From Tiny Homes to Nursing Homes

A couple weekends ago Eric and I went on a road trip and I wrote this post. The time I spent staring at the laptop screen may have been a contributing factor to my car sickness in the final hours of the drive but, as with most things, in retrospect it seems worth it. I finally got the chance to revise and publish it so here you go :)

Let it be known that I didn't want to drive the 12 30 hours to a funeral this weekend. If you work with me, you heard me joke about it in the lunch room. If you live with me, you saw me in a tail spin packing everyone up for a four day trip for all seven people to three different places. If you are married to me, I might have texted you about it multiple times over the course of many days in a series of messages that read something like "I DO NOT WANT TO GO ON THIS TRIP." In my defense, I was nervous about leaving the kids, nervous about being gone from home. You also might have heard me voice my displeasure about having to write sub plans. But, being the self-sacrificing wife that I am (ahem), I begrudgingly went on the trip anyway and consoled myself by remembering that I had 12 hours to complain all the way there. When it started snowing Thursday, I realized I had more like 16 hours to complain, given the treacherous road conditions. Not only do I dislike long road trips, I also have a strong aversion to funerals. Social situations in general are not always fun for me given my propensity for sticking my foot in my mouth, but sad, morose occasions can pose a problem for verbose, outgoing, socially awkward people in general so I was not looking forward to seeing who I might offend or what kind of off-topic story I might accidentally end up telling at the wrong time.

My own neurotic worries aside, Eric had already attended a funeral the weekend before in Oregon for his grandpa so this seems to be a season of funerals in his family. The one in California was for Eric's aunt Karen, a kind woman who I had met a couple times and had passed within seven hours of her father, Eric's grandpa. Eric is a family guy, one of the reasons I snatched him up, but also a reason we keep the roads well worn between Washington and Oregon.Staying in the Copper Rooster Water Tower Inn was on the agenda but it was just a distraction so we would have something to look forward to in the midst of all the driving and the sad reason for the visit to California in the first place. Even though we got there at 2am Saturday morning, when we pulled up we instantly remembered we planned to make this a getaway. A time to relax and have fun and do something we both enjoy, be tourists and stay in fun, funky places we could tell our friends about. It isn't often you get to stay in a water tower built in 1910. Even though we would barely get to sleep there, we peppered our trip with exploring the nooks and crannies of our abode and creating a video to share on Facebook. The water tower was, hands down, the most unique place I've ever stayed. It was cozy and quaint and quite special. When would we ever be in this area without our kids again and get to stay in such a great place? It would be best to enjoy it.

I have only been to a few funerals in my life. The one for Karen was really quite beautiful. She was remembered as a kind and thoughtful woman. A wife and mother that devoted herself to her husband and kids. We are talking DEVOTED. I didn't know her well but when I was around her I remember feeling encouraged by her. Her husband was a mountain climber so she climbed Mount Hood, just once, and said "I'll never do that again but I see why you like it," Her daughter is a runner so she walked her cool down laps with her. The simple stories of a mom finding ways to relate to her kids were touching and seemed worth every minute in the car. Karen's legacy will live on in every person she met and everyone who hears her stories. Someone behind us made the comment "She deserved every kind word in that service.."  I would wager to guess people left there wondering how they could be more like Karen. I know I did. I was so worried about saying or doing the wrong thing at the funeral but once we got there I remembered it was not about me (duh) and I was glad we drove all that way to hear Karen's stories.

When we made the decision to drive to Lodi, California for Karen's funeral I knew I was couldn't drive all that way and not drive four extra hours to see my great  Aunt Evelyn in Fresno. When I was a kid my Aunt Eveyln would drive up with my Grandma Jump every couple summers to visit us and my cousins, from Fresno to Moses Lake. Her visits meant so much to me as a child. Her stories about her life are the only connection I have to my mom's parents and grandparents. I loved hearing her talk about being a drapery saleswoman for Sears. She loves to mention how she still gets a profit sharing check from them (still mentioned it today). She used to say she always took the stairs because if she stopped taking the stairs she wouldn't be able to use the stairs anymore. She wore heels and got her hair done and never stopped living life. I was always fascinated by this Californian woman. As I got older I became even more enamored with her. She seemed to be somewhat of a control freak, as evidenced by her house looking like a page from the Sears catalog, circa 1955, to this day. There is something I found comforting in not being the only control freak in my lineage. It's like I could say, "See, I was born this way, just like Aunt Evelyn, and she and I are both fine."

When we got to the facility today she was sitting up in her wheel chair wearing a purple jump suit and she assured me she had a closet full of clothing to wear. I'm not sure she entirely remembered who I was but here are some things she said that stuck with me:

"This place is nice... I like it here."
"The food here is good... this chicken is really tender today."
"They take care of me here and do things for me I can't do anymore."
"Do things now that you can't do when you get old."
"How old are you?.... oh... you're young!"
"I'm healthy. I've been really lucky. I can't complain."

My Aunt Evelyn is 99 years old. We visited for about 45 minutes and finally her roommate, who was probably in her 70's, asked us to either leave or go to the hallway because we were being loud. I'm not sure why they didn't put my aunt in a room with the guy that was waving at everyone in the hallway because I'm sure she is driving her roommate crazy. She'll be 100 in September and I have every intention of taking the whole family down to see her on or near her birthday. I told her we would send the kids in to her room two by two. Hopefully she is in a new place by then because her room mate might kill us all.

Our final stop was to visit my cousin, Xochitl, who was just a little girl a few years ago it seems but who is now a high school Spanish teacher in Klamath Falls and is adulting all on her own. We got some pizza and drinks and chatted about life and got to see the town she calls home. Seeing the kids you helped raise become your friends is an adventure all it's own and I can't wait to get their with my own kids, though there is a part of me that misses that little girl I used to know, too.

For all my complaining about the hours on the road, this trip has been an eye-opening adventure. Rather than look at the unfortunate parts of the trip I choose to look at the inspiring parts... The legacy of a wife and mother and a life well-lived that will carry on in her loved ones. A fun-filled tiny house adventure with my husband who wants nothing more a life filled with adventures with me even if they are sandwiched between the realities of adulthood and life. Words of wisdom from my 99 year old aunt I will carry with me all of my days. Love from my cousin who I have watched grow her entire life. All of it was worth the 30 hour drive.

I wonder where the most unique nursing homes in America are? I guess someday Eric and I might find out... :)

I've Spent My Whole Morning Reading About the Penguin Scandal and Here's Why

The Scandal of the Homewrecking Penguin, courtesy of National Geographic, has caused a hubub on the interwebs that I didn't take notice of until this morning. It is quite an interesting video. If you haven't seen it, check it out here before you keep reading.

This blog post is about cheating so don't read it if you don't want to know my honest opinion about it or if you are a cheater who is going to try and defend themselves to me. Stop. Just stop. Well, wait, I mean read it anyway cause I would love more traffic to my blog but don't read it to engage in an argument. I actually have a list of 'other things to do besides cheating' towards the end of this post, so maybe you should read it actually :P Also, *disclaimer* there are like 5% of couples who reconcile after a cheating scandal and who go on to have a successful marriage, much like a You Tube video game playing millionaire, you are an exception, not the norm.

So, my initial reaction was that yes, this video is sad. There is blood. Mr. Penguin just lost his wife and kids and it was all recorded and then posted online, so typical of the drama in today's society really. And as if that wasn't entertaining bad enough, he trips on the twig. It was a humbling, Jerry Maguire leaving the office alone and pathetic, sort of way to end things.

But having lived through my own cheating scandal this video made me keenly aware of something. The headline for the video is 'Homewrecking Penguin.' While I think it's important to note that the Homewrecker is indeed a horrible penguin and has caused a lot of pain for the penguin family, let's not forget to put Mrs. Penguin on blast as well. She knows Mr. Penguin intimately and brought the Homewrecker into her home knowingly and willingly leaving Mr. Penguin blindsided.  I feel that because I've been on the Mr. Penguin side of the story before I should share with people what I consider to be common sense for people (and penguins) who aren't cheaters and don't understand what is happening here. Let me break some things down for you...

1. Mrs. Penguin clearly has self-esteem issues, as most cheaters do. She has issues with herself that Mr. Penguin will never be able to 'fix.' Mrs. Penguin actually did you a favor, Mr. Penguin, by taking herself and her cheating ways on to other prospects that she will leach from. Mr. Penguin is recorded on video at a very low moment! He will realize later that Mrs. Penguin is not worth the fight. The narrator is not doing Mr. Penguin any favors, just like the haters who will try to blame him for not keeping her happy. Hold your head high, Mr. Penguin. Some people are just jerks. 

2. There is a common misconception that cheaters need to be forgiven and your marriage or relationship needs to be preserved. I have watched couples do this over, and over, and over and spend 10 or more years with a cheater before they finally conceded "Hmm.... I guess I can't forgive you." Please, Mr. Penguin, if she comes sliding back on her belly, DO NOT TAKE HER BACK! Cheating runs in some people's blood, They love the triangulation, Don't do it, Mr. Penguin. Go find a sweet divorcee penguin that was also cheated on and shack up together and hold each other tight and be thankful you both got rid of cheaters. TRUST ME this works.

3. Cheaters want us all to think they cheated because their 'needs weren't being met.' This is bull. Mr. Penguin, this is 100% not your fault! You got married for better or worse. Spoiler alert: Life has a lot of "worse" parts in it. During those "worse" parts I would like to suggest there are fifty million things a potential cheater could do BESIDES CHEATING to make yourself feel better. Here are just a few:

• Develop a hobby
• Invest in your career
• Go on a walk
• Eat a good meal
• Do something nice for someone
• Exercise
• Watch TV
• NOT CHEAT
• Write a blog

Ok, so the part I found hilarious were all the memes and comments that this video generated. Cheating is not funny, but once you have had it happen and survived it, you realize you are stronger for it. Much like burnt popcorn, it is terrible, but it happens, and you just have to throw it away and start over.

Here are a few of my favorite funnies :)

I don’t always miss my kids being babies… but today I do and here’s why

I had three kids, each two years apart. At one point I had three kids, 5 years and under. When I think back on those times, I think that is the point where I slowly went insane. There are lots of reasons I don’t always look back on my kids’ baby days fondly. Here are just a few:

• Kids are selfish little beings. I’m selfish too but I have the burden of knowing right from wrong so when it came down to their wants or mine, they always won. I hate losing. 
• They are impatient and demanding. And the way they show this is through constant tears. Constant. Tears. 
• Changing the diapers on a two year old is the equivalent of changing the diapers on a hobo. 
• I got interrupted a lot. My thoughts were interrupted, my conversations, my meals. That’s annoying. 
• There was a solid 7 years where I fell out of touch with popular culture. I still have no idea what the fuss Lost and Grey’s Anatomy were about.  It’s a shame.

For me, having babies was crazy time. I wasn’t the mom who sat and stared at my babies and was just thankful to hold them. On the contrary, while I held them I thought about all the things I needed to get done. True confessions here, people. So I spent a lot of my time with babies, being annoyed.

But God makes allowances for us all and gave me the precious gift of a horrible memory. My close friends and family know this is 100% true. I am terrible about keeping commitments and showing up places on time, mostly because I just plum forget. However, I also am very forgiving and don’t keep a record of wrongs, mostly because I can’t remember them. My bad memory has been a joke in our family for a long time, but truth be told, I am pretty good at remembering negative things. I'm just not quite as good at remembering the good.

Because of this inability to store information in my brain, I started hoarding saving physical items I felt were connected to memories. It started when I moved out of my mom’s house and was on my own. I took my childhood toys and books with me and kept them in a room in my first house. When people came over, they assumed I had kids. Now those items are stored away in the attic. When I had my kids I wanted to save all those small moments in time I knew I would never remember so I started scrapbooking. Each of my kids have a book with letters I write to them on their birthdays and pictures from that year. Each of them has two scrapbooks that span their lives from birth to five years old. Then there are the family Christmas and vacation albums. My focus in these albums was not to have the best page layouts and most creative, artistic products. An experienced scrapbooker can see that I threw pictures into books and have very little skill in making things look nice. But what I did focus on was writing down the wonderful things happening in my family and the endearing things about my kids’ childhoods that I knew I would forget.

For someone with a negative outlook on life who is mostly always angry or annoyed, scrapbooking seemed to bring out the fun and happy side of me. I’m a perfectionist and, spoiler alert, life is rarely perfect… or is it? As I flipped through my kids’ albums this morning I saw adorable kids in swimming pools, laughing kids playing in the snow, a family taking their kids to Disney World. No one took pictures of all the different ADHD meds Lena has tried and how none of them have really helped. There is no record of the summer Ben freaked out and had major panic attacks over people supposedly watching and judging him. I have yet to take a single picture of Evy playing the ‘baby of the family’ card and pestering her siblings to get them in trouble, though it seems to happen daily. My marriage slowly falling apart while we had kids and tried to rebuild trust not knowing it would never happen… not on those pages. What IS on those pages are all the happy moments. All the funny things Lena has said because she has no filter on her brain. All the things Ben has excelled at because I may not be the only perfectionist in the house. I have an entire book full of our beloved baby of the family, Evy and how fun it is for her to be the youngest. I have pictures of two people trying to raise three kids and enjoy it.

Good grief. I have around 20 scrapbooks. That’s hundreds of pages of happy moments from a time in my life I also have an equal amount of terrible memories locked in my brain. How can it be that even in a time of my life where I was stressed and discouraged, I was also living some of my best days?

The past five years have been some of the hardest in my life, but also some of the most personally fulfilling. I think often about my failures and what I haven’t given my kids in the way of a happy family. But when I sit down and look at the photographs in their scrapbooks I realize what I gave them is a life worth living and that the good outweighs the bad. The sad thing is I haven’t documented any of the events of the past five years. I guess when I sit and think about it, it’s too sad. There is too much not going my way. There are too many hurt feelings, and hurt kids. I guess somewhere along the way I forgot, I don’t have to document the parts I don't like.I don't have to dwell on the parts that don't seem fair and make me sad. I can choose to focus on the positive and enjoy each moment every day that brings me joy.

Here's a picture of our family today! I am going to use this to start a new scrapbook. In real life two of the people in this picture hate each other, one wants to move out of our house, and there are two other people who are exhausted and not sure how to handle all these kids... but in our family scrapbook I shall write "Valentine's Day 2016" and I will put some cute heart stickers around it and in five years when the teens are moving out for reals we will look it and say "Remember that day? We ate Chinese food and went to the movies and everyone had fun." <3