July 22, 2007

Mike: “If you want to be a part of my life, you will come out to the garage right now.”

Leaves.

I, hesitantly, follow.

Mike: “It’s like the time your Aunt Irene had the same lawn mower for 20 YEARS and then realized the other day that if she pushed the right little button, it would become a SELF PROPELLED lawn mower. It’s like that, Babe, JUST LIKE THAT.” (crazy bugged out eyes)

Mike: “Okay, get down on the floor of the car, put your face right here so you can see up underneath the dashboard, leave your legs hanging out of the door.”

I slowly, cautiously, lower myself to the shag red flooring of my husband’s 1980 Ford Grenada, the one that my husband has been driving for a year now without a heater in it. The one that he has stubbornly refused to take to the mechanic’s because he couldn’t bear to emasculate himself even further. The one that he has been driving around during the winter with a CANDLE in it for warmth. An OPEN FLAME in his car. A real live wax candle that he placed in his cup holder, LIT ON FIRE and then drove around town with in an attempt to stabilize the temperature within his MANMOBILE.

Mike: “See this little lever? That’s what signals my heater to come on. And see how it’s not connected to the wire right there? Well, the WIRE is what signals the lever to signal to the HEATER to start blowing HEAT!”

Me: “Okaaaaaaay……”

Mike: “So, the wire goes BACK ON the lever and then I have HEAT. Watch this. Watch this. Watch me while I fix my own heater right now. Watch this. Are you watching?”

Me: About two inches from his face “Yes, babe, I’m watching.”

Mike takes the wire and puts it back on the lever. Just like that, it’s done.

Mike: “I’m not even a Man, sweetie. I’m NOT EVEN A MAN. Like when I get mad at you for never cooking or cleaning, I don’t deserve a WOMAN, I’m not a MAN. I drove around for an entire year with a burning candle about 7 inches away from that stupid little lever. Today I googled ‘Heater Ford Grenanda’ and within 15 minutes, it was fixed.”

Me: “I know I’m supposed to boost you up right now, remind you of all the reasons you’re really manly, but …… this really deserves a moment of silence.”

………………

Me: “Mmmkay, I’ve got to go blog about this now. Peace out.”

July 18, 2007

First off, you guys totally pulled through for me on the name crisis. AWESOME suggestions and it’s always fun to hear what some find repulsive and what others find beautiful. Several of you reminded me that we need to chill out and wait to see what these kids are already named. And they’re right. We had planned to keep their names as middle names but we’re going to stay open minded about keeping their first names as first names.

Maybe we can give them new middle names and call them by their middle names?….. My kid brother does that. His name is Michael Burke and he has always gone by Burke (He’s named after Dr. Burke on Grey’s Anatomy) (No he’s not) (But seriously, now, everyone thinks of Dr. Burke when Burke says his name is Burke) (Well, everyone that is TV-Obsessed, Celebrity stalkerish like myself) (I love you Brangelina!) (Speaking of Celebrities, the TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition is in Boise right now building a house for a family that, I’m thinking, must be characters out of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” because it’s just UNREAL how tragic their situation is, or was, or is still but not as bad now).

Well in the mean time we have come up with some additional back up names that we can actually both agree on. They are:

Chaz
Sonny
Cohen for Boys

Sarai for a girl, in addition to Yenna and Biset

I realize that you have to be a certain kind of someone to like these names. For example, you probably have to love 70’s sitcoms to really appreciate Chaz and Sonny since they both kind of remind me of tight pants and Afros and a little bit of Mork and Mindy.

So there’s that.

Next up, here is a picture of my sister, myself and my Dad:

My sister invited us to a party thrown at the house of her Employer. It was not a typical party. But, then again, her Boss is not a typical Boss. He promotes a rather unconventional office environment. Picture working at Google’s Headquarters but also throw in a couple mechanical bulls and shots of tequila. But whatever he does to promote such an er, invigorating office environment CLEARLY MUST WORK because this house was the NICEST house I have ever been in in my life. There were statues of Zeus and a marble bar in the FOYER. Need I say more? So anyway, here we are at Boise’s version of “Lifetimes of the Rich and Famous” and in walks my Dad …….. with a STOGIE in his mouth. That’s right, a Cuban cigar. An illegal Cuban cigar, mind you.

Audrey’s Boss gives him a big bear hug (they know each other) and so begins my Dad’s evening of hobnobbing it up with the “in” crowd. He does this. He does these things, chats it up with strangers while smoking a cigar in the nicest house I have ever been in in my life. And somehow, it works and they love him.

My husband was tripping out. He was mind-blown by it all. By the vast array of walks of life in the place and the unexpected personalities that accompanied them. And then, like out of a sheer Mike fantasy, in walks the BAND. The Reggae band and they were as OPP-O-SITE as could be. They were Hippies of the truest kind. The skirts, the jewelry, the dreads, the drums, the incense, it all poured in as they paraded through this million dollar home to set up their equipment on the balcony of the Foyer. And Mike was entranced. He was gone, he was now a National Geographic Journalist who had been accepted into the inner confines of this secret reclusive world. A world where Hippies and Suits shared a laugh and danced to Reggae music together. It was like a vision of what the world COULD be.

I dragged Mike out of the party as we were leaving, after he carried a couple speakers for the Hippies and then shook hands with the Employer, and it was NON STOP talking for the entire 30 minute drive back to our side of town. NON STOP.

“Did you hear that girl say that she got her dress in PARIS!” and “Did you see that the caterers were carrying around trays of COORS LIGHT! I didn’t expect Coors Light, did you?” and “Did you see the calves on the Employers WIFE! She could kick my a**!” and “Can you even believe that POOL!”

And although Mike felt somewhat uncomfortable in surroundings so nice, he came away with an epiphany.

“You really have to go for it, don’t you? To make that kind of money, you have to risk it all like the Employer did. You don’t make THAT kind of money by swiping your time card. You have to risk it and throw your money down on something you believe in.”

And although Mike doesn’t have any source of affinity for risking his money to make the kind of money that the Employer makes, he came away with an appreciation for people LIKE the Employer. People like me, his wife who drives him crazy with big dreams and big projects. His wife that gave him ulcers when she announced they would be buying investment homes and his wife that gave him Irritable Bowel Syndrome when she announced she would be switching careers. His wife that is currently, as we speak, trying to convince him to build a Hotel/Nightclub/Spa.

And this is a VERY hard concept for my cute husband of mine because the cute husband of mine would rather put his money in a shoebox and drive his 1980 Ford Grenada without a heater forever.

But he’s married to me. And I know where he keeps the shoebox. And yet, we find a happy medium.

July 14, 2007

When I told my husband this, he looked at me and exclaimed “NO, absolutely not. You have REALLY lost it this time, we are NOT naming our son ‘Crisis’ we might as well name him ‘Tsunami’!!”

And then I was all, “Um, no, I am having a crisis in regards to boy names. I’m having a boy-name crisis.”

“Oh. Well, good. I mean, not good that you are having a crisis, but good that you don’t want to name our son Crisis.”

The thing is, Mike would respond with the same disdain and repulsion as he did above whether the name meant “a crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point” or not. You could insert the name ‘Sam’ or ‘Will’ or even ‘Charlie’ and he would exclaim “CHARLIE?! We might as well have his middle name be ‘and the Chocolate Factory.’”

And it’s like that with every. single. name I mention. Hence, the boy-name crisis.

Roble. “That’s disgusting. That’s like ROBLE-COP or something”

Kelile. “Would you like some cream with your Kelile? Kelile and Cream? no” (I’m pretty sure he is talking about Kahlua here)

Enzi. “Enzi, like Enzyme?”

Esi. “Esi, like East SIDE. EAST SIDE BALLERS!”

Bates. “Ya, and if he someday wants to work with horses in a stable, his hired help can call him ‘Master’. ‘Master Bates’ Nice Jamie, good one.”

Ezekiel. “Sure! Or even like Moses or Judas or Cain! We should name our son Cain!”

You see what he does? I even told him how I had a College buddy who’s name was Ezekiel and how everyone called him ‘Zeke’ and I thought that was super cute. I’m PRETTY sure no one called him Cain. Or Judas for that matter.

But he won’t have it. He shoots them all down. He thinks we need to see pictures and see faces before we can properly come up with suitable names. Oh, did you forget? We are getting two kids, so we need to have TWO names each, for each gender.

Which brings me to our girls names. Our lovely, wonderful girls names. I don’t know if I even want to mention them in case there are vulturous name-stealers among us. You carnivorous name stealers! Stay away!

But, I’ll tell you. We have Yenna and then we have…. nothing else.

But Yenna! I adore this name, love it, love it, love it. And Mike loves it too. It’s like an African version of “Hannah” or something. And we love it. We keep going back and forth on the second girls name of Biset. Which, we love and it is African as well but I think it sounds too beautiful. It’s too pretty I think. I feel like it sounds similar to Elizabeth and that a name so lacy and pretty doesn’t sit well next to Delaney, which is more of a cute, punky and spunky name in my opinion.

So, Biset might be too pretty. But Yenna we love. And so far, that’s it! That’s all we can agree on.

So, Internets, do you have anything? Any great boy names? Any great girl names? Anyone want to back me up on the above mentioned super awesome African boy names? African or not, we need names. We had the awesome name of Miles picked out for the domestic placement that fell through but it seems wrong to transfer that name over to this situation. I can’t really do it. I can’t do Miles again.

And, I know that our kids will come with names and some people keep those names. And we plan to keep those names as middle names. Please don’t flame me for wanting to give our kids new first names. Different strokes for different folks, alright?

July 10, 2007

Delaney, as I’m putting her to bed while we were visiting Mike’s family in Utah over the 4th: “I love Grandma J’s toys”

Me: Ya, Grandma J has some great toys.

Delaney: We don’t have ANY good toys.

(Me laughing)

Delaney: We just have a bunch of Earwigs all over our house.

Thanks, everyone, for your support during our Plague of the Earwig. Your words of encouragement, thoughts and prayers during our most difficult time truly made a difference. I thank you. And I offer sincere apologies to those that had acid flashbacks and nightmares for nights upon nights after reading my disturbing account of the happenings within my own home, within my own sanctuary. I certainly didn’t want all of you to have to suffer as I have suffered. I did not wish to inflict my own misery upon you, my dear readers. I would rather bear the entire brunt of this and suffer alone.

They were in my shower and were on my toilet seat as I was taking a pee.

But thank you again and please go in peace, do not suffer any longer.

They were in our Cheezits and in our shoes.

I love you dear readers. Do not bear my burden even one second longer.

Go. Just go.

It has been an emotional week for us, not only because we LOST to Earwigs, we lost our dignity as humans to little wriggly, squirmy bugs that drove us from our home, that TOOK OVER our home, that slept in our beds and recorded their favorite insect shows on our Tivo, but also because we found out that our Fugee friends moved away.

Ya, I know, right? What the heck happened?!

We are still trying to figure that out ourselves, really. We literally went from spending 3 days a week with them, taking them to English classes, taking them shopping, taking them swimming and to the movies and babysitting Baby Fugee, to nothing and then they moved. Without telling us. To Texas. As in, far far away.

We feel super guilty about it because about 3 weeks before they moved, we stopped seeing them. We didn’t break up with them, per se, we just needed a little wee break was all. Did I mention how it was 3 days a week? As in, 1-2-3 days within 7 days over and over again? So when their session of English classes ended and they didn’t need us to taxi them around as much, we sort of, kind of backed off for 3 weeks FULLY intending to pick right back up with it after our little Fugee Holiday.

But then I emailed our IRC office and was told that “Your Fugees moved to Texas. Did nobody tell you?”

Uh, no. Nobody told us.

So now we totally feel like garbage. Our Fugees probably thought we were mad at them or done with them and they never called us to say Goodbye. And now they moved to TEXAS and we feel like we lost our friends. Our non-English-speaking, non-public-restroom-using, so-in-love-with-America African Refugee friends.

Delaney is up in arms about the whole thing. She keeps asking about Baby Fugee and then screaming “But, I didn’t WANT him to move to Texas!” And we didn’t either. But from what I can gather, the Fugees paid for non-refundable airline tickets to visit Mama Fugee’s long lost brother in Dallas and instead of buying round trip tickets, they bought one way tickets and then upon realizing this, rearranged their entire lives accordingly by MOVING there instead. I guess we all have to accept the consequences of our mistakes, but really, this seems extreme.

I worry about them. Dallas Texas seems scary. And big. Even to me and I speak English and have a fairly firm grasp on the proper rules of public restroom etiquette and how to fill out an employment application. I worry about them and at the same time, I am annoyed at their disregard of the IRC Office’s advice. Apparently, they were warned (in Swahili) by the IRC office here of the VAST differences between Boise and Dallas, of the MAJOR changes they would encounter and the challenges that would be waiting for them. They were told, in detail, that the rents were more and the city was much larger and their work commute would be longer.

But they went anyway. I don’t know whether to commend them for doing what they feel they are capable of and going for their American dream or if I should call all the Dallas Hospitals in hopes of rescuing them. Either way, I am sad that they left. Good Luck Fugees, we’ll miss you.

The IRC Office asked if they could match us with a new family, an Ethiopian family. So time to dry the eyes and jump back in I guess. There are more scared and excited families out there who need us to show them episodes of the Simpsons and how to play on an xbox 360. Our work is not yet done.

July 1, 2007

Oh hey, what’s new? How’s life? Nothing much? That’s nice, I WISH I COULD SAY THE SAME.

We have been cursed.

You’d think we had opened King Tut’s Mummy Tomb or something because it’s bad. I’m talking a curse of epic proportions. A hex. A jinx.

Either that or it’s the end of days around here because we have Earwigs, people. We have hundreds and hundreds of Earwigs in and around our house right now, so many that I am re-swallowing a little bit of vomit that just came up into my mouth again, a bodily reaction that occurs just by typing the word ‘Earwig’ as I sit here.

It all began about 2 weeks ago when I started noticing 1 or 2 earwigs a day in the house. Actually, back up, it all started about 2 months ago when my really cute husband tried to set up the new sprinkler system to where we could embark on a small Agricultural business of “starter Rain Forest kits” out of our own itty bitty backyard. Our lawn was a virtual swamp for weeks and weeks, which was kinda fun at first because Delaney and her girlfriends could take mud baths and cook mud pies but then after about 5 mud baths, 3 mud pies and a dozen ridiculous attempts at lawnmowing up a marshland, it wasn’t so fun anymore. Little did we know that our brazen carelessness and child-like over usage of water would be creating a literal petrie-dish of insect breeding. The breed of choice? Earwigs.

So, we continued along our enjoyable life-paths of waking and bathing and feasting and sleeping and all the while the earwigs where out there, in our yard, just multiplying and multiplying like something out of “Arachnophobia”.

And so back to where I was, I started noticing 1 or 2 of them a day. On the wall in the hallway, on the rug in the living room, on the cupboard door in the kitchen. And each time, I would be all “Gross! BABE! BAAAAAAAAABE! Cumeere! There’s another earwig in here, come kill it!” and each time he would make a mental note to buy some pest spray at Home Depot.

Well. After about a week of the aforementioned routine, Mike remembered to pick up some bug spray at the store. Awesome. We’re delivered from our hell, right?

You is so wrong honey.

It’s only just begun.

Mike puts down the bug poison crap along the outside perimeter of the house and calls it good. We put Delaney down for the night and start getting ready for bed. Well, this isn’t what REALLY happened at this segue, but I’ll come back to this.

Enter: SUPER CRAZED OUT OF CONTROL EARWIGS

Mike came out of the computer den and I came out of the bedroom to meet each other in the Kitchen. We were talking when Mike saw one. Then he saw another one. Then I saw one. And another one. And another one. And another one. And AAAHHHHHHH, They’re EVERYWHERE! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!

Mike jumps into panic mode, his hunter and gatherer mode, his protect-the-women mode. He breaks into a mad sweat and starts going crazy, killing all the earwigs. But he can’t kill them fast enough, they’re literally everywhere, probably 30 of them as we scurried through the house.

Mike is getting more and more worked up and I am outright LOSING MY MIND when it hits me: our wee child. I must save her. I bolt for the stairs as I yell over my shoulder, “I’M GOING IN FOR THE KID! I’VE GOT TO SAVE HER!”

Mike is chasing after me. “Don’t wake up the child! She’s fine! It’s just a few earwigs! We’ll be fine!”

Me: “Let me break this down for you: WE ARE NOT SLEEPING HERE TONIGHT”

Mike: “Yes we are, it’s fine, I’ve almost killed them all!”

Me: “Oh yeah because their curfew is 11:00 and then they all go to bed for the night…”

Mike: “Please don’t wake the kid up”

Me: “I’m waking the kid up”

Mike: “Jamie, Nooooooo—”

Kid’s up.

Mike: “I cannot believe you woke her up”

Me: “Honey, there are earwigs all over her room!”

Mike: “No there’s not, you’re just a little freaked out is all, we are all staying here tonight, put her back to bed, earwigs are perfectly harmless”

Me: (totally calm voice) “There’s one on your left butt cheek right now”

He starts violently slapping his own butt, dancing around, TOTALLY freaking out and has ALL of his clothes off in about 2.2 seconds.

Delaney, who has been sitting on my lap comatose this whole time, sleepily asks “Why is Daddy taking all his clothes off?” to which I answer “Because Daddy had a perfectly harmless little earwig on him, Honey, that’s why.”

Mike is …. beyond pissed right now because 1. he looked like a total freakin circus act just then and 2. he was exhausted and 3. (this goes back to the spot I said I would come back to) he was frustrated because I had promised him some fancy hanky-pank in the bedroom that night and he was quickly realizing that the earwigs were, um, not adding to the ambiance, IE: He wasn’t gettin no action and he knew it. Mike goes into what I like to call “Irrationally Pissed” mode.

This is when he starts spewing off craziness. He ACTUALLY tells me “You girls go then, I am staying here to KILL ALL THE EARWIGS. They are nocturnal, I can kill them throughout the night” like we are living in some sort of medieval fairytale in which Knight Michael will stay and sacrifice his life for the love of his land and defend our freedom by battling the earwig militia throughout the remainder of the fortnight.

I looked at him for a couple seconds, waiting for him to playback in his head what he just said out loud. The moment doesn’t come, the moment where he realizes how charmingly ridiculous he sounds, that he will stay the night, camouflaged in our own home, planning his desecration of these little insects.

I tell him to put his clothes back on, that we are going to my Dad’s house. And we did. And thus began our 3 nights of homelessness due to our home being invaded by earwigs.

The Exterminator came out the next day and told us he has NEVER seen an earwig infestation as bad as ours. He was actually chuckling to himself as he talked about it. He took us out around the house to show us where the nests were and we could see, literally, HUNDREDS of earwigs just scrambling for their lives after being doused with poison. Just hundreds of them, all throughout our yard, all along our house, hundreds of them. It was, to date, one of the grossest sights I have ever seen.

Since then, they have mostly died. Our patio is an earwig graveyard, each day we sweep up their carcasses, but it’s not over yet. They are still very much a problem. As are the sleepless nights around here. Nights in which I wake up 3 or 4 times to turn on the light and search for insects in the bed. And in which Mike gets aggravated because I woke him up again. And in which I ask him if he would still stay up all night and fight the nocturnal earwigs for me as my protector. But he only liked that idea when it was his idea for some reason.