Scouting: a verb or a noun?

I am a girl. My husband is a convert to the church. How does this cripple us as we try to raise sons? Combined we do not posses a testimony of the Boy Scouts of America which means we cannot muster the effort it takes to even complete the application process let alone get our kid to a meeting every Tuesday. Even though we both know that Jack is totally going to love every minute of it as he has a genetic predisposition for anything that involves a uniform or a chain of command. How in the world did my husband grow up and somehow dodge this bullet? Perhaps he was too busy shining the brass on his marching band outfit. Or joining the army. Or plotting his law enforcement career. Are you seeing a trend here? The man loves uniforms. Saluting makes him happy. He is clearly the parent that should have been in charge of the Boy Scout application because I don't posses that gene.

Before I begin my tirade about how little I care if my kid can start a fire without a match or properly accessorize an outfit with an ascot (Now that I think about it, I specifically prefer that my boy not know how to do either of these things) Let me say that I am well aware of how karma works and I know that even the act of writing this exponentially increases the odds that I will be asked to accept a calling in scouting at some point in the near future. I am willing to take that risk.

My experience with Scouts consists of  badmouthing uptight parents who wouldn't let their teenaged boys get a drivers license until they had gotten their Eagle Scout. To those people I would like to say that your effort was totally misplaced and therefore counterproductive. Also, you are total cock blocks. Yeah, I said it. We were all thinking it.

I knew the day was coming when I would have to come to grips with this totally odd quasi religious/political organization and that when the time came I would need to prayerfully commit to drop my kid off at a weekly meeting and learn how to sew patches on to a sash. Easy enough. Holy crap, I just remembered the sash. An ascot and a sash? Its like they are asking to be ridiculed.

At this point we are a few months overdue to start this whole adventure and I would like to report that we are well on our way to Arrow of Light glory but instead I must report that I couldn't get through even the application without taking a break to complain let alone pay money for a uniform that I can only describe as "unfortunate". Did anyone catch the way I inserted the term "Arrow of Light" into the paragraph as if we all know what that is? Other people think you are schizophrenic if you ask another person if they are an Eagle. No. I am a human. Thats why we are not communicating in screeches and I am not feeding you to my hatchlings. Scouting is so much like the church in that there is a whole language and culture associated with it and the people who are accustomed to it throw it around like it is normal while everyone else is thinking "What the hell is Webelo?" They act like its normal to have your kid make an oath to an organization.

The application is pretty basic. Name, mailing address, email. But then you have to check a box agreeing to be "an active ScoutParent" Its a simple yes/no question but with the ominous use of capital letters and lack of space between the main words. Actually it is not a yes/no question. There is only one option. I assume that not checking the box is the equivalent of no. I checked the box purely out of peer pressure. These Boy Scout application creators managed to apply peer pressure without the involvement of any of my peers. Someone somewhere has a "subliminal manipulation" badge on their sash. This might even have been some guy's Eagle project.The word ScoutParent is obviously a legally trademarked term and less obviously a commitment to be something I can't even define. I immediately picture myself turning down an invitation to attend a jamboree (!?) and then I picture myself being grilled on a witness stand. "Is this your signature on this document dated May 7 2012  agreeing to be an active ScoutParent?" This fantasy sequence always ends with me receiving the maximum sentence allowed by law which is time in prison and/or camping. There is one other question: Are you a Tiger Cub Partner? I left that one blank because I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the way they filter homosexuals. I can't even make an educated guess of what a Tiger Cub Partner is but identifying myself as a "partner" might be the equivalent to coming out of the closet and I assure you if I ever decide that I am a lesbian I'm keeping the Boy Scouts out of it entirely. I will also leave all tiger cubs out of it.

I am well aware of the BSA's controversial history with gay rights and the huge legal battle the church had to wage. We all know that the church is totally capable of rolling out it's own program for boys and I'm willing to bet that that program is waiting in the wings. The day that happens the Boy Scouts is officially dead.                                                                                                    

When is comes to gay rights I support the Scouts wholeheartedly on this issue, I would like to point out that the millions of dollars spent in that legal battle is the price tag of outsourcing your young men's program. We saw this one coming with the Girl Scouts and avoided that headache in time to prevent our young women from becoming exploited unpaid cookie salesmen, but somehow stayed tied up with the Boy Scouts. The gay lobby could never resist a target with such deep pockets and did I mention the ascots and the sashes? Of course gay men were going to want to be pack leaders. Didn't Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have an entire episode devoted to those pansy looking hats?

And don't get me started on the fundraising. Once a year the church devotes a session of combined Relief Society and Priesthood just to tout the virtues of Scouting and to remind everyone what a worthy cause it is for their charitable dollars. They stretch two minutes of actual information into a very long hour. By the end of the class even the homosexuals are pulling their wallets out just to make it stop. But anyone who has actually sat through this meeting knows that even a huge cash donation will not make it stop. Because there is some fine print ACLU bull crap somewhere that prohibits the church from actually accepting donations on behalf of the Boy Scouts during a church meeting so instead they pass out these forms that request your consent to discuss Boy Scouts on a different occasion at a different place. They go on and on about how there is no pressure to check the yes box and it will all be kept confidential. At this point I am usually trying to push a blank check onto any adult male that will make eye contact with me. This is when everyone acts like my check is hot lava and if they touch it the church will lose its tax exempt status. Then I find myself apologizing for offering money which strikes me as odd every single time. Then just in case there are hidden cameras with direct feeds into the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union, I loudly announce that no financial transaction has occurred here and thank everyone who may or may not have placed an American flag on my lawn for holidays which I am aware is a free service offered to all citizens and will be performed for anyone submitting a written request regardless of their tax deductible donation equal to the suggested $30.00 or sexual orientation. We communicate in a complicated code that involves semaphore and honeybee pheromones and eventually we all understand that if anyone happens to find a blank check under my doormat I will not alert the ACLU. The memo on the check will however include a snarky comment about ascots. I hope there is a merit badge awaiting all of these brave men.

Which brings me to my next point. Why is this organization for boys run almost exclusively by women? Who's idea was it to seek out the only demographic in the church that is very unlikely to have no scouting experience and tap them run things? Probably the same person who first attended an Enrichment meeting and realized that Mormon women have a penchant for getting crap done even if it is completely pointless. I swear that floral centerpieces and den mothers originated in the same meeting and that meeting probably involved handicrafts. My guess is toll painting. Okay, maybe blogging falls into the pointless category. Guilty.

And what is with camping? I have another term I like to use to describe a situation where my family must sleep on the ground in the wilderness: Failure. Have we become so spoiled rotten that we consider it recreation to crap in the woods? Its almost offensive. I like to think my ancestors were fighting wars and crossing plains specifically so that I could sleep on a sweet memory foam mattress with high thread count sheets. They were probably hoping that the day would come when we didn't have to even think about the possibility of wild animals eating our babies. And what did those guys do for fun? Pretend to have typhoid fever and force themselves to use only animal skins for a weekend? The cotton gin? Thats for wimps that can't handle roughing it.

Around here we consider it a hardship when we discover that our Internet purchased plush Angry Birds are counterfeit. Where is the merit badge for putting up with spotty WiFi or waiting longer than thirty minutes for a pizza to be delivered? I like to think of my great grand children not even knowing what an open flame is. I want them to be be capable of calculating the cost of gas and camping gear versus two nights at the Ritz Carlton and I hope they end up at the Ritz every time. I hope someone gives them a merit badge with a little abacus on it for that. I hope they don't know what an abacus is. I could go on forever

So basically I am hoping that when the folks at the BSA see that I have contractually agreed to be an active ScoutParent that they don't google it. The signature line of the application includes the fine print that by signing you are affirming that you have read or promise to read in the future a document about how it is everyone's responsibility to prevent Child Abuse. (I wish I were making this up) Sign here to confirm that the above stated address is correct and that you have no immediate plans to molest boys. If your address is incorrect or if you are concealing an impulse to fondle youngsters under the guise of placing flags in yards for free, please inform your attorney that we strongly advised you against both of these behaviors. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law the penalty of which is a maximum sentence of 50 years to life camping in the wilderness.

Making Memories/ Securing my Coolest Mom Title

The drive across town form our house to my parent's house takes about an hour and is about 62 miles each way. There are a number of ways to go but most of them take us in the general vicinity of downtown Phoenix. Jack is always mesmerized by the tall buildings and the skyline in general. We don't often have need to actually go into the downtown area but to an eight year old those skyscrapers are pretty cool.

Last week we spent the night at my parent's house and the next day we were driving home leisurely with no real time constraints. The weather was beautiful and it was lunch time. Jack looked out the window wistfully and asked "Can you imagine what it would be like to actually go into downtown Phoenix and see those buildings up close?"

Years ago I worked in Renaissance 2. My first job when I was 16 was in the America West Arena. Having been born and raised in Phoenix, I know my way around down town. I am sure that Jack has if fact been there too at some point but if he had he certainly didn't remember it. I thought to myself "Whats the harm in dropping off of the freeway and cutting across town through the skyscrapers?" I pulled over to exit and told Jack that it was his lucky day. We were going to take a ride through down town Phoenix.

The kid thought he'd died and gone to heaven. He was so excited. As we got into the shadows of the buildings and I was giving my little impromptu tour I decided that we'd go one step further and park and get something to eat. I had an idea. "Jack. I'm taking you to one of the coolest places on Planet Earth. He was dying to know where we were going but I made him wait until we walked in.

Friday's operated a restaurant in the Diamondback's stadium Chase field that is open 365 days a year. We got to go in and have lunch in left field  while we watched batting practice. The sheer size of that place will make you dizzy for a minute when you first walk in and the fact that we were the only ones in the stands (or even the restaurant) made it a mind blowing experience. Luckily since we were the only ones the kids got to run around the stands and check it all out. Jack just kept saying over and over " You are the coolest mom ever." Mission Accomplished.

The whole thing cost us less that 20 bucks and an hour of our lives and I guarantee it will be an hour that they both remember for a really really long time. Our waiter saw Jack taking it all in slack jawed and said " So when you grow up do you want to be a baseball player?"

Without missing a beat he said "No, I want to build baseball stadiums."

The roof was opened and we had a perfect view of the planes coming in for landing at Sky Harbor which was the highlight of the whole experience for Abraham. Even though you could pretty much set your watch by their regular arrival every sixty seconds or so, He was equally shocked and excited every single time. I could have sat and watched those boys take it all in all day long but eventually all of the food was gone and it was time to go. Without being prompted they both thanked me about a hundred times on the walk back to the car.

I'm certainly not the most fun mom or the most spontaneous mom or the mom who owns zoo passes. I refuse to listen to crappy music in the car (I.e. anything made for children) and I make them eat vegetables against their will but that day I was a Rockstar. I know for a fact they will remember that day fondly for a long long time. So will I. 

Jack Mormon

I was raised by an active Mormon mom and a totally inactive Mormon dad. He had been raised in the church and served an honorable and very successful full time mission and met my mom at Ricks college and they got married in the temple. I don't know the details of how his church attendance disappeared in the first part of their life together because I wasn't even born until long after he was carrying a pack of cigarettes in his pocket every day after work.

Anyone who knows my dad knows that he is a powerful guy. When he walks into a room people are compelled to turn and look just because of the energy he carries with him. They stand down. People either worship him or detest him or simultaneously worship and detest him. My friends were afraid of him and often people would check with me to see if my dad was home before accepting an offer to play at my house. This was especially odd because he had never mistreated my friends in any way and never mistreated me so there was never an actual reason to be afraid of him but people just were. He swore like a sailor and always had on his person at any given moment a wad of cash, a can of Coca Cola and a bag of candied peanuts. These happened to be my three favorite things in the world and as the youngest child and most manipulative daughter I had staked my claim on a generous portion of all three of those things early.

I always knew my dad had a testimony of the Gospel but looking back I have know idea why I thought that. Its not like he was bearing his testimony to anyone or even discussing religion with anyone but I respected his intelligence enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. The doctrines of the church have always made perfect logical sense to me and therefore I had always thought that anyone who had heard it all and didn't believe was a little bit low IQ. Whoever instilled that into me as a child is a genius and I find myself often dropping hints to my kids that will accomplish this ever so subtle yet powerful technique of inspiring obedience to commandments. Ultimately I want my kids to adhere to the tenants of our religion because they love it and know it to be true for themselves but I am also a realist that understands that often times you get to the higher level by passing through the lower level. Whatever. Maybe they will go on a mission for no other reason than to avoid being a social pariah in the Mormon culture. Great. I saw enough Elders on my mission come out for the wrong reasons. They all ended up figuring it out. Except for the ones with low IQs. "Jack, serving a mission is wonderful because you get to Preach the Gospel and help people come unto Christ which will bless your life eternally. Also I will be devastated if you don't go and you will surely only have really lame unattractive girls to choose from when you want to get married." I am not above this form of brainwashing. The ends justifies the means. Not to mention it is one hundred percent true. I would be devastated and any girl worth marrying will and should hold out for someone who has demonstrated that level of commitment to God.

My dad was always entertainingly irreverent about the church. He wanted us to be raised in it, but he loved doing things like seeing the statue of Brigham Young at Temple Square in Salt Lake and saying "There's old Brigham with his back to the temple and his hand to the bank." (which, by the way, is exactly how it is positioned). He openly declared that his favorite college sports team was any team playing BYU, and he had a penchant for walking out a room during mid lesson of a home teacher's visit.

He had a really cool sculpture of a giant jack (the toy). It was this funky touchable piece of heavy art and he loved telling people that it was his Jack Mormon award. I came across it the other day and since I did name my first born after it I had to get a photo. I'm sure he made this with his own hands. (He is awesome like that.) I officially lay claim on this when my parents are dead. I want my mom's charm bracelet and my dad's Jack Mormon Trophy. 

There were certain things that I wanted to be ignorant about. I convinced myself that he smelled like cigarette smoke because thats just what welders smelled like and his employees at the shop all smoked. When he had cigarettes in his truck or pocket it was because he was holding them for a friend. Even when I found him with a cigarette in his fingers I would immediately search the scene for whichever shop employee had his hands so full that he needed my dad to hold his cigarette for him while it was lit and while my dad was welding with his other hand. After all, everyone knows that smoking is like the worst thing a person can do, right? This is definitely one of those LDS culture things that is kind of messed up but I appreciate that I was brainwashed to disrespect smokers for a very good reason and as an adult who has never been tempted to take even one drag, I have no complaints.

As an adult I can also appreciate all of the ways my dad was totally righteous when I was growing up that I gave him no credit for at the time. I understand now how significant it is that he provided well for his family by working his ass off every single day. I realize how significant it is that he never cheated on my mom. He was honest in his dealings and he was a good person to the core who always gave generously to his fellow man and served others. He would even hold cigarettes for people without complaining.

I have seen enough train wreck marriages and worthless absent fathers and cheating husbands or lazy bastards who don't work to know now that my dad was doing a lot more right than he was doing wrong. Plus he ended up with four well adjusted children who all chose wonderful spouses, married in the temple and are currently enjoying fulfilling lives. None of us ever rebelled, he sent three missionaries into the mission field and we all love each other. You can't argue with results like that. Granted, his best parenting move was choosing my mother in the first place who tirelessly drug four kids to church all by herself and who modeled the positive fruits of following the Savior and staying active in His church every single day of her life.

As a dramatic teenager my fondest dream was to see my dad come back into the church. It was hard for me to get priesthood blessings from random ward members. As I understood the plan more I wanted my dad to be part of our eternal family. I thought it was a pipe dream but thats what I really wanted.

I wish I could give you more details of my dad's miraculous change of heart and subsequent reactivation into full activity in the church but I was not in the country when it happened. When I left on my mission I left an inactive smoking swearing Milan and by the time I got back we all went to the temple together and he was serving as the High Priest group leader. I don't take any credit for the change but I'm sure that between supporting a missionary, the death of his parents, a heart condition that was threatening to end his life and the general softening that comes when a person becomes a grandpa, there was a perfect storm of events that brought him back. In a style that I understand completely he went the extreme route. He stopped carrying people's cigarettes cold turkey, put his garments back on and by the time I was back he would follow me around trying to engage in spiritual discussions and spend hours a day studying the scriptures and immersing himself in the teachings of the prophets. It was great but I will admit I had an unexpected grieving period when I realized that the guy who raised me was gone forever. He had been replaced by this spiritual giant who would not only sit through an entire home teaching message, he was home teaching. Shortly after that he was called to be the freaking bishop. Yes. Thats right . Staci Haws was a bishop's daughter.

Not only did I have to grieve the loss of Old Milan but it took a while to get used to New Milan. One time I remember putting a mix CD I had made into the car stereo while on a road trip shortly after my mission. One song had a bad word in it and this apparently offended New Milan. He started lecturing me about the influences we choose to introduce into our lives and why it is so destructive to choose worldly music etc. I could have taken the advice from anyone else but I wasn't about to have Milan Haws tell me that I needed to be more churchy. "Hey Dad, I am sorry but I am not offended by swearing. Remind me sometime to tell you about the asshole I learned that from. In the mean time turn the music back on."

Nowadays I just appreciate every detail of my dad. Even the contradictions. He does whatever he does with passion including being my biggest cheerleader since I was born. Our family was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I did receive perfect unconditional love from my parents and to not take myself too seriously which I am finding is actually pretty rare and that skill makes life more bearable than just about anything. Turns out I had the best dad in the world and I still do. 

Better than Airbags

Here are some pictures that John texted me today on the scene of a horrible car accident where everyone should have been killed but instead were miraculously unharmed.

I am pretty much an angry bird-ologist

My four year old and my eight year old spend most of their days trying to come up with questions that will stump me. Abe still thinks that I am the ultimate source of all knowledge but Jack is becoming more skeptical. Here is a sampling of questions I have answered today:

Abe:

Sharks like to eat people, right Mom?

T-Rexes hate dinosaurs, right Mom?

Ninjas are so quiet, right Mom?

Lala loves to lick people in the face, right Mom?

Me and dad are both handsome, right Mom?

This show is boring, right mom?

Blue slushies are the best, right mom?

Skeletons are totally fake, right mom?

Angry Birds hate pigs, right mom?

Jack:

How did Stephen Hawking get paralyzed?

What does DNA stand for?

Why do people get abortions?

Would a French dog understand English?

Who pays for the Olympics?

Why would the Irish want to kill each other?

Wouldn't an igloo be too cold to live in?

Are humans evolving?

What is Algebra?

Hey Jack, don't you have any questions about Angry Birds? Go ahead and ask me why Target is a far more pleasant place to shop but will never be able to compete with WalMart for global retail domination. Ask me why Obama wants war in Iran during an election year. I can accurately tell you how the gravitational pull of the moon creates oceanic tides. I know a lot of stuff. I am pretty good at making stuff up on the fly too.

Basically Abe is asking me stuff to confirm his hypothesis that we both know everything. Jack is trying to confirm his hypothesis that we both know very little. I am totally thrilled with both theories.

True Beauty

I like the theory that everyone has one true beauty. We spend so much energy inventorying and loathing our physical flaws and sometimes everyone needs to just admit that they posses one perfect physical feature. One thing that we can just embrace as beautiful and feel comfortable about. I have fabulous eyelashes that are long and thick and naturally curly. I can think of improvements I could use to every single thing about me but there is no way to improve my eyelashes.

Physically I didn't win the genetic lottery and get blessed with a gorgeous face or body and as a chunky kid who grew into a chunky teenager, an entire life of feeling gigantic has a way of warping your self image. I never had what I would call low self esteem because apparently in the pre-mortal world I decided to skip the line where they were passing out athleticism, I refused a fast metabolism and I went straight for where they were passing out confidence and took two helpings. Don't get me wrong, I believed that I was a morbidly obese monster of a girl who would never be found attractive by any human male alive, I just happened to also think I was genuinely the coolest person I knew. I was always the life of the party, I could get along with anyone, I cracked myself up constantly and I knew God loved me. My mother probably deserves credit for the confidence because she was certainly my biggest fan and she is a social/emotional genius who has a magical way of making people feel at ease in her presence. She did not go overboard praising every mediocre accomplishment but I never craved her acceptance because it had never been withheld in any way. Can a daughter give higher praise than that? I have known enough screwed up adults in my life to tell you that nothing damages a person more than a childhood of wondering if you will ever be good enough to your mom. Not to mention the fact that neither the Arnett nor the Haws gene pool has ever run short on confidence and the odds of Marolyn and Milan producing an insecure introvert are about as high as the odds of them having a brown eyed baby.

With that said, I would also like to tell you that the first thing my dad ever said to my mom was "Do you know that you have fat knees and no boobs?" I'm not making this up. This is not a pick up line that would or should work on any woman but the effect of this statement combined with his obvious attraction was to expose her most sensitive secret that she had spent her life concealing and hating and just exposing it, acknowledging it, and dismissing it. What a novel idea. Long story short, they ended up married with four kids and as soon as medical science caught up with the growing plague of women who hated their figure, the fat knees and flat chest were fixed. These days I can name ten people in ten seconds who I know personally who have had boob jobs and/or liposuction (and a hell of a lot more than that) but this was back in the 80s when it was almost unheard of in the middle class. I was about ten when she got her boobs and I remember that she was extremely worried about the message she was sending her daughters by surgically altering her appearance. At the time I held no strong opinions about breasts one way or the other but I understood that everyone else seemed to give them (or the lack thereof) a lot of attention. My mom kept telling me "Staci, when you grow up you will most likely not have boobs at all. Thats okay. That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with you." I remember thinking something to the 10 year old effect of "No shit, Sherlock."

Besides her own neurosis about body image, I don't know where she got the idea that I would grow up and have small boobs since I had never possessed anything that had ever been described as small. Even stories of my birth always included what a giant baby I was. People don't realize that a statement like that is the emotional equivalent of telling a girl she was born hideously disfigured. They also don't realize that comparing a child to a Cabbage Patch Doll is not only UNORIGINAL, it is CRUEL. (And those are the only two qualities I truly detest in a person to this day.) I wasn't a sensitive kid and never had a penchant for violence but a person can only get their chubby cheeks pinched so many times before they begin plotting revenge. Just freaking try to pinch my cheeks today. See what happens. Better yet, pinch my kids cheeks and call them a Cabbage Patch Doll. Please keep in mind that the number of semiautomatic firearms 35 year old Staci has immediate access to is in the double digits.

Okay. Now that I have that off of my chest I can tell you that I have spent my entire adulthood or an insane roller coaster of weight change from literally being morbidly obese, to getting so thin that size 2 jeans were loose on me and I couldn't even lay on my stomach in bed because my body would teeter precariously on my prutruding hip bones. I am 5'10" and I was about 110 pounds. This was a few years ago when I was in the grips of a mysterious auto-immune disease that ravaged me out of nowhere. The sick thing is that I was literally wasting away to nothing and there was a point when I started to honestly expect to just keep shrinking until I died. I would lie awake at night and wonder how the end would come. Would I collapse in the house and be rushed to the hospital where I deteriorated until organ failure while my family watched helplessly and doctors continued to be stumped or would I just go to bed and not wake up? I went to dozens of doctors and I couldn't stop or even slow down or diagnose the problem. The sick thing is that I was a walking skeleton and everyone who saw me just couldn't help but congratulate me and celebrate this weight loss. When I got sick I didn't even want to lose weight. My weight had been average and stable for years before I got sick. My neighbor told me that I look like a holocaust victim. I was shocked to hear such a direct and graphic insult and then I realized that she meant it as a compliment. I can think of no better illustration of how completely weight obsessed our culture is than the moment I realized that healthy women are looking at images of Holocaust victims and feeling envy. It got to the point that I couldn't have a conversation with anyone without them pointing out how fabulously skinny I was. I was familiar with the phrase "There's no such thing as being too rich or too skinny." but I had never expected to experience either condition and I certainly wouldn't have put my money on becoming too skinny, but I was officially there. I would dread church on Sunday because each week I would have to explain over and over that no, I did not do the HCG diet. I have a horrible incurable undiagnosable auto-immune disease. Then I would have to maintain a pleasant demeanor as everyone responded exactly the same way every time I said it. "You're so lucky." Yes. I am lucky. I am wondering who will raise my kids when I'm gone and wondering if my funeral will be one of those depressing tragic type of funerals or if it will be inspiring and touching. But I can buy my clothes in the little girls department, and I don't have to try anything on because I know how it will look on me which is exactly how it looks on the hanger. Lucky me.

I am all about extremes. I'm either scary overweight or scary skinny. My house is either a disaster or it looks like a model home. I am either so healthy that I haven't needed to see a doctor in a decade or I am so sick that I am hooked to an IV five times a week so that I don't die. I got pregnant with Jack while simultaneously using 3 forms of contraception and I had to take fertility drugs for a year to get Abe. I experience no physical pain when I am in advanced stages of labor. In case you think I'm talking about digging ditches, I'm not. I'm talking about pushing something the size of a watermelon (with shoulders) out of my vagina. I went through the entire process of meeting, dating, converting, and marrying my husband in a little over two months. Once I paid cash for a brand new 328i BMW. The car I drove for three years before that was a red and grey two toned Pathfinder that had been wrecked on three corners, didn't have power steering (or power anything) that was lovingly called "the Dyke Mobile" by everyone who knew it. There was a time in my life that I had a private corner office in literally the highest rent Class A office space in the entire state. Mine was the office with three walls of floor to ceiling glass on the corner of 32nd street and Camelback on the sixth floor overlooking the Biltmore and right across from the Ritz Carlton so if I got bored I could watch famous people sunbathing. That job came with an expense account, a ridiculously large paycheck, an assistant and a primo reserved parking space in the garage. The monthly rent on just the parking space was higher than the total value of the car I parked there every day. If you are wondering how a 23 year old high school drop out landed that job let me tell you something about sales. When the president of The American division of a multinational corporation realizes that he just bought a plane ticket from NYC to Phoenix to interview a 23 year old high school drop out, he knows that he has found someone who can sell anything. I hate the term "She could sell ice to an Eskimo." Of course Eskimos will buy ice. Eskimos LOVE ice. They love it so much that they live in houses made of it. In fact, thats the only thing I know for sure about Eskimos. They are ice addicts. Thats like saying "She could sell Crack to Whitney Houston". Lets all be clear about our target demographic. If you ask me if I'd rather sell ice to Eskimos or desert dwellers I'll take the ones who didn't move to the desert specifically because they hate ice. Let me tell you a far more accurate phrase that would express sales ability. "She can sell Mormonism to the French." Thats a tough sell. It is also a perfect job to prepare you to sell high end office space.

There was once a time when I was on the VIP list at every trendy bar in town (tip: the girl who will be the designated driver every single time is the most popular girl in the club scene) I have never tasted alcohol but I was on a first name basis with all the bouncers (another tip: It never hurts to make out with a bouncer every now and then if you want to be on the VIP list at all the clubs) Speaking of extremes, Once I spent the night in jail. I used my one phone call to get Lisa to come post bail and I made it home the next morning just in time to shower and get to church to teach gospel doctrine. You get the idea. I sound bi-polar but I swear I'm not. I'm not even a thrill seeker. Sure I find it entertaining to push people's buttons (especially the buttons on uptight Mormons) but really, somebody has got to do it. Lets not take ourselves too seriously.

With my all or nothing track record it makes sense that one day I had a revelation that hit me over the head and changed everything. I am hot. I had spent my whole life avoiding mirrors and accepting platonic BFF status among all of the cute boys I knew and had totally convinced myself that had God wanted me to be a wife and mother he would have given me a totally different set of physical attributes. I had totally grieved the loss of the husband and kids I was taught to want but would never have and I had made peace with it and moved on. After all, I was in my early twenties and everyone knows that that put me way into old maid status. Sick.

I was successful at selling just about anything on the planet but I saw my DDDD boobs as a liability. Male humans are HARD WIRED to love DDDD boobs. I was daily selling high end commercial real estate to companies at above market premiums effortlessly and I was failing to sell DDDD boobs to men. I wasn't even really overweight then. I had learned how to advantageously dress my figure and learned how to doll myself up. Wait a minute. I was marketing my product to the wrong demographic. If my life had a soundtrack, this is where you would hear Sir Mix-a-lot. There is an entire planet of men who love my LA face and my Oakland bootie. The first group I discovered was black guys. I couldn't get a date in the singles ward to save my life but I couldn't walk down the street without a hot black man pressing his frantically scrawled phone number into my hand. I was dating a professional basketball player and he was showing me off to his jealous friends. And I was the trophy girlfriend based entirely on my looks. I didn't have to make anyone laugh or engage in witty banter to make them want to be around me. That got old in a hurry. That got offensive in a hurry. The magical thing about realizing one day that you are in fact attractive is that once you know it everyone else seems to notice too. There is a vibe that gets sent out and heads start turning. Once that vibe was put out I found another demographic. Non-Mormon men. Here is another little nugget of truth about attraction. A chick who is a solid seven gets more attention than a ten. A seven is attractive enough to catch their attention and not too hot to scare them away. This is especially true if the girl who is a ten never had to be forced to develop a sense of humor and never got forced against her will to learn how to be BFFs with cute boys because it turns out to be a very handy skill to have when you are married to the cutest one of all and you are raising the other two cutest ones.

I keep thinking about Eve n the Garden of Eden. Before she ate the forbidden fruit and Satan had no influence over her she walked around naked. Then she ate the fruit and became subject to Lucifer's. The very first thing Satan did was make her ashamed of her body. This is the Father of all Lies who laughs at suffering and is bent on destroying us and out of all of the millions of things he could tempt her with he went with the most effective destructive thing possible. He convinced her that her body was disgusting. In fact thats what signaled God that the fruit had been eaten. They covered themselves with fig leaves because they were ashamed. Its no coincidence that death and body image issues entered the world simultaneously.

5 And I, the Lord God, called unto Adam, and said unto him: Where ^agoest thou?

16 And he said: I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I beheld that I was naked, and I hid myself.

17 And I, the Lord God, said unto Adam: Who told thee thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, if so thou shouldst surely ^adie?

They made themselves coverings out of fig leaves to cover themselves and the scriptures don't say this but I its very possible that Eve then said, "Does thou know wherest I may go to find a good underwire minimizer fig leaf so that I mayest lift and separate my breasts? And wherein may I find a way to cover my cellulite? The Serpent beguiled me and told me that this apron I have fashioned out fig leaves maketh my thighs look huge."

I love Eve. She is the smart cookie who figured out the answer to the whole tree of life riddle. I guaran-damn-tee you that while the Garden of Eden was probably a really nice place it was about as exciting as watching paint dry. I mean how long can a sharp girl walk around a place carrying baby lambs gathering flowers and watching ripples in a pond without something interesting around. I would have been all over that forbidden fruit. Sure, death is fine. We'll take the curse. I'll push shoudered watermelons out of my vagina and Adam will till the earth and we will figure it out as we go, just get me out of this boring place where we feel nothing. I'll take the combo of pain and joy any day over perfect boringness.

The great thing about life is that the whole point of life is to come here and get our asses kicked. Life has a way of figuring out the one thing you don't see coming to level you every now and then. The worst thing that could happen to a person is for nothing hard to ever happen to them. Its actually the only thing you can ever really expect out of life. It will all be unexpected. And just when you get to where you feel like you have a handle on things and you are strong and capable and you don't need help from anyone, watch out. An infinitely loving God won't let you get too far like that without blessing you with some challenge that will efficiently remind you exactly why we need Him. I let Abe wander far enough away from me that if he falls he might get hurt but I don't let him get so far from me that he'll get hit by a truck. And when he insists on running towards traffic without me I give him a swat on the butt. He doesn't like getting a spanking and he may even cry and throw a fit about it. He might even be mad at me or claim to not need me at all. He doesn't understand immediately that the little pain caused by the reprimand is nothing compared to the pain that those cars will inflict. He won't understand it for years. I love him unconditionally and endlessly and will do anything to keep him safe. Even spank him. I don't ever enjoy the spankings life hands out but I'm trying my best to reign in the tantrums and learn to stay close to my Parent. Sometimes he even throws one of those leashes made for kids with ADHD at Disneyland onto my back which really pisses me off but I'm starting to understand why I need the freaking leash. He loves me. I have a covenant with Him and He keeps His end every time.

Of all the names in the world my parents could have chosen for me they picked Staci. Staci Haws. Say it out loud. Now say it with a severe lisp. Thathi Hawth. Go figure that thats the kid that got a lisp. I examined every angle of this irony for a half hour every day of third grade as I was forced to sit in a small room with a tyrant of a speech therapist who made me talk about that slut Sally and her stupid seashells by the seashore every single day. I'm sure the woman was much nicer than I remember her because horrible people don't typically choose to make helping children a career, but thats not what I was thinking about because I was too busy mentally slaughtering Sammy the Seal with my semi-auto. I couldn't hear the damn lisp. In my head it sounded exactly the same when I said it her way or my way. I literally made no progress. Finally the school year ended and the speech therapist wrote me off as a hopeleth cathe. Wow this post is long. Can you tell that I am thuffering with inthomnia? Feel free to stop reading anytime.

That summer I had to get a dental spacer put into my teeth just to prevent crowding. It was a little bar that connected to my back molars and ran along the inside of my bottom teeth. You couldn't see it but it felt weird. I spoke and it was a little awkward. I sounded weird. Terror ran through me. For a moment I thought that Thathi Hawth had just become Shashi Hash. In reality the lisp was gone. In one instant. The lisp disappeared. I never mispronounced an S again in my life. Even when the spacer came out. It was that simple. cathe clothed. Can you believe that I had such a dramatic change in one instant. Its a fact. Its the story of my life. Its how I roll. I do pretty much nothing by degrees.

To close, let me just embed a nugget of a video that illustrates exactly the kind of girl that all the guys every LDS singles ward go nuts for. This is my true revenge to every boy that didn't ask me to dance at the stake dance and to all of the ones who asked for my number and called to ask me about my girlfriends and then lingered on the phone for hours because I was so fun to talk to. I sound bitter but I really am not. I count my unsuccessful teenaged love life among my greatest blessings. Not to mention I ended up scoring the kind of man that…… uhhhh…. I got…… I am at a loss for words. I have no words that do justice to John's goodness and his hotness and his integrity and intelligence. He is my perfect complimentary match. The only person that I trust completely. I made it across the finish line of single-hood with a white dress that symbolized the perfect hard-won virginity that I possessed. He was worth saving it for. A real man who loves my rack a lot and loves my brain even more. It blows my mind that I got so lucky. Not Holocaust lucky, Real lucky. I was searching for my equal and I married up.

So back to the greatest viral video ever to grace the Internet. I could watch this over and over and over and over. I would like Travis to report in twenty years how entertaining it is to be eternally yoked to this sweet spirit after she has gained a few pounds. Being married to this girl after the newlywed sex is over sounds about like the Garden of Eden to me. Enjoy.

The Tooth is Out

This whole day has revolved around Jack's obsession with getting his loose tooth out. Yesterday he was all about letting me yank on it but there was one or two incidents where it bled and hurt more than he expected. Today he was twice as obsessed but now was completely wussing out. The tooth was so obviously hanging on by nothing. It could twist 180 degrees and protruding out. I could have let it go for another day if he wasn't so stressed about it. Finally I pinned the kid down against his will and yanked the tooth out when he opened his mouth to scream. No blood, no nerve, the new permanent tooth is showing and there's no way it actually hurt him. Nonetheless he didn't take too kindly to my helpful assault and so he cried and flipped out for twenty minutes. Then he walked next door to the Gartner's house to show them his tooth where he promptly dropped the tooth onto the ground where a bag of crushed popcorn had recently been spread. We sorted through thousands of small white tooth shaped debris. Just as I considered fetching one of the old teeth from my jewelry box to solve the problem, the tooth was found and once again Jack could stop sobbing. Here's a pretty classic picture that illustrates the trauma of the tooth. This is literally the best smile I could get out of him.