How To Be A Good Wife

I ran into this funny thing out on the internet somewhere. It's taken from The Good Wife's Guide from Housekeeping Monthly: May 13, 1955. Holy Crap, I'm glad I wasn't a housewife in the 1950s! Although I do admit to listening to Noah read from the Dick and Jane book we have and thinking it looked like such a lovely, simple time. Reminds me of when I was at BYU and my roommates and I used to read from the book The Fascinating Girl and laugh hysterically. Okay, not all of us. There were a couple who found it to have useful advice. I especially like number six, can you say Stepford Children? And number ten. Huh? I'm all for striving to be a good wife, but come on:

(1) Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready in time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

(2) Prepare yourself. Take fifteen minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up and put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh - looking. He has just been with a lot of work weary people.

(3) Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

(4) Gather up schoolbooks, toys, papers etc... and then run a dishcloth over the tables.

(5) Over the cooler months of the year, you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

(6) Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.

(7) Be happy to see him.

(8) Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

(9) Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to say, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

(10) Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late, or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he may have gone through that day. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.

(11) Your goal: try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

(12) Don't greet him with complaints and problems.

(13) Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low soothing and pleasant voice. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

(14) Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

(15) A good wife always knows her place.

Oh. My.

TMBG

Brent and I went to see They Might be Giants in concert last night. I wasn't expecting a whole lot. We saw them once in '92 (incidentally, we were broken up at the time. Never date your ex while broken up, it's a sure fire way to end up married for 14 years with three kids.;) Anyway, I don't remember a ton about that show in '92, except for a bunch of accordion playing, of course. Fun time I think, not super memorable. So I just thought it would be: listen to some good music from way in the back where I would try to avoid being squished by pushy concert people. Turns out it was the funnest concert I have ever been to! The venue was very small and we were about twenty feet away from the stage. I swear John Linnell looked me in the eye. No one was pushy and obnoxious. The youngest looking person I noticed there looked to be about 25 so there were none of those obnoxious teenagers. Not that all teenagers are obnoxious, it's just that concerts seem to bring the obnoxious side out in them. It was just so fun, the music was great, they were funny, it was educational (how many concerts can you say that about?) There were even sock puppets for a few minutes (Part of their family show that is going on today, they do children's CDs too. Kind of wish I was taking the kids to that one.) Okay, that sounds a little too much like I'm into sock puppets, which I am not. It was kind of funny though. So fun, fun times with Brent and we got to stay the night in Salt Lake too while the kids were with Grandpa Richard and Grandma Karen.

Halloween '09

The Which, the Goth Girl and the Scary Clown (Who wasn't really very scary because he didn't want to wear the scary mask. Which was fine by me because I prefer his cute face to the scary clown mask face.)

Blog Post # something, something, something

I have so little to write about lately. I'm just doing the day to day tasks with my family and studying for school. Things are happening, but nothing that seems worth blogging about. Last night I had a dream. Actually, this morning, right before I woke up. I dreamed that I volunteered to make lunches, and deliver them, to every kid at every elementary school in the Jordan School District. I don't even live in the Jordan School District. But I was feeling overwhelmed at the task before me. Thousands of lunches had to be made and delivered and it was 11:30 already. I was never so grateful for Brent to wake me up and kiss me goodbye for work. I was so happy I didn't really have to make all those lunches, and so happy I wasn't really so stupid as to accept such an impossible job. How dare they even ask a person to do such a huge task, by herself, in one morning?

In other news, I had a scratchy feel in my eye for a couple of days so I went to the eye doctor on Monday. Apparently I have small pit on my eye that is filled with bacteria. Nice. I have to put antibiotic eye drops in my left eye for a week. To keep the pit from burrowing into the center of my eye and making me need my eye surgically removed. (Slight exaggeration here.) The eye drops drip down my sinuses and I can taste them in my throat. Eeew. You didn't want to read that, did you?

Cooking Class

Isabella's friend Amber.... Her mom asked some of us if we wanted to do a monthly cooking class with the girls, rotating months. So this month was my turn and veggies were on the menu. It turned out to be a lot of fun with the girls, no one was injured with all of those knives cutting vegetables, and I think they may have learned something too!

A cornucopia of vegetables!

Vegetable Chowder

Vegetable Skeleton (in honor of Halloween)

Old Pics, Just For Fun

I did this blog post over the weekend but didn't like it so I removed it. I still like these old pictures that I had on the post though, so what the hay, I'll just stick them on:

Little Bella

Little Zoe

Little Noah

Can't a girl miss those baby days once in a while? Maybe I should cut my crazy hair off again too.

This picture was from Isabella's Kindergarten birthday party, six years ago. It cracks me up because it reminds me of the cover of an album from the '80s or early '90s.

Now off to study for my Computer Information Resources test I have tonight. I'm learning all sorts of things that 13 year olds already know.

Insanely Stupid

I do not have my finger on the pulse of all things tween. I tend to think that despite that, I'm still a good mom. I've still got the whole Big Picture thing going for me. Today, however, I almost blew it as a tween mom. Tomorrow is Zoe's 10th birthday. Today I got a phone call from her soccer coach and was offered free tickets to Miley Cyrus. Of course I said,"Woohoo! She's going to love that! I'm going to be a hero! Thank you so much!" Okay, I didn't really say that. What I said was "No thanks, it's Zoe's birthday." The coach's response was, "Oh, she's having a birthday party?" My response to him was, "No". So I say goodbye and hang up on the man who just offered me FREE tickets to Myley Cyrus on my daughter's 10th birthday. Immediately I know I am now in the doghouse. She's going to hear about this. She's going to be sad because her BFF is going. I've just ruined my kid's birthday!

Isabella is going to hear about this too and how I could have gotten three tickets. Isabella asked me why we couldn't go to her concert a couple of years ago. My response, "I didn't even know she was coming until the day after". See, no finger on the pulse of what tweens want there. Then she asked last summer, "Why can't we go to Stadium of Fire and see the Jonas Brothers?" I answered, "Because we don't like giant crowds and traffic on the 4th of July and Stadium of Fire is just a little too Republican Rally for our taste. I prefer my holidays nonpartisan." (Don't be offended by this anyone, I'm just joking. I've never been there. Not joking about traffic though. 4th of July, 1989, Phoenix, AZ, literally FOUR hours in traffic!) She wouldn't have to ask me why we couldn't go this time, her answer would be, "My mom is mean and clearly hates me!"

Why did I think it was so important to keep my kid home on her birthday so we could open presents and eat cake and ice cream together? Because those are our big plans. Fortunately, I realized I was being stupid and insane and called the coach back up and told him I may have been the teensiest bit hasty in my initial response. Luckily, his offer hadn't expired and I was still able to get the free tickets. I'm going to have to milk this hero mom thing for all it's worth.

I'm Gettin' Political....Just Barely Though

How can anyone think that this man is NOT completely full of crap?

Ramble Ramble

First of all, I'm sitting here on my computer typing while listening to my blog music on the laptop. Pernice Brother's, I like you, even if I first heard of you by watching a Sherwin Williams commercial. It's just more fun to use two computers at once, and the sound quality on the laptop is oh so superior. Gives a nice a.m. radio vibe. I've done pretty much nothing constructive all day because I've gone brain dead from studying for 3 hours for a five question online math quiz this morning. Five questions? Really? So my brain is all fried because I'm not used to counting so much and I'm not sure I can even always identify the associative property of addition at all times and places. I've also been thinking and reading way too much political junk lately. I know I shouldn't do that. Another reason to get off facebook. Would someone just give Glenn Beck a bunker already? So I have to go to the store, to buy chocolate, of course, to combat the buzz in my head from the math and the politics. I'm driving down the highway and a slow truck ends up in front of me carrying a load of wood board things from the Home Depot. Probably finishing his basement. He's driving way slow and next to him, driving slow, is an old man on a motorcycle with a baseball cap on. We all stop at a light and he pulls on his goggles. The kind you use as protective eye wear for power tools and in high school chemistry labs. No real point here except I thought you might enjoy picturing the old man in the baseball cap and protective goggles on his motorcycle. He did pick up some speed and totally beat the guy with the wood board things in the back of his truck. Anyway, I got my chocolate and felt better so I could do the dishes. So there you go, something productive done.

You may ask, how is school going anyway? Well, let me tell you. The first week we had a lecture in my computer class, the professor taught us how to format our computers, even though if we followed her advice being the clueless computer people some of us are (okay, just me) it could have had catastrophic results. Okay, catastrophic may be a bit dramatic, and she did say, "Do Not Do This!" Then why did you show me how too? I'll just stick with the more important information, how to name my C drive after myself. What else? The other day I got to school a few minutes early and was hanging out in what can only be described as the student union of a one building college campus. I was there maybe six minutes and two people asked me if I had an appointment. I never had that kind of service just sitting around between classes at BYU. But then I was usually asleep on a couch in a bathroom or at the library, drooling on my homework. Hey, you try staying up 'til midnight with your super fun roommates, going to work at 3:30 am on campus as a janitor, and going to your 7:30 am class without falling asleep in a puddle of your own drool on your homework. The good news is I can now remember how to add 3/5+79/8 and get the right denominator and all that. So I'm getting used to everything. It helps that the kids' first week of school is done and my blood pressure has gone back down from my brain being yanked around in twenty nine different directions. And I no longer feel like I'm ruining my kids' lives because I'm thinking about algebra at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon instead of my kids and how maybe I should go spy on them on the playground at recess because Noah is in first grade now and I'm lonely. The good thing about being alone so much now? My mind wanders off into lots of bloggable rambling. Okay, it's probably not very bloggable, but entertains me anyway. And that's the real purpose of having a blog, right?

Back To School Pics

Some cute back to school pics, even though they've already been seen by pretty much everyone on facebook. Worlds colliding again! Maybe they are right that facebook is a waste of time. Hmm.

They are definitely growing up way too fast!

Remember This?

Remember Pay It Forward?
I finally got around to doing the projects for it sometime during the summer. At first I was thinking: What have I done? Why did I sign on to do this? But I had a project idea I was wanting to try out so I decided to give it a try and it was actually pretty fun. I do like a good craft every now and then, after all. I still need to send some out so send me your address, okay! Yeah, you! :)