many of our family members were present who have since died. I missed my Dad horribly while walking around, as the last time I was there, he was with me. But it was still beautiful and peaceful. I love that we can go there whenever we feel like it.



9. No place can beat Utah for ice cream. I vaguely remembering my parents commenting once we moved from Utah (Logan), to Iowa City about how the ice cream selection was lacking. Not so here! It's ice cream heaven- entire aisles dedicated to nothing but ice cream and other frozen treats! And it's all relatively cheap. I am planning on keeping a steady supply of Creamies in my freezer at all times. Oh yeah, and you can buy the massive cans of Stephen's hot chocolate here, and in lots of different flavors, because it's made in Farmington! Okay, this is exciting for me, because when I was younger, we used to sell it every year for school fundraisers before you could buy it in the store and we REALLY liked it.

So right now, it's a bit of a mixed bag for us. I REALLY want to fall in love with living here, because moving is a massive headache. The few people we have met so far have all been extremely nice. Nate is working with some really cool people. I have yet to meet anyone I will be working with yet, nor do I know my school assignment, which I will hopefully have sometime this week, because I need to register my kids for school! The kids love our new place, and it is really nice not constantly worrying about whether or not Ian will fall down the wooden stairs. And I kind of like having nice, thick carpet, because you can roll around on the floor much more comfortably. I look forward to discovering more about this area and finding the beautiful places in the many canyons to get my nature fix. And also for my morning sickness to go away.

Friday, May 16, 2014

And we will be moving to....................

So my throat has been hurting a lot the past few days. Especially the left side. And I've had a fever off and on. I took a few hours off of work today to make sure I didn't have strep or some other nasty infection and found out...... nothing. At least they took the throat culture, but I don't have the results yet. I am going to assume I don't have strep because I can still swallow without feeling like I am swallowing razor blades and my uvula isn't touching the back of my tongue and I'm not lying on the bathroom floor in Hawaii trying to cool off from a raging fever. Not that I know any Nate's that have experienced that......
Speaking of Nate, here is a picture of a Unicorn:















I would like to refer you to specific verses in the Bible that talk about Unicorns:

  • Numbers 23:22    “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.”
  • Numbers 24:8     “God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.”
  • Job 39:9   “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?”
  • Job 39:10    “Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”
  • Psalms 29:6     “He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.”
  • Psalms 92:10    “But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”
  • Deuteronomy 33:17    “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.”
  • Psalms 22:21    “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.”
  • Isaiah 34:7     “And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.”
Note that this is the King James version, many of the modern translations do not mention Unicorns. I totally ripped this off another website.

Oh yes, I almost forgot- the reason that you clicked on this blog link was to find out WHERE we were going- well, Utah people, rejoice (or run screaming, depending on how you feel about us)- we will be moving to Salt Lake City in August. Nate and I have both accepted positions with the Granite School District. I will be a Speech Pathologist with the Preschool program (not sure of my assignment yet, that may depend where we end up moving), and Nate will be teaching Spanish and English at Cyprus High in Magna. The Granite School District has really funny boundaries- it stretches all the way from the East side of the Valley over by Holladay and South Salt Lake, and goes approximately 40 blocks north to south, and about 20 miles east to Magna on the east side of the Valley. So we will be down at the end of June to find a place to live, and then pack up and move mid-August. It is a huge relief to know where we will be in a few months and Nate has a job! He is so excited. He was a little worried that he would be at a disadvantage because he had to interview over the phone, but I guess they really liked him. So, any of you people from the area, please give us any recommendations you have for.... anything. Neighborhoods that are awesome (remember that we both work in education so we are not rich.....) neighborhoods that are stabby and should be avoided or neighborhoods where people are insane and try to outdo each other, things to do, places to go out to eat, things that grow well in a garden there, realtors and mortgage companies (eventually), whatever. It's been a long time since we've been to Salt Lake, and I am sure it is a whole lot different than what I remember. We now know where we will be going on summer vacation every single year........ massively long trips back to Oregon...
This certainly isn't what we were expecting a few months ago, but we are excited to start a new adventure!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

A year in review.... and then some.

I have not written a single post in over a year. The last one was in February of 2013. In January I was determined to do a nice post with photos about our trip to Hawaii, and that obviously didn't happen. I've just been stalking and reading everyone else's blogs instead. Crazy stuff has happened this past year, but that's nothing new. In fact, the entire time Nate and I have been married has involved lots of insane and terrible and wonderful things happening, and the only thing that hasn't been crazy has been our marriage, and for that I am grateful.
I don't remember much of what happened last summer, other than it was a very nice, pleasant summer with lots of time spent working in the garden, going to the coast, and watching the kids splash in the inflatable pools. We weren't traveling all over the place like we had been the year before.
At the end of last August, Nate's mother suddenly passed away. She had been paralyzed from the chest down for the past year and a half after her spinal stroke, but other than that had been in good health. At the end of August, she suddenly had a massive brain hemmhorage, and died a day later. It was my first day back at work, and Nate's first day of his student teaching practicum when we found out. He was able to rush down to Medford to see her one last time, even though she was mostly brain dead by then, but I think she knew he was there.
I have been working 4 days a week this year, up from the 3 days last week, and it has been really hard. I supervised 2 graduate students this year, and I honestly would not have been able to get through this year without them. I think I would have thrown a chair out of my office by now and run out screaming long ago had it not been for them. But they are now gone, and I am on my own for the rest of the year- just 1 1/2 months to go- I can do it!!!!!!!! But it is certainly not easy, I feel like I am doing two full-time jobs right now. In fact, I probably am. This entire year, I have felt like I needed a change- I just can't continue providing speech therapy for 25+ kids per day, plus doing evaluations, plus all of the IEP and eligibility paperwork and progress notes that go along with the job, plus 80+ IEP/eligibility meetings per years, plus specialist team meetings, plus the spring preschool evaluations and KG transition meetings, plus the new evaluation system required by the state of Oregon this year where I have to collect mounds of data to track growth.....and doing this part-time. It's completely absurd. I have been doing this for nine years, and this has by far been the most insane year at work.
The whole family went to Hawaii over Christmas, and it was amazing! The details of that I will save for another post, but here is a picture of Nate on Diamond Head, where we scattered some of his mom's ashes:

My dad has now been gone for over 2 1/2 years. I can't believe it has already been that long! Last July marked 10 years since Nate lost his dad.
We have been living in the house my parents lived in for the last 10 years of my dad's life for 2 years now. It was really strange when we first moved in- a lot things reminded me of my dad, and I started having a lot of panic attacks and would get really upset. I had been trying so hard to hold it together since I had Ian, and moving in was the final piece that caused me to break down. I started seeing a counselor who helped me work through some of those issues, and I eventually stopped picturing my dad lying in bed dying or having dreams about him dying over and over again. Moving the furniture around helped, as my mom left a few of the furniture pieces at the house, and our bedrroom was set up exactly the same way that my parents' room was while my dad was sick. Nate was so sweet and rearranged the entire house for me. I have still let myself indulge on a regular basis of reliving memories of my dad sitting in the recliner that I am now sitting in while reading to Madelynn. I often stare out into the backyard and imagine him sitting on the porch in the evening with a tall glass of water just enjoying being outside. I sometimes look out towards the back office and think that if I will look through the window and see him sitting at his computer working on a writing project. But these indulgences can't go on forever, and it is likely that we will be leaving soon.
Nate graduates with his M.Ed in one week. Due to Oregon TSPC being ridiculous and requiring an idiotic test that even native Spanish speakers can't pass in order to get your Spanish endorsement, we are looking at leaving Oregon, which makes me sad, but I'm also up for a new adventure. I have a job offer in Salt Lake, and if Nate also receives a job offer from the same district, then it looks like that's where we may be headed. They seem extremely interested in him, so now it's just waiting. Hopefully we will know soon, because it is very anxiety-inducing not knowing where you will be living come August. We weren't originally even considering Utah, especially because Utah is notorious for having crappy pay for teachers, but with the legislature adding $$$ to teachers salaries recently, it is comparable to the district I am currently in. And I never intended on moving back to Utah after we were essentially driven out of Logan.... yeah, ask my mom- some not so fun memories. But, we went to the educator job fair in Portland a few weeks ago (ironically just days after Nate was put in as 2nd counselor in the bishopric in our ward), and suddenly Salt Lake just seemed.... right. It's not what I would have chosen (I would have chosen Spain.....) but I'm okay with it, because I think it's more important that we are where we are supposed to be, rather than where we want to be. We don't have to go- we could always stay here next year, and Nate could sub (because let's face it, we live in Eugene- there are no teaching jobs for Nate here. There's rumors of more lay-offs happening again this year in the district we live in) But honestly, the idea of staying here and having a repeat of this year happen next year sounds like complete torture to me, so I think I'm good to go.
Here is a picture of Madelynn and Ian eating peanut butter sandwiches in the backyard: