The Talking Shower!

Staying in other people's homes is an experience that brings mixed feelings.  When you are shown to the strange bedroom, you have to take a while to orient yourself.  Everything is in a different place, the bed feels different.  Maybe there isn't a lamp next to the bed, or maybe it's on the side you don't normally sleep!  Maybe the room doesn't have it's own bathroom and YOU HAVE TO SHARE!! All these things are uncomfortable and strange.  It takes a while to get used to everything (and by the time you are, you usually have to go home :)

This past week, I tended some friends' 3 youngest children while mom, dad and graduating senior daughter took a trip to Europe.  I looked forward with some trepidation because in spite of having 3 sons of my own, they are practically "only" children, each being 6 years apart from the other.  So having 3 kids - 14, 11, and 8 together, was going to be a challenge.  It wasn't.  They were delightful - well-behaved, helpful and fun.

That was not the problem.  The problem was the "talking shower!!"  The parents said I could sleep in their lovely upstairs bedroom.  When I went upstairs for the first time, I was delighted to see it was a large airy room with a ceiling fan.   The only thing that freaked me out a little was that there was a LARGE shower/bath in the corner of the room.  Yes, that's right, folks, not in it's own room, but in the CORNER OF THE BEDROOM!!!  Oh, dear, showering in a room that had no door to lock.  And it had sheer glass doors.
Well, never mind, I told myself, you can lock the door to the bedroom.  Oh, wait, no door to the bedroom.  OK, JUST BREATHE!!!  I went down the stairs and found a door at the bottom of the stairs.  PHEW, OK, I can lock that!

Monday morning arrived.  Now, if you are a girl reading this, you know what a big deal hair is to us, right?  Doing my hair takes an hour every day (maybe it's because I am 55 and can't just run a comb through and go out - IT WOULD SCARE THE NATIVES!!! )  So I wash my hair Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This was Monday.  This meant that normally I would not shower, but take a bath so as to not mess up the hair.  I went over to this VERY LARGE shower/bath and looked at it.  I turned the handle of the tap and water came out the top of the shower.  I looked around for the knob to change from shower to bath water.  Nothing.

Ah, on the the wall I spied a keyboard.  Yes, that's right, a keyboard in the bath.  All sorts of little signs. Ok, I can do this.  I undressed and got into the shower.  That itself was difficult  because the wall of the shower was HIGH, and I have short legs.  This was not going well.  I shut the doors.  I looked at the keyboard again.  Wait, I can't see anything because I am blind without my glasses.  Open the door again and get my glasses.  Push the button with what looks like a shower on it.  A Chinese woman welcomes me to the shower!!!!!!!!!Water pours down from the top.  Urggh, I didn't want that.  I don't want to get my hair wet.  Steam begins to fill up the shower.  Now I can't see out of my glasses.  Open the door, wipe off the glasses.  Close the door, push another button.  Water shoots out of the lower jet holes, tiny jets of water that STING!! I hop to the side.  Glasses fogged up again.  Open doors, water sprays from the sides out onto the floor. Manage to grab a face towel.  Wipe the glasses off. Try again.  No luck.   Finally, I pushed all the buttons.  Now I have Chinese women talking to me, water gushing from all sides, a hot blast of steam on my legs.  I have visions of dying in the shower, a large beached lady, shot with water jets, drowned in steam and heat and soapy water.  Yeah, I wanna be that EMT.  Well, thank goodness, I would be dead and wouldn't have to see me being lifted out of this torture chamber.  (Although I would probably be there in spirit, floating above, with my late husband David, with him saying "Sha, you put on a little weight, I see.")
Hmm, so not going to happen.  I WILL FIGURE THIS **** shower out!!

OK, so I decide to wash my hair.  Because it's already wet.  But there is no water coming out of the top shower.  So I have to kneel down in a rapidly filling tub, bend my head and rinse off my hair with the needle point sniper bullets of water shooting out the side.  Powerful, painful massage. 

Finally, I grab my sponge.  I think there is a water softener in this house, because the sponge will not get rid of all the soap.  I try to rinse it in one of the jets.  The temperature keeps rising.  (One of the buttons I pressed, I think, must raise the water temp).  Now, I am not only going to be a large beached lady, but I will be a large, BOILED, beached lady.

Once my hair is rinsed (oh, my painful scalp) and I have allowed water to reach each pressure point on my body, I decide to stop showering.  I close the tap.  But the shower continues to heat up, because I apparently pushed the sauna button.  Finally, in desperation I push the OFF button.  Goodbye, says the Chinese lady.  I open the doors and swing my short, fat leg over the side, missing the step and falling on my red, hot, (and I don't mean that in the J-Lo way) bottom on the floor of the bathroom. 

Well, if only I could have video taped that.  I KNOW I would have won the $10,000 on America's  Funniest Home Videos.

Staying over in other people's homes is so much fun, isn't it?

Playing catch up.....................

It's been a while......................................
So much has happened since I last posted on this blog.

I had to have surgery in August last year.  Not fun.  However, my dearest outlaw-sister-friend Corryn Howden came and stayed with me for 10 days and because of her, I recovered super fast, and felt healthier (and slimmer) than I had for a long time.  She made me drink this amazing veggie juice every day.  It really helped with my healing and I felt great!  She is one of my favorite outlaws!

The need for the surgery was a great surprise to me - I had almost put off going to see the doctor but something kept telling me to go (it was one of those "very pleasant" ob-gyn appointments that we all love sooooooooooooo much!!)  Thank goodness, and I am so thankful to his faithful assistant Christine,  who asked the question that started the examination process that ended up in the surgery.  If I had left it for another year, things might have been much worse.  Grateful to God and the Holy Ghost for promptings and for following those promptings.

I was glad to get back to work 2 weeks earlier than expected, as I had not been with my new 7th graders except for 3 days right at the beginning of the term, so it was an adjustment.  But we have had a great year.

Then in October, we had another traumatic upheaval.  My dearest Matt, who had received a deportation order in March, was finally picked up at my house at 6:55 am.  I usually leave at 7am but left at 6:45  that morning so I was not there when 6 huge, aggressive ICE (immigration police)  agents showed up at the house and threatened to break the door down if he did not come out. (Unfortunately, Timothy was there and was grilled by the ICE agents which was not pleasant for him) :) They took my little boy away without shoes or a jacket and because Immigration does not have a detention center, they put him in the County Jail for 3 weeks.  Seeing my son in a striped jumpsuit broke my heart.  It was a very stressful (and expensive) time.  I had to pay ($75) into an account so he could call me (no more collect calls) (I also had to put $50 in his commissary account so he could buy whatever he needed), I also paid $25 so I could email him.  His dear Miste and I visited him twice a week. It was heartbreaking to speak to my son on a phone through a glass panel. Then around the 21st October they put him on a plane and sent him back to Africa.   He has been there for 7months already, but has a good job, has a car, has GOT MARRIED to Miste, and is living with his brother and sister-in-law, so it has all worked out okay.
Rather a drastic punishment for a very small crime, but I guess it proves once again that you can choose your actions, but you can't choose your consequences.

Miste is back here, getting her spousal visa and other paperwork, and then will go back to Africa as soon as possible.  I will be visiting there at Christmas so I will be will my whole family for Christmas (except for Travis) for the first time in 18 years!!
I AM LOOKING SO FORWARD!!

The next thing that happened was very exciting. Travis received his LDS mission call early in December.  He was called to serve in San Diego California, Spanish-speaking!!! He was so excited.  He finished out the semester that December, and came home for the three months to prepare.  He was to leave April 4th, 2012.  He worked for our bishop, Sean Collins, for about 6 weeks and managed to save some money to go toward his mission.  We spent a lovely 3 months together.  His mission farewell was the 18th March and we dropped him off at the MTC on the 4th. He was there for 9 weeks learning Spanish and he arrived in San Diego on the 5th June. He is so excited to be serving the Spanish people of San Diego for the next two years.  I got to talk to him from the Airport on the 5th!! The next call will be at Christmas.  He sends an email home every week.  You can read them on his blog at eldertravishowden.tumblr.com.


One of the best things that happened this year is that my beautiful grand-daughter turned 1.  I wish I could have been there for her party.  She is so adorable.  We tried to talk on Skype one time but she just wanted to bang the keyboard.  Her dad picked her up and then she tried to get to the keyboard with her toes.  I can't wait to see her at Christmas.  She looks so much like her daddy did, with her mommy's pretty eyes.  Her dad sent me some videos of her recently and I laughed and cried as I watched this beautiful little girl toddle around.  Love you, Islay.

 The rest of the school year was great!  My cute little 7th graders make going into work a pleasure each day.  I will be moving up to 8th grade next year and they will be coming with me so that will make the transition easier.  I am looking forward to teaching 8th grade with a whole new history and language curriculum.
The only constant in life is change and change is so good for us - it stretches us and makes us grow!!

Well, that's all my life caught up. School finished on the 31st May and I spent the next week moving to the 8th grade classroom.  I then went on Sunday 10th to tend some friends' kids for a week while their parents jetted around Europe with their graduated senior daughter.  It was so much fun looking after the kids, they were so well-behaved, and I had a hilarious experience there.

Read all about it in my next blog - " THE TALKING SHOWER" 

Photographs.

I just spent the morning taking apart a photo album. It was an album I made of my wedding day to Timothy. Someone had bought a beautiful Wedding Journal/Album and and one summer I spent a lot of time carefully cutting the pages out and replacing them in a scrapbook with acid free plastic sheet covers. I used the pages from the bought album because they had beautiful words and verses on them, that really shared what I felt about the wedding and the marriage. I also added my thoughts and feelings about the wedding and the honeymoon. It was a beautiful thing.
Anyhoo........ this morning I just felt it was time to take the album apart. It was an interesting, cathartic experience. I took each page out of its plastic cover, read what was written and looked carefully at the photograph. And I was overjoyed to find that I was not weeping, I was not sad, I was not devastated. I remembered with fondness what a beautiful day my wedding was.

It was a gorgeous South African summer day in February. We had the wedding at South Africa's only "theme park" - Gold Reef City, a replica of a mining village from the Victorian era. The marriage was performed in a small chapel with a steep pitched roof and stained glass windows, which just held our 60 or so guests. The reception was held across the street at the Gold Reef City hotel, where we had a wedding lunch.

The overwhelming feeling was one of joy. I felt beautiful that day, loved and desired and content. The wedding ceremony was sweet, with my boys giving me away, and standing up front with us during the ceremony. We were all so happy.

As I looked over the photographs this morning, that is the feeling that came to me. I reveled in the memories of that beautiful day and the magical honeymoon that followed. The photos allowed me a glimpse into a happy past, and the glimpse warmed my heart.

I felt a feeling of gratitude for that experience and all that followed. Isn't that what photos are supposed to do? Allow us a glimpse into what was, and a sigh for what might have been and a thank you for what it meant.

"All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it."

Not only did the photos remind me of a joyful time, I also found some beautiful pictures of family who are no longer here. The pictures are beautiful, because we all look our best at weddings, don't we? My dearest Mom, with her hair "coiffered" and her smile wide on her lovely face. I miss her so much. Dear Granpa Jimmy, with his happy face, all spiffied up in a suit. I remember him always answering "marvelous!!!" whenever you asked him how he was.

Beautiful pictures of Greg and Matt, at age 12 and 6, looking handsome in their white shirts and long pants. They are both men, now, with their own lives and challenges, but then they were still my sweet boys, with their futures ahead of them. Then, I was still so much a part of their lives, still made decisions for them, still kept them safe from harm. Now, they have their own lives, with their own pictures.




A photo album is a wonderful thing. It is a memorial to the significant events in our lives and it is an affirmation that exciting things happen; and that even when they don't, the most mundane are worth capturing. It is, for the future generations that look at the photographs, a tantalizing glimpse into how their parents or family members used to live and a vision of what was important enough to them to capture on film.

"Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?"

So as I dismantled the album, (with much less pain than the marriage was dismantled (oh, the irony)), I felt gratitude for the many experiences, especially the joyful ones, that I have had in my life. It doesn't matter (I can say that now, because I have worked through the pain) that that beautiful bright beginning had a bad ending, because for a while there, all was bright and beautiful. It is those bright and beautiful moments from the past that motivate us out of the present and into a hopeful future. So much good came from that happy day; my beautiful son Travis, my life in America, a college degree, a job that I absolutely love, a spiritual journey that has given me some of the greatest joy I have ever known, and the advent into my life of some extraordinary and very special people. That day also began a journey of learning, many painful lessons that I wished I did not have to learn, but many lessons that have helped me become the person I am today.

That is also why we love looking at photo albums that belong to people we know and love. It is a glimpse into their lives, into their joys and into the significant events that they experience. From their photos, we can vicariously enjoy and share their experiences. We can love whom they love, we can see what they saw, we can wear what they wore, ate what they ate, we can feel what they feel.

I took one of the plastic covers and put the title page of the album inside. Behind it, I put the pictures I wanted to keep, the pictures that show that experience, pictures of the love and the joy and the sunshine of that day, pictures of the people that mean so much. That I will keep. The rest of the album I will discard, shred, throw away, with all the bad memories of the struggles that followed, the sad ending to that bright beginning. In the plastic cover will be love and joy and gratitude for the experience, and the pictures.

"A person is neither whole nor healthy without the memories of photo albums. They are the storybook of our lives. They provide a nostalgic escape from the often difficult days of the present."