My poem from last semester

I wrote this poem last semester. I thought I'd post it....

Wedding Ring

On my left hand is a golden ring,
A circular symbol of eternal love,
Scratched from years of wear
Silently declaring to the world
I am taken.

I've worn my ring for so long
That it has created an indent,
A silhouette on my finger--
Like the marks left in carpet
By heavy furniture.

Its diamonds refract light
Into tiny sparkles and rainbows,
Light I carry wherever I go.
People say diamonds are a girl's best friend;
My best friend gave me the diamonds.

I noticed the weight of the ring
As it was lovingly placed on my finger
By a warm heart and nervous hand.
Now I notice its absence when I take it off,
Like a piece of me is missing.

I rarely remove the band,
Only to make bread;
The dough pulls our grime left from
Diapers, dishes, daily duties.
Maybe I should clean it more often.

I like the bits of grime and scratches.
They are tokens of the journey,
Memories etched in soft metal--
From our June wedding day
To purchasing a minivan

College, Coca-Cola, kids
Star Trek and McDonalds,
The birth of each daughter,
Date night every Friday,
Sunny days and stormy weather--

Holding hands through it all...
The greatest adventure of my life.

Wedding Ring

Last week I lost the center diamond out of my wedding ring. I was very disappointed, and I haven't found the diamond yet. I told Jim that since we were married in the temple we should have bought an extended warranty on the ring. Jim said that on the bright side, my ring lasted longer than most marriages. Ahh, there always is a bright side, isn't there?

Jim took me to Target and bought me a beautiful sterling silver and cubic zirconium ring for fifteen dollars to wear. It's funny, I have spent a lot of time reflecting this week about my wedding ring and its symbolism. You know what I've learned? My cubic zirconium ring sparkles just as much as my diamond ring (actually it sparkles more because the stones are larger), and it shows the world I am married just as well as my diamond ring. I actually really like me new ring, but I'll admit there is a lot of sentimental value attached to my other wedding ring. It's not the value of the diamond that is the loss so much as it is the fact that I have worn my wedding ring through everything over the past nine years. On the other hand, I now have a ring I can wear and not worry about damaging. I have a quote on my wall (it looks like vinyl lettering but I actually bought it at the Dollar Tree for a buck) that says, "The best things in life aren't things." I guess losing my diamond is a good reminder of that.

Mandy Jane Designs

My friend Mandy is an amazing photographer and has done some really neat things with temple pictures. Her blog is www.mandyjanedesigns.blogspot.com . She makes temple picture prints similar to the antiqued pictures that you see for sale at Deseret Book and Costco, but she charges a lot less. She also has her own style of temple photos. I bought one of the Idaho Falls temple with red tulips in the foreground. She will soon have prints available of the Twin Falls, Idaho temple. Currently she has Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Logan temple pictures. On the side of her creative photo art blog she has a link to her photography blog. You should check it out as well. She did a photo shoot with my girls last year, and I just loved the pictures!

Earwigs in my garden...

Warning: This image is not for queasy stomachs.... Oh, I guess I should have put that in the heading BEFORE you all looked....

I hate earwigs. They are vile squirmy little creatures who like to hide in moist, dark places, lurking in the shadows, just waiting to frighten some poor, unsuspecting soul....

Earwigs have been a curse and a plague to me since I was a kid. I used to find them crawling across the floor of my childhood bathroom, their ugly brown bodies and pincers displayed upon the burnt orange linoleum. I used to get a small wad of toilet paper and cringe as I felt the pop of the exoskeleton, and then I would gag as the strong putrid smell of the dead little creature wafted up from is crushed remains. I sometimes threw the carcass and toilet paper in the garbage, but I was always afraid the bug might not be completely deceased, and could potentially crawl out after me. I decided flushing the pests down the toilet was preferable.

I have a good reason to despise earwigs. They not only used to crawl across the floor, but they more often were found hiding in most inconvenient places. As a kid I shared a bathroom with my brother and sister. We had an adorable little orange (to match the linoleum) wooden whale toothbrush holder. I believe it had four holes drilled in to hold our toothbrushes in the upright position. Now, what happens when you put a toothbrush in a holder like that? The left over water drains down the handle of the toothbrush and puddles at the bottom of the holder. The earwigs thought this was great, and we used to pull our toothbrushes out to find earwigs on the handles of them or lounging in the bottom of the holes. Here's something worse--at one time my mom bought us toothbrush covers for the heads of our toothbrushes, and, yep, you guessed it, we had to stop using them because we would pull our brushes out and find earwigs laying like lumps of toothpaste across the bristles.

After I moved from the country to the city I wasn't plagued by earwigs as much. My life was much improved, and some of my anxiety decreased when I brushed my teeth or moved things around while cleaning the bathroom. I let down my guard, relaxed, and lived to regret it. One day I decided to fill a plastic mug with cold ice water. I used the plastic straw that came with the cup (like the cups and straws you get at the hospital). I drew up a long suck of cool water, and I felt a hard piece of something hit the inside of my mouth. At the same moment I tasted a foul acrid taste. I spit into the sink, thinking I had sucked up a piece of rotten food that might have become lodged in the straw during its cycle in the dishwasher. What I saw, when I spit, was an earwig squirming in my sink. I was mortified. I spit, and spit, and spit. Then I brushed and brushed my mouth and tongue. To this day I can only drink out of those plastic straws if I'm in the hospital (like after having a baby), and then I throw the cup and straw away.

I've had an earwig in my mouth one other time. I used to tease my husband for always turning on the light to get a drink of water and rinsing his cup, even in the middle of the night. I used to simply leave the light off, fill the cup, and take a swig. I managed to nearly swallow an earwig that way, and I now ALWAYS rinse my cup before I drink out of it. I think it is a very good idea...

Okay, so now that you know more that you ever wanted to know about my past with earwigs, let's fast-forward to the present. I have a beautiful row of romaine lettuce growing in my garden, and four rows of corn. I decided to harvest some of the lettuce over the weekend, and guess what? It is absolutely FULL of earwigs and earwig poop. How can I eat something that appears to be crawling every time I touch it?! Last year earwigs ate all but two of my ears of corn, and it looks like they have the same idea this year as the corn is also already getting infested with earwigs. I decided to check the good old Internet for some home remedies for getting rid of earwigs. I found a suggestion for using tuna fish cans and some pantry ingredients and I decided to try it. Last night I put a can in my lettuce with the mixture, and what you see at the top of this blog is the results. That is a can full of dead earwigs. Impressive huh? All you do is mix one tablespoon each of soy sauce, molasses, and cooking oil. The soy sauce attracts the earwigs and the oil makes the can too slippery to climb out of and smothers the little pests. My dad said he heard earwigs are full of protein and soy should give them a nice taste for a stir fry.... Ugh, that is so DISGUSTING!!!!!!!! Another website said you can make the mixture with just soy sauce and cooking oil. I used molasses with the other ingredients. I also tried using a soup can because I only had one tuna can, but I didn't catch nearly as many earwigs in it, although I still did catch quite a few. Tuna cans seem like the way to go. Earwigs like to wander around at night, so put the cans out in the evening, nestled among the bases of the plants that are infested, and then dump the disgusting little bodies in the morning. I am going to put out more cans tonight..... Happy earwig hunting!

My Little Pony Games Online

My daughters really like My Little Ponies, and my daughter Jasmine asked me if I could find her a My Little Pony website online. It turns out that Hasbro, the makers of the My Little Pony toys has a really fun website. Jasmine loves playing on it, and I like it because it doesn't have a bunch of links to outside websites on the sides. I like to know my kids are going to be on the website I've chosen, not accidentally navigating off who knows where. The website is http://kids.hasbro.com/playskoolkids/?brandId=dad2af6e-1c43-11dd-bd0b-0800200c9a66 . My girls also enjoy getting on www.agkidzone.com to play games and watch videos of Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobby, and the Care Bears. This website does have a few advertisements at the top, but they coordinate with the games. There is the potential for kids to click them and be taken away from the webpage. This website is run by the American Greetings company. It is a really cute website, and I don't worry about my girls playing on it.

Clearance Vinyl

A lady that I know who has a vinyl business is cutting down on the products she offers and is selling several vinyl products at greatly reduced prices. You can check her website out at http://vinylsayings.com/Clearance.aspx.

The World of Webkinz

Meet Sparkplug, my mom's Webkinz pet. My daughter, Emily, has been begging me to get her a real pet for a while now. I am not a pet fan. I had pets as a child. They are fun at first, then you either grow tired of them or cleaning up after them, or else they die, whether from natural causes or untimely accidents (which is how most of my childhood pets met their demise). I can handle taking care of small children, apparently, but I can't manage to keep pets and plants alive, so I don't have either (except for my yearly futile attempt at raising a garden). I don't know why Emily is so bent on getting a pet anyway. Two years ago I let her get a tadpole to raise with her birthday money, and I forgot to buy it frog food when it matured (hey, I had literally just had a baby like the week before), and it died. Emily buried the pathetic little corpse in a shallow grave in our garden and marked the spot with a homemade headstone. I'm sure the decomposing frog gave the soil some much needed nutrients....

Anyway, I was growing tired of the whole pet thing, and Emily mentioned her desperation for a pet to her "teacher," the teacher assigned to oversee my teaching of Emily for IDVA. Her teacher suggested I consider getting her a Webkinz. I had to rather sheepishly admit that I had no idea what a Webkinz was (I'm not as cool of a mom as I would like to think I am), and after she explained it to me I thought it sounded like a great idea. For those of you who don't know what a Webkinz is, it is a stuffed animal you buy that comes with a code so you can take care of it in an online environment. I mentioned the Webkinz pet idea to my mom, who said, "Hey, I just bought one of those and had JoDee {that's my big sister} set it up for me. It's a lamb named Sparkplug."

My mom sent my girls a photo of Sparkplug and her username and password so that they could help her take care of him. Yes, Sparkplug is a boy, however, he is very fond of dressing in pink ballet clothes and red shiny shoes since my girls have taken over his care. He also has a lovely pink flowered bathtub and matching toilet, as well as a recently added pink oven/stove combination. The girls play games to earn money so they can buy food and other things for Sparkplug. Really, my mom spends time earning money for them because my girls can spend money a lot faster than they can earn it, surprise, surprise. I hope I'm not teaching them bad habits for real life by letting them call Grandma and ask her to earn them some money to spend on their pet...

Shall I divulge the truly sad thing about this whole Webkinz thing? The depressing truth is that I find playing with Sparkplug to be quite addictive. I keep wanting to try the games, dress the lamb, and pick out furniture. I even took it to an exercise class today, online of course, and the girls and I had a great time watching Sparkplug jump on the trampoline that Grandma bought it, and swim in the pool that Grandma earned the money for so my girls could get the thrill of buying it. Emily even bought it swim goggles and a swimming suit. I think flippers are next on her list of purchases.

Webkinz are now up there on my list of favorite toys, along with my past favorites of Cabbage Patch Dolls, Glow-Bugs, My Little Ponies, and Furbies.... Oh yeah, and my mom found my Furby from high school and brought it to my house for the girls to play with the last time she visited. I now find it slightly annoying, and it is currently sleeping on top of my fridge. It needs new batteries, which I am not at all sure I am going to replace. If anyone knows of a good home for the Furby, I may be willing to let you adopt him. We might need to hurry, though. I think my husband might be plotting an "unfortunate accident" for his future demise....