Last week of August and um what the heck? Why is it almost Christmas? Sick.

Disneyland. Where do I start?  I don't.  I can't even go there. I love it so much. I want to live there but I can't.   Anyway, why is it so hot here in California this week?  Seriously?  Also, why have there been floods, mud slides, fires, torrential rain, hail, wind storms that knock out power, dangerously high surf and earthquakes all while I've been here?  Maybe God wants me to not live here. Also, Mike got a job in Park City. I love Park City.  WOOT!

thank's for nothin' egg dudes

Last week I got sick something fierce as in I was puking all day, I even threw up in the bathtub. Yeeeeah. In case you aren't quite getting the visual, baths do not have drains that are compatible with (WARNING:  The following contains graphic content describing vomit. Pregnant women should quit reading now) puke that contains huge chunks of zucchini and sausage. So here I am, passing out from dehydration, so weak I could barely hold my head up, my ears are muted,  my eyes are seeing spots and blackness and I'm trying not to throw up in the tub. Somewhere in my mind I knew that if I passed out, I'd hit my head so I sat down immediately. So here I was, sitting in the tub, puking between my knees and it's running toward the drain. Let's just say I had to clean it up by hand...good thing the toilet was right next to the bath. I know. I'm disgusting. I'm disgusting. Throw stuff at me or shut up.

So anyway, guess what I'd eaten the night before:  zucchini and sausage...but with eggs. I'd had scrambled eggs too. Guess which eggs.  The recalled ones. (click)

This is why everyone needs to have a farm and to live off of their land. Anyone know of any chicken farms in Lehi?  I'm over the store kind.  They're sick. Literally.

and all I can think about is scarves

It's almost September. It is. It's crazy. The best part of Utah is the fall. I dare anyone to tell me that Utah in the fall isn't the most perfect place on earth. Since there are so many colleges around (like billions) the football games start up, people start wearing the shirt that represents their "team" and for your information, I'm neither Blue nor Red. (I don't want to decide!) But I do love my scarves. The girls and I share nearly 30 scarves. Don't be jealous.

There are a few other things I love about the coming season. One of them being the apples that grow so abundantly in the fall. I just love homemade apple pies. Once upon a time my friend Tori and I ordered 2 huge boxes of apples to be delivered to us in Las Vegas. We were new mothers, new wives, new homeowners and we thought we'd be ever-so-domestic by making some pie filling to freeze for the year. We purchased an apple peeler that clamped onto my counter top and away we went.  It started out fun, we laughed and talked as we went, always making sure to keep the leftover peels tidily in a garbage can. After about an hour of cranking that peeler things changed. Babies were crying, kids noses were running, my phone kept ringing and those apples, those boxes of apples...well, they seemed to be multiplying. Kind of like the loaf of bread and the fish story.

I looked at Tori and she looked at me and we both decided that one box of apples for the pies was enough. I think we spent 10 hours that day, turning only 1 box of those apples into carefully trimmed, thinly sliced, cinnamon and butter seasoned apple pie filling that we packed neatly in our freezers. Granted, I used every one of my 100+ bags of pie filling, but I don't think I'll do that again. Berries?  Yes. Things that need to be peeled and lemon'd and seeded and sliced?  Not so much.  I will say that everyone of my neighbors thought I was the Apple  Queen, and all of the sick ladies at church came to expect a pie for the next year from me, and that thought makes me almost want to take on this challenge again. It is, you know, almost apple season again.

I also love walking in the crisp air without mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes.  What are mosquitoes even for?  Why are they on the earth? Can anyone fill me in on this mystery?  I have to wear a scarf now in the evening when I go walking and it isn't even really cold enough for that. I have to protect my neck, you know. See, and we've come full circle. It really is all about scarves.

yeah probably not the best looking lunch ever

Guess what I had for lunch today. This was all on one plate mind you...

• collard greens with vinegar on them
• 1/2 can of creamed corn
• 1 big fat spoonful of cottage cheese

Yeah, it makes me sick just thinking about it but boy was it good. Also, I just realized all of those foods started with the same letter. And on that note:

Today's post was brought to you  by the Letter C.

anybody have a membership to Heavenly AAA I can borrow?

I've never been one of those people who dillydallies. Except for when I was 13 and I was in the bathroom before church, perfecting those bangs so I could be cute for all the boys in my ward. Then I'd hear the call as my dad was standing at the end of the hall "Quit dillydallying!  Let's GO!"  Back then?  I liked to dillydally. Otherwise, I've been in a rush to do pretty much everything in my life.

This has caused a pretty fair amount of grief for me. Hastily made decisions about love, or quickly moving toward a purchase...these types of things seemed to haunt me until a few years ago when mortality stood up and yelled directly in my face "Heeeyyyy!!!" during a bizarre series of events. These events finally broke my fast-lane race to nowhere in particular.

Suddenly, I liked to take my time. To make decisions carefully. My first slow and prayerful decision to file for divorce had a huge pay-off. "So THIS is what making a good decision is like..." and just like that, I was addicted. One might even say I was obsessed. Thus, I've become the opposite, in a crazy switch of events. Some might call it a 1/3 life crisis. I call it "learning from my mistakes."

So here I am today, making decisions that are slow and low, changing here a little, there a little, and even if there seems to be something impending, I'm wary of making a "rash" decision, having been burned by the hot stove of immaturity in the past.  Does this serve me better?  Yes and no.

First of all, the decision to marry my husband. Anyone who knows me knows that everyone I meet is my VERY!  BEST!  FRIEND! immediately after meeting them. Likewise, every boy I ever met was The One. This time I knew, but didn't want to be crazy so I went on denying that I really felt like that for him, until (for heaven's sake) he was right there in my face and we had a clear path. Then I admitted it. Score 1 for me. (Pshh, score 1 for Mike, what am I talking about!?)

Secondly, the choice to move to Utah. We wanted to come up here months before we moved but I carefully weighed our job situation and until we had a secure job that could support our family, we waited. We came up here for a few reasons, one of them being to be by my sister and her kids, which has been awesome but the main reason being so the kids' dad could see them as much as he wanted.  Good choices on both accounts. We've done our part in this and it's payed off, sometimes in surprising ways that seem negative at first, but in the end, all it's done is shown the kids that we really, really love them and that we will make sacrifices for them on their behalf. They see this, they know it, and all but one of them has thanked us for what we do for them. The other one, well, he's torn, but last night, out of nowhere, he said that he sees. We just want them all to be loved by as many people as they can be. Score 1 more for mature kids!

Thirdly, I've been making decisions about my health the last few years. I hated wearing clothes that could be made into bed spreads. I disliked very much having to shop at the big end of the store, and I for sure hated feeling like garbage. Mike and I made a conscious decision well over a year ago when I got sick to change the way we lived. We walked every night, we ate well, locally and sustain-ably and we tried to limit the amounts of times we ate out per month to 2. It worked. It was a slow process, but it worked. I lost almost 1/2 my body weight and he lost a significant amount, and my health improved. I even got pregnant and STAYED pregnant!  Those changes stuck, and to this day, even after having a baby, I'm still almost 1/2 the weight I was when we moved here a little over 2 years ago. Score 1 for The Gap!

So now, at a time where we need to make a decision really quickly, where do I find the guts to go back to that old way of life?  How do I find balance?  Big road blocks are in our path and we're butting up against them right now. Unfortunately (and fortunately all at the same time) Mike is King Dillydally of Takeyourtimeland. We need to make decisions RIGHT NOW but we're worried. We're scared to jump in. Me, miss fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, scared to make these decisions? Because they seem terrible?  Yes, because they seem terrible. Also, because they seem like a step backward in the progress we've made, up front at least.

I'm such a homebody. I could stay at home and read and play with the baby and put on impromptu musicals and make posters about fake restaurants and play lounge singer and make up songs all day with my kids until the cows come home, but right now, the urge and the fire has been lit but yet I don't wanna react because there is no clear answer ahead!  Just the fire to go! We need to move where we can fix our situation. We want to fix this situation, but we're stuck in the mud. I need a boost from the Big AAA Tow Truck in the sky right now. It's exhausting.

In other news, I'm retaining water like a freakin' sponge. That's always good for one's self-esteem.

she just needs her mama, that's all

Something's been coming over me the last few months. It all started when I had miss lola-bird. Something about how peaceful the morning of her birth was. I'd gone into my doctor the week before and they checked me out and said that my blood pressure was up a bit. This for me is normal, but my sweet doctor J. (no, not THE Doctor J, but yes, that fabulous) said he wanted to be safe so we scheduled me for an induction on my 39th week of pregnancy, the following Friday. I was ok with this because I'd been having weird feelings and I'd shared them with Dr. J. So Friday came and the cute nurses at American Fork Hospital called me at 5:45 am and asked me if I could be there in 30 minutes. They had an early opening. I shook Mike awake and said "It's TIME!" which for us means "they're going to induce me now!" since I don't go into labor (when it's time, at least, I can't say the same thing about the first 30 weeks of pregnancy. Figures, right?) on my own.

I showered, shaved my legs and got to the hospital (which is 15 minutes away) in 35 minutes. Fast showers are the best. So is wearing your hair long and straight. Easy peasy. We got into the room, filled out all the paperwork, met our AMAZING nurse Paula and got the iv's started and settled in. By 8:30 the pitocin was causing contractions and I was already dilated to a 2, so we thought we'd have a while til the contractions started coming harder. Fast forward to 9:00 am.

I look at the husband and say to him "something's wrong". He says "what's wrong?" I say "I dunno, something" so he says "Call Paula". I call the nurse, tell her something's wrong. She asks a few questions, and tells me that she wants to check me. She checks me and says "whoa. You're at a 7". For those of you who don't know what that means, that means I'm almost done. In 30 minutes, I went from "eh, let's maybe have a baby by midnight" to "ok, so your body is really trying to get this baby out NOW".

I am having contractions that are super intense, and it comes the time where I have an epidural or not. Now here's where it gets tricky. I wanted to have Miss Lo with no epidural. I went in there thinking I'd say no. I had Casey with no epidural (#4) and Tiffany with no epidural (#1) so it was totally one of those things I knew I could do. The pain wasn't any different than it was with the others, and I knew it was happening fast, but something told me to get it. So I got it. It only worked on half of my body. When I say half of my body, I mean

that absolutely literally. Epidurals are in your spine. Mine only took care of my right side. Period.

So there I was, feeling everything in my left side of my body, trying to breathe through the fastest labor in the universe when 2 nurses come walking in, but really quickly. One comes to my left side to mess with my iv, the other, my nurse Paula, she comes over and tries to move the fetal heartbeat monitor around on my belly. I asked her what was wrong. She says "well, we keep getting YOUR heartbeat on the baby monitor, so we want to make sure the baby's heart rate isn't that low." The other nurse informed me that she was turning the pitocin off because I was going 1000 mph. at this point and definitely didn't need help getting this baby here.

After 10 minutes of not finding the baby's correct heart beat consistently, they opted to break my water so they could put the baby on a monitor attached to her scalp. As soon as they did this, things got crazy. Lola's heart beat WAS the one they thought was mine. With every contraction, her heart would go from her normal 150-160 beats per minute to 45-50 beats per minute. They rolled me onto my left side then we waited... They rolled me onto my right side then we waited... nothing helped. 10 minutes of this, and with each contraction, I'd look at Mike and start to pray aloud.

Please Heavenly Father, please help Lola. Please get Dr. Jones over here to get her out.

Mike was in a trance. He couldn't even move. He was silent.

Finally, Paula said to the other nurse "Get Doctor J. here. Now" and the other nurse said "he's here. He just walked in for another patient...."

Dr. Jones walked in and said (with a smile on his face as always...) "So what's going on here? This baby being naughty already?" (those doctors know how to keep you so calm...)

Just at that moment, Lola's heart just stopped. Literally. Just...stopped. Mike stood up immediately and I looked at the clock and watched 5...10...15 seconds tick by. Doctor J walks over to the nurse who looks like she's seen Jacob's ghost and takes the forceps out of the nurse's hands, walks over to me, says "you're at a 9. Let's just get her here" and the next thing I know, the bluest baby you've ever seen is being handed to me.

"She just needs her mama, that's all" he says.

Lola-bird had her cord wrapped 4 times around her neck. Every contraction pulled it tighter. The cord was also the size of a straw, which I've since learned is about 1/4 the size of a normal umbilical cord. She needed to come out.

I talked to Dr. J later when he came to visit me in recovery. "See, always trust your gut feelings, even if they seem crazy" he said. "I can't tell you how many times I've learned the hard way to just trust a woman's feelings over the years"...

He calls them gut feelings. I like to call it intuition. Intuition fueled by the promptings of the Holy Ghost. What a gift it is to be a woman.

That's what's been coming over me. This feeling that I'm here for a greater purpose, that there's something out there for me to do, and that I'm not alone. Sometimes the days are dark, and adversity gets the better of us, but really...I feel surrounded by light. I feel loved. I feel like I can take care of these people even when financially, it seems like I can't. Also, I'm just so blessed to have this little birdie. I can't resist her. Can you?

about a gal

I'm Allison. Also called Alli. I'm also called mom, honey, mama, mommy and jerkface (but only by Eliza, Taylor and Ashley, my siblings. Oh and it's said with love, don't go getting upset now...)

I live. I just need to say that.

I also write. I have had a blog for the past 8-9 years. Yes, for real.

I also take photographs. For people and friends and brides and sweet new mothers and for occasions and holidays and for myself.

I'm feeling a lot lately, so I'm back to blogging. Don't get your hopes up, I'm doing it for myself only so I won't be trying to entertain. I'll just be real. How's that?

Sweet.