The MIL edition

It's Thanksgiving. A time to be thankful. A time to be enveloped in the warmth of your family and your home. But who are we kidding? This four day weekend usually ends with a couple of family members no longer speaking to each other and a few others on new prescriptions of valium.

Unfortunately, since my husband and I are each one of only two siblings and because our families are geographically dispersed, I don't get to see large fireworks displays. However, I DO get to rub shoulders even more than usual with the creature that lives in my basement - my MIL. That would be short for Mother-In-Law. No F at the end.

"More than usual" is actually somewhat of a misnomer this year, since we have been existing in something Dante never bothered to write about that I will call "Sprained Wrist Hell". My MIL sprained her wrist in mid-October, magically becoming a blind paraplegic. The doctors can't really explain this, but I can. It's called "just her usual personality, but with a sprained writst".

For example, she has always micromanaged everything she observes in the car, probably out of a fear of some crisis that the rest of us wouldn't even imagine. For example, two minutes after leaving our driveway we get, "Jayden, don't sing the alphabet so loud. You're libel to make your mother distracted, cause her to drive off the road, and we will all end up in the hospital!" (I swear these are real quotes). And then there's always my favorite which is the constant comments on the way back from our neighborhood grocery store, "slow down, you're going to have to turn right when you get over this next hill." Once I snapped, "Do you really think I don't know how to get to my own house from two miles away?!?" - but she didn't notice or care. The next direction was delivered within 30 seconds. I was actually relieved, because then I knew I hadn't hurt her feelings. Whew. That was a close one. 

I actually do love my MIL, and she is a sweet lady. She loves me, my husband and my daughter, and she honestly tries really hard to respect my area of the house. A lot of women have worse mothers in law. It is important to understand that before I say this - I think she has a real condition that causes her to have severe anxiety over a multitude of crises that will NEVER happen. The obsession over these will cause things like a random text one day warning me never to use dryer sheets on Jayd's clothes because some of them have certain chemicals that completely destroy your ability to function physically and mentally - or something like that. I stop reading after the first 5-10 sentences and go on to my usual household chores, such as to throw Jayd's clothes in the dryer (with a dryer sheet). On my way back across the hall, by the door that functions as a gateway between my "home" and "the basement" I will discover a series of paper notes that have been pushed under the door, and I will also have a voicemail and an email. All addressing the current urgent issue of dryer sheet toxins. She does this instead of coming to talk to me - in the interest of not disturbing or bothering me, because there is absolutely nothing disturbing about that, right? But at least her heart is in the right place.

What a sprained wrist adds to all this, of-course, is that she needs to be driven everywhere, and subsequently escorted around wherever she is. This is where the hell comes in. Between multiple trips to various stores, post office, doctor, and whatever, we get to hang out a lot. Her sprained wrist makes her helpless, and I get such honors as holding the produce bag open while she very closely examines 10 or so pears one at a time and places them in the bag. She asks for everything in a kind of helpless little voice and makes a big production out of lifting a bag of broccoli (with her good hand). And that brings us to... THANKSGIVING!

She is, because she actually IS very sweet, making a pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving. Pies can be fickle, and my husband is picky about his pumpkin pie, so she bakes them in my oven instead of her basement appropriate toaster oven that's probably from the 50s. As such we got even more quality time together this afternoon. She started by asking me to read her the recipe, because she can't read with only one hand. My sixth grade self had to bite her tongue to hold back the "...you read with your eyes and not your fingers..." comment that was begging to be said. So I'm reading the instructions when she interrupts me to say, "if I do it like that, it will be gummy because the pie filling will seep into the crust and..." she kind of trailed off into an incoherent mutter. I stopped reading and waited to be directed. Was I free to go back about my business? Was I meant to keep reading? Finally she said, "Well, maybe some people like it gummy. Do you like it gummy? Is that why you want me to make it that way?" Now my teen self was biting my tongue. Because 14 year old Elle would have said "WHO LIKES GUMMY PIE? WHO???? And I don't care HOW you make it. I'm reading YOUR recipe to you at YOUR request. I'd rather be writing a blog about how fricking crazy you are!!!!!"

OK. Sorry. Just had a little break and some deep breaths. Out of curiosity, is it valium then beer then liquor? Liquor, pills, then wine? Just wondering for a friend of mine who wants to know. Not me. But let me know, so I can tell her.

Well, I'm signing off. I'm being beckoned to take a pie out of the oven. And that's ok, because that does actually require two hands. Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Guess What I Learned Today

I have learned a couple of valuable lessons this week that I absolutely have to share. The first is, if you leave some laundry in the washer too long and it starts to stink, unless you like to smell like stink for months afterwards, it's a good idea to wash that load with one full cup of baking soda, a full dose of Tide with Febreeze, and the hottest water your fabric can handle. My mildew laundry was spring fresh again. Woohoo!

The second lesson is even better.

Gremlins are real. They got into a berry colored sharpie marker and caused some damage to some of my daughter's clothes. The evidence that creatures who are largely believed to be imaginary OBVIOUSLY did this is as follows: It's almost a full moon, which is when gremlins come out. It's almost Halloween, AND, this is most important, my princess-angel toddler would never EVER do that.

I naturally considered just throwing the newly designed clothes into the washer with a full cup of baking soda and a full dose of Tide with Febreeze. It seemed to be the laundry answer of the week. But instead I went to work with some stain remover and color safe bleach. The verdict is still out, but the likely answer is - the marks are indeed permanent as is clearly written on the casing of the marker.

Exhausted and anxious I went into my bedroom to see if the gremlins also got my light-cream, almost white carpet. They didn't! But even as my lips were attempting to curl into a smile, I felt them dragging back and revealing my teeth in more like a werewolf effect. The gremlins had marked all over my expensive wood bedroom suit. The one my husband bought me for our anniversary 2 years ago.

With thoughts of trying to personally sand and refinish the furniture perfectly such that my husband would never notice, without him first seeing the marks, and without him noticing furniture stain smells, I got out my phone and consulted my best friend, Google.

With very little effort I found what I needed... on a finished surface, a sharpie could be removed with isopropyl alcohol. Hubby was giving princess-angel a bath, so faster than Flash, I got the alcohol and some paper towels and wiped at the marker, completely forgetting the recommendation to first test a non-visible area of the wood. Voila! The sharpie was gone! And the finish was fine!

Whew. Good thing the darling husband doesn't read my blog. He never has to know. Now to pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch. I'm done for today. I leave you with this advice: If you do happen to see the Gremlins - please don't feed them after midnight.

What Was I Thinkin'?

A few months ago, I signed  up for the Ragnar Tennessee with 5 of my girlfriends. The Ragnar Relay series is a group of 200 mile races in various parts of the country that you run as a team (hence the relay part. You didn't know you were getting a vocabulary lesson too!).  The Tennessee version is from Chattanooga to Nashville.  It's a lot of fun if you can stand living in a van for at least 30 hours with stinky, sleep deprived runners being forever bound by getting each other through all the typical escapades of runners like poo-mergencies and snot rockets and of-course running day and night until your team crosses the finish line. It's never boring. At the Arizona (Del Sol) Ragnar in February, one of our teammates was accused by the spouse of leaving a worm in the toilet via #2 before leaving for the race. WHAT? Yeah babe, my crazy third world worm that I of-course actually have in the first place is now in the toilet. But the excitement and bonding doesn't end with just your team. You usually meet some interesting (and desperate) people in the porta potty lines too. You just can't buy closeness with a total stranger like that. So go sign up for a Ragnar. NOW.

Usually there are 12 people on a team. You may notice there are 6 of us. We are an ultra team. All the same requirements with half as many people. We each run twice as far. What was I thinkin'?

One thing true of all races is it feels good just to finish. And since I am running 36 miles in this race I had to make some preparations (i.e. months of training) in order to ensure that I finish. One such preparation is running two half marathons in the same day. I have to train myself to run on tired legs. What was I thinkin'?

What a coincidence! That training run was... today.  I woke up at 3:30, met my teammate Angie around 4am and got off to a great start. We were pressed for time so although we set out to run 13, we only ran 10. They were a strong 10, and we could have easily pushed out another 7. I went home feeling like a champ and went to church.

My second run, again scheduled for 13 miles, was at 4pm with Olivia. I had already started to feel tired. My legs hurt. Too many nights of 6ish hours of sleep were catching up with me. It was about to rain, and basically our loop course was "uphill the whole way". It was whine time. But nothing was stopping me from my goal. I grabbed my water and my Cliff Shot Bloks and off I went to conquer the world. Luckily I wore some hot pink Zenzah compression sleeves, and therefore my legs wouldn't get tired. HAHAHAHAHA. No.

We were trotting out the miles and I was kinda wishing my compression leg sleeves went thigh high. My quads hurt. I wonder if hot pink thigh high compression sleeves with short running shorts would make me look like a hooker? Nevermind.

We got to mile 5 and back to our water. I guzzled water - producing sounds sort of like a hippo. I also decided to take my Shot Bloks. It was early but they should give me a little more energy. And while we were stopped, I decided to take care of that sniffle I'd been struggling with by utilizing a running tool called the Snot Rocket. Plug one side of your nose, aim for the grass, and blow hard. The result was a fat, translucent, 4 inch long slug that crawled out of my nose and across my cheek - dangled for dear life for half a second, then fell to its death into the grass. Olivia turned away immediately and threw up in her mouth a little bit. Then she turned back to look at me and calmly said, "I love you Elle". I'm not a phychiatrist, but I'm not sure she meant it.

We were off again. Somewhere around mile 10.5, we veered AWAY from where we would have to go to get back to the car, which any true wilderness survivor would know is stupid, but runners constantly do in the interest of getting the prescribed amount of miles. After approximately 16 steps, I started to wonder if I could finish the run. I was suddenly and incurably FAMISHED. I started walking. Olivia asked what I needed, and I knew exactly how to answer because the smell of it, the sight of it, the feel of it, the taste of it was filling all my senses as if it were right in front of me - I needed a giant meatball. The ONLY thing I could think about was that giant meatball. Having it was like an intense fantasy. I must have seen one of these before. I know it's exact size and color (4 to 5 inches in diameter, juicy, a little red sauce around it). I knew exactly how it would feel in my hands. Silverware wasn't really part of my fantasy.

Either because I was obsessing over a giant meatball or because my eyes were actually twirling around in my head like those cartoon birds that get hit in the head with a hammer, Olivia let us turn around and go back toward the car. We finished our run at about 12 miles.

At the parking lot, my husband and little girl were waiting. We exchanged some words about something and made some agreement about what would happen next, all of which was completely lost on me as there was one thing on my mind. Meatball.

Even in my stupor, I recognized my own delirium, so I starting thinking of the fastest way to get any nourishment. I dug through my bag and found a glorious baggie of gummy fruit snacks of my daughter's. They were gone immediately. Somehow I remembered the gas station about half a mile down the road and went there. I couldn't honestly tell you what happened in there. There was some discussion from the clerk about my socks. I'm pretty sure I was just nodding and drooling. I got back to my car and examined my purchases - a personal sized bag of Funyuns, a bag of Spree tangy candy, and a package of jumbo chewy SweetTarts. What was I thinkin'? No really, what. was. I. thinking?

At the time, it didn't matter. I opened the Funyuns and ate every single one. I then ate half of each bag of the candies. OooooOOOOOooooo. My stomach was turning. I can tell you WITH CONFIDENCE that none of that was an acceptable substitute for a giant meatball.

But in the end, I ran 22 miles. This is no great feat for any other member of my team, but I feel like I achieved something. I am sleeping in tomorrow. And probably finding a giant meatball. But for now, goodnight.

It's Going to be HOT

Do you sometimes remember a treasured person from your childhood, like your third grade teacher or something, and wonder "what WAS it about that person that I liked so much? I just don't remember."

That person for me this week is Stu Tracy. As I told you, I am from the desert. Stu Tracy was the weatherman on channel 5 from the 70s and into the 90s. For me, that's birth through college. I remember talking about Stu Tracy as a kid. In the south, old men sit on the porch and talk about the weather. In the desert, 3rd graders stand on the playground and talk about the weatherman. I even remember being sad when he announced his retirement. I just don't remember WHAT I liked about him. AT ALL. I don't even remember what he looks like. Of-course, I have a disorder that causes me to be unable to identify my own grandmother if enough time passes, but that is for a different blog post.

So I Googled Stu Tracy. Amazingly I found that a lot of people from the Valley of the Sun are still talking about him in YouTube comments and various other forums. In general they are saying they miss him. But not WHY. I mean seriously. He did Phoenix weather. How could that be entertaining? It's like a spin on Good Morning Vietnam. "Hi, I'm Stu Tracy and here's the weather. Today it's going to be HOT. Damn hot. Tonight, hot, with an overnight low of 100 degrees. Tomorrow... Hot. Oh yeah, and dry." It's the DESERT. It's going to be hot and dry for like a million years. I'm not exactly sure why they even do the weather.

So if any of my friends from home remember why Stu Tracy is burned (pun intended) into our minds as likeable or missable, please post your comments! Until then, leave your umbrella at home. Unless it's a parasol.

Excuse me ma'am, are you going to eat that crayon box?

A child's diet is a complex thing.

My 2 year old is developing at such a fast rate. This puts a lot of pressure on a parent, especially an educated, rather athletic one, to give the child the RIGHT diet. I mean, what if my failure to give her enough protein daily prohibits her from developing the muscle mass she needs to be the next American to win more Olympic gold medals than even Michael Phelps? And God forbid the lack of Omega 3 fatty acids I get into her diet cause her to have the brain power of a tire re-treader for the rest of her life. I don't want her to get diabetes or have so many preservatives that she is ultimately the human equivalent of a hot dog. And I'm still looking for any signs of a third eye from the pesticides she gets from those non-organic McDonald's apple slices she loves.

So for the first 18 months of her life I was, well, to say it nicely, a food Nazi. I measured out how much of each vegetable, fruit, protein, carbohydrate, water, etc that she should have. And I liked to be present when she ate, because otherwise how would I KNOW if she got her fruit or not?????? Still there were obstacles. For example, I couldn't imagine the audacity of any person who would offer her food that was not provided by me. UGGH! I should mention she was in full-time daycare and had plenty of trips to see grandparents. My reply might have been "I guess a little juice today is ok, even though we try to avoid it for her" my thoughts were more like, "You gave her JUICE? Just pull her teeth out right now then! Why wait for them to rot. SHEESH. She can clearly never be alone with you again. See ya later. I'm off to give her a blood sugar test."

Sometime around 18 months old, I realized that she not only had selfish dietary-morons around her offering her non-approved items, but she also had ... her own preferences. As it turns out she loves M&Ms and hot dogs and ranch dressing (thanks mom and Heather). Around this time I also saw her eat her first crayon box. After green beans, paper is her favorite food. She especially likes Mellow Mushroom crayon boxes. I don't mean chew on, I mean EAT. But I digress. When I realized I didn't have complete control, and that she was amazingly healthy anyway, I lightened up a LOT. I guess I should have known it wouldn't last. Her mother is the biggest frito-lay consumer in the Tennesee valley.

I admit I still pull out her toddler report from teacher before I even pull out of the school parking lot to see if she ate her well-balanced lunch I provided. ("Ate Most" is the most detail I get, which is probably a good thing). I don't know why I bother though. The first thing she told me when she got in the car the last three times I picked her up was "Mommy! I ate my sticker!".

It's Fine. I Ran Today

OK, so I am not especially young, but sometimes I still do things that I really ought to know better.

Disclaimer: If you don't like any discussions that remotely include poop, just skip this blog post.

I got up EARLY this morning to go running. It's important to give you a little background into running, just in case your primary fascination with my exciting blog lays more on the parenting side. Runners know that it is always best to give yourself some time to, um, go #2 before you start your run. Running "makes things happen". If you do not go first, after you run a few miles you may often find yourself in the middle of a "poo-mergency". That is, you need to poo ASAP, but you're in the middle of the woods or worse yet Research Park, the central location of probably three-quarters of corporate offices in this area. You see where I'm going with this. No open bathroom for miles. Not even a porta-potty, which, I assure you no matter your previous convictions about using these, look like little temples when in the real-time poo-mergency experience. Suffice to say, runners try to avoid this whole scenario.

Knowing the importance of avoiding that scenario may help you better understand the other bad decisions I made this morning. I only had a few minutes, but I decided I had time to take care of business. In the interest of time you know how, like, when you *think* you put too much TP in the toilet and you're not *sure* you will sometimes try to flush and see if you get lucky? I did that. Then you know how you get in a panic and flush again and again? Oh that doesn't happen to you? Well anyway, I flooded my guest bathroom. As it was gushing out and potentially heading toward the kitchen, I threw towels at it and stomped on them like one of those circus clowns trying to put out a fire.

The water was contained, but I was completely out of time. The toilet was still clogged and I had towels soaked with toilet water all over the floor. What next? Clean it all up and arrive 20 minutes late to my run? What would the text to my friends read like? Or should I leave a note for the hubby and play innocent? "Hey Babe, something happened in the guest bathroom. Could you check it out?"

Well, I cleaned it up. I told my friends the truth. They were cool waiting for me, but just made me assure them I had washed my hands. Sigh. All in a day's work I say.

Introduction to Desert Girl

My name is Elle. I am from Phoenix, but after 30 solid years of learning how the world works my new husband moved me to "the South". Now I have no idea how anything works, and when confronted with my MANY idiosyncrasies in relation to southern culture I usually bust out with "I'm from the desert!" I've now been here six years, and I have come to understand that I will always be DesertGirl. We're not talking about just the fact that my straight hair will hereafter have funky humidity waves and fly-aways.  The differences in Western versus Southern culture weave a web that could win prizes at any Halloween party. My perspective usually leaves my southern counterparts either with their jaws on the floor or howling with laughter. And I'm all like, "What?"

Since I quit my most recent job to stay home with my daughter, a decision that took nearly two years to finalize, you will be reading a lot about her and how extremely funny, smart, beautiful, witty and generally exceptional she is by every standard (note from the editor, DesertGirl may be biased).

My other consuming subject is running. I am nearly always training for a new race that I am REALLY excited about.

Hopefully I can share a few things from my days as a runner and housewife that can make other people relate, or at least get a hearty howl from one side of their mouth while the jaw on the other side hangs on the floor.