Stagecoach

The Transcontinental Railroad killed the stagecoach.

It might have lessened the severity of the Great American Desert, where I currently reside with ease, but it killed those romantic little coaches and the wagon trains as well. Thank you, fifth grade curriculum, for the refresher course in American history.

In my lifetime I have watched technology kill its former self. I witnessed Nintendo kill Atari, Discman kill Walkman, and the suicide of Floppy Disc. DVD knocked out VCR and is now cowering in a corner against the reigning heavyweight champion Streaming Netflix. Technological cemeteries across the world are selling plots to landlines, payphones, boomboxes and chunky monitors.

I just don't want letters to die.

Emails are necessary. Texts are worthless. If texts kill letters like the train killed the stagecoach then I will have strong words for the girl in the pink T-Mobile dress. Nothing compares to an envelope addressed by hand and embellished with a postage stamp. A letter lessens the blow of a mailbox stuffed with credit card offers, grocery ads, catalogs one never orders from and legitimate bills.

I save letters. I have boxes and boxes of them and they are organized by sender. I love pulling them out and seeing what stamps were used, where they were postmarked and how they have weathered and softened over the years. Getting lost in a pile of old letters is the best. Especially if it's raining outside and you have a dog sleeping on your lap.

In our nearly fifteen-year marriage Greg has been a man of few written words, yet I have a full box of letters he sent me during our four-month engagement. I am so thankful there were no cellphones then! We were forced to write! He did write me a stellar Christmas letter a few years ago denoting his Top 100 memories of our marriage that he attached to this. I also have a letter he left on my car window at the gym after my turnip post. It reads: "Melissa! I love you! You rock! You roll! Thank you for being so awesome even with your turnip peasant soup filled with vitamins and minerals and lots of healthy stuff. Keep up the good work on your workouts. C U Soon, Greg"

As luck would have it, I miscarried while Greg was out of town for a two-day business trip. He was in meetings all day and I could not call him. I sat alone for forty minutes in my room at Legacy OB listening to the doctor give a successful ultrasound through the wall. Those forty minutes I was able to text Greg. I texted fear and anxiety through blurry eyes and he texted back that he loved me. He texted that together we can still do anything. I decided in those forty minutes that texts aren't as worthless as they used to be.

STOP

American Fork is the perfect little city to live in. Sure, sure, we have the mountains and canyons and proximity to Salt Lake. But mostly we have witty teens that vandalize our stop signs in their free time instead of playing video games. This is wise.

I absolutely love the clever graffiti that is terrorizing our hamlet. I'm only sorry that the "CAN'T STOP JIMMER" sign got taken down before I snapped a photo of it. Additionally, I cannot find the "DON'T STOP EATING VEGETABLES" sign. I even asked a reliable source deep within the Fire Department and he has never seen it.

Speaking of non-awful music, I absolutely love instrumental scores from movies.

My Top Ten:

1. The Last of the Mohicans

2. Ever After

3. Chocolat

4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

5. The Age of Innocence

6. Little Women

7. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

8. Edward Scissorhands

9. Pride & Prejudice (Keira Knightley version)

10. A Room With a View

What I just noticed is that my Top Ten contains three Johnny Depps, two Winona Ryders, two Keira Knightleys, two Daniel Day-Lewises and a link to Johnny Depp via Tim Burton via Helena Bonham Carter. With all this inbreeding between my soundtracks I bet I can get to Kevin Bacon in seven degrees or less.

1. Daniel Day-Lewis was a Mohican that starred with Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence.

2. Winona dated Johnny Depp. (unfortunate tattoo)

3. Johnny Depp starred with Keira Knightley in Pirates.

4. Keira Knightley starred as The Duchess with Ralph Fiennes. 

5. Ralph Fiennes was the voice of Ramses in The Prince of Egypt and Val Kilmer was the voice of Moses.

6. Val Kilmer was Tom Cruise's "Iceman" in Top Gun.

7. Tom Cruise beat Kevin Bacon in court in A Few Good Men.

I knew I could do it.

Honorable Movie Score Mentions:

Amadeus ("Lacrymosa"!!!), Legends of the Fall, The Secret Garden, Narnia (first one), The Young Victoria, The Little Princess, Miss Potter, Sense & Sensibility

Urban Legend or Fact:

I have a massage therapist that says the The Count of Monte Cristo soundtrack (Jim Caviezel) is beyond amazing. It's not available anywhere, and when it does pop up used on amazon or ebay it is always over $100. This is insane. Curiosity is killing me. How good is the score? Why is it not available anywhere? If the full score from The Boy Who Could Fly (super stupid Disney movie I watched as a kid) is available on iTunes, why oh why is this movie not? The injustice. 

"Stop Drop and Roll" reminds me of "Snake Rattle & Roll" which was an original Nintendo game my siblings and I enjoyed back in the day. It had this awful ice world that I never did pass. I can still hear the sound of the segmented snake falling to his death from those icy cliffs. Boo. I bet an AF Caveman could pass the ice world. 

Non-octagonal signs are not immune to the criminal activity running rampant in our streets.

A Letter to my Mom

Dear Mom,

First of all, Happy Mother's Day. Secondly, sorry I was your worst baby that screamed all night and slept all day and only would sleep if you were holding me while standing. When you describe me as your only "hot/cold baby" I sort of cringe inside because I think I still carry that trait. Just ask Greg.

I can't believe you spent over $10,000 on my piano lessons and sheet music. That must have been a great sacrifice since I whined about having to practice almost daily. How did you ignore my ranting without losing your patience? Teach me, because I lose my patience daily when RE whines about math homework.

I can't believe you took my measurements with your soft measuring tape, wrote them down with your perfect cursive on your mini purple legal pad, and drove for two hours to Kansas City to buy me clothes. I can just imagine you and Aunt Carolyn holding your measuring tapes up to clothes on the rack to see if they would fit us. Did I ever thank you?

Thank you for always saying I was beautiful, even during grades 3-11 when the school pictures proved otherwise. I always thought moms lied about their kids being beautiful, but I know you meant it now that I have a beautiful little buck-toothed 5th grader that thinks her pictures are ugly.

I appreciate you taking me to the color consultant the summer before 8th grade (a.k.a. The Peak of My Frail Self-Esteem) and determining that I was an Autumn. I still carry my swatches in my purse when I buy clothes. It is easier to navigate life knowing that I should wear cream instead of white, gold jewelry instead of silver, and warm tones instead of cool tones. That was a really nice motherly thing to do.

I will be forever grateful that you set the example to use things up. I can scrape a peanut butter jar better than you now. I also cut my lotion bottles in half and scoop out two extra days' worth of balm. Sometimes I save the foil from the cookie sheet just like you did after you watched the movie "Country" with Jessica Lange in 1984.

Coupons. I know who the Godmother of coupon usage is. I don't use expired coupons, Burger King coupons at Sonic, or Sonic coupons at Ethan Allen (haha), but I'm glad you did. It probably helped pay for my stinking piano lessons.

Remember how fun it was to watch the beauty pageants together? We always loved the one that had the talent competition versus just the swimsuit and ball gown competitions. Sometimes I wish I could rewind time and earn a penny a minute scratching your back while we watch "The Parent Trap" and eat lemon Soft Batch cookies late into the night.

You spent your nights brushing dogs, scrubbing pots that had soaked, balancing the checkbook to the penny and watching made-for-TV-movies. I do the same thing, except I don't wear rubber gloves for the pot scrubbing and that is why my hands are 398% less soft than yours.

I love you, Mom. And I promise I'll never call you "Jo-Jo" in public.

Love, Wass

100 Bushels of Wallpaper

   

  

   

I had been wanting this wallpaper for over a year. It was the only wallpaper on sale the night I peeked at anthro's "sale" area of their website. It was a sign.

If you ever have to remove old wallpaper buy liquid fabric softener. Mix it 50/50 in a spray bottle with hot water. Spray it on the paper, massage it in, let it sit. The paper will scrape off with a putty knife and your neck muscles will thank you for saving them hours of unneeded effort.

It took a lot of nerve to post the final photo. I wanted to take everything off of the fridge and counters, remove the "to-do" list from the cabinet, make cookies for the cloche, etc, and then I remembered that I'm working on not being perfect and accepting life sans rose-colored glasses. So enjoy my real kitchen and know that it's cheery and British enough for Kate and Will if they ever want to stop in for a cup of tea.

Evelyn

My maternal grandmother was Evelyn Hathcock Kerby and she could pick 100 bushels of fruit a day.

A bushel box of apples weighs 40 pounds and is slightly larger than a ten-ream box of copy paper. She picked her 100 bushels while she was pregnant and simultaneously watching and caring for her toddlers. My maternal grandfather, Thomas "Old Tom" Kerby, will turn 97 in November. In his lifetime of owning the farm he has never been one day late with a payment. This is the stock I come from.

I am fascinated with the work ethic of my grandparents. They are a good story.

My grandparents bought 60 acres of the fertile San Juan River Valley in 1945 for $12,000. At the time they already had three small children and they would end up having seven more. Together they cleared ten acres of cottonwood trees so a crop could be planted. Grandpa chopped the trees down by hand and pushed the stumps over with a tractor. Grandma was right by his side helping while their kids played in a lean-to set up in the snow. They planted 20 acres of fruit trees and the other acreage yielded hay, potatoes and corn. The work was obviously physical and brutal but it had to be done and it gave them true grit. In 1948, while Grandma dug potatoes for the harvest, their 14-month old son drowned in the irrigation ditch.

Back in those days there were no apple houses or cold storage facilities to preserve the picked fruit. Grandpa dug a deep trench 10-20 feet wide,  filled it with apples, and covered them with straw. (He didn't actually get cold storage until the 70s.) Without cold storage the main source of income in the late 40s was to sell to truckers. Truckers would bring a big semi to the farm and load up hundreds of bushels of fruit. Grandpa couldn't find any help to pick the fruit, not even at the unemployment office, so Grandma became the help. Side by side they picked. Grandpa grabbed the high fruit from a ladder, Grandma plucked what was low from ground with the little kids. There was no dinner until they had each picked 100 bushels.

Grandpa still says, "No one ever out-picked Mama." She was a good worker, a hard worker and a fast worker. Today we hear Oprah talk about "multitasking" as if it means "talking on the phone while you paint your nails." My grandmother multitasked a living out of raw land during queasy first trimesters and painful third trimesters and never had a girls' night out. She was up before dawn in her dress with her hair done ready to feed the brood. She went to bed early after cleaning her face with Merle Norman cold cream.

I did not inherit Grandma's strength of being a morning person, nor have I raised ten children. But I can pick 100 bushels of fruit in a day.

Of course it's not really fruit, but I can paste 100 bushels of wallpaper or stain 100 bushels of fence or freelance 100 bushels of good design. I can work hard, as can all of my siblings. There's not a bum kid in our family. Suzette is a dental hygienist that also makes custom baby bedding and blogs for the local newspaper. Cristall is making it solely as a fine art painter, although she has taught private school, art lessons, and math tutoring in the past. Matthew is a landscape architect with side businesses from excavation to vinyl letters to graphic design. Natalie is going to school for a second Bachelor's degree while working full-time.  I don't know if we inherited it, if my parents lucked out, or if our ability to get it done was the result of conscious parenting. I think it was a combination of all three.

Now if I can just get my daughter to unload the dishwasher without crying.