Guilt-free parenting? What's that?

This is the last week of classes, then finals are the week after. The stress is upon me but I thought I’d take a few minutes to say something.

I missed my four year old granddaughter’s birthday party yesterday to make my share of a team powerpoint presentation on the accumulated earnings tax and some other tax homework that had to be done. I love you, Victoria. I sent my husband and three youngest children with a gift in my stead. Is there such a thing as guilt-free parenting? I visited at their house Saturday afternoon, on my way back from taking Melody’s spare car keys to her at Thanksgiving point, and before taking Nathan and his friend to the movie theater. I’m not at all sure that that makes up for missing her party though. I do the best I can.

Only one more school year and I will be done with a bachelor’s degree. I could finish in December if I really pushed myself but I find it harder now that I am married. Fewer credit hours are better. So I will finish in April. Someone tell me what I should do after that. Should I get a master’s degree so I can get the CPA? Should I just find a job? If I go into auditing, do I need the master’s?

While I’m at it, may I say that I am so amazed by and thankful for this man that I married. Losses give you a different perspective and help you give up pettiness and selfishness. We are happy together in part because of our past traumas; we focus on what matters and let everything else go. Maybe I should speak for myself. I have learned to do these things. My tip of the day is marry someone who is nicer than you are—actually, I did that the first time, too but still, it did not end well. That is because he had agency and used it. I couldn’t make him stay any more than he could make me follow the path he wanted to take. If only I’d known what was coming, I could have handled it much better.

It was very hard to be a single parent and full-time student. I didn’t complain, I just kept going and going. Keith has allowed me to figuratively take a breath and give some of the burden to him. I had trouble sleeping for 2 ½ years. When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, your body doesn’t let you sleep even when you are sleep-deprived. Since I married him, I can sleep like a normal person. Yay for delicious miracles : )

Some habits die hard. Keith is working 6 am to 4 pm at one job and 5 pm to 10 pm at another. We can do anything for a year, right?

Two yrs. to 50? It can't be

Yesterday was my birthday. Scary how close I am getting to "old" or at least what I once considered old. I spent about 5 hours studying for the accounting test I will be taking today. But I made time for warm brownies topped with vanilla ice cream. No wonder I’m fat. Went on a date with my thoughtful, kind, talented husband. Claudya talked all day about going to “Grandma’s birthday” but when they stopped by, she was grouchy the whole time—something about interrupted naps? Melody asked me if Alden was temperamental like that and I said, “Yes. And I think I was, too.” I’ll take the blame because I can’t imagine her mommy ever being that way J

And now I am eating buttermilk waffles with maple syrup before I go to the testing center, which always makes me feel a little like a lamb going to the slaughter. One of my professors calls it The Place Where You Can Smell Fear. Not too far off. Then I have an 8 page paper due by Sunday night for Organizational Behavior, which needs 10 sources, 5 of them non-internet. I have written one page so far. Melody is rubbing off on me ;-)

Keith is making a chicken coop. The plan is to have 5 chickens, though we bought 8 in case a couple of them die. Sam thinks it’s his jungle gym. It’s fun to have baby chicks again.

I love being married. Everything in my life is better with Keith in it. I have little to no tolerance for jerky behavior so I married the nicest guy in the world. Those of you who have known him for a long time know what I mean. Hope he can put up with me for 35 more years ;-)

Just one more month and the semester is over! Again, I apologize to everyone I may be ignoring because of school work. Sigh. I am likely going to do a master's degree, too so two more years...Please try to remember me. Especially if you are my child or grandchild.

Trip to Missouri, Excruciating shoulder pain

I have well-polished hardwood floors in my home. (Thank you to my dear brother-in-law, Jaye for sanding and refinishing them right before I moved in.) But if you run across them, slip, grab the banister, and tear something in your shoulder on the way down, you will be sorry. And if you are foolhardy enough to get on a plane the next morning to go see the love of your life and a certain little girl named Aurora, aka Rora Bug, you will suffer excruciating pain without the comfort of your familiar surroundings, your own bed, bathroom, kitchen, etc. You will use up entire bottles of ibuprofen (yes, it was a small bottle) and discover that Advil works better than the generic brand. You will have sudden heart-felt compassion and empathy for anyone who’s ever had a torn ligament or muscle, bad shoulder, or broken bone.

The first day I drove into Lebanon on hwy 64, I felt joyful. I drove that road every Sunday and Wed. night for 12 years. But after about 3 days, I remembered why I love living a couple miles from everything. And this morning when I pulled out onto State Street in Orem to go to work, I felt that same surge of joy. Utah is home now. As much as I love Missouri, it’s not where I’m supposed to be right now.

Luckily for Rora Bug, I couldn’t hold her with my bad shoulder. On the third day when her mother put her on my lap, she burst into tears. The look on her face said, “Mommy, how could you BETRAY me like this and put me on that grandma lady’s lap?? I thought you loved me!” So I didn’t push it. I told her that when she’s three years old, she might change her mind about me like her little cousins, Victoria and Claudya have done. It was fun to visit with Spencer, Michelle and Aurora. We went to dinner a couple of times and saw a movie and had some fun discussions. Spencer is a smart kid.

Spencer loaded my suitcase and book bag into the car the last day and I said, “I had high hopes of doing homework while I was here and I didn’t do any.”

He replied, “Well, if you weren’t out so late with Keith every night, you could have gotten some done.” Oh, Spencer, you make me laugh. Thank you for extending my life a little bit with laughter. Does anyone else remember 17 year old Spencer and see the irony? Maybe you would only see it if you were trying to parent him back then. :-) I think I deserve some credit here. I always made it back to Spencer’s house by midnight. This means I had to leave Lebanon by 11:15 pm. And it brought back a memory that has been waiting for the right moment to be blogged about. When we lived in Missouri many years ago, Richard, my oldest son, had a midnight curfew and chafed vehemently at it. This is not an exaggeration. Just ask him. He wanted to be able to leave Lebanon at midnight and I insisted that he be HOME by midnight. After he came in a few times at 1 am and we had lots of discussion about it, he said, “Fine then! I am moving out.” I think he was 18 at this time.

I said, “Where are you going to go?”

“I’ve already talked to Keith Chandler about it and he said I could move into his house.”

Great. (Sarcasm font needed here.) I knew Keith was a good and decent person, though he had never said one word to me. But I also knew there would be no curfew or rules for Richard at that house. I tried to be supportive and I let the younger boys go there a lot while Richard lived there. I was there several times to drop off or pick up kids but never saw Keith once. I didn’t know then that he worked 7 am to 2 pm at one job and 3 pm to 11 pm at his other job. In other words, I didn’t know he was a crazy person. Melody has a memory of being at Keith’s house late in the evening because JAC was going to pick the kids up there on his way home from Chicago. She tried to watch a movie downstairs by herself while all the boys were upstairs and she got scared. The kids all thought the house was creepy. I can see how a child would think that.

Now the homework awaits in larger than usual quantities. I am happy to be back home. Thank you, Melody for holding down the fort while I was gone.

Thank you, Keith, for a great time.

Official wedding date!

It’s official. I am going to marry Keith Chandler on March 2, 2012. There has been a lot of hoop-jumping to get permission to be sealed. I got a letter from SL Friday and Keith got one today. I can finally allow myself to be excited about the whole thing!! Just a teensy bit. That’s all that’s allowed :) He is likely too nice for me. Those of you who know both of us know exactly what I’m talking about :) but I am going to marry him anyway. He still lives 2000 miles away give or take a few, and we talk several times a day, while I try to stay on top of my homework (22 more credit hours to a bachelor’s degree!) and he tries to wrap up his affairs in Missouri. We need to settle down and be normal, married people now. We will be married in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple at 2 pm and there will be an open house afterward at my house in Orem at 5 pm.

(I know the photo has nothing to do with the blog post but I like it. It's me with my granddaughter, Aurora.)

It’s been three years since my husband, JAC, pulled the rug out from under my world. Some of you don’t know anything about that so at the end of this blog, I will post Melody’s version of what happened the day he walked out the front door. Her version is always better reading than mine.

I despised being single but I was determined to stay that way if the right guy didn’t come along. I am still a little afraid to marry anyone because of my former spouse’s behavior. But I love Keith with all my heart and I know we will be happy together. He is not perfect but he is perfect for me. And he’ll make do, having me for a wife. ;) It could be worse. We are both thrilled to have found each other. Anyone who’s spent any time single can relate.

She wrote this in October for her writing class. I have hesitated to post it and I apologize if it's too much information. One reason I have not is because I don’t want to hurt JAC’s feelings. He would not like this. But it’s what happened from the viewpoint of our 15 year old daughter. This happened the first Sunday in June, 2009. Don’t be sad for me. It was wrenching and traumatic for a couple of years but we are okay. It changed me in a good way.

Written by Melody Compton Oct. 4, 2011. I remember the day my father walked out the door. I wasn’t all that surprised—I’d come to terms with the fact that my father’s crazy train had left the station long ago—but it still made a part of me feel hollow. My three younger siblings and I were sitting near the front door, all of us close together, Sam nestled in my lap. My mother was crying, something I’d never seen her do before. My eyes refused to meet either of their faces, so out of this moment, I recall in a sick clarity my father’s boots. They were large, brown things, with thick lacing, the leather worn down and frayed. They were loud as he marched towards the door, and dried mud was crumbling off them, leaving dusty trails across the blue tile of the living room floor.

Aside from the boots, I remember my mother’s desperate, unsteady voice. “I want you all to know that your father is leaving because he wants to marry another woman.” Her hand was entwined with the long sleeve of his thick, off-white shirt. It wasn’t a violent thing; it was a loose hold, her fingers barely grasping it. “I want you to understand that.”

Her voice was just as broken as the grungy mud now. Just as crushed and trodden on. This was a lost battle, and those words were her admitting that.

“No—No, that’s not it,” I looked at my father’s face now, because both of them were making noises I’d never heard before. Words filled with mixtures of agony and frustration, both trying to make the other understand and neither willing to give in. My dad was crying too. Expressions carved into their faces, ones I’d give my life to never see again. “Your mother—”

But that was the end of that, because my mom had the door open and my dad wasn’t really paying that much attention to us, and then he was outside the door and mom was closing it.

Sam, so little, barely five looked up at me, and I wrapped his little fingers in mine because there was still dirt on the floor and mom was retreating to her bedroom, making the most gentle, keening noises.

My eldest brother and his wife came. They made phone calls, soothed my broken mother, and began packing up the house. It was all in one unsettling lurch that the world began tumbling town. When people say that days feel longer than the twenty-four hours days are allotted—I always thought that was an exaggeration. But the first three days after my father walked out, they stretch and stretch and pulled until I lost track of the day.

We moved within the week. My mother, my two little brothers, my little sister and I all jammed ourselves into a three bedroom apartment that had bad lighting and a weird mold problem. It was nice enough though, and the four older boys all converged on us, taking care of the mold, helping my mother in any way possible, and confronting my father when necessary.

My mom enrolled herself in school that fall. The shock still cloaking us, but what were we to do? My mother was strong. She was going to get what needed to be done, done. She filed divorce papers, discussed selling the house with my dad, and the four youngest enrolled in their schools.


My father was never a very consistent man. He never interacted well with us when we were younger. He had two settings—lecturing and working. This might have been a good role model in our lives if there hadn’t been a few other drastic things playing out in our life. Though it’s not officially diagnosed, I believe my father is mentally unstable in certain aspects of his personality. He always leaned towards the obsessive end of the religion spectrum, and two and a half years ago that tendency careened out of control—my father, under ‘godly inspiration’, insisted my mother join him in his decision to marry another woman. My mother, a strong and stubborn person, refused and my father left his wife of twenty-seven years and eight children to marry another woman.

dress, 10 yr olds and thermostats, xmas shopping

Melody wrote about our wedding dress shopping foray and I can't improve on it so I'm going to just quote her. It really happened on Friday though.

"SATURDAY, THERE WAS A PRETTY LITTLE GATHERING OF THE GENERAL WOMEN OF THE FAMILY, PLUS JACK, MINUS A FEW SISTERS-IN-LAW. ALL IN ORDER TO GO DRESS SHOPPING FOR A CERTAIN SPECIAL OCCASION. IT WAS A GLORIOUS EVENT, WITH MUCH GIGGLING AND ‘OOH-ING’ AND ‘AHHH-ING,’ AND ‘I BET I HAVEN’T SHAVED MY LEGS LONGER THAN YOU HAVE.’ IT WAS EVERY HOLLYWOOD CLICHE I COULD EVER DREAM OF (WELL, MAYBE MINUS THAT LAST TIDBIT.) AND MY MOTHER LEFT ONE LOVELY WEDDING DRESS RICHER. AFTERWARDS, WE ALL ATE UNTIL WE WERE UNCOMFORTABLE AND THEN SOME."

I find shopping to be draining so I didn't take Marene's advice to keep looking and come back later if I still wanted the dress. I just bought it. It's very gorgeous, not the traditional white thing. And after trying on all those dresses and looking in all those mirrors, I did NOT overeat at the restaurant. I let the young women do that.

This morning, I noticed the house felt warm--it's a rather cold house. Then I remembered that I told Joy yes when she asked if she could turn up the furnace. So I went and looked at the thermostat. Try to guess what a 10 yr old would set it to. Years ago, we shared a house with a neighbor from Ecuador and the thermostat was in her side. She kept it in the 80s which was great until we moved out and the landlord sent us the utility bill for an entire year. Joy had put it to 82 degrees!! Sometimes I'm not too bright. You would think after raising so many kids, I'd be a little quicker to anticipate outcomes.

Words escape me sometimes when trying to say how I really feel. I'm still in the euphoric state of being madly in love. I didn't think that was ever going to happen again. If there was time and space to tell what I've been through the last 2 1/2 years, you would understand when I say that I am so, so thankful to have Keith and I love him more than I can say.

I'm off school and work now for a couple of weeks but so far there's been no rest. I foolishly have not finished my Christmas shopping and the lines in the mall are much longer than I anticipated.

Thanksgiving; funnest three days of my life

Monday morning--back to the grind. I am at work, procrastinating homework just long enough to blog. (I tutor students and if there isn't one at the moment, I am free to be on the computer.)

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with 6 of my kids; the four at home and Richard and Alden and their families. The two of them are nine people now, ten if you count Dallas, the Beagle puppy (AesaLina's baby) who came for Thanksgiving dinner, too :-) My grandchildren are the cutest and the sweetest and pretty smart, too. I know everyone thinks that about their own grandchildren. But they really are :-) I LOVE them!

Then in the afternoon, Melody, Joy and I went to the airport to pick up Keith Chandler. That began the funnest three days of my life. I am a very private person so I won't be writing a bunch of details--even this is hard for me. But my kids love him and he fits right in. My word for it is "familiar" and his is "natural." I took him to the airport last night and he has gone home to Missouri, which will allow me to recover from too much smiling and laughing :-) That was not a joke. I do need to recover :-)

Okay, I know you want to know. Well, some of you. He asked me to marry him. I said yes, more enthusiastically than it comes out in this writing. There's no timetable because a few details need to be worked out. He has to move to Utah for one thing. And we plan to get married in the temple so there are a few details there that make it impossible to know the date right now.

And now, I MUST concentrate on homework which has gotten the short shrift for the last several weeks. Three more semesters! I can do it!

rose-colored glasses

I went to bed last night at 8 pm because I've been so tired lately. Joy and Sam came in and out of my room though to ask important questions for which only a mom will do like, "Can I get on the computer? Melody won't let me use the power cord." And "Can I use the computer now? Joy's on it." Being the warm, caring mom that I am, I handed out helpful answers like, "Have you brushed your teeth? It's bedtime. And shut my door all the way when you go out." They know I love them. :-)

I'm keeping my head above water at school but just barely. It's starting to feel like work. Every time this happens though, the end of the semester looms. The class average on the first half of the last accounting test was 60%. I got 76%. I think that's the lowest I've ever scored on anything. All I have to do is stay at the front of the bell curve though which I usually manage.

So I've been single for a couple of years, as most of you know. The entire time, I've prayed to be invisible to anyone who is not right for me. Anytime someone appeared on the scene who seemed interested, I've prayed, "If I need to be protected from this person, please protect me." In every case, it would become obvious within about 24 hrs that my prayer worked :-)

Until recently. He and I have known each other for about 16 years but only had a real conversation a few months ago. I already knew that he shares my religious convictions, has integrity, and is kind and hard-working. What I didn't know is that he is a writer, articulate and intelligent, more in my league that way than...(cough) other people. With whom I may or may not once have been associated. And he makes me laugh. This might be a small thing to some people but for me it's right below breathing on my life's priority list. We're the same age. He would do anything for me and worships the ground I walk on. I think the rose-colored glasses he views me with are extra-strength. We all have our faults you know. :-) But he's fair. He views everyone that generously. I think of myself as more of a realist which is just code for, 'I'm not that good.' He does live 2 states away. He's coming to visit at Thanksgiving. I'll let you know how it goes.

His name is Keith. If you were ever in the Lebanon Ward, I do mean that Keith. I am as surprised as anyone that it worked out this way.