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Levi and I—we’re tired. For the first time since we’ve been married, we’re having a hard time reaching consensus (at least about something important) and the stakes at hand make our diverging opinions feel like kind of a big deal.

I’ve always thought it unfair the number of big decisions people our age have to make. Isn’t there a place, say five years from now, where we just live the lives we’ve been deciding about for the past decade? Because it really is exhausting—all this choosing things right now that will ultimately determine whether we end up in Michigan or Mongolia; in passages of hounding regret or blissfully happy.

Who to marry. What to study. Where to live. Where to work. How to live. Because we have to decide all of that right this minute, don’t we?

The particular choice at hand feels like roads diverging, which is hard enough. But it’s complicated because we’re two travelers who decided to always walk together, and after a lot of personal and careful consideration on this matter, we didn’t chose the same path. Levi wants to go left, I want to go right.

Which means we’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to convince each other to switch platforms. And trying to convince ourselves that we’re not being selfish by pushing our own agendas. And then deciding it is selfishness and meeting up at the end of day and saying to each other—at the same time—I’ll walk with you. Then trying to convince each other that we’d both be happier doing what the other person wants. Until we find ourselves back at that place where again, we each want two different things. Like I said, we’re tired.

There’s a story in the Book of Mormon that a lot of Mormons read when they have to make a choice. It’s about a man who goes to God with two specific problems. God solves the first one, but sends the man to come up with his own solution to the second, in effect promising to help and bless whatever solution the man comes up with.

Levi and I, we’ve tried both approaches. We went to God and asked for solutions for almost a year, and no definitive feedback to speak of, we assumed He would bless whatever we came up with.

So we’ve brainstormed. We’ve been to the temple. We’ve fasted. We’ve listed and ranked the options. Weighed the pros and cons. Stayed up late. Conceded. Held fast. Listened. Cried. Argued. Sank. Pumped our fists. And this week, we smashed head first into a deadline. We had to make a decision by Tuesday morning. (Or else.)

So on Saturday we spent three hours with a marriage counselor. (Okay fine, it was one of my best friends who doubles as a therapist. The things we ask our friends to do for us…)

On Sunday, anytime we found ourselves alone, we looked at each other and though we didn’t want to, asked the same question. “What are we going to do?” Sunday night, we fell asleep on the couch, on the verge of depression, at 9pm. We both slipped off at that point in the conversation where it didn’t make sense to say the same things for the sixtieth time. We still don’t know what will be best.

But like I said, we had a deadline. So on Monday night, we flipped a coin and had a good night’s rest.

We spent the weekend in Florida. Coming home, Levi reminded me of one of our first “discussions.” It was right after we had started dating, and we were in different cities for Christmas. On one of those long-distance/just getting to know each other phone calls, he told me that at airport security, he showed some “attitude.” He was pulled aside, taken to some sort of an interrogation room, and “inspected.” He missed his flight.*

He told me the story and then said how much he despised airport security. “But it’s necessary,” I insisted. “A necessary hardship.” Even if airport security is JUST ONE MASSIVE PACIFIER—even if its sole purpose is to make Americans feel safer—then I’m for it.

He laughed at me. Told me I was ridiculous. Called me a Fascist. Still I maintained: it makes me feel better; more secure.

This weekend, the security guard wouldn’t let me through because all I had was my student ID. “It has to be government issued,” they said. This made sense to me, because if there’s any one group of people we can all trust, it’s the friendlies at the DMV. The airport security guard had me stand to the side so another—a more senior—security guard could assess the situation. Between my Costco card and my student ID, and a little conference between the two security guards discussing said IDs, I was good to go.

Levi got stopped too. There was more than three ounces in his bottle of aloe vera. Suspicions arose (naturally) and they went through his bag. Busted. A full tube of tooth paste. She ceremoniously set it aside. “You’re going to take both of those?” he asked, incredulously.

“Okay, fine.” She said. “Pick one.”

Ahhh. Pacified.

*Not to feel bad for him on this one. He missed his flight so they put him first class on a non-stop. It’s one of the reasons I married him: even the lame things turn out well.

So I admit to feeling stymied by my former success: last year’s Halloween. 

I can’t take credit for it either. Normally, I’m not a big believer in dreams, but last October I dreamt that a friend was pregnant. I didn’t meant to tell her about the dream—had a conversation with myself where I promised I wouldn’t—but as soon as I saw her I characteristically blurted it out. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “I’m eight weeks.”

That’s how I knew my dreams were serious business; not to be cast aside. And so when I dreamt that for Halloween we would show up as the First Transcontinental Railroad, I was afraid of what would happen if we didn’t at least try. I would be the Central Pacific line. Levi would be the Union Pacific line. And our sweet little Adelaide would celebrate her first Halloween as the Golden Spike.

In the words of my friend Autumn, “Good grief. Most people go their whole lives without getting to be the golden spike.” Read the rest of this entry »

Our sweet little baby is heavy in the tantrum phase* and the other night, at approximately 3:30am, she was so angry that by jumping and screaming she gained enough momentum to hurl herself out of her crib, landing headfirst on our hardwood floor. (We assume our downstairs neighbor, who hates us, was too tired to get out of bed and bang her ceiling in protest. It was quite the thud, following by quite the boom boom boom of her scared father running to help her.)

So while I’ve been trying to teach and mold and shape our little girl from the very beginning, the need for discipline is now fully upon us. Levi and I differ in our approaches. He thinks we should do what we can to make her happy; happy babies grow up to be happy people. “Levi, she has refused to eat anything all day. Please don’t give her an entire piece of cake.”

“Oh, but she’ll love it,” he says as he hands her a spoon.

“Levi, she knows that if she cries, you’ll give her whatever she wants.”

“But she’s crying,” he says. He’s confused by my comment.

I, on the other hand, think we should do what we can to teach her control. “Rebecca,” he says, “she’s just a baby.”

“Oh she knows,” I say. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

He gives her the pacifier. I take it away.

How, we both wonder, are we supposed to do this? I find myself looking to Victorian children’s literature for a clue, like the story “The New Mother” wherein two naughty children are threatened with a new mother if they don’t improve their ways. Of course, they don’t improve, and get a new mother with—hold your breath—a glass eye and a wooden tale that clanked as she walked.

Levi can do what he’d like, but I’m going to start telling Adelaide stories that scare her into submission. I think she’s too young to appreciate the full impact of what I’m saying (she only responds to buzz words like “night night” or “cheese”) but I figure I can use her youth to hone my own story-telling skills.

My pediatrician has been on me to take her off the bottle. I think I may start there. “Oh it was just awful what happened to those babies,” I’ll say. “Lock-jaw, every single one of them. That’s not even the worst of it. Their tongues forked. Like little snakes. People screamed when they saw them. I don’t know why those babies were so opposed to the sippy cup…”

I’m on the hunt for just a handful of good stories. Stories that might help me

• get her coat on
• get her to sit in her stroller
• get her to eat dinner
• get her to sit in her carseat
• only messy her diaper when Levi is home
• say “please” and “thank you” at the appropriate turns
• sleep in
• those sorts of things

            I figure if you can write a talk for Lisa, surely you can help us raise a child?

*It is a phase, right?

My students will kill for any detail from my life. Lincoln Ramirez cares more than most.

He always to know if I have a man. He wants to know where I live. He wants to know who I went to the Junior Prom with. He wants to know if I get drunk on the weekends with my friends.

            “No. Do your work.”

            “Yeah right. Why you lying to me?”

            “I’m not lying to you. Do your work.”

            “Why not? It’s cool Ms. Smylie.” Read the rest of this entry »

A good friend of mine recently broke up with his girlfriend. “The trouble with love,” he said, “is that it has so many different meanings.” And the trouble with that is that when someone says “I love you,” you interpret that according to your own definition. And the trouble with that, is that your own definition of the word is almost always entirely dependent on the degree to which you are experiencing love.

I think I take it for granted that when Levi and I say “I love you” to each other, we mean the same thing. Of course at the beginning of our relationship—three weeks in—when Levi started saying it to me, I dismissed it. “He uses the word differently than I,” I said. But as soon as I started falling in love, I assumed that the two of us used the word exactly the same way. Which is to say: it wasn’t until I was feeling love for him that I truly felt love from him. Read the rest of this entry »

Rebecca

On Saturday, a fall morning to ourselves, Adelaide and I decided to clean out the closet. For her, this meant taking things as I pulled them off shelves or hangers and placing them in the wrong pile. (If I had a nickel for every time I had to say, “Goodwill on the right, summer on the left.” All the while she bobbled her head, so pleased with her helpful self.)

For me, the entire thing was strangely monumental. I’m a big believer in throwing things out—perhaps a nod to my childhood where, every time we received a new article of clothing we were forced to get rid of something we already owned.  These days, my rule is that if I haven’t worn it in the last year, I won’t wear it in the next year. And so it goes…

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Like the shirt I wore to an interview at a top consulting firm—an interview I botched so badly that I hadn’t made it to the elevator before I 1.) started crying and 2.) received a phone call saying they had “decided to go another direction.” I keep these clothes, I guess, because they say things like, “don’t pretend” and “you used to be skinny.”

For some reason, however, this past Saturday I was ruthless. I threw out all nostalgia clothing, including the skirt the badminton player gave me, the cable-knit turtleneck Levi and I wore on our first date, and the shirt boyfriend 4.0 said really “worked” for me. I finally admitted defeat and packed away all maternity clothing, acknowledging that I would not, at any point in the upcoming winter months, be eight-months pregnant.

I threw out almost all of my old work clothes; not exactly sad and not exactly happy that barring the tragic (and then I might be glad for an excuse to shop), at no foreseeable point in my future would I need x number of slacks and y number of blouses. I smiled as I thought about what my friend Sarah said when I told her I had received a tax return from the last time I had a steady income. “Ah, from bread winner to bread maker. How are you?”*

None of this cleansing was as painful for me as it was for Levi, who, on returning later that day had to go through his side of the closet and admit, firmly, that he had gone up two full sizes. I like you better this way, I said. “It’s the Oreos,” he said.

But it’s three days later and the forsaken clothes are lying face down in some dumpster-like drop bin awaiting sorting. And all I can think when I look at our newly organized closet—what with its evenly space hangers and its neatly stacked boxes—is Why?

Why on earth did I give away the nylon black shirt I wore thirteen years ago when Harry {gasp} Connick Jr. responded kindly (and nervously) to my awkward request for a hug.

I meant to keep it as just a reminder that sometimes, everything in the world does work out in your favor.

Dang. I should have kept the cable-knit turtleneck too.

Rebecca

Levi says the only time he ever stole anything was when he was five. It was a pack of cinnamon gum from Skagg’s Alpha Beta in Salt Lake City. When they got back from the store he took it out back and ate the whole pack at once. I know you all saw this coming, but he now HATES CINNAMON GUM.

Last week, he has having a conversation with a friend and asked the friend what his dad did for a living. “He used to be the manager of Skagg’s Alpha Beta in Salt Lake.” And so Levi poured out his whole and confessed to the manager’s son. “I’ve been wanting to say that for years,” he said. I wasn’t there to witness this scene, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my husband cried as he pressed a crumpled dollar bill into the friend’s hand. “Promise me you’ll give this to your father?” Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago Church was cancelled because they found bed bugs in our building. To make way for the exterminator, we were encouraged to attend church at another building in our area. Imagine our neighbors’ delight on finding that people from the “infested” area would be sitting next to them come Sunday.*

That’s just it. You hear someone has bedbugs and you wave at them from behind a glass door and then pretend like your phone just rang and you have to take it. Sooo Sorrrry, you mouth.

So yeah, it’s been a damper in our community. I don’t know if you’re dealing with bedbugs too, but if you aren’t, don’t look into it. Googling “bedbugs” produces the same result as Googling “headache”: you end up with a brain tumor.

Several families in our congregation have gotten them. And so at least in the mom circle where I run, there is a slow moving paranoia settling in. Women are scrubbing baseboards and buying mattress covers and taking their clothes off as soon as they get home from church. They stuff them into a black garbage bag where they stay until the next morning when all the home’s bedding gets washed and then dried, on high heat, for at least ninety minutes. This is not a judgement on my part. I would do these things two if I weren’t lazy. Getting bedbugs is a frightening prospect. (You can hardly stand to look at the picture on this post, admit it.)

We’re hearing stories about hiring dogs to sniff out the bugs and taking every single thing out of your apartment and throwing out furniture and washing every article of clothing and drying it for ninety minutes on high heat and exterminators who charge several thousand dollars. And someone has to clean up after the dogs.

Every scratch and every tingle and I’m convinced we’ve been hit.  (A side note. Sit down for fifteen minutes and think and write about bedbugs. You have never, in your life, itched so badly. Seriously. Try this.)

I’ve been telling myself that it’s inevitable that we’ll get them.  This way, I don’t have to worry about them until they come. This is a lame attempt to trick myself and I haven’t fallen for it once.

This past Sunday, a three-foot bedbug came running towards me, hugged me, danced around me, sat on my lap, and then sat next to me and laid her head on my knees.  And then I had to take her to use the bathroom.

It’s like I got hit by an even worse infestation. Since when was it so inconvenient to love someone and how come I’m failing so miserably at the whole thing?

Don’t you love those little reminders that you’ve got a long, long, long way to go? And why do they always seem to come from four-year olds?

Lisa’s birthday party last year. It’s hard to explain…

Rebecca

I just got a text message from Lisa saying that the internet has been down all night for her. She says she’ll try to get her post up later today. She apologizes profusely, feels terrible, has been agonizing about what to do, etc.

Readers, believe what you will.

I hope you realize, however, that yesterday was her birthday. Know also this: she married Tagg, who, if my memory serves, knows how to celebrate a birthday better than the best of them.

She says internet is down. I say she’s recovering. 

Either way Lisa, we’re glad you were born. Happy 30th.

Of course, if it is down, she won’t be able to stop us from using this Apron Stage pause to tell her how much we love her…