Not yelling.
After 30+ days, I yelled.
Then I yelled two days after that. Then the next day. Then two after that, etc.

It has been hard to get back on the goal train.

The complacency began to get to me and I'm back on. I decided to give myself a reward each yell-free month I go.

Each day I do make it through without hollering, I notice an immediate difference, even if the difference is only in how I can feel love for my kids more easily and think of them as a treasure instead of thinking of them as being a list of to-dos.

So I persevere.

I was just thinking about the word catechism. And then I thought about my cat. Hence the title, because I am not going to now write a doctrinal manual on cat ownership.

Catechism, which I always thought was pronounced: catch-ae-ism, is Catholic. I am not. But I am now...a cat owner.

I would like to apologize for any grief or irritation or obvious nose-snuffling expressed around the cats of any of my friends. I have never liked cats. They make me very sick BUT my KIDS like cats and my HUSBAND likes cats and I think I have the soul of a cat and so...

I got a kitten for my birthday. Her name is Imogen and I looooooove her. On Friday, I'm going to the allergist to begin the journey of teaching my body get along with her as well. In other words, I'm going to go the route of immunology (ie shots, shots and years of shots). All for a cat? No! For my kids, yes, but I also have terrible seasonal allergies and this will, allegedly, solve these issuses! Yay!

She has been a lot of fun. She's got a lot of personality, really loving and playful (which sometimes gets her into trouble. She seems really happy, exploring and  bounding around in our yard.

I've built her a scratching post, working on some more toys for her and I'm in charge of feeding her every day. I had know idea that owning my own pet would make me so sillyhappy.

(Sorry no pics. They won't load)

I started over on the no-yelling thing. I've been leaving comments on the Orange Rhino (the girl with the bright idea) FB page. I'm involved and committed.

Since my little mess-up, I have plunged forward and if I make it through today, I will have completed 25 days of not yelling at my kids. Bryce's behavior has gotten so much worse, but now I feel like I can hear his needs now that I'm placing them above my own. For me, I think, yelling was just the opening credits, maybe the climactic scene, of the parenting pity party I've allowed myself to have when things don't go my way.

I have since got Bryce on the no-yelling bandwagon. He's working it out and is far from where I'd hoped he'd be, but he's mellowing a bit and taking more responsibility for his reactions. He's getting quicker at coming to me for help on a solution instead of just blasting a sibling for being hurtful, bossy or  uncooperative.

I've read my scriptures every day for 35 days. I'm finally longing to read them, longing to learn. It's been nice to reacquainted with each other. It's been 16 years this month since I entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah which turned the Book of Mormon into my best friend for the next 18 months. A natural result is that I'm praying as an individual more regularly and feel more at peace. These things have been great blessings.

I have crafted something every day since I started. I've written poems, worked on afghans, built a cat scratching post, made friendship bracelets, built lines on my family tree (yes, I counted genealogy) and worked on a scrapbook page.

This is what I love best:
 I feel like each day is filled with more purpose than I've has for a looooooong time. True purpose that is shaping me and making me better. I feel more positive. This is not to say I don't feel stress. I've felt a lot of it as I have wrestled with the natural man and with three kids who are trying to adjust to the new me. All those same family struggles are still there, but I feel like the Lord is right along side me, instead of blocked off, relegated to the proverbial sporting-event bench, by me, while I try to play the game alone.

I blew it today.
I yelled at Bryce to get out of the car.
There's a lot of pressure to send your kids flying like Mercury out of the car when we drop off at school in the morning.

I lost 10 days of no yelling and sent my boy off to school with my harsh sentence ringing in his ears.

Dang.
On all accounts: dang.

It sucks to start over again. I wanted to count it as a little oops, but how I felt afterward (and the rest of the day), just didn't seem to be write. I erased all the days I'd gained so far, but it's the honest accounting of the thing.

Sigh.

I'm caught up with the idea of 365 days. Of being able to do anything, every day, for a whole year.

It began with my husband sending me a link to The Orange Rhino. This is the blog of a mommy that was tired of the negativity of yelling at her kids. Many of us out there would cringe if our husbands sent us a parenting article, but this is one turned me instantly onto the idea, the empowerment of, not only NOT yelling, but of accomplishing a good, good thing for an entire year.

Then, I decided that if I put this hand in hand with another of something I want to have more a part of my life, READING THE SCRIPTURES EVERY DAY, then these two goals cannot help but help each other!

So I did it. I made myself a double-chart and I use a pencil to fill it out.

So far, I'm seven days in and seven days are filled in on the handy-dandy 365 day chart.

Yesterday got a bit intense, as did my voice as I talked to my children, so I thought I'd better check the Rhino site this morning to see what she had down as the definition of yelling. It's here. Well, I've been pushing the limits so I need to reign myself more, but I am SO up for this challenge and so excited.

I've seen Bryce responding better to me in general and I know more improvements are on their way. Another awesome result is that I am also praying more. It's so nice to have a goal with real desire behind it, one where I feel like I can ask the Lord to take me hand and help me through this.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Now, this may like a bad idea, but I've also run into Make Something 365 & Get Unstuck and I think I'm going to add this challenge to my challenges. You choose a theme or a medium and make something every day.

I'm going to choose for my theme the Emily Dickinson poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity, 
It asked a crumb of me.

Alright, then. Here I go. I am weak of will and well, just weak, but I know the promises of the Lord when it comes to helping us with that which is good and right. I think these goals, especially the not yelling and scripture reading are truly good and right.

Awesome. One foot after another. One day at a time.

Bryce is so different from his docile, domesticated older siblings. He's sweet as can be, but he has a wild, reactive side that, when it comes out, can only be described as being UNLEASHED!

 

His best moments come at quiet times. His best moments are rare and all the more precious for it and you have to be paying attention when they happen.

Yesterday, was one of those times. He's frequently quite tender with his nightly prayers. He prays that two recently departed members of our ward will have a good day in Heaven and he prays for their families. He gets me all softened up with those prayers, which is nice, because bedtime isn't always easy.

Anyway, yesterday he'd had the normal amount of "unleashing" with fits and disgruntled postal-employee reactions, but it was still okay. I tucked him into bed and moved on to tucking in Ella. As I shut her door, he called out to me. Normally, at this time of night, I sigh (inwardly or otherwise) and give 'em a blunt "what?" but I was a big girl and listened to him.

He proceeded to tell me how sorry he was for the mistakes he'd made in how he'd treated me that day. He listed a bunch of things and was so sweet about it. Aw! I love these moments!

This morning, I reminded him of what he'd done last night and how proud I was of his choices. He just smiled that sweet promising smile of his. He just warms my heart right up!

I love my little blog. I love writing and putting words out into the cosmos, but I haven't been sitting at this desk much lately. As soon as school ended in December, I didn't want to even look at this screen or sit in this decrepit old chair.

 

Anyway, let's do a bit of catch up. Non-calendar holiday related catch-up/insight.

 

First, here's a weird picture of my husband. He spent the month of November growing a full-beard. That's never happened before. I liked it for awhile, but the kids couldn't wait for it to be gone. An then it was really weird that it was gone.

 

Ella and I had a little paper folding adventure. She loves origami. Ella's life is in the details. If you look at her room, she has all these little things, tiny touches that make up her little world. Her very pink world. She lights up our world as well.

If life would only slow down. During this day, we were waiting for Cameron's parents to arrive back home and everyone started playing around together. Dane and Cameron tossing snowballs at each other was a delightful scene.

 

My dad told Facebook that he was officially cancer-free after his last chemo treatment six months ago. That's how I found out. Funny man. He also just got a dream-come-true Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He's a blessed man!

Uncle Eric had a birthday and we celebrate with the Superbowl. Appropriate since he's the only member of our family that actually cares about the game of football.

My friend Angie and I scrapbooked with our mommies. They had to put up with our music and we theirs.

Dane graduated from the D.A.R.E. program. He was really excited about that. That's a good thing. He also received his Arrow of Light before moving on to Boy Scouts.

After such a LONG reprieve, we've had a bit of sickness. Ella is by far the BEST patient of the bunch. She's sweet. Stays in bed. Snuggles a lot. Communicates her needs. Doesn't whine!

Bryce started piano lessons, joining his siblings. He says he wants to take piano lessons all day long. He LOVES it. He loves his teacher. It makes him happy.

My oldest boy turned eleven years old. He loved being around family, much more than having to open presents or eating cake. This kid loves his cousins.

The new year really changed things for Dane and Ella. Expanders, braces and Ella getting headgear, which she has nicknamed "Mr. Doom."

 



 Then we went on a big family vacation (another post, another time) and face four weeks of off-track time beginning today.

Day two and I just

Putter, mutter, wondering

what can I write next?

It's November (tomorrow) again and it's National Novel Writing Month and I'm back in. I have joined up for NaNoWriMo which is writing, madly, fifty thousand words in one month.

I am starting from dead nothing and am going to work my fingers hard core to create a new novel.

Or a really, really rough first draft of one.

I documented last year's journey on my now-defunct poetry blog and looking back on this blog...November is blank. Sounds like I was focused.

I had so much fun with it last year that I was bugging my catalyst writing buddy, Joni, about it in June or July.

So I have school, life and writing. All November, all the time...except on Sundays and not so much when we're gone for Thxgvg.

Hence the craziness.

Bring it on!

I share a few haiku I wrote last year as part of my journey:

Yes she said (NaNoWriMo progress in haiku, day one)

Yes, she said and cleared

her throat, then pumping her fist

made the first day's goal

Day 4

So I went shopping

Sue me. Only fifty days...

Christmas is coming.

Day 10

We race and I win

Because I am doing this

The rushing is sweet

Day 19

Brandishing my words

With swift and serious jabs

I tear up paper

Day 26

I jumped off the ship

And now, swimming back, I find

Thoughts weak as jelly

Day 30

The thirtieth passed

Without celebration cuz

I finished early.

In an itty-bitty article in Parenting: School Years magazine entitled "Happy Triggers" it says

Can't afford a shrink? Enter the mommy blogosphere. New research from the University of Pennsylvania found that writing or reading blogs makes moms happy. "Blogging or commenting on blogs is a great way for moms to be heard, and get feedback," says Shoshana Bennett, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who specializes in counseling mothers.

So, here you are, getting happy. Isn't it wonderful?

So more happy thoughts from me --->  --->

• I got an A on my Exponents and Polynomials quiz this morning
• Bryce spent most of his down time yesterday listening to an old Utah Valley Children's Choir Primary music tape (especially the song I had a solo on)
• I'm drinking a lot of water and feeling good from that
• I have been called as the Ward Choir Director and the first practice (yesterday) went well. The choir is already larger than the one in our last ward and it was a low attendance day and they sound fanTAStic!
• I've got a great husband who has been showing me in little ways that he just loves me (one example: he paid $34 dollars just for a photograph of just him and me from our family photo shoot) speaking of JUSTification *eyeroll*
• Ella has seized the day with her piano practicing lately. She's really improving.
• Dane has been pleasant and helpful and when his mommy calls him, quickly he'll obey. 
• My boys are totally having huge group play time with the kids in the neighborhood and making friends here like never before!
• Ella has shown an increased interest in cooking with me (though she still refuses to break an egg)
• I get to attend my first Time Out for Women this weekend and I am so excited!

Have a wonderful week, my mommy friends! I hope you get to recharge today and face the week ahead with a positive attitude and forgiveness in your heart. And blog. It's good for your happy-meter.

• Oh and one last happy thought...I'm going to respond to comments by commenting in that section to increase the happiness of feedback and hearing each other.

Our Ella got the special privilege of being baptized on her birthday.

Family, family, family! Love it!

Afterward we had a luncheon. All the food was lovely, delicious and much-helped-with. Thank you everybody!

The cousins got to whack a pinata and then Ella opened a few presents from her family.

Her ideas about presents have changed so much. She got books, art supplies, a journal and a lot of items for her room. No more toys for this little girl...stuffed animals excepted.

My friend Angie prompted me to follow up my last weep-fest post with a positive one.

I can do that, but only half way. Here are the good and bad on my mind

BAD: I got an "E" on my second math quiz of the semester. (Just call an F an F, people)
GOOD: I made a peach pie from our first peach harvest. I also made three pumpkin cake rolls.

BAD: I still have to get all the rest of the food ready for tomorrow (family/friend post-baptism luncheon).
GOOD: I don't have to make a single salad. (Thank you Mom, Mom-in-Law, Angie and Alesha)

BAD: I'm missing my kids' recital to work on my house.
GOOD: I'm missing my kids' recital to work on my house. (and apparently vent on my blog)

BAD: I have a LOT left to do before I hit the hay tonight.
GOOD: My family will love me regardless of the state of my house. (Loving and Judging, however, are very different things)

BAD: I'm behind on my laundry.
GOOD: I REWIRED A LIGHT FIXTURE WHILE HUSBAND LOOKED ON IN FEAR.

There is so much good in my life, but the bad just waves, jumping up and down, wanting the most attention. Oh well.

BEST: My little girl is turning eight years old and she is being baptized on her birthday. She is so ready, so excited and so mine.

It's been one of those days...

I honestly couldn't tell if it was me (hormonal, over-sensitive, who knows?) or if my kids really just had no love for me today.

I've been pretty happy with my progress as a calm emotionally-level individual lately.

My kids, however, have managed to say amazingly hurtful things to me throughout the day and I have been in tears all over the place. They're words and actions have been run the gamut from merely insensitive to down-right mean.

We had Stake Conference today, so church was earlier than normal. ALL I wanted was to hang out after church, play games, eat our meals and be together. Who knew these would prove to be such lofty goals? *eyeroll* I bawled throughout the meeting. I'm not even sure what the speakers said. 

I'm so frustrated. I'm not sure why I shouldn't go back to the angry, yelling, threatening mom I've been in the past. No one even hears me when I speak. 

Such is the life of a mother: You have them work and learn and try to help them as they grow and they think you're mean and don't love them. If you let them do whatever makes them happy or pleased, then they grow to think you didn't love them and did nothing good for them.

Surely there is some middle ground?

What was that? Did I just hear my mother laughing? Probably. Apparently, I deserve it all. :) 

Monday is winding down to a close and I've wanted to write this post for a few days.

I begin with a poem.

Time Machine (a working title)

Musical mechanisms are mysteries
Scales and dissonance are data
Machines slurp it in like gelatin
The whir and the needle are relics
The spin and crackle of vinyl
Isn't just music playing, for
A turnstile is a time machine now.

-----
I love songs that tell stories. I've had several of this type flitting through my (more cleared) head lately and I noticed they had something in common. The titles of the songs were women's names. Naming a song after a person means you've got a guaranteed story song (even if it's hidden in the background, written in the liner notes). Below is a list of some of my favorite women songs. Have a listen to a few. :)

Isabel by Unrest

Jolene (written and performed originally by Dolly Parton) by The White Stripes

Eleanore by The Turtles (My mom and my sister love this song and we sing it loud)

Katy Song by Red House Painters (so emotionally charged and sad, one of those "back story is the best part" songs)

Veronica by Elvis Costello

Valerie Loves Me by Material Issue

Selfish Jean by Travis (I think the video [unofficial] is hilarious. It's done by a comedian who has layer after layer of t-shirts with the lyrics written on them. He removes the layers with great timing, completely deadpan. It ends with one t-shirt remaining, thank goodness)

These are just a few, but I think immortalizing a person in a song is a grand thing.

Do you live "in the present"?

It seems like I haven't been here for years.

I've been trying to have more stillness, more quiet in my head.

I've drastically reduced the time spent listening to music and reading. This has come naturally from wanting the quiet.

This is an unusual place for me, the present. I'm guilty of escapism a lot in the past.

This week has been not great. I got a tooth drilled on Monday, followed by a visit to the South Jordan court for a moving violation. Oh, I wanted to escape: crank music, read, RETREAT! Opting instead to go for quiet and reflection, I really felt like I was more open to the gift of the presence of the Holy Ghost.

When my children get home from school, I feel like I can actually listen to them. My head's not filled with so much with others' thoughts and words. So often my children's words go in one ear and out the other because I haven't left room for any more. I don't think the boys really notice, but Ella sure does. If I miss one word of her soft voice, she gets frustrated and pulls into her shell again. Lately, though, I'm able to be present if that happens and show her through my love that Mommy is honestly just hard of hearing sometimes and I really want to know what she's said. It's beginning to soften her up to me a bit more.

What I have been listening to are talks on cd from LDS speakers that I've picked up from the library. They fill my head with thoughts I want to think, but thankfully their words bring my own distract-able thoughts into focus and allow me to feel the Spirit.

Today, I've felt so full of love. It's really changed how I've reacted to the irritating behavior I'm bombarded with constantly as a parent. Today I have felt like a good parent, able to overcome the not-so-great of the week.

I think I could live for this.

Ha! I almost wrote Bake to School.
I'm grabbing lunch after this!

So I began my second class today. More online math. I seemed to have retained about 70% from Spring Semester. So far. I'm sure that number is going to drop.

I ain't skeered tho'! I'm gonna make it. I'm a survivor...

Yeah. School.

See this pie chart? See the darker portions in each piece? The dark portion is what I know based on my first  assessment. The lighter part is all I have to learn in the next few months.

I'm excited and I'm ready, but man, I am talking out loud to myself a LOT! I guess that's what an empty house will do to you. I'm grateful my school has finally started so I can feel a little more connected to my kids. Nothing like a little college-grade homework to help you empathize with kids' homework complaints. 

I'm not sure how to talk, really talk, about how much this concert meant to me.

Back in high school, my ears were opened to a whole new level of music. I've written about it a lot in the past, but it changed my life. I already liked alternative music a lot, but my life-long friend Ben had discovered some amazing sound, thanks as always, to the British.

Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, Bauhaus, This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance.

Dead Can Dance's Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. Photo: Jay Brooks / Sacks & Co.

I thought they'd broken up back in 1999. They've both put out solo albums, etc. Dead Can Dance was done, right?

Imagine knowing a band/musician that had moved you in amazing ways. Imagine that band/musician was never going to produce any more of that soul satisfying sound again. Terrible.

All the credit for knowing about the return and world tour of Dead Can Dance goes to my husband. He found out about it and said we could go together. What an offer! But...

But this music belongs to me and someone else I am eternally entwined with...my sister-in-law Alesha. I told Cameron that his offer was wonderful, more than generous, but I really had to go with Alesha.

And I did. We had to go together to experience something long hoped for and never to be realized, except now it could be realized.

The venue was the Red Butte Garden amphitheater and the concert was last Saturday. I thought a lot of my friend Ben, now passed away these eight years, and how he was the catalyst for my love for all this music that I still love so much  (going on nineteen years).

It was a beautiful, dream-like concert, so much more about sound than noise, an amplification of the senses rather than the volume of an electric guitar (though that's awfully fun, too). Dead Can Dance are classified as "world music." Fair enough. They are Gothic cathedrals, rural Turkish villages, Greek churches and Irish fields.

Brendan Perry's voice is a rich, elevated baritone and Lisa Gerrard reminded me of a graceful marble statue that could sing like an angel.

I wished Ben could have see this concert. I wanted him to be there. Dead Can Dance have never made it to Salt Lake City before. At the third encore, an unfamiliar song introduction began and I puzzled it out in my brain and then came the utterly unexpected "Song to the Siren." Originally written by Tim Buckley, recorded by Pat Boone, then Tim Buckley, then This Mortal Coil (sung by Elizabeth Fraser from The Cocteau Twins). This Mortal Coil's version is the one I know best and when I was in high school with Ben, he expressed that he'd like me to sing it at his funeral.



When Ben's mom called to tell me that he had passed away, she said wanted me to sing but that she wasn't sure what yet. I related what Ben had told me ten years earlier and she said that's what she wanted me to do.

So here I am. Standing at this concert, with my sister-in-law and friend, who accompanied my singing at Ben's funeral, listening to the very song I sang that day, all the while thinking of him, wishing he could be there. Of course, I cried, but it was so awesome. Alesha and I clung to each other.



These musicians move me. I am so grateful for the effort they put into beauty and ethereal elevation.

 I've always wanted to get a picture of my kids in front of this sign. It's a cross road off Foothill Blvd. in Salt Lake City.
The name says it all. :)

No, this is not another post about birds.

This is a model eagles' nest at Hogle Zoo that my babies all fit into perfectly.

We didn't go to the zoo alone. We went with friends we don't see enough: Anisa and her boys B, J and T and Jacinda and F & S. 

 It's not easy to keep eight kids together, but major attractions like a gorilla statue seem to help.

 Ella and I were very fond of the misters located throughout the zoo.

Ella was thrilled to find one that dripped.

Hey Anisa!

For Dane and Brenner, it was like no time had passed. It was also like they had no parents with them. They were the leaders of the day. No child hesitated to follow them around to where ever they might go.

 Hey Bryce!

Of course I'm ending with a bird! Not my fault, since this zoo helper was right at the exit waiting for us.This is a Swainson's Hawk. It was cool to get so close.

I am so impressed with the changes that the zoo is making. I love the new Rocky Shores (arctic) exhibit. That polar bear is a ham! (Did I mention that a portion of this exhibit is inside and air conditioned?!) It was a great visit. So glad we got to do this and sad that our visit had to end so quickly.

Cancer-Free

Two little words that we've been waiting anxiously to hear in connection with my dad since his diagnosis in February.

The last few months have been filled with intense prayer, worry and connecting with each other. We have been so blessed by this cancer. I hate that my dad had to suffer these last few months, but I hope he knows what a difference his experience has made for the rest of us, how profoundly it has changed us all. 

This is the dad I've known all my life. This is a favorite picture of mine.

This was my dad on his 60th birthday a month and a half ago. Nowadays, the man above is unfamiliar and I've become quite used to the one here. It seems so crazy.

Anyway, on Thursday, about five weeks since his final chemotherapy administration, my parents went to the doctor to hear the results of the body scan. "Cancer-free."
There has been such a wonderful weight of gratitude over my heart. Immediately, I think of all those thousands of prayers that have been offered on behalf of my dad, many by those of you who don't even know/ have never met him. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We feel so blessed and yet there is an odd absence. Voiced well by one of my children "It is so strange that grandpa isn't sick anymore, that he is just fine." We all know what he means and we wouldn't have it any other way.