Here I am. In a Nutshell.

My life is full of happiness, joys, blessings, and lots of great days. I'm aware that I have a great life and a wonderful family, and, really, when it all comes down to it, I have no reason to complain. I just want to point that out.

And get it out of the way.

Because due to some recent spikes in less-than-happy things in my life (one of our kittens dying tragically, to name just one), I’ve been kind of a buzz-kill the last few days.

I know, I know. I need to be positive and move on, despite the extra lack of sleep (Luke is teething and back to not taking good naps or sleeping well at night. Nor letting me put him down without that trademarked high-pitched screaming that says, “How dare you think you can actually get anything done around here?!”).

And, despite the few--okay, lots more than a few--extra pounds I’ve been wallowing about lately. No more using the excuse that I "just had a baby." What happened to the whole claim that nursing moms lose weight faster?

To me it’s looking like a fairy tale, ladies. And I can only use the elliptical for so long before I realize my kids are destroying things while in the absence of my attention. So throw me a frickin’ bone here [insert whoever I feel like directing this at] and at least let me get back to my pre-baby-growing size.

Okay, moving on from that. In light of my loss of vigor and optimism, I feel like making a list of some things that make me me (some inspired by recent events and others at random placement). Good, bad, embarrassing--I don’t care. I am who I am, and on most days, I actually like that.

So, just in case you ever get quizzed...

• If I actually let myself, I could probably eat a whole cake in one sitting. Beyond any food, even chocolate, cake is my downfall.
• I still mourn my Dyson and have a little buyer's remorse for my Kirby.
• The romantic fluff is my favorite substance in movies and books. If there isn't any, the rest of the content better be damn good.
• I swear sometimes. Okay, more than sometimes. But--to all you gasping for the innocent ears of my children--I do watch myself around my kiddos. And church members.
• The judgement, naivety, and close-mindedness from church members is the highest pet peeve on my list of pet peeves.
• The whole mumbo-jumbo of religion and doctrine in general, and who's right and wrong--even in my own religion--is really tiring me out.
• Pictures of posey teenage girls taken by themselves are high on the pet peeve list, too. Maybe even #2. Especially ones with the crooked pout and the sideways peace gesture.
  
  
  
• Doctors are climbing really high on my hit list right now. All except my kiddos' pediatrician, who I found after a rigorous search and is wonderful. As far as I'm concerned, besides her, there aren't any left with good hearts in this world, who truly care about the patient and figuring out what's wrong with them. Since when does someone whose services we pay out of our butt for feel they have the right to treat us like we're wasting their time??
  
  
  
• I hate corned beef. I only eat it on the special occasion that we make it because it's my husband's favorite food. There's nothing right about it.
  
  
  
• Dora the Explorer is the bane of my existence.
• I am horrible at anything crafty. I don't sew. I don't have a nack for home decor, and am basically clueless when it comes to knowing whether or not something looks good. And I'm only a decent cook. So, basically, I fail at the Susy Homemaker test.
• My passion involves a laptop and solitude, and sometimes, I admit, that writing is all I want to be doing.
• At this given moment in my life, if I was given the opportunity to spend twenty-four hours doing whatever I wanted, I'd go to a hotel completely and utterly alone, and write.
• I want other people to read what I have labored over. Regardless of whether or not I'm good enough, I want to be known for writing--and maybe even make a little dough on the side.
• Grammar mishaps really bother me. Like, a lot. Irregardless is not a real word, people.
• Sometimes my kiddos still see me naked. And that's not good, since Sam is almost four. But that's what happens when you have three small children, a busy husband, and you are shower-deprived. Sometimes, it's unavoidable. So sue me.
• I nurse in front of my kids because I want them to be accepting of it. It irks me when mothers are so hush-hush about breastfeeding and don't even speak of it. It's not a sexual thing, ladies, no matter how much society wants it to be. It's a beautiful thing and a God-given way to feed and nourish our babies.
• Though I know it's not (do I really?), sometimes I feel like praying is a waste of time.
• Next to losing a child, my biggest fear is my children losing their father, or me, and having someone else raise them.
• I Hate bugs. Hate with a capitol H. And one of the biggest offenders are moths. There, I said it. I'm "afraid" of moths. And crane flies.
  
  
  
• If asked, I'd say the Book of Mormon is my favorite book, because it is, yet I haven't really read it in almost four years.
• I love dry humor. I love anything comedic.
• I'm addicted to late night comedy/talk shows and DVR some of them regularly. Conan is my guilty pleasure.
  
  
  
• I'm socially awkward sometimes. And physically awkward all the time.
• I have the worst temper in the world, thanks in part to the genes of my father. It almost prevented my husband from marrying me. And now I see it in my kids. Uh-oh.
• The best sound to my ears isn't rain or waves or anything emo like that. It's the word "Mommy" on my two-year-old's lips.
• I truly feel that with all of these things aside, my children are my greatest blessing in life. They are the best part of me, an extension of who I am--my flesh and blood. And my life would be nothing without them. Poop, screaming, annoyances and all.

The Nerd and the Cheerleader

*Post inspired by Mama Kat's weekly writer's workshop, with the prompt, "Explain how you met your best friend."

“Look at her,” I whispered to my brother, discretely pointing to the girl on the corner. Stylish clothes, platinum hair, trendy makeup job over a beautiful face…and no smile. “I bet she’s so stuck up,” I finished, folding my arms uncomfortably over myself. Her arms were folded, too, but probably because she thought herself better than us newbies.

We had just moved to Idaho Falls and it was our first day of school—my Freshman year and my brother’s eighth. He didn’t respond to my assumption. He probably knew I was just jealous.

As we waited on the corner for the bus to arrive, my stomach twisted madly inside at what lie ahead. And seeing this cute girl, who apparently lived just one street over—great—made it worse. Was everyone going to be this way at Clair E. Gale Middle School? Would there be anyone I could connect with?

Nudging my brother, furthering my desire to feel better about myself, I harrumphed. “I bet she’s even a cheerleader.”

Later that morning, while all the students congregated on the lawn outside the school, a girl from my church who I’d met the previous Sunday approached with none other than blondie from the bus stop. “Hey, Jennie!” she beamed, “remember my friend I told you about?”

I gulped a guilty breath. “Yes…”

Well, turns out, blondie’s name was Chloe. Turns out, blondie was in fact a cheerleader.

But she was also the sweetest, most compassionate girl I ever met. And I felt horrible.

Come to find out, Chloe was shy, too, which explained her aloofness at the bus stop. And even funnier, she told me years later that when she first saw me at the bus stop, she thought I was a snob. Ick. I never thought I was, but maybe judging someone without knowing their story made me one. Lesson learned.

But from that first day, Chloe and I clicked better than I’ve ever clicked with anyone, and to this day—fifteen years, lots of boyfriends, 2 husbands, and 6.5 children later—we are the best of besties. Even when we’ve gone months without talking, or years without seeing each other (like right now), we can pick up that phone and have a conversation as though we just spoke the day before. She gets me. I get her. We are the same in so many, quirky ways.

She is talented, artistic, and beautiful, and can connect to me on a wavelength special only to us. She is my sister and my best girlfriend. Chloe, I love you.

High School or Hell?

*This post is inspired by Mama Kat's weekly writer's workshop. The prompt was "If you could go back to high school, what would you do differently?"

Anyone who knew me in high school knows I was shy, self-conscious, and just plain dorky…to put it lightly. Don’t get me wrong. I had an amazing, select group of friends who gave me memories I will always cherish. To you girls: I will love you forever.


But for the most part, the first word that surfaces in my mind when trying to sum up my high school experience is...Hell.

Besides to those few who knew me well, I kept myself locked inside—because in all reality, I didn’t know who I was to begin with. Every negative experience, every setback, was utterly traumatic to the emotional teenage girl I was, and since I was shy and closed-off, my teenage years were filled to the brim with them.

Just walking through the crowded hallways between each class was unnerving and gave me anxiety. Being looked at or recognized by anyone was scary—even by the boy I’d been crushing on at the time. Crazy, right? What teenage girl doesn’t thrill at that “cosmic, I’m-gonna-mary-him” eye connection? Well, even though I gushed about it in my journal, I just plain hated it. Hated the vulnerability, hated the exposure. Even from Bill and Bob*, the two guys I was sure I’d end up marrying someday.

And no, I didn’t. (No regrets there, by the way)

*We will give them fake names in order to avoid embarrassment on both parts...or maybe just because these were the actual code names my girlfriends and I used.

To those boys: Even though I’d shrink and run the other way when you’d make eye contact with me in the hall, really I was pathetically, madly in love with you…

Because instead of adoring myself, I put all my emotion into someone I spoke no more than one word to on a daily basis and claimed it “love.”

Atrocious haircuts, awkward-fitting clothes, no sense of self-worth, zero confidence: I was the very definition of the term “crawling in my skin.” It was a sad, depressing time, really. Letting my raging teenage emotions get the best of me, letting them affect friendships, opportunities to branch out, and—back to those boys again—even boyfriends.

Oh wait. BoyFRIEND.

Yes, that’s right. One. And I’m surprised I even had him, though I only had him for a month. I was so uncomfortable and unsure of who I was that I didn’t know how to act in any intimate setting. My dearest friends knew me and loved me, and when with them I could be the strange, silly, and funny girl I was...


...Or even the empathetic girl I was—always the first one there when anyone needed an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on.

But put me around kids who loved being the center of attention, loved bringing other people down, and insults and glares would brutally throw me back into the dark hole I’d dug since the first day of middle school. The hole that had become home. Home, sweet-nauseating, home.

Gabby girls linking arms on the way to the cafeteria: keep those loving limbs away from me and my insecure bubble.

BoyFRIEND going in for the kiss or the hand, especially while walking through the hall swimming with judgmental teenagers: forget it. Kill me now, and What do I say, and How do I act running in a panic stream through my mind.

What would they—the beautiful, bold, cheerful and sometimes mean students—think of the star basketball player touching the girl with uneven dishwater hair, a baggy sweatshirt, and jeans too short for her daddy-long-leg legs? What would they think of the nobody? Surely they’d see the couple as a misfit, just as she so clearly does.

And so they did. And so did he. Do I blame him? Not in the slightest.

So what would I do differently?

I’d love myself. Pure and simple.

And not for those boys or even those teens who smashed my self esteem into the ground, but for me.