Elephant

Bear with me, Stuart found this story on an elephant in Wichita Falls and I just had to share it:

Someday, perhaps, a work crew laying cable or pipe will unearth a large set of bones near a busy Wichita Falls intersection.

They may think they have found the remains of some prehistoric creature, but they would be wrong. Should a paleontologist be consulted, the expert would determine that the bones, while old, did not come from a wooly mammoth, but its evolutionary descendant, the elephant.

How an elephant came to be buried in Wichita Falls is a story of incredible cruelty – at least by modern standards – that from this distance smells like a publicity stunt. Whatever the motivations involved, a bizarre set of circumstances converged in this Northwest Texas city in 1899.

It started when a circus hit town. The owner of the show let it be known that the company had a killer elephant under sentence of death.

The animal had been spared after killing one man some years before, but when the pachyderm killed a second, the circus proprietor sentenced it to death. At least that was his story. Maybe the animal was just getting old and the circus boss figured the publicity attendant to executing a “killer” elephant would be worth a whole lot more than the hay it took to keep the animal swinging its trunk.

Plastering the town with handbills, the owner called on the good people of Wichita Falls to lend a hand in the execution.

On the date set, the elephant was walked from the Big Top to a spot near where Brook now crosses Kell Boulevard and staked out with leg chains. As one newspaper later reported, “Everybody in Wichita Falls who had a shooting iron repaired to the scene. There were folks with shotguns, revolvers of various kinds and rifles.”

Unfortunately, no one had the kind of firepower it takes to drop an elephant. The beast took on more lead than 20 coats of old paint and seemed not much worse for the wear. The only noticeable affect, totally understandable, was a considerable annoyance at those doing the shooting. The elephant lunged at its chains, but fortunately for the crowd, the iron held.

Shotgun pellets bounced harmlessly off its thick hide as the beast roared in fear and rage.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals not yet having a toehold in Wichita Falls, the circus gang came up with another idea. A railroad track being nearby, with the ready cooperation of the local station master, two switch engines were employed to stretch out a heavy chain fastened around the big animal’s neck.

The killer elephant, if indeed it was, finally died of strangulation.

Safe at last from the possible rampage of a rogue elephant, the people of this Northwest Texas community faced another not-so-little problem: How to dispose of a dead elephant.

As city officials pondered the situation, someone noticed the town scavenger in the crowd and had an idea. If he would bury the elephant, he could have the hide.

The man, thinking the near bullet-proof skin would make a fine roof for his house at Seventh and Austin streets, agreed to what literally was quite a large undertaking. With help from his family, he skinned the elephant, dug a hole sufficient to contain the body, and somehow got the carcass in it.

For a time, the junk dealer had the distinction of having the only elephant skin roof in Wichita Falls, the state of Texas and perhaps anywhere in the nation.

But fame, and utility, proved fleeting. After the first good rain, the elephant roof shrank like so much green rawhide. By that time, of course, the circus had long since pulled its tent stakes and moved on to the next town.

Crazy! I'm telling you, the weirdest people live in this city that I call home. Well, the city that the AF made me call home and now I am voluntarily calling home. And for your patience here is a glimpse back in time.

That's Life

Star and Stripes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

Thanks to all who are serving and have served!

This

was a killer job.

Another day

...another interview.

That's right, I'm still looking (and interviewing) for a job. But Clarissa, didn't you get a job? Why yes, yes I did. After sitting thru 5.5 hours of orientation (which by-the-way really shouldn't be called orientation. It should be referred to as filling out paperwork and watching outdated videos on what the company is NOT about.) the manager discussed the schedule. Sweet! Not. The company only allocates a certain numbers of hours to each store per week to be divided among it's employees. Sounds normal. Each store has 1-3 managers and managers are considered salary and therefore must have 40 hours per week. Alright, again sounds pretty normal. This particular store has 3 managers and so 120 hours immediately goes to these three individuals (who by-the-way also get mostly daytime hours). The store is allocated 150 hours per week. Hmm. 30 hours left. Alright, here comes the kicker-each associate is then given 3-6 hours per week. I'm sorry, I thought you just said 6. Oh, right. Six.

I went home feeling not so great. Six hours per week would barely cover my gas, not to mention the fact that ultimately I need a job that offers benefits.

So Stuart and I talked about it. We prayed about it. We talked about it some more. Then I called and quit. slow, deep breath

This whole job search thing is not only exhausting but so depressing. I know I am a good worker. I know I have skills that companies want in their employees. No, I don't have a college degree. No, I haven't "worked" in 4 years, but why should staying home to rear your children be held against you? There are plenty of moms that could walk circles around CEOs because running a household is SO MUCH MORE than just cooking, cleaning, and changing a diaper.

And so I have yet another interview today in which I must plaster a smile on my face and act like I am completely excited about potentially coming to work for whatever company and all I can think about is if I do get whatever job my kids are going to have to go to daycare and that just breaks my heart. I do want to get a job so that I can a) help my family, b) be there financially for my husband since he has been there for me/us for the past 6 years, c) be around adults and d) actually put clothes on. (I do wear clothes...)

There is an up side to all these interviews though: I get to see the craziest people known to man and they all happen to live in this city. Fun.

BTW-there's an update on baby Luke here. Thanks for praying!

Rings

This week has been a weird one for me. I'm seriously not wrapped up in the MJ death or the Farrah death or Ed's death and not even Billy Mays' death (but Billy Mays? Really?). I think it's sad that they passed away and my heart goes out to their families but it's not something that I have hemmed and hawked over. These deaths have however reminded me of Jennifer's death.

Stuart and I were sitting on the couch one night this weekend and laughing at something on tv. For some reason it reminded me of the time right after our wedding rings came in the mail. We were so excited to have them; it was a physical reminder that we were getting married! So excited were we that we decided to don our rings when we went out to dinner that night. We laughed and smiled and flirted, all the while looking like we were in fact already married. I'm sure that no one else in the world noticed that we were both wearing rings but to us this was a huge magnifying glass to our hands and everyone had to know.

After dinner we went back to Stuart's parent's house. As soon as we walked in Jennifer immediately noticed that Stuart was wearing his wedding band. To say she was hysterical is an understatement. Needless-to-say, Stuart's ring was in Jennifer's possession from then until moments before our wedding.

I was retelling this story to Stuart, laughing and thinking about how silly we were.

Stuart: Oh, that was nothing. My mom was not hysterical at all.
Me: Really? I thought she was pretty mad.
Stuart: Nah, that was 'slightly concerned'.
Me: Really? I thought she kinda flew off the handle.
Stuart: Nope. You haven't seen anything.
...hmm...
Stuart: I guess you never will.

I miss her. And it's hard to put into words what that does to me.

Youngest

son and dog

Honestly

I have been bestowed a gift. A gift unlike any other. Ta-da!
And with this I am privileged to advise you on 10 honest things about me. Like I haven't already explained to you the complexity that is known as me. So without further adieu, here are 10 note-worthy, honest-to-goodness things that you might not have known about yours truly:

1. I grew up in Fortaleza, Brazil. My parents were missionaries there for 5 years. So along with Portuguese being my first language, my first memories of childhood belong to a country of Carnival, beans and rice, and frogs that used to jump out at me from our indoor garden.
2. I am somewhat of a Jew when it comes to money. Stereotyping I know, but seriously, I am. Not only do I obsess about money to the point of making fancy, shmancy spreadsheets, I balance the checkbook every day, double checking it against what USAA.com says, I make spreadsheets about where our money is to go and check that against our "Bills" spreadsheet, I have an unhealthy relationship with coins to the point of rolling them and paying for a $10 purchase in all pennies (the clerks, the love me), I get giddy if I can pay for anything in exact change and I verbally assault my husband when he nonchalantly throws pennies away.
3. I love to coordinate things. Smallest to largest, color order (white, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, grey and black), alphabetically ascending, rotation (used last to used recently); these all add order to my world. And if I walk into a space that doesn't have this type of order, I mentally process how I can remedy the problems.
4. I'm a bit of a control freak. I think you get the point.
5. I used to shave my eyebrows instead of plucking them because it was less painful. I know, I know. Where was my mother at this time? Now, don't get all freaked out. I didn't shave my eyebrows off, I just shaved in between my eyebrows.
6. My "pointer" toes are longer than my big toes. Stuart thinks this is the weirdest phenomenon to which I pleasantly remind him that this trait means I am a genius.
7. It drives me bonkers when people say "I could care less." By definition this means that you could, in fact care less. It's "I couldn't care less." By definition meaning that you could not, in fact care less.
8. "Sex and the City" is my not-so-in-the-closet guilty pleasure. And yes, I own the entire series plus the movie.
9. One of my biggest fears besides all thing dark, reptiles, rodents, bugs that fly, scary movies, and clowns is yogurt. Something about "live cultures" makes my skin crawl. Unsubstantiated, but real none-the-less. I do however encourage my children to eat this dairy product. And they love it.
   
10. I can't drink milk. And by can't, I mean won't. *shudder* Yuck.

I am bequeathing this jewel to:
Marci because she's my sister
Jennifer because she's hobolicious
Brooke because she thinks like me
Brittany because her son's actions match those of my children
Amy because I want to hear what she has to say
Aubrey because she's a new mommy
Raena because she needs to blog more
Autumn because she also has two boys
Bri because she was my other half

Summer Nights

Naked Boy

Last summer we were doing our typical morning thing: I was at the table feeding Tucker, Tyson was playing in the living room, Turbo was whining at the back door and Stuart was getting ready for work. Very typical morning. Tyson wanders over to the backdoor to investigate what his toys have been up to while he was sleeping-nothing.

"Naked boy mommy."

Huh? See, Tyson was just 2.5 years old and still developing his amazing verbal skills.

"No buddy, you're not a naked boy right now."

After baths we would let Tyson run around naked because he loved it and in the hopes that not wearing a diaper would magically make potty training happen. (Obviously the potty training did not happen for another year, but it DID happen and we are all happier for this incredible gift our son bestowed on us.)

"Naked boy mommy."

"Tyson, you're not a naked boy right now. Why don't you go play with your cars?"

"Mommy! Naked boy!"

"Tyson..." as I get up to help him away from the back door, I look up and see a naked boy. A.Naked.Boy.

"Stuart!!"

There is a little boy, naked, standing at the back of our fence just staring at Tyson. I open the back door, look around, see no one else outside (it is only 6:45 am), mentally check off all the kids that live around us, and deduct that I have no clue who this naked child is.

"Honey, what are you screaming...whoa, who's that?"

"I have no clue."

He doesn't seem to be hurt, just naked and a little scared. I walk up to the fence and ask him what his name is. Nothing. Where's your mommy? Nothing. Are you ok? Nothing.

"puppy"

"Do you like my puppy dog?"

"puppy"

I look around again, desperately trying to figure out who this child is and why no one is outside claiming him.

"Alright sweetie. I'm going to pick you up and we're gonna find your mommy. Ok?"

"puppy"

I lean over the fence and heave him over, trying not to scare him and trying not to scrape him against the chain links. As I walk in the door, Stuart immediately peppers me with questions, "who is he? is he ok? do you know him? what's his name?"

"I have no idea."

As Stuart walks outside to surely find a panic-stricken mother, I grab a pull-up (kind of handy that we had just decided that week to start potty training and thus had a brand new package of pull-ups) and semi-clothe this naked boy. He immediately spots Tyson's cars and pads over to start playing with his new non-naked friend.

Stuart comes back a few minutes later-no one is outside, no one seems to have lost a child.

"I think we need to call the police."

15 minutes later our house looks like a crime scene. We have 2 SAFB Police cars, 1 WF Police car, plus the usual gawkers realizing that their neighbors are now crazy too. One of the SAFBPD Officers takes the little boy so that Stuart and I can give our accounts of finding this toddler and another officer starts walking up and down the streets. Mind you, it's been a good 30-45 minutes since we have found this child.

Finally a social worker makes her way to our house and thanks us for finding and clothing the child (he was the same size as Tyson).

It's just at that time that one of the officers spots a woman wearing only a long t-shirt walking on the street behind our house. He quickly flags her down and we learn that this woman is in fact the derelict mother.

Apparently the little boy woke up, got out of bed, rounded up the two dogs, opened the unlocked back door, let himself and the dogs out into the yard and then opened the unlocked back gate so that the dogs could play more. All the while his mother slept mere feet from the ruckus. (I don't know about your dogs, but mine aren't exactly quiet first thing in the morning.) After letting the dogs loose, the little boy took off trying to get his dogs back-thus the repeated "puppy." When the father came home from PT he found an open back door, open back gate, missing child, missing dogs and a sleeping wife. I can only imagine the string of obscenities that came out of his mouth.

Finally getting the full story, CPS still had to take the child into custody till they could further investigate the "problem" and the officers finished up with Stuart and I. Turns out the naked boy only lived a block away from us but his parents had no clue how long he was gone.

Yesterday, Tyson was playing outside and out of no where asked me about the naked boy. Strange what these kids remember.

Mommy Brain

I think all mother's understand the incredible, delusional, upside-down, bottom-side-up phenomenon known as "mommy brain" or "baby brain" if you will.

For me this started a mere 30 seconds after Tyson was born. I could not remember my name, where I lived, who my husband was; you know, the highly important information that you need to answer before being discharged from the hospital. I was even more amazed after getting home (and by the way I delivered Tyson in San Antonio though we lived in Las Vegas, so we drove home when Tyson was 4 days old and what normally took us about 21 hours to drive took us 30 hours with a new, newborn and a nursing mommy. Yeah, fun.) that what normally is a fully functioning brain had turned to absolute mush.

It should have been no surprise to me that this last week the memory skills that I normally pride myself in were gone. Disappeared. Finito. Out the window. Au-vi-da-sen. I have no idea how to spell that but it sounds nice doesn't it? And distinguished. And international. See, there I go again.

Here is a sampling of my mommy brain from this last week:

• After searching for my cell phone I finally gave up figuring that someone was bound to call me at some time and I would hear it and find it, unless my phone was on silent and then I was out 'o luck. Luckily someone did call me and low-and-behold, my phone was in the refrigerator. And it still worked.
  
• After a particularly long night with Tyson, I went to make breakfast. This was a comedy of errors. I began by putting cream cheese on a frozen bagel and THEN putting the cream cheese laden popsicle in the toaster. After realizing my wrongness, I quickly popped the bagel out of the toaster and put the toaster under the faucet to clean it. It still works. Giving up on toasting anything, I filled a bowl with cereal and took the milk out of the fridge. As I was pouring the dairy, Tyson look at me and quizzically asks why I am pouring orange juice in his cereal. Alright, enough of that. Two down. Searching for anything else to feed my son, I grab a bag of chips and declare, this morning you can have whatever you want.
• When brushing my teeth, I grab the toothpaste and put it on my toothbrush. Man, this feels weird. It's at this point that Stuart walks in and asks why I am putting shaving cream on my toothbrush.
• Upon waking up on Saturday, I did a mad dash to get Stuart's Father's Day cards on the table before he woke up. I had the boys ready and rehearsed on saying, "Happy Father's Day Daddy!" I was prepared and he was going to love it. Too bad I was a day early. At least I wasn't a day late. (Oh man that just made me think of being pregnant..which I'm not, I just had a flashback. Remember Stuart had the 'ole snip, snip so unless I have a miracle baby this family d-o-n-e.)

I am amazed that I haven't done more permanent damage to myself.

Daddy

Happy Father's Day!
To my husband-

I couldn't ask for a better father and husband. I love you more than words can say.

And to my padre-

I love you more every year of my life. Thanks for being a fabulous Peepaw!

Something New

After some thought, prayer and contact with Luke's mommy, we decided to make a blog for Luke. You'll see the link on the right side (--->) of this blog. Feel free to look around and read about the amazing journey that Luke and his parents have been on. Feel free to copy the button and place on your blogs as well. And as always, thanks for your prayers!

Hotness Sickness

A plague has befallen over our house. Sickness has made it's not-so-grand entrance again and taken hold of the youngest humans. The boys started sneezing Wednesday but I didn't even think twice about it since we live in allergy-ridden Texas. Unfortunately I should have taken head because the boys both woke up with coughs and one faucet nose and one clogged nose. Oh and did I say "woke up?" Maybe I should clarify: I woke up to that. Tyson never really slept. He was awake from 12-5 am Thursday morning because he couldn't breathe well.

Medicine was tried but quickly spilled over, spit out or sneezed out. I then brought him into the living room to let him calm down while watching some tv. I took him to bed with me. (Let me just say that I have no idea how parents who sleep with their kids do it. It was horrible for me. If Tyson wasn't kicking me in the legs, stomach or face, he was tossing about in such a motion that all the sheets ended up on the floor and the dogs ended up on the bed to investigate the party going on, leaving Stuart naked, cold and still sleeping on the far side of the bed.) I took him back to his bed. I ended up sleeping on the floor of his room.

They were pretty puny.

An even worse monster has been rearing it's ugly head all week-heat. Not just it's-a-bit-hot-and-I-wish-I-were-inside-heat, but HOLYMOLYIAMGOINGTOMELTTODEATHTHEMINUTEIWALKOUTOFTHISHOUSE heat.
And apparently our A/C also has it in for us. Thanks to a frozen evaporator coil, air was not getting into our house and so the temperature was not-so-slowly rising.

I know what you're thinking. Come on Clarissa, put on your big girl panties and deal with it. Trust me, I did. I yelled and whined and kicked things. I thought I handled this situation remarkably well. My therapist, not so much. Just kidding, I haven't talked to my therapist about the h-e-double hockey stick that we went thru for a couple of hours till the block of ice melted. I mean, we did have to turn the A/C off and run every fan in the house to make it feel like an island paradise. And I by no means threatened to go to Walmart just to get out of the heat inside our house. I also didn't eat two ice cream cones during this time to cool myself down.

On a good note, my electric company must love me and think just like I do. They provide a graph on every bill to show a visual of our electric use. So that's where my $191.87 is going to this month.
I just love a good graph.

Momy, Mommy!

I think I may have mentioned before about the life cycle of poop in this house. I mean, I do have a potty-trained 3 year old (thank heavens!), a constantly full diaper-totting 2 year old, a mammoth 5 year old (good gracious, Turbo is really 5?) lab AND an ever growing 1 year old great Dane. Yes, there is a lot of poop that filters thru this house and particularly thru my hands. It's nasty and yucky and no one really wants to deal with it, let alone talk about it, but this is my life and I feel compelled to share the gory details with you. (Come on, you know that you too investigate your child's poo. It's just amazing how bad it really smells and how the kaleidoscope of colors changes from every angle and oh! the corn that doesn't get digested...)

So I deal with poop on an hourly basis. This act, however, did not prepare me for what happened yesterday.

I took the boys outside to play around 9 am. Why so early? Because it's so obnoxiously hot at 12 pm that we get sunburned just being inside our house. It's really getting out of hand. So we go out early and then try and not burn the house down in the afternoons.

So we're outside, the boys are running around and doing boy things, the dogs are playing the weird "boy-girl dog" dance (Turbo is fixed so there are NOT going to be any puppies in our house) and I am picking up, well, dog poop. I'm telling you, hourly. I finish up with my duty and go to grab the trash can to dump it's contents along with my steaming fresh dog bowel clean up bag into the dumpster. [We have a dumpster behind our house. Yet another example to the old-ness of our house. We don't have the conventional Tues/Fri curb-side garbage pick-up that most of the city does. While this is great for taking our trash out whenever we feel like it, not worrying about the trash that's piled high and rotting since we (and I say we because it was always my fault that the trash didn't get taken to the curb when we lived on base. Apparently it was too hard for someone else to remember to take the trash all 10 steps to the curb when that someone was leaving for work and had to walk around the poopy diaper laden refuse, so the task befell on me. And in order to fulfill this task I would have to remember to put it out the night before as the handy-dandy waste management team would come to collect our offerings at 6:30 am.) forgot to take it out and therefore missed a pick-up. It's not so great when the all four dumpsters in the alley behind our street are filled with limbs and mulch and other gardening left-overs and so the trash that is stinking up my garage can't fit. Ahem.] I do this too, on a very regular basis.

Off I go; 1 minute later as I am walking up thru the back of the fence I hear, "Mommy, Mommy!"

Now this was not a scared mommy, or a Tucker just bit me mommy but a very enthusiastic Mommy!

"I'm coming Tyson!"

I open the gate and am met by my beautiful three year old smiling ear-to-ear. (I now know what this particular smile means)

"Mommy, mommy! I went poopy!"

"You went poopy?"

"Yes, mommy! I went poopy! All by myself!"

"You went poopy?? In your big boy underwear?"

"No mommy. I went poopy like Turbo!"

"Like Turbo?"

"Mommy, look!! I went poopy like Turbo in the grass!!"

And he certainly did. Just like Turbo, in the grass.