I may be opening Pandora's Box here, especially for those of you that have known me a long time.
In fact, I am a little nervous about this post, but ever since I saw it on Brooke's blog I figured I would give it a try. Please, be gentle.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot-- or just from blogland-- anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Maybe you can help.

Do you have a lot of boxes laying around that you can give or let me borrow?
Do you know a store that regularly has boxes in the back that people can take?
Are you a box manufacturer willing to trade merchandise for my hearty recommendation to all my friends and family?

I'm expecting to hit at least 2 out of 3 of these...help me folks!

Know what? I think I skipped music Monday last week. Oops.
But I'll make up for it with a soft, sexy, lovely song tonight.

I, along with millions of others, went through a huge Norah Jones phase when she first hit the scene several years ago. I could listen to her CD over and over without growing tired. I haven't thought of her much recently, but for some reason tonight I was reminded of how much I used to enjoy her music. It's soothing, wistful, romantic, sensual.

Come Away with Me (2002)


And let me take this chance to say hi to Amanda, whose blog I've been reading lately, and who has decided to do a musical Monday (with a twist) of her own. I enjoy finding out what kind of music people are listening to and loving. So if anyone else out there wants to jump on the music Monday bandwagon...please do!

I just had an out of body experience.

Really! I did. I typed my name and suddenly became overwhelmed while looking at it. It looked so foreign to me. It was like I was seeing it for the first time. I thought, is this me? Is this what other people see when they look at my name? This name is sort of short and cute and bouncy. It doesn't even seem like my name. Have I been called this my entire life? Is my person somehow wrapped up in this 5 letter word?

For a few minutes I felt completely separate from my name. It was like it was not a part of me at all, and I was only a casual observer thinking about the look, feel, and sound of the name Becky. It's hard to describe exactly what was going on in my mind.

I've had this feeling with other words before. Sometimes if I use a word too many times, too quickly, it starts to look and sound strange. But that had never happened with my own name.

Has this ever happened to you?

I'm covering two incidents of trauma...and both involve hair.

First, Cody was traumatized when I showed him this photo I took of Nate yesterday.


Nate put this get-up on himself and came in to show me. I was a little surprised, and couldn't resist snapping his picture. He will probably hate this photo one day. Yep, I can almost guarantee he is going to hate it. Maybe almost as much as Cody does.

Then this afternoon we traumatized our youngest by using Cody's beard trimmer to basically shear the back of his head. (I know, I know, Cody doesn't have a beard. But he did grow one as an experiment about a year and a half ago so we still have the trimmer left over from that time.)

Lucas was NOT happy about his first hair cut. He was highly suspicious of the beard trimmer before we began. Then suspicion turned to terror. I tried to hold his screaming head still while Cody quickly trimmed. I should probably mention that neither of us had a clue about what we were doing. We just had a theory that the trimmer might do a pretty good job of removing the little blond mullet from our child. And I admit that we didn't even really care about how good this was going to look when we were done. I took the other two kids to a fancy kids' salon for their first cuts. I decided that this time, instead of forking out $20, we would just try it ourselves. Especially since at 18 months, we figured he probably doesn't really care what his hair looks like. Besides, if we messed it up too bad, we could always fall back on the fancy kids' salon to mend our efforts. Fortunately, it turned out cute (not perfect, but cute.) I am always amazed how that first cut can transform a child from baby-ish to more kid-like instantly. He looks so grown up!

Lucas has figured out the magic of the "magic word."

After grunting and motioning with his hand for a few seconds, he is apt to toss in a "please" in hopes that it will get him what he wants. Know what? It usually does. Dang it if that child doesn't say please in the cutest way. I just can't resist. So as long as the item he is wanting isn't a knife or something, I like to go ahead and let him have it. That reinforces it, so he keeps using the word "please" more and more. And it melts my heart every time.

I definitely prefer his cute little "please" to what I refer to as "the summoning." When he wants a drink of milk, he stands by the fridge and starts yelling "MAMA MAMA" at the top of his voice until I come. When I enter the room he looks up and calmly says "milk." I'm thinking, can you not come find me, calmly say milk, and just skip the abrasive yelling? Is that too much to ask? I would still get it for you, baby. But it's kind of hard to change the method after one is already so embedded.

Yes, I stole my title from a children's book. I think it sums up my day quite well.

I must admit there were a few good moments, but overall I went from one bad event to another.

It began when I left the house at 9:30 AM. A bird flew into the front windshield of my van. Smack! Birds often swoop around and seem to be in danger of hitting the car window before pulling up to safety. This bird didn't pull up quickly enough. It hit so hard that I flinched, closed my eyes and shrieked. I'm glad I didn't have a wreck. I felt terrible about it. I almost cried.

I made it to the church building to purchase tickets for Hawaiian Falls tomorrow evening. But I was greeted with the horrible news that the tickets were sold out. There were more tickets coming later. But I was really bummed, as any mother of a 5, 3, and 1 year old would be, at the prospect of having to load everyone up for another trip to buy tickets. I really just wanted to be done with it.

So we headed to Office Max instead to buy the copier paper I need to print a newsletter this Friday. I had the church's tax-free and credit card. But Office Max was sold out of the heavy weight ledger paper I need. This was my only chance to purchase this, so I had to buy a lesser weight paper which will not look as nice. That's no-good.

We drove through Sonic on the way home. When I unloaded the food I realized that they had forgotten to put in the honey mustard dipping sauce for my popcorn chicken. I know that isn't the worst thing that could ever happen. But it continued to dampen my already darkening spirits.

Then something very bad happened. Nate started screaming and crying that his mouth hurt too bad to eat. He and Ava both had some fever yesterday but no other symptoms. Now suddenly their mouths were hurting. So I looked inside to find blisters. My regular pediatrician was not open today (of course) so we got an appointment with his back-up. The doctor had to do strep tests on both of them. I ended up paying $290 for him to tell me that they have the hand, foot, mouth virus that is going around and there is no treatment. We are now trapped inside the house for a week.

During dinner, I spilled spaghetti sauce on my shirt, so I grabbed the tank top I had just gotten from the dryer to change clothes. I found that it was covered in mottled blue stains. Something else in the wash must have bled. It's ruined. And I'm going to go ahead and make a guess that the spaghetti sauce isn't going to come out of the other shirt. My record with stains is deplorable.

We did have a nice rain this afternoon. I stayed inside because I felt certain I was in danger of being struck by lightening today.