I leave my apartment pretty early every morning. And every morning I walk the few blocks to my office. Some mornings I walk past fancy business men in dark suits, or powerful career women with high heels. Other mornings I pass by tourists or taxi drivers standing around smoking waiting for their early morning fare to the airport. Sometimes I pass students on their way to the bus stop. Most mornings I just see a few joggers and maybe a homeless person or two.

This morning, while enjoying my usual walk and listening to Wilco on my iPod, I stopped at a crosswalk. While waiting for it to change, I happened to look down at the ground and I noticed something. I admit that I didn’t instantly register what this something was. After sitting there waiting and looking, I realized what exactly I was looking at.

Dude, this something was a freakin’ condom wrapper.

While it isn’t that odd to see garbage lying around, I do find it odd to see an opened condom wrapper. A condom only means one thing took place. One specific thing that really shouldn’t be taking place in the middle of a downtown metropolis.

(I feel I must note that this particular part of town is not, I repeat, not frequented by ladies of the night.)

In my mind I see a nice couple who met last night for drinks after work. They were enjoying each others company so much that they decided to have dinner together. Again, they were enjoying being together so much that dinner turned into dessert, which turned into after-dinner-coffee, which turned into “Oh my goodness, I can’t keep my hands off you and I must make sweet, sweet love to you right here in the middle of this concrete sidewalk! Let me just open this condom first.”

Oh, so romantic.

So tell me, do you think I’m way off with this scenario? If so, how do you think the condom wrapper ended up on the sidewalk?

—————————–

Are you watching “Big Brother” or “Biggest Loser”? Do you live for Thursday night so you can watch Hott Jack “Lost”? If so, you must head over to WeHeartTV and join the discussions!

When I was about 20, and living at home for the summer, I awoke one morning to the hustle and bustle of my entire family talking in kitchen. The discussion was lively and voices were excited. I heard my dad and brother retelling the story of the events of the night before.

Apparently the farmer’s field next to my parents house had caught fire in the middle of the night. The surrounding neighbors had all come over to put out the fire. My dad and brother raced outside to help. My mother and sister stood close by and watched. Fire trucks arrived. Sirens were turned on. Ambulances were on watch, as well as all the local police officers.

And I, well, I was fast asleep in my bed. Apparently I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.

I began to question if my family was just pulling my leg. How in the crap could I have slept through an actual burning field? How could I have not heard the opening and closing of the front door to our house? How did I miss the blaring sirens?

When Babboo was first born, I quickly got used to getting up at in the middle of the night and feeding him. To be completely honest, I loved this time with him. Screw sleep, I was snuggled up to my sweet little bebe while giving him nourishment, and watching reruns of “Friends”.

It was Heaven.

He quickly began sleeping through the nights and I forgot what it was like to wake up to the sound of a newborn’s cry. Of course we did have out bouts of (intense) sleep regressions. And while they didn’t correct themselves overnight, they did correct themselves eventually. Now if Babboo wakes in the middle of the night crying, I don’t even hear him. I am simply no longer programmed to wake up. It’s the sad, cold truth.

I was floored last weekend when The King informed me that he’d been getting up every night for the last few weeks to quiet our crying toddler. Not only had I slept through Babboo’s cries, I had slept through my husband getting in and out of bed. Seriously, I had no idea this had been happening every single night.

(It’s stuff like this that makes me feel like a horrible mother. And wife. Of course I get over that quickly. But still. Horrible.)

Last night was a little different. Not only did I hear Babboo’s cries, I heard him screaming out for grapes. And Cheerios. And maybe even asking for a drink. And dude, the poor kid was coughing so hard I thought he was going to cough up his tiny little lungs. I prepared Babboo a full plate of food, at midnight, and then sat up with him while he watched a few episodes of his favorite show. (Which is not, it must be noted, “Friends”.)

My heart broke for him.

My heart broke again, this time for me, when my alarm went off this morning.

So tell me, have you ever slept through something crazy like a freakin’ field fire?

————————————————

Want to hear more about what is going on in this picture? Head over to SeattleMomBlogs to read all about.

It’s been a few weeks since my Big Reveal of Hey, I’m a Mormon!, so I figured it’s time I discuss some of few of your questions. Or rather, one of your questions.

I received quite a few e-mails asking me about my religious practices in regards to my first marriage, and whether or not he was also a member of the LDS church. So yeah, let’s talk about that today and see if I can explain it all to you. (Wish me luck!)

The first time I saw Suede (which is what I’m calling my first husband) was his first Sunday back from his two year mission for our church. He had served his mission in Los Angeles, California (Spanish language speaking). My family had moved to a new house down the street from Suede’s family. I hadn’t met him before he left for LA, although I had heard about him while he was on his mission.

Eventually I met him. And we dated. And got pretty serious. He asked me to marry him. And then we got married.

Suede and I were married (and sealed together for all eternity) in the Manti, Utah LDS temple. My grandparents had been married there, as well as my parents and most of my aunts and uncles. It was a tradition in my family, and I happily followed suit.

(The Manti Temple. I will forever think it’s so beautiful!)

Of course we all know that Suede and I never celebrated our second wedding anniversary.

Our divorce was final the summer of 1999. While we were no longer married to each other legally, we were still sealed together in the eyes of the Lord. Really, this was just a technicality. During this time I thought about what would happen if Suede died and I was left being sealed to the dude FOREVER. I realized that even if he did die, I couldn’t imagine that the Lord would force me to be with Suede forever and ever and ever. I mean, dude, what kind of a Savior would do that to someone he loves? So yeah, I was pretty sure that it would all work out, you know, if Suede did happen to die. Which he didn’t, thank goodness.

Plus Suede was sort of living his life against what he knew to be right. So I figured our sealing was pretty much null and void.

Fine by me.

I forgot about our sealing to each other and moved on with my life.

Enter The King.

The King’s parents were baptized into the LDS church when The King was just a little boy. He was also baptized and was raised going to church every Sunday. He served his two year mission in Berlin, Germany, right after the Berlin Wall fell.

When it was decided that The King and I were in love and moving towards getting married, I had to start thinking about the fact that I was currently sealed to Suede. There is a process by which one can get a cancellation of their sealing. It’s a pretty big deal, so I needed to start the process.

This process sort of reminds me of when King Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. While I wasn’t looking to cut off the head of Suede so I could marry The King, there was a process that needed to be followed.

First, I was instructed by my Bishop (who is sort of like a “pastor”), after many meetings together, to write a letter to the Prophet of the LDS church asking for a cancellation of my sealing to Suede. I was never given any instructions as to what the letter needed to say, only that I had to write a letter to get approval. I thought a lot about this and prayed a lot about it and then I set pen to paper and wrote my letter. Basically I just requested that the cancellation of the sealing be granted so that I could move forward with my life. I said that I wished nothing but the best for Suede and hoped that he felt the same way.

Suede was contacted by his Bishop in Utah (through my Bishop in Seattle) and asked to also write a letter to the Prophet. I knew that him choosing to not write a letter wouldn’t stop anything from going through, but he was asked to write a letter. I have no idea if he did. To be honest, I sort of think he didn’t. But this is the standard practice of the church, so rules had to be followed and he had to be asked to write the letter.

My letter was sent off to church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah to be read and reviewed by the Prophet. Dude, that’s a pretty big deal. I’ve never met the Prophet. Heck, to this day I’ve never even seen the Prophet in person. Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal!

And then we waited to hear back on my cancellation.

Now, I’ve personally never heard of anyone’s cancellation of sealing not going through. I can’t imagine the Prophet is going to make someone stay sealed, just for the heck of it. So while the process is sort of a sure-thing, it isn’t an easy and quick process. The Prophet and his counselors read and review each letter. I imagine they even pray about ever request. So yeah, it’s a big deal!

In the mean time, The King and I were getting closer and closer to our scheduled wedding date. We were planning on being sealed, just hoping that we’d get confirmation that it was okay.

We were getting married on a Friday and by that Wednesday I still hadn’t received my approval letter in the mail. I needed the approval letter to take with us to our sealing. I admit that I started to get a little nervous.

On Wednesday The King’s dad made a couple of phone calls and got in touch with someone at the church’s headquarters. They told him that my cancellation had gone through, even if I hadn’t received the approval letter in the mail yet. Hopefully this would be enough to let The King and get sealed to each other, as planned, on Friday.

I kid you not when I say that the letter finally arrived in the mail on Friday morning, right before I headed to the temple for the wedding and sealing. The cancellation had gone through. I had been given the all-clear to be sealed to The King.

Phew. Just in time.

And so, on August 11th, 2000 The King and I were sealed together, for time and all eternity in the Seattle LDS temple. My parents were with us inside the temple to witness, as well as The King’s parents and his sister and the guy she was going to marry in the same temple in two weeks. My bestest friend May and her husband were there, as well as my aunt and uncle and many of The King’s family friends.

It was the perfect way to start our life together.

I hope that answered all of your questions. Because really, I’m not too comfortable about being the spokesperson for my faith on the interweb.

You know you can always tell me; “dude, shut the crap up. We hate hearing about your divorce and your church!”

Whatever. It’s cool with me.

If you do have more questions, or just want to learn more about the LDS church, I suggest you go right to the source. Mormon.org has this great little “Ask a Question” tab on their front page where you can live-chat with a cute 19-year old missionary. No pressure, just a good way to get answers to your questions.

After The King gets out of the shower, and before he gets completely dressed, he likes to joke about taking our trash out. You see, our building has a trash chute in a little room right outside our front door. In the two+ years that we’ve lived there, I’ve never run into anyone while taking out our garbage. Hence The King’s desire to test fate and take out the garbage, partially clothed. He’s always like, “dude, nobody will see me!” and I’m always like, “someone would see you, be assured!”

And thus, The King has never taken out the trash without his undies on.

This last Saturday was busy at my house. I was cleaning and crafting and engaging my son. When nap time finally rolled around, I was ecstatic. I hopped in the shower. There is nothing like a shower where no ending is required. I had time to shave my legs and deep condition my hair. After I got out of the shower I decided to keep thing breezy and finish up the mopping of the bathroom floor with just my short little pink robe on. So what is my butt hung out, I was cleaning. And really, you don’t need a bra on to mop a floor. Besides, who needs pants on to take out the garbage, when you’ve got on a robe?

Plus, nobody will be in the trash chute room. They never are.

That is, until the one time I chose to actually take the trash out while wearing my shorty robe. Yep, my overweight, pothead neighbor was there, taking out his own trash. All I could do was laugh and tell him “the one time I decide to take my trash out in my robe and here you are!”

His reply?

“Don’t worry, I didn’t see anything!”

My reply?

“It’s cool.”

First off, he didn’t see anything? Of course he did. How could he not see anything? And, it’s cool? What in the hell does that mean? Does it mean that I’m cool with him seeing something? Does that mean I want him to follow me inside my apartment and see some more something? Or does it mean that I’m an idiot and not good at being breezy under pressure?

I ran back inside my apartment. Thankfully the pothead neighbor did not follow me. I called The King and told him of my bad luck. He laughed and reminded me that it was inevitable. He’s right, it was.

But dude, why didn’t it happen to The King and not me?

So tell me, have you ever been caught in your robe?

————————-

Want to hear all about the awesome 90’s TV series that I found this weekend? Head on over to WeHeartTV to find out what it was? (Here’s a hint: before he was a castaway, he was a hott older brother!)

We packed up on Friday night and tried out something new to downtown Seattle. Want to hear about my latest New Thing?

You might not have heard, but I hosted a baby shower last night for my dear friend (the ones we went to Canada with last month). I was happy to do this, you know, until I heard the guest list was well over thirty people.

Thirty people?!

That is a lot of people. Dude, I don’t know ten people (outside of you lovelies on the interweb).

Thankfully I tricked anybody who said “let me know how I can help with the shower” into totally helping. I was ashamed for taking such blatant advantage of them, but dude, I needed the help.

Even though my bestest friend May has long since moved away deserted me to Nevada, I tricked her into designing the baby shower invitations. The Guest of Honor loves pirates, so we took hold of that theme and ran with it. I think they turned out pretty freakin’ awesome, don’t you?

Rumor has it the Guest of Honor’s mom was not very impressed with the fact that her daughter’s baby shower invitation had a mermaid with pasties on it. Really? (Clearly I need to keep some of my own personal inventory to myself. Gulp.)

The baby shower went well. I feel good about how it turned out. Mostly I feel good about the fact that it’s over and no more is required of me at this time. Being a Party Planner is hard work, people. And the pay is crappy. The Guest of Honor received buckets of sweet little newborn outfits and baby related sundries.

She squealed appropriately with the opening of each teeny tiny baby outfit.

And thankfully, very thankfully, there was only one game. A game which included finding a damn safety pin in a bowl of rice. (Impossible, by the way!) Like the good sport that I am, I played along, even though I would have much rather been eating baby shower cake.

Baby shower pirate cake, to be exact.

I heard the Guest of Honor’s co workers proclaim that this was the best baby shower they’d ever been to. Hearing that sentiment made me feel pretty good about the whole thing.

It also made me question how many baby shower’s they’d been to.

Oh yeah, and the best part was when we were all cleaned up, ready to head home and someone noticed a raccoon through the window. Everyone was all, “oh, a raccoon, look how sweet and cute and precious!” and I was all “keep that damn beady-eyed son of a b*tch away from me. I don’t need no freakin’ rabies!”

“Mass raccoon attack at baby shower. News at 11.”

No, thank you.

Please reassure me that I’m not the only one that thinks raccoons are neither “cute” nor “precious”. Because really, they are creepy and will kill a man, just to watch him die.

Babboo, The King and I excitedly accepted the invitation to birthday party last weekend. The birthday girl was going to be two years old. The parents of said birthday girl were a couple from church that we are desperate to be friends with.

You see, at the start of 2008 we began going to our new ward at church. (Hey, what in the crap is a ward? A ward is the term us Mormons use to refer to the congregation we’re assigned to attend, based on where we are located geographically). By moving to our new house, we will be living in a new neighborhood. Which means, we will be assigned a new ward. Although we don’t technically live in the ward’s boundaries right now, we figured we might as well start going to the new ward, since we’ll be moving to the new house shortly.

Moving on…

Okay, so now we’re in this new ward (congregation) and we want to make friends there. We’re very happy about all the other young couples in the ward. There are tons of people are own age with kids Babboo’s age. It’s like Heaven. On Earth. Really. Which explains why we were so thrilled to be invited to the birthday party at the house of this family from our ward.

Dude, cool new friends? Birthday party? A night spent outside of our tiny apartment? Where do we sign up?

Needless to say, the invitation to the two year olds birthday party clearly stated “no gifts”, but we all know nobody ever really means that, right? Since we’re dead-ass-broke, I wasn’t in the position to run to Target and buy a toy for this little girl. Instead I did what I did best….

I made her an iron-on shirt. And awesome iron-on, I might add.

We arrived at the party. I scanned the room to make sure I wasn’t under dressed in my jeans while checking out my food options. The King scanned the room looking for a place to sit his tired ass down. And Babboo, well he held on to my leg for dear life. The poor kid hasn’t been in a real life house, that doesn’t belong to a grandparent, in over eight months. He wasn’t sure what to think of all that room. And the toys. And the other kids to play with.

Eventually we all settled down. I began doing what I do best with the other ladies there. Which means I was talking about daycare woes. The other women, all SAHM, just nodded their heads and offered sympathy. Which is all I needed. Babboo stayed with the other kids and played with the toys. The King, well, he talked shop with the guys.

So far, it was a perfect evening.

Until…dun-dun-dun…it came time for the Birthday Girl to open her gifts.

Yeah, a toy.

Yeah, another toy.

And again, a toy.

Three cheers for new toys.

Then Babboo handed her her gift from us. The sweet little two year old opened it up and then tossed it on the floor. I don’t blame her. Kids don’t really care too much for clothes. Plus, we all know the awesome iron-ons are more for the parents anyway. Her mom was embarrassed and hurriedly picked up the shirt off the floor to inspect it. I waited to see her notice Debbie Gibson’s smiling face and wind-blown hair and get giddy about a concert tee for her little girl. Instead she gave a little forced laugh and then held the shirt up for the others to see.

“Who is that?”, asked one of the guys.

I shoot back, “Duh, it’s Debbie Gibson. I mean, Deborah Gibson.”

“Who is she?”

“You’re kidding right? She was totally awesome when we were teenagers.”

And then I realized he wasn’t kidding. He didn’t know who she was. I asked him how old he was and he promptly informed of his age. Crap, he was five years younger then I am.

Dude, I have never felt so old and out of touch as I did in the moment.

Clearly these people have not yet passed The Test to become our new best friends at church. While I don’t have all the The Test written down, I do know “must know who all 80’s mall singers are” is on the list.

And must think I’m super awesome is at the top of the list.

I guess this means I need to step up my homemade gift giving skillz. Maybe I should learn how to make these dolls. I mean, who wouldn’t love to receive a Dog: The Bounty Hunter felt doll?

I know I would.