Three beautiful things:
1. Walking 3 miles with women I have never met before, but came to really enjoy their company and hearing their stories and getting to share mine.
2. A long, warm, relaxing bubble bath while reading a good book and letting those tired leg muscles straighten back out a bit.
3. Parker hugged me today and said “law oooh”, which of course means “I love you”. And he patted my back as he hugged me. I love my babies.
I have a new best friend. Her name is Tiffabee. We’ve never actually met. We’ve never shared an email or chatted on line. In fact, Tiffabee doesn’t even know I exist. But that doesn’t make me love her any less. You see, I found her blog, How to Eat a Cheeseburger, and I’m hooked. This blog is devoted to helping women realize that skinny does NOT equal healthy and fat does NOT equal unhealthy. That women need to embrace beauty of all shapes, that curves are beautiful, to throw your scale out the window, to stop worrying what size jeans you wear, and just eat a cheeseburger! (Or a turkeyburger, or a veggieburger… you get the idea)
Striving to be thin and a constant obsession with thinness does not help one’s self-esteem. Yes, I would LOVE to be thinner. Alyson and I were just talking about that on the phone. I don’t pay much attention to the number on the scale anymore. I pay attention to what I look like in the mirror and how my clothes fit. I would love to wear those cute little t-shirts I got after I had Dallin, but who knows if I’ll get thin again. My goals should have less to do with being thin than with being healthy. Working out is good, as long as I’m striving for health. I want to be able to walk my 60 miles for The 3 Day. I want to be able to play with my boys without getting winded in the first 2 minutes. I want to fully realize that my husband loves me no matter what size I am.
This is not going to be easy for me. Growing up and being so skinny was hard. I always heard about how I needed to gain a few pounds. In college I once went to the health center because I was really sick (turned out I had strep and bronchitis). The doctor looked at my throat for literally 2 seconds, then asked me if I was anorexic. It sucked that I could never fit the hand-me-downs given to me, or that I could rarely borrow clothes from friends or roommates because I would drown in them without belts (which I hate to wear) or pins and things holding the clothes in place in weird areas. I hated being teased about my nearly flat chest by my friends.
However, I loved that my aunt would go shopping and see this cute little dress and send it to me and it was a perfect fit. I loved that I looked really good in it. I loved that my wrists were actually really bony looking. I loved that my guy friends in high school told me I had the best butt of all the girls we knew (while I pretended to be offended that they even looked!). I loved that I could eat a large pizza or the Big Jud’s Special all by myself and seriously not gain an ounce. I loved that as a senior in high school, I could fit into my 1st grade sister’s Catholic school skirt. Yeah, it was short, but it was funny to me. I loved that when I was trying on wedding dresses they had to pull in the sample dress SO much to give me an idea of how the real dress would fit. I loved being skinny (even though I hated being called skinny. So derogatory to me at a young age. I preferred to be called thin).
I really need to get over this obsession that being thin or skinny or whatever will make me happy! If I lose a ton of weight, will I really be happy?? Sure, I might be more comfortable (having all this extra weight is really not fun… especially in this Arizona heat!), but when will I say, “Okay, I’m good. I’m thin enough.”?? Or will I constantly think I need to be thinner? And what if I can lose a lot of weight, but I still have a flabby tummy after having three c-sections? And stretch marks on my stomach, thighs, and under arms?? When will I feel good enough?
I want to feel good enough regardless of what size jeans I wear. I want to feel good enough regardless if I will ever even fit an arm into my wedding dress again. I want to feel good enough regardless if I can wear that cute t-shirt that Ches bought for me that has Princess Leia on it and that I’ve never actually worn because he bought it while I was in this last pregnancy and then I never lost any of the weight.
I know deep down that my body shape doesn’t matter to anyone who actually cares about me. I know deep down that it’s my personality and the things that I do that attracts friends. But I often have a hard time reaching deep down and keeping that as a priority rather than getting thin. Thinner. Because seriously, what IS thin? There will always be thinner.
So now I’m an avid Cheeseburger fan*. Check it out. You may like it, too!! This isn’t a site promoting fat girls. It’s a site promoting body acceptance, true beauty acceptance. Everyone is different. Some women are supposed to weigh 110, and some women are supposed to weigh 160. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. So… no skinny girl bashing, and no fat girl bashing. Just total acceptance. Anyone else feel like a Cheeseburger?
*Okay, so actually I don’t like cheeseburgers because I can’t stand the cheese, but I’ll take a yummy hamburger almost any day of the week. But obviously, that’s not the point. Please ignore my idiocy.
For a while there I was obsessed with checking my blog stats every day, several times a day. Back when I still used Blogger I signed up for one of those free stat counter thingys. Karen told me that’s where she got hers. It was fun to see what key words or phrases strangers would look up and come across my blog. But there was hardly anything interesting. And as far as seeing WHO was looking at my blog? Well, it pretty much gave me the IP address and the city and state/province/country. Most of the time I knew who each visitor was. Oh, and I could see how many times a day each person actually clicked on my blog, and see how long they stayed at my blog.
Then I moved to WordPress and the have their own stat counter built in. Now I can see a handy chart of the day to day hits as well as the actual website that my readers come from. It gives me those key phrases that are googled. There are rarely surprises anymore. Anytime someone searches for “Parable of the Talents” they get this post. Any type of search for a cool cake brings you to this post. And it seems a lot of people want to know how to pronounce Roncesvalles, Tremont St., and Coeur d’Alene, so they head to this post.
I actually stopped looking at my stats there for a while (I think mostly because I saw such a dip in my readers, I got depressed. So petty of me, I know, but dang it all, I want to be popular!!). A few days ago I started up my ritual of checking my stats before anything else in my blog. I started to notice that there were a lot of unfamiliar referring websites. Usually I only see the people on my blogroll and the Google searches. Now, however, there are these other blogs that I’ve never heard of. And why would someone be coming from “LOL Catz” for something on my blog? It seems that now WordPress gives you options at the end of a post of other “related” posts. So now anytime someone writes about sex, they get referred to my ONE post with “sex” in the title. Interesting.
I don’t know if I really like this “automatically generated possibly related posts”. Again, I really want to be popular, but I there may be some unwanted traffic. Of course, as long as every commenter is nice, I don’t care where you come from or how you got here. And I like the discussions… so bring it on!! Just no mean stuff. I have to break up enough fights with my three boys. I shouldn’t have to do it on my only place of relief. 
Dallin and Parker have been having a lot of fun in this new house. They like to take toys and blocks and balls and stuff and throw them down the stairs. They drive cars and rubber duckies down the stair railings. They put all the building blocks in the fridge yesterday. Dallin actually SAT in the fridge today. And they like putting things in the oven and taking it out. It’s fun to pretend that they are baking, apparently.
I remember a post from Heather waaaaay back when (a couple years ago, I’m thinking) when Little Red used to put things in the oven and she got used to checking the oven before she turned it on. Melted cars do not make for a happy Little Red, if I recall correctly. 
Anyway, I started to kid with Ches that we were going to have to start checking the oven before we turn it on, just in case.
Oh, how I wish I had done that tonight.
Dinner was late, as seems to be the case lately. It was 7 pm and Dallin and I had just returned from the grocery store. I decided it was too late to make tacos (besides, I forgot to buy more tortillas and we only had two left. And yes, I know that I could make them from scratch, because they are that easy, but I didn’t want to make the effort. Like I said, it was too late already.). So I turned on the oven to preheat and pulled a frozen pizza out of the freezer. Then I set about making some juice.
I had all the water in and was getting a spoon to stir it up when… Huh. What’s that smell? Like burning plastic??
I opened the oven to see two plastic balls that are supposed to be in the tub for bath time (oh great, I just realized it was supposed to be bath night tonight, too. Crap). One of the balls was sitting right up on the element… and it was on fire!!!!!
I yelled and screamed for help. Ches came down the stairs pretty quickly. I pulled the fire extinguisher out from under the sink, then exclaimed, “I don’t know how to use this thing!!” Ches took it from me and in a flash, with just one puff, put out the fire.
That smoke from the extinguisher does NOT taste good. My throat felt very yucky. Still kind of does.
So now we have this residue all over the kitchen and the inside of the oven is completely white. So much for frozen pizza for dinner.
Ches and I set about cleaning the kitchen (good thing is was mostly dirty dishes out!!) and getting rid of any extra residue so we could make dinner. The kitchen really needed cleaning anyway, so I guess this was as good as an excuse as any.
The boys had cold cereal for dinner and Ches and I had bagged salad. At 9 pm.
I haven’t set fire to anything in such a long time! I was doing so well!! Or so I thought. When I said so to Ches, he said, “Yeah, pans aren’t good enough for you anymore, so now you’ve moved on to the oven.”
At least he got amusement out of the entire evening. And now I know how to use the fire extinguisher.
The other day, about 9:30 am, the doorbell rang. Ches was at school, getting some work done, and we don’t know anybody, so I was a bit confused. And I was in my pajamas. Well, it was a neighbor who noticed something odd at the corner of our house, upstairs by the roof, and thought we ought to know.
It was a swarm of bees. Big bees. Lots and lots of bees.
Not good.
So I called Ches at school and he called the management company. We had an exterminator at the house that afternoon. The sprayed a bunch of chemicals and said the bees weren’t getting in the attic (yay!) but it looks like they were getting in the wall. They used some of that expanding foam stuff to close the hole. Apparently there were actually two spot where the bees were congregating.
It’s been a few days, and most of the bees are gone. Hopefully the queen is dead, because that should take care of the rest of the hive, or so we’re told.
The scariest part to me is that there have been all these reports around the valley of some swarms of mean, vicious, attacking bees. People and animals are getting seriously hurt because they end up in the wrong area and these bees start attacking them and stinging like mad. I’m scared of that happening to us, so once I saw those bees I freaked just a little bit.
Things are fine, now, and mostly I’m just glad that we are renters. It’s times like this (and like yesterday when the handyman came to do some little repairs around the house) that it’s nice not to be a homeowner and have the financial responsibility of that kind of thing. When something goes wrong… we make a phone call and it’s taken care of. As much as I want to own my own home, I’m not looking forward to having to take care of all those little things that come up. Water heater breaks? I have to pay for it. Leak in the roof? I have to find someone to fix it and I’d have to pay for it. So yeah. Sometimes being a renter is the best thing in the world.
After dinner, scripture reading, and family prayer, the boys were just bouncing off the walls, so Ches said “Get your shoes on. We’re going outside.” He took the boys to the playground across the street. I headed upstairs to the computer to finally get a turn without someone begging to play Marble Blast Gold or Word Twist. First, I checked on my personal page at the3day.org, then just as I logged in to Facebook, the phone rang.
It was Ches. ”You should go to Payless and get yourself some new shoes so you can get back to training for your walk.”
Big pause.
“Huh? Now?” I was so confused because we haven’t even talked about me getting new shoes in a while, and this just seemed to come randomly out of nowhere.
“Yeah, I mean, I know there isn’t much time, but you can go if you want. You don’t have to. Whatever.” Ches was so nonchalant about the whole thing. I was still confused and I don’t think anything comprehensible came out of my mouth at that point.
“Well, I don’t mean to interrupt your computer time,” Ches continued. ”I just thought you’d like to get yourself some new running shoes. Just don’t bankrupt us.”
So I headed to Payless. Now, I know I’m not going to get any top of the line cross trainers there, but I know I could find SOMETHING that should last for a little while, at least. I tried on several cute pairs (that weren’t so cute once they got on my ugly feet), and I tried on some pink runners (I really, really want pink runners for my walk! I just think it’s appropriate, don’t you??), but I didn’t like the way they felt. Finally, I tried on some cute, lime green Champions. They breathe well, fit well, and didn’t rub any part of my feet in any odd way. Oh, and they were on sale, so they only cost $9.70!!! How awesome is that????
I showed my new, awesome, cute, cheap, fun shoes to Ches, and he smiled and said, “How girly.”
But they aren’t the pink ones!!! :)
So we’re in the house. yay! We still have boxes everywhere and it feels super chaotic here, but that will sort it out soon enough. The kitchen is a lot smaller than my last few kitchens, so I’m trying to get it all set comfortably for me. That’s probably the hardest job right now. At least we have an actual pantry here.
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Dallin is having the hardest time adjusting. The first couple of days he kept saying he wanted to go home now, and when we said “But this is our home now” he would start to cry and yell, “No! It’s not home!” He’s doing better, and last night was the first night he didn’t wake up screaming and freaking out in the middle of the night.
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We got our phone and internet hooked back up on Tuesday. It’s nice to feel connected to the world again, even if all the phone calls we’ve received are from telemarketers.
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My stepmom’s father passed away last weekend. The viewing is tomorrow and the funeral is Saturday. I feel awful that we can’t be there, all because of the price of gas. Lancaster is definitely within a day’s drive from here, so it would be do-able, but we just plain don’t have the money. Money sucks.
What’s that quote? Something like, “Money only matters to those that don’t have it.” How true that is.
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We rented some movies recently with a gift card a friend gave us. We read about the story of Noah and the ark for Family Home Evening on Monday, then planned to watch “Evan Almighty”, but the kids were horrible and we sent them to bed. Ches and I watched the movie. It was really cute. Definitely good for a family. Steve Carrell is hilarious. I’m really starting to enjoy his work (I’ve ever really watched him before and no, I don’t watch “The Office”. Flame me later for that, ‘kay?). I especially liked the scene where Evan starts telling God that this isn’t in his plans, then he tells God what all his plans were and God starts laughing. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes: ”If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” It has certainly held true in my life.
At the end of the movie I told Ches,”I sure hope God is like Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of God. He’s kind, loving, and really funny. I’d like to think that is was God is really like.” Both of these “Almighty” movies (Evan and Bruce) just make me happy to have some faith. Probably silly, but still. That’s just me.
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In case anyone was wondering… yes, it is hot here. And yes, it’s going to get hotter. How do we stand it? We have air conditioning. And we drink lots of water. And eat lots of ice cream and Otter Pops.
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I’m all signed up for The 3 Day walk. I’m working on my personal page (I thought it was all set up, but I guess not). You can visit it at http://08.the3day.org/goto/Sariah.Sharp
Feel free to make a donation online, or just keep up with my progress. I’ll be keeping a blog there, as well as on my personal fitness/weight loss blog (“So Long, Fatty!”) that will mark most of my journey through training and fundraising.
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Ches just told me that some friends of ours who are moving to Wisconsin are loading their truck tonight. I didn’t think they were leaving until next week!! Anyway, looks like we’ll be driving out to Tempe tonight. Aiden has to at least say goodbye to Carter!
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I’m thinking of setting up an email account for Aiden. He has enough long-distance friends now. He loves letters — both giving and receiving — but is horrible about sitting down and actually writing. He loves being on the computer, though. I don’t know. He’s only 5, but if I monitor it well, maybe it could be a good thing? I don’t know. I keep going back and forth on this.
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Well, back to unpacking and such. Fun fun fun. :P
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