Surviving my own Stupidity, or Why Eleven Year Olds Shouldn't go Cow Tipping

Inspired by my friend Cindy (who was, in turn, inspired by "Anne of Green Gables"), I decided to write about a time when my own stupidity nearly got me killed.

As I looked back on my early years, I found enough instances to make me scared for what escapades my own children will get up to. Not all of the instances lend themselves to story telling, but a few are worth describing. So, after a bit of pondering, I've decided to write about a night full of adventure, danger, and, yes, stupidity.

I was ten or eleven at the time. The exact age escapes me, but since most of my best adventures occurred around that age, it's safe to assume it was one of those two. It started with with some plotting between two best friends, me and Jessica.

This picture's a year or two after the adventure.

I would have been just a little younger.

I don't know whose idea it originally was, but both of us concluded that it was somehow essential to our growing-up experience that we go cow tipping.

My house was the obvious choice when it came to staging the endeavor. The property just behind my house was over 70 acres with a herd of about 20 cows. Nobody lived there, and we had permission to play on the property. We usually avoided the cows and stuck to the barns, though--after all, barns didn't stamp their feet and snort at you if you got too close to their babies.

One momma cow in particular always made me nervous. She was huge and red, and she had one horn. And she didn't like kids.  This and other concerns, however, were incidental to our current adventure. After all, the cows would be asleep.

We went to bed at a reasonable hour--or at least, we went to my room, where we sat around wearing dark sweatshirts and debating whether or not to bring a flashlight. Finally we decided against it; after all, there were no city lights around, and the moon and stars were always bright enough to see by. Besides, we wouldn't want to run the risk of waking the cows up early by shining a light in their faces.

We waited until the fireflies were gone. We waited until it was completely dark. Even darker than we'd expected, actually, because clouds were completely covering the sky.

Carefully, we snuck out the window. (Actually, we weren't that careful, because I had floor-to-ceiling windows in my room, so all we had to do was slide it up a couple feet and step out onto the porch. Still, it seemed cooler to sneak out the window than to go into the next room over and use the door.)

The most likely place to find the herd was near the barns. We'd rarely ever seen the cows go into a barn, but they were fed near the barns, so it made sense that they'd sleep there.

Gravel crunched loudly under our feet, but it was too dark to avoid all the rocks and sink holes on the over-land route, so we stuck to the road. Soon the barns loomed, brown-black mountains against the blue-black of everything else. We could barely see their outlines. Still no sign of the cows.

"Where are they?" I whispered, "Do you see them?"
"No. Probably just a little further. Isn't the hay behind the barn?" Jessica whispered back.

In the end, it was so dark we didn't see them at all. But just as we passed the barn, we heard them. They were close. They seemed to be all around us, in fact. And they were definitely not asleep.

My mind was suddenly filled with the image of Big Red, and the size of hole her one horn could leave in me.

Being the confident, fearless eleven-year-olds that we were, we made a break for the covered hay bales. These were giant round bales, stacked two-high and mostly covered with plastic. The stack was 3 times our height, and we scrambled up and perched on the highest point we could find, shivering and listening to the cows chew their cuds. You don't know how ominous a sound that is until those cows have you surrounded in the dark.

I don't know how long we waited. We pretended to each other that we were just hanging out waiting for them to fall asleep so we could tip a few and go home; in truth, we were clinging to the hay for dear life waiting for our chance to run.

Eventually the herd moved off, and we dared to come down. We crunched our way back up the gravel road a bit more quickly than we'd come, slid my window up, and went to bed, promising to "try again another time."

We never did.

Surprises of Spring

Behind our house there's a steep downhill slope which quickly becomes a mass of evergreen trees. It looks so thick that I've never actually gone down there (which is strange for me, because once-upon-a-time I would have felt an irresistible need to explore such a place). 

A few days before Easter I walked out of the garage and looked over the hill, and I saw something white amidst the green.

Curious, I clambered down a few feet. This is what I saw:

This gorgeous lily was fighting its way up through the weeds and scratchy evergreens around it.

After exclaiming over it with Ryan, we came up with this theory: Someone bought a potted lilly. It died (or appeared to). They tossed it off the top of the hill to get rid of it.

But despite the circumstances and surroundings, it bloomed again.

Because it was a few days before Easter, my thoughts went first to resurrection. Then they turned to how we shouldn't judge others, because we don't know when someone might be spiritually sleeping instead of spiritually dead. Then I thought of Joseph in Egypt, who excelled and bloomed wherever he was placed.

By that point I didn't know what to write a blog post about, I just knew I wanted to share my beautiful lilly, which is in a place where nobody else is likely to ever see it (unless I drag them off behind my house to show them, which I admit I've already done with one friend).

So here it is, friends. Take your own lesson from it, or take your pick from those mentioned above. And don't forget to look around to see what surprises spring might throw your way.

Confessions of Ignorance

Today I followed a link to an article entitled, "50 things you should not say to autism parents." As I read the list, the thought that kept going through my mind was, how could someone think something like that, let alone say it? I don't know a lot about autism, but I do know enough to not say something like, "He just needs to apply himself more."

But, of course, it's easy to scoff at these types of comments when they're about something I think should be common sense. It's easy to forget that what may seem obviously rude or insensitive to me may be innocently-intended, merely a comment made in ignorance.

And now that I've given you a paragraph of abstract generalizations, here's my concrete example.

During Fall semester of 2010, I met an amazing girl named Cindy. We were in a class together, and though we'd only interacted a couple of times, we found out we had the same favorite author (those of you who aren't readers may not understand the instant bond that can create), and we became Facebook friends.

One day Cindy missed class, and I saw that she had posted something about not feeling well. I posted that I hoped she got better soon, and when I saw her in class a couple days later, we had a conversation something like this (it was a year and a half ago, so obviously it's not verbatim):

Me: "I'm glad you're here. I saw on Facebook that you weren't feeling well, and I saw you coughing today, but I'm glad you were well enough to come."


Cindy: "Oh, yeah, I had a rough day the other day. I have Cystic Fibrosis, so I always have a cough even when I'm not sick, but I do get sick a lot."


Me: "Oh man. Kind of like pregnancy, I guess, where you just never really feel well and it just kind of wears you down."

Yup. There it is folks. This is where you should be thinking things like, How could she even try to compare a life-long and ultimately fatal genetic illness with a temporary condition that brings so much joy at its conclusion? Or, That's so insensitive of her to say something like that when pregnancy is something so many women with Cystic Fibrosis can only dream about.


Well, I know that NOW.

This is something that I've felt bad about for the last year and a half, but I'm sure that, just like parents of children with autism, my friend Cindy gets insensitive comments like that all the time.

Getting to know Cindy provided an incentive for me to educate myself about Cystic Fibrosis. (If, like me in 2010, you have no idea what it is other than that it's "something medical," I recommend you read Cindy's own explanation of it here.) While I still don't know or understand all the many ways it affects the lives of those who have it and their immediate families, I at least have a basic understanding of what it is, and I'm slightly less likely to make ignorantly hurtful comments in the future.

I learned something valuable about myself from that conversation above, though. I learned that I'm in the biggest danger of making these types of comments when I'm faced with something I don't know anything about and I grasp at straws for a way I can relate it to my own experience. It's something most of us do automatically, because our own experience is the frame on which we stretch our view of the world.

But what if, instead of trying to relate it back to myself, I had focused on Cindy? What if I'd said, "What is Cystic Fibrosis?" and then really listened?

Nearly a year after my conversation with Cindy, I was staying with my mother when a friend came to celebrate her daughter's birthday with us. Her daughter had died years before, at the age of 10. She'd had Cystic Fibrosis.

Again I automatically tried to find a way to relate, mentioning that I had a friend from college who had Cystic Fibrosis. This time, however, I caught myself at that point and started to listen. And thanks to what I had learned from Cindy, I was able to better understand and be a sympathetic ear as this friend talked about her daughter's struggles.

I'm not always good at stepping outside myself. I'm not always eager to admit my ignorance. But I'm trying to learn from it, and I request the patience and forgiveness of each of you around me as you struggle every day with things I don't understand.

Feeling Beautiful

This is me attempting to smile and raise my eyebrows.

As many of you know, the day after I came home from the hospital after having Mariel, I ended up back at the ER. I had lost control of the left side of my face, and had no idea why. Turns out neither did the doctors. I had something they call "Bell's Palsy," which is what they diagnose when something affects the facial nerves but they don't know what. They said it could be a virus, strain from having the baby, pressure from an earache I'd had, or any number of other things. They prescribed me a steroid and an antiviral and sent me home.

One of the interesting things about Bell's Palsy is that not only do they have no real idea what causes it, they have no way of predicting how long it will last. They told me that most patients get better within two weeks, but for some it lasts months, or even years, before suddenly going away. Some never get better.

Honestly, I was so exhausted that I didn't care how long it might last. I was just glad that it wasn't anything serious, and I was anxious to take my two-day-old baby and go home. Sure, it was annoying that I'd have to sleep with an eyepatch on to keep my left eye closed; sure it bothered me that my taste buds weren't working right. But really, all that mattered at the moment was sleep. (Of course, that was the day that Cimorene woke up from her nap with a fever of 103 degrees. Sleep didn't really happen for another week.)

When I called my mom and told her the diagnosis, she commented, "Well, at least you're not single and trying to catch the attention of a guy." That was the first moment that it occurred to me to care how I looked. For a split second, my brain asked, "Will it bother Ryan that half of my face doesn't work? Will he think I'm ugly?"

But almost as soon as the worry entered, it left again. This was Ryan we were talking about, the man who could tell me honestly that he thought I was beautiful when I was morning sick and had just been puking. He thought I was pretty when I was out of shape and red-faced from running after a frisbee. He told me I was beautiful through both my pregnancies as my body changed shape and made me more and more uncomfortable. He told me I was beautiful as I was dealing with post-partum depression and was frustrated that it was taking so long to lose the baby weight from Cimorene. He liked me with makeup or without it, in grubby clothes or a ball gown. No, I didn't have to worry about Ryan. He'd still think I was beautiful.

And sure enough, one of the first things Ryan did that evening when he saw me was tell me he thought I was beautiful. Then he carried our sick and screaming toddler back into the doctor's examining room so that I could sit out in the lobby with our two-day-old baby and rest a little. And then he made dinner when we got home.

Yeah, he's that amazing.

It wasn't until a few days later that I realized just how much being married to Ryan has impacted my self-image. Once upon a time, I was very self-conscious. I wasn't as pretty as a lot of my friends, and in high school and my first couple years of college I tended to get overlooked by most guys. I worried about how I looked and was never very confident, even when friends and roommates told me I was looking great.

But last week, even the thought of not being able to move half of my face didn't scare me.

My Bell's Palsy is almost completely gone now. I can still feel it a little, but most people can't tell at all. I'm one of the lucky ones who got better in two weeks. But even more than feeling grateful that it's gone, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for what it showed me about my relationship with my husband. I  already knew I had married an extraordinary man, but seeing some of the ways in which I've changed for the better because of being married to him makes me even more grateful.

Thank you, Ryan, for managing to convince me that I'm beautiful.

One Soul

We finally got a bench for my "piano"--a keyboard, actually, but it's the best I have--and I sat down yesterday afternoon to begin rebuilding one of my favorite Sunday afternoon traditions. When I was a teenager, Sunday afternoons were dedicated to music. I would pull out all our "churchy" music and play and sing, sometimes for hours. (This frequently got me out of tasks like helping prepare dinner, because my parents liked the music. I was a smart kid.) My younger brother James would frequently come and sing with me, and sometimes my dad would wander in for a song or two as well, but usually it was just me and the piano.

Yesterday I pulled silver and orange duct tape off the top of the box labeled, "Shannon's Piano Music," and grabbed the first book on the top. It was "The Light Within" by Janice Kapp Perry, a collection of songs I'd grown up on, easy to play and fairly easy for me to sing (if no one's listening and I don't have to worry about being a little off on the high notes).

I started on the first page and played through several of the songs without really thinking much, but when I got to the duet called, "How Great Shall Be Your Joy," my brain started buzzing. The words for the first verse are based on a scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants. It's a scripture I memorized first through this song, and later in early-morning seminary as a teenager.

D&C 18:15--And if it so be that ye should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my father!


This time, instead of my brain jumping to full-time missionaries like my brother James, who's currently in Denmark, I thought of my children. What greater joy could I have in the kingdom of God than to have my family there with me? What greater opportunity do I have to bring souls to Christ than when teaching my children?

But my brain kept going, because I've known too many wonderful parents who have children who have "opted out." Despite my best efforts, my children will have agency--that wonderful and terrible ability to make their own choices--and they may not choose to follow Christ.

And then a beautiful reality of this scripture hit me. One soul. Just one. God, who cares about the sparrows and the lilies and the hairs on our heads, cares about one soul. Including mine. Even if the only soul I bring to Christ is my own, I shall have joy.

I'll still do my best to help others, especially my children, to learn of Christ and come to Him. But in the end, the only soul I have control over is my own. I'll do everything I can to bring that one home to Him.

Scenes of Christmas



Setting up the tree.




Helping Daddy with the lights.




Daddy decorated Cim. She begged us to hang ornaments off her for the next week.




Our tree and presents on Christmas morning. (Half of the gifts are from the Dollar Tree or tag sales--shh!)




Cimorene discovers her stocking. It had a bear, which meant she automatically loved it.




"Look what I found! Can I keep it?"




Daddy got a stocking too. Santa was sneaky, so he had no idea he was getting one.




Santa's belly and red robe had nothing on mine!




The stocking stuffers were all Cim really needed for the day. Birds, a cat, and a glitter wand. Oh yeah.




Our pondering princess. She put the headbands on herself.




I'm not sure what she's trying to turn that bird into, but apparently it's not working.




Ryan had fun wrapping.




I loved his decorations. This box held the traditional bag of Doritos. :-D




"You better watch out..." --This song has never seemed so appropriate.

 

As an extra gift to me, Ryan changed the poopy diaper. Cimorene didn't care what was going on--she had her toys.



Castle Cakes

The other day I was a at a tag sale and found a cake pan that I had to have. Now, normally cake pans don't have that kind of magnetism for me; I usually don't make more than one or two cakes a year, so why would I bother buying lots of pans? This pan, however, was a Nordic Ware castle pan.

When I showed it to Ryan he got really excited, because apparently his class has had a running joke about one of the guys having a castle. We decided that the first castle cake should go to his class.

I was really worried about getting the cake out of the pan, so I watched a video of tips on the Nordic Ware website first. This was our first attempt:

It came out a little dark, so we decided we'd eat that one and try again for his class. This was our second attempt:

His class loved it, and we felt validated for our efforts. The next day he came home and said they were having a pot-luck at school for about 60 people this weekend, and he had told them he'd bring a castle cake. For that many people, though, he thought we should probably do two. We grabbed a box of red velvet mix and one of dark chocolate. Here's what we got:

So what have I learned from this? That a really awesome cake pan has the power to turn a 1-or-2-cakes-per-year person into a 4-cakes-in-three-days person.

I also learned that it's time for me to buy a set of medieval legos. These cakes are just begging for knights and dragons.

Keeping Faith in Humanity

Two weeks ago I was really stressed out. I was trying to get a washing machine, we'd been wearing dirty clothes for two or three weeks already, and things kept going wrong. In the middle of problems and stress, though, I was helped by two wonderful men who need to be thanked by name.

The first was Eddie. I found Eddie on Craigslist, selling a washing machine and dryer. I asked him if he'd sell me just the washing machine (a wonderful family had given us their old dryer), and we made arrangements to pick it up. When we picked it up, Eddie said that he had hooked it up a couple days earlier and it ran fine, and that if for some reason it didn't work for us, he'd give us our money back. That's a rare type of promise from a Craigslist dealer, so we were sure the washing machine would be just fine.

Well, of course when we got the machine home and hooked it up, it ran water all over our floor. And of course we didn't know what box most of our towels/rags were in, and we hadn't bought a mop yet, so we used 3 rolls of paper towels to clean it up.

I texted Eddie and told him what had happened. And, amazingly enough, he held true to his word. He told us he'd give our money back.

The next day I went to a store that specialized in appliance repair but also sold used washers. That's where I met Mike.

Mike was a sweet, friendly man about my dad's age. He told me about his granddaughter, who's a toddler, and he just loved Cimorene. I explained the problem we'd had, and he was eager to help. He said it was probably a really easy fix, and that Ryan might be able to fix it himself. He told me some things to have Ryan look at, and then sold me a new cord I needed for the dryer--at a 25% discount, because my husband's in the military (I think it was partly that and partly that Cim was being super cute and giving him high-fives).

Ryan looked at the washer that night, and I called Mike the next day to tell him what we thought the problem was. He told me to have Ryan call him later and he'd walk Ryan through some more diagnostic things. He even gave me his cell-phone number, which he said would self-destruct after one use, because he doesn't normally give out that number--keep in mind, he's doing all of this without expecting to make any kind of profit.

Well, the washing machine ended up being pretty rusted out, so we decided it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to repair it, but we were able to go get a really nice used one from a store that Mike recommended. They delivered and installed it for free because my husband's in the military, and then they hauled away the old one to dump for us (they didn't even want it for parts). Oh, and Eddie gave us our money back as promised, so everything turned out really well for us.

I'm still planning to make Mike and his staff cookies. I don't know if they have any idea what their kindness and helpfulness meant to this pregnant lady who had just finished a month-long hotel stay with a teething one year old. I don't know if this situation would have seemed like a big deal for most people, but by day 3 of the scenario I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, and the fact that EVERYONE involved was so kind to me made it seem much more manageable.

I'm grateful for the bright spots in trials, the things that make you say, "yeah this situation stinks, but the world is a good place." I'm grateful for good men like Eddie and Mike, who have a sense of integrity and charity, and who help me keep my faith in humanity. There are awful people in this world, but there are also some who are wonderful, and who do little things to make people's lives easier. This is my thank-you to them.

Belated Birthday Tribute

Ryan turned 27 last month, and amidst the craziness of moving and military, his birthday sort of got lost. So here's the post that he should have gotten several weeks ago.

The other day I was listening to a song, and it struck me for the first time just how much it reminded me of my wonderful husband. Those of you who know Cooley, picture him singing this with gusto:

(I highly recommend you listen to the song as you read the lyrics.)

Big Time

by Sam Payne

Hey kid, wanna hit the big time? I pushed my glasses up

And I put down my comic book, surprised that they were approaching me.

Jumped in, they took me to her papa; told me every detail

Seems they'd taken his fair daughter, needed one outside the family

To take the briefcase full of cash to the Italian with the limp

And wait inside the car for them to slip her in.

Someone to drive her home and be presented with a check,

About the size that he might never have to work again.

Sounded like the Big Time to me.

You know what everybody says about the plans of mice and men

Well I wound up in a freezer, with the oxygen a'goin fast.

She lay beside me on the concrete

Goose egg about the size of the lump within my throat

And my life began to pass.

So I tripped the frozen tumblers with the earpiece of my glasses,

Surprised the man outside before he made a sound.

Then I went and threw my body between her and flying bullets,

Hotwired us a car and left that part of town

Headed for the Big Time.

Big check, big congratulations;

An extra zero for the freezer time, and for the inconvenience of the bullet holes.

I swear you could have heard a pin drop as I watched myself push it back across his desk

And heard myself say, "That's not how it goes.

'Cause every hour of the last few, I've spent them every one

With my body and my soul upon the line for her.

I was in it for the money, but I'll trade it if she'll have me

For a chance at fifty years with her, or fifty more."

"And I'll take more than bullets for her.

Give me a lawn to mow, give me some kids to grow.

More than bullets for her.

I'll stay on through gray mornings when we're both confused and slow."

I guess we rode into the sunset; at least it seems we did

But a million years have come and gone, and details have begun to go.

Big check torn up long ago; or I assume it was;

Perhaps there never was one in the first place.

Well, it's tough to know.

Could it be I met her back in college?

Maybe I just asked her out to Dairy Queen.

Would my life be any less upon the line for her, if that were true?

Would you still believe me if I said

I've been feeling like the Big Time?

Ever since I met her, like the Big Time.

Ryan and I have had some crazy adventures. This blog, on which we post so infrequently, tells only a tiny portion of our adventures in China, Rexburg, Utah, Pennsylvania, and now California.

But while I love knowing that my husband would "throw his body between [me] and flying bullets," the little daily things mean so much more. Things like a couple days ago when he was on his hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor with paper towels because it was really dirty and we didn't have a mop yet; watching him dance with Cimorene in the living room; hearing him come in from the garage singing.

While we plan to keep having adventures and singing bouncy tunes, I'm grateful for a husband who is also willing to "stay on through gray mornings when we're both confused and slow" (we seem to have had enough of these lately).

These are just some of the things that I love about him; every day I'm more grateful to be married to such a wonderful man.

Happy birthday, Ryan. You're my hero.

Sisters

Yesterday I was shocked to be told that I will having another little girl in January. I'm not sure why I was so certain I was having a boy, but I was definitely surprised.

Since then I've been thinking about how unprepared I am to raise sisters. All I had were brothers; If I don't even know how to be a sister, how will I raise some? Of course, my concern mostly just stems from the same insecurities any mother feels about raising children in general--am I really ready for this?

I keep having the song "Sisters" from the musical "White Christmas" run through my mind (this is the best video I could find). My daughters will be 18 months apart, and I hope that as they grow up they will consider it a blessing to have a sister and friend so close to them. I'm sure there will be times they want to pull each others' hair out, but I hope that overall they love having a sister.

For those of you who have sisters, what is your favorite thing about having/being a sister?