Less Than Intelligent

A loose screw.  Not the brightest bulb in the box.  Light's on, but nobody's home. A couple bricks short of a load.  A few deacons short of a quorum.  Dumber than a box of rocks.

All of these phrases reflect one's intelligence--or lack thereof.

These phrases, and a few more, zipped through my head a short while ago.  My toddler was taking a nap and my preschooler was quietly playing on the computer.  I thought it'd be a good idea to take advantage of the peace and quiet and go lie down myself (three of the my four children took turns last night disturbing my REM cycles).  I had a small headache from the exhaustion and I thought taking some ibuprofen before getting bed would be helpful.  I grabbed a bottle of pills from the bathroom counter, filled a glass with water, put a pill  in my mouth, and swallowed.  It wasn't until I was nestled, all snug in my bed when I realized I had taken melatonin and not ibuprofen.

It was a less than intelligent decision.  ('Less than intelligent' is one of my go-to phrases I mutter when I'm unhappy about something.  I choose to say it instead of 'stupid' or 'dumb' because I don't want my children walking around saying those words about themselves.  However, I've never caught any of them accusing themselves of being less than intelligent.)

Melatonin is a little something we keep around the house, primarily for Maren.  A year ago, Maren's bedtime routine consisted of the typical stories and tucking-in, which would then be followed by 2-3 hours of  her begging for snacks, one more story, playing loudly in her room, screaming, and slamming doors.  It drained us every single night.  Until some angel friend recommended melatonin to me.  It's a hormone created in the body when it's preparing to go to sleep.  Just a little half pill at bedtime helps her relax, calm down, and quiets the fight in her that resists the restorative sleep her parents desire her little body needs.

So I was already pretty tired, and I had also spent a big chunk of the morning standing while doing the ironing.  I had just ingested a pill that would make me ever more tired, and I didn't have the luxury of 8 hours of nighttime to sleep it off.  For a few seconds I even considered gagging myself to throw it up.  But that sounded less appealing than being sleepy all afternoon, so I decided to close my eyes.

Now I'm awake (physically) and I expect my children to be home from school any minute.  I'm experiencing this funky haze which reminds me of my drowsiness-induced days of junior high when my mom gave me daily doses of antihistamines to battle my allergies.  I never told her how tired I was every day, all day long.  I don't remember how old I was when I made the mental connection between my tired stupor at school and the allergy medicine administered to me.  But I hastily quit taking the pills and was amazed at the clarity of mind I experienced in class from that time forward.

The best news about spending the afternoon in this hangover-like-state (I've never had a genuine hangover, so I'm just taking a stab at the comparison) is the fact my husband won't be home until after ten o'clock tonight.  Hooray!  I think we'll have oatmeal for dinner and I'll put the kids to bed early.  I have some ice cream with chocolate sauce calling my name....

Hot on the Trail

I may or may not have been catching up on my turns in several games of Words With Friends when my 2-year-old approached me and said, "Wash hands, Mom, wash hands."  My brain was distracted from the best way to use that Triple Word space by the sight before me:  a little girl with a sheen of brown sticky something coating her face and hands, with patches of blue and red popping out of the brown.  My first instinct was, "I'm a horrible mother for neglecting my toddler while I indulge in my own personal pleasurable past-times." My second instinct was "CHOCOLATE?!  There's chocolate in this house and I didn't know about it??"

I asked Kristen to show me where she found the candy.  But after many attempts and altering the form of the inquiry, I realized she wasn't going to own up to where she found the candy and I would have to take matters into my own hands and find it myself.  It didn't take long to find--I went downstairs and spied the bag of trail mix on the kitchen table.  Trail mix!  Of course!  The girls had been enjoying trail mix during morning snack time and it never was returned to the pantry (surprise, surprise).  Kristen had delicately picked out most of the mock M&Ms.  I can't help but admit when I found these little golden nuggets of tastiness hidden midst the less appealing raisins and peanuts I devoured a good dozen or so of them myself (pretty much all the chocolate pieces I could find).  Then I got a tummy ache.  Darned processed confections!

Thus proceed the adventures of mommy at home with two little girls.  Mommy is used to having an 8- and 6-year-old help being her eyes and ears around the house and alerting her when such mischief as the chocolate snatching is taking place.  I guess Words With Friends will just have to wait until nap time, or make sure the trail mix is put away after snack time.

The Meanest Mom

At lunch today, the kids wanted chocolate milk.  While mixing up their chocolaty beverages, Isaac asked why chocolate milk is so sugary.  I explained that plain, regular chocolate is actually very bitter and sugar has to be added to make people want to eat it and turn chocolateering into a bazillion dollar industry.  Then the bright idea struck me to let them try unsweetened chocolate.  I took a square of my unsweetened baking chocolate and chopped it into tiny bits, letting them each try one.  These were small pieces, smaller than my pinkie fingernail.  Oh, I wish I had the camera when they tried it!  Think back to those bitter beer face commercials from the 90s (search YouTube if your memory's not that good or if you are too young to know what bitter beer face is).  Or the last few seconds of Kid History Episode 6 (7:20) when the hot guy retches out the green smoothie.  Some kind of combination of those expressions would properly sum up the kids' reactions to eating a crumb of unsweetened chocolate.  It was a great way to wrap up summer break.

The Brigham Stoop

When I look back on my life and think about people who made an impact on me, who helped mold me and helped me become who I am today, one person who comes immediately to mind is a man named Neil Cardon.  Neil was the manager at the Cougareat food court at BYU, and he was my boss for my last three years of school, from the summer after my freshman year up until a month before Alayna was born.  I actually knew Neil before I worked at the Cougareat, or at least knew of him.  My older siblings Rose, Cathy, and Hank (who are 11, 10, and 8 years older than me, respectively) worked for Neil at the campus bakery when they were students.  When my freshman year employment at the Morris Center (the old Deseret Towers cafeteria) was over, I wanted to go back and continue to work there, because it was familiar and I really liked familiar back then.  I told my sister Rose what I had in mind for myself and she told me Neil was the manager at the Cougareat and I should contact him for a job.  Neil knew my siblings well--he even made Cathy's wedding cake.  I found Neil's work email in the BYU online directory and introduced myself and inquired about a job possibility.  I came for an interview at his office and we got acquainted and he pretty much said if I was a Howell, I must be a good worker like my brother and sisters had been, and I got scheduled to work at Sugar 'n Spice, the ice cream and pastries shop in the food court.

After a few semesters working on the lines at Subway and Teriyaki Stix at the Cougareat, Neil promoted me to be an assistant secretary in the offices behind the lines.  With time I did less assisting and had undertaken enough of my own projects in the offices I became a secretary/student manager.  I loved working at the Cougareat.  The mangers and students I worked with were my second family.  

There's a point to all this back story, I promise.  One reason I'd been thinking about Neil today was because of something he taught us called the Brigham Stoop.  Basically, if you see a piece of trash on the ground in the food court, stop, stoop, and pick it up.  Keep the place nice, take pride in the upkeep of the Cougareat. In the mornings this summer I've been walking with some of my girlfriends in the neighborhood.  This morning, however, I was alone because the other girls had other things to attend to.  I decided to take a different route than customary, and because I didn't have girl-talk to distract me, I paid more attention to my surroundings.  A large part of our walking area is empty lots where new homes are being built.  And the amount of trash I found scattered here and there really bugged me.  I thought to myself, "These workers need to take pride in what they're doing and practice the Brigham Stoop and put their trash where it belongs." There were even beer cans at one site, and I'm pretty confident drinking on the job is frowned upon.  I confess, I started picking up empty plastic bottles that could be recycled and put them in the basket of my stroller.  (This also reminded me of a time when I was about 7 and I rode my red bicycle with a basket in front through a park near my neighborhood, and I loaded the wire basket with garbage I found along the riding path.  And I rode by some kids and they teased me for the load of garbage.  Just another anecdote.  I guess I knew about the Brigham Stoop before Neil told me that's what it was called.)

Neil taught me so much more than just the Brigham Stoop in the three years he was my supervisor at BYU.  I think I'm going to teach my kids the Brigham Stoop and make them put it to use around the house.

Unrelated tangent:  I discovered a friend in my ward knew Neil when she was a little girl.  I believe she said he had been her home teacher when she was growing up, and was very kind and did a lot of service for her family, because her parents weren't active in the Church at the time.  And I knew for certain he had a great impact on her life, just as he had for my siblings and myself in those days past.