You're Still the Only One For Me, Babe

I saw Twilight again today. Still so in love! *sigh*

Oh, Edward!

I had a great day today. Elvira and I went to see "Twilight" at the mall. I LOVED that book, really liked "New Moon" a lot, enjoyed "Eclipse" the second time around, and struggled with "Breaking Dawn." I decided I was really more of a wolf girl and admitted I had a thing for Jacob. Edward was just too whiny, after all.

Oh, Edward! Robert Pattinson was perfect as Edward. I'm such a vampire girl now. The movie was great. It was perfectly cast, and the screenplay was really great. There were some little things added that fit right in. Things like dialogue between the high school kids, and Charlie and his gun. Really funny. The audience was completely packed with people seeing it for the very first time. There were probably four men in the whole audience. I bet 99.9% of the people had read the book, and everyone got excited at the same parts. Elvira just had the biggest grin on her face the whole time, and I'm sure I did, too.

Then tonight I took Things 1, 2, and 4 to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at PHS. It was so good! It was staged very much like the movie, but was still good. The kids had such great voices, and had no inhibitions at all about really embracing their goofy selves. I've been singing the songs since I got home. PHS puts on a good play, that's for sure!

I really needed this weekend!

I Need A New House

I really don't want to offend anyone in my ward or neighborhood. Really, really don't want to. But I have to get out of here. We've lived in our cute little dollhouse for 14 years next month. Our cute little 3 bedroom, 1 bath (soon to be two) home with 1666 sq. ft. and four children. I grew up never living anywhere more than a year or so, and I've been here nearly 1/3 of my life. I might just possibly explode.

So, I need to move. Soon.

This is what I need. Five bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, preferably with a basement. We Midwestern girls need our basements to escape the tornadoes. Don't even start with the whole "we don't get tornadoes here" thing. There's always a first time, Missy. Walking distance to BYU for Sweetie since he doesn't drive much anymore and we're down to one car anyway.

Here are my neighborhoods of choice: Tree Streets (not because of cjane (though that's a plus--but I've always loved it there!), Stadium Heights, Indian Hills, Edgemont, Grandview Hill, and those super cute streets just east of Kiwanis Park with University names. It would be hard to walk from Grandview, it's true, but I like it up there. You'll notice my neighborhood isn't on the list. It's not that I don't love my neighbors, because I truly do. I just want a different view. Provo looks very different when you're looking towards the west, rather than from it.

I feel a little like a hamster in a cage here, because we have so many big hobbies that take up a ton of space. Sweetie has his easel and a big watercolor table in the garage that has never even been used. Drummer Boy has, you guessed it, a big drum set. We have a Lego table with, help me out here Em, probably close to 15,000 Legos on it (no, I really don't think I'm exaggerating). Elvira has tons of art supplies, books, etc. Tinkerbell has enough Barbies to stock a Toys-R-Us, and Kitty Boy has lots of everything. We have over 1,000 DVDs and a couple of thousand books (that's what happens when you're married to a film professor). And I have loads of sewing and craft supplies. It's a darling house, and it was even featured in the Hidden Garden tour in 2006. Gorgeous landscaping, lots of built-in shelving and storage things.

But Drummer Boy is starting college next year, and dorms are expensive. I would love for him to have his own room so he's not sharing a bunk bed with his middle school brother. Am I greedy? Unreasonable? I don't think so. Just getting a little claustrophobic.

And one of the biggest perks? You get to have sue-donym as your backyard neighbor!

So, know anyone who wants to buy a cute little dollhouse with a beautiful garden that looks a lot bigger from the outside?

I don't want to study!

I'm sick of Stats. I don't want to study anymore. If I'm lucky, I'll end up with the same C+ I got in 1984. Waaaaa.

But we're going to Phoenix for Thanksgiving, so I'm still happy! Sunshine, warmth, yay!

I Hate Diabetes

Okay, so you know how much I love Heidelberg.

I hate diabetes even more. Elvira has both Type I and Type II diabetes. Type I means she can't manufacture her own insulin because her pancreas shut down. Type II means she can't absorb the insulin she is injected with. So on top of all the insulin she takes in, she also takes an oral medication (twice daily) every single day of her life to open up her cells so they will accept insulin. She used to have seven, count them, seven shots a day at a minimum. Sometimes up to 12 if she was sick or had trouble getting her blood sugar down. Then she got her insulin pump, which has made things different, but not a whole lot easier.

I just spent the last 30 minutes trying to upload all the readings from her pump onto the computer, figure out why the stupid monitor that is attached to it isn't working, fixing it, reassembling everything about six stinking times, because you don't know if the monitor is working until you put it all together again, and then trying to reattach it to a sleeping teenager. Envious? Don't be. Because as frustrated and mad as I get at this STUPID disease, Elvira has it way worse than I will ever have it. If she forgets to test, her pump malfunctions so she doesn't receive insulin, or she gets sick and her blood sugar launches into the stratosphere, I don't feel a thing. I used to get up every morning at 3 am to test her (doctor's orders), and sometimes give her shots in her sleep or try to rouse her long enough to take in some carbs so she wouldn't go into a coma during the night. But that's not what we do anymore. She seems to be able to tell in her sleep when she's low and wakes up and tests. But my neighbor Sue had a sister who went into a diabetic coma, suffered brain damage, and died months later. So that's in my mind every single day of my life. I used to have nightly dreams that I went in to wake her and she had died. Will she still be here to graduate from high school? Will she be healthy enough to go away to college? What if she or her husband loses their insurance? Will she tell us so we can make sure she gets her medications? Will I outlive her?

She told me awhile ago that even on her best day, she still feels sick. She remembers a little bit what it was like not to have diabetes, but she was diagnosed when she was eight, seven years ago, and the memory is almost gone. Even before she was sick with this, she was still ill with a thyroid disease. So she would have to remember right after she turned five what it was like to feel healthy.

How did this happen to her? My grandmother had a brother with Type I, so maybe I caused this. Sweetie's sister has the same thyroid disease, so maybe it came from him. The doctor said it was probably triggered by a virus, and I remember she was sick a few weeks before she was diagnosed. What if I had taken her in to the doctor instead of just treating a little cold at home? Could they have done anything? Probably not. I blame myself every single day for this. Being the Diabetes Nazi doesn't help things--she gets very angry with me and things get worse quickly. Backing off doesn't help either. She's a busy girl, and it's easy to forget to jab your finger with a lancet and squeeze the blood onto a test strip five times a day. I'd sure want to forget that.

I don't blame her at all. I'm totally on her side. I just hate diabetes so much.

Yes We Can!

Wow! What a night! So exciting! We all six stayed up late to watch Pres.-Elect Obama's speech. Very moving and inspiring. I thought Sen. McCain's speech was great, too. Very gracious. I'm thrilled the whole thing is over.

I miss Chicago like crazy today. If we still lived there, Sweetie and I would have grabbed the kids and headed down to Grant Park. I love that park--it's where I fell in love with Chicago when I was 13 years old. The picture above is of the crowd leaving the amazing party for Pres. Obama last night. I'm going to love saying that, by the way.

I am so hopeful for the future. The sun is peeking through the clouds and things are going to get better. And my awesome nephew Jacob is home from Iraq for good! And maybe his brother Robert won't even have to go a year from now.

Why were people so afraid of this? I got so many emails with weird rumors and generally stupid things in them about Obama. Concerned neighbors came by to warn me of his "true" background (socialist, Muslim, terrorist, take your pick). I had students who were literally in tears because their parents had them so worked up about all the terrible things that would happen if Obama were elected. Kids were fighting with each other, spouting nonsense they had heard at home. They had no idea what they were saying, they just wanted to fight. You know, no matter who won, the sun would have come up today and life would have gone on. Take a deep breath, people.

Now I just have to wait for my parents to calm down...

I Love Heidelberg

I love Heidelberg, and I'll tell you lots of reasons why.

* Until I was married, it was the longest I had ever lived in one place at a time--almost 3 years.
* My brother graduated from High School in the castle.
* My sister had her prom--in the castle.
* We had school field trips--in the castle.
* Our MIA rode our bikes from our uber cool chapel across the river to--the castle.
* We had ward picnics on the banks of the Neckar River while they illuminated the castle with fireworks.
* It still gets me choked up when I see pictures of it or hear the name "Heidelberg."
* My little sister was born there.
* It was the last place my family lived before my brother left for college and we kids were all split up.
* I saw my first opera--The Student Prince--with my mother--in the courtyard of the castle.
* I made a friend for life--Holly.

Saturday morning Holly and I met for breakfast here in Provo. We've known each other since we were ten. They had just moved to Heidelberg from Okinawa, and my dad had just finished a year away from us in Korea. We lived in different housing areas, so we didn't go to elementary school together. But we became fast friends through our ward. We had only joined the Church two years before, so I looked to her and the other girls to "show me the ropes."

We went to each other's birthday parties, Girls Camp, Primary, and navigated all the catty girl-smack from the other Beehives. She never made fun of my incredibly ugly swimsuit with the apron. I don't know if I've ever had a "best friend" because I generally moved every year and I sort of never developed that skill, but Holly would have to be way up there.

Her family is awesome. Her parents were so kind to me, and her brothers and sister were annoying and cute. I was the youngest so having younger siblings around was a new thing for me. But then, when I was 11, my mom had my sister Emily, and Holly's dad delivered her. He even forced my dad to come into the delivery room and watch. Yay Dr. H! I don't think anyone else would have been successful in that endeavor.

Then my dad got his own battalion to command, and we moved away--two hours north. I was devastated. It was not a beautiful city like Heidelberg. Giessen had been nearly completely destroyed during WW2, and it had a very cold, industrial feel to it. Not really its fault, I suppose, since the bombs were allied after all. I made new friends, was yearbook editor, got my first kiss, visited Amsterdam, Paris, London, Switzerland, Austria, and left just over a year later. We army brats pack a lot of living into a short period of time. It's sort of an occupational hazard. But I was sooo homesick for Heidelberg, and I really wanted to go back.

So my Mom and Dad stuck me on the train and let me ride all by myself back to Heidelberg, where Holly and her parents picked my up at the train station and whisked me away to their apartment. We went to a middle school dance so I could see my other friends from school, and I got to spend the whole weekend with Holly. It's true that you really can't go home again, but this was pretty darn close.

Over the years, we've both lived lots of places. Our family visited Holly's family in Emporia, Kansas (aka The Coldest Place on Earth). They lived next door to my surrogate parents, Jack & Janet. Jack was our bishop in Heidelberg and the doctor that stitched my face back together after my run-in with a chain-link fence in sixth grade. I saw Holly pretty regularly in the HFAC at BYU. I would be coming out of class and she was always rehearsing with some choral group or another. She had a gorgeous voice even when we were kids. Then she went on a mission, I graduated, and we lost touch for lots of years.

But now we're back in touch, and I'm so happy. She just lives in Orem, one town away. And you know the best part? Even if I had just met her today, I would still love her. We can talk for hours about new stuff, not stuff that happened when we were 10. That is the proof of a real friendship, I think. Lots of people can reminisce, but most people can't still find things in common. She loves the same books Elvira and I do, we both have close families, love opera, and we see things alike in a lot of ways. And she has one of the best laughs in the universe. You can not help but grin from ear to ear and be instantly happy if you hear it.

Heidelberg was very good to me.