Nothing Good Happens at 3am

When I was living with my parents, I had to be home by midnight and there was no exception to my curfew. Dad lived by several mantras, one of them being, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight.” These days, my question is as follows—at what point in the morning does it stop being “after midnight” of the night before and become “the next morning?” If this question doesn’t make sense to you, let me explain a little of what is going in our lives right now.

Jacob goes to school in Pocatello. We live 80 miles to the north. Luckily, I work for a transportation company that can shuttle him south to Pocatello. At the bus stop, he keeps his car parked so that he can drive himself from there to school. Unfortunately, his first class begins at 6am. In other words, Jacob has to leave our house at 3:15 in the bloody morning in order to catch his shuttle to get him to his car, to get him to his class on time. Thus, you can understand my question better. Does this 3am morning still count as “after midnight” since we have technically gone to bed and woken up again? Can anything good happen at this hour?

After a couple months of 3 o’clock mornings, I admit wholeheartedly that events are always more dramatic at that obscene time of the “day.” Emotions are high and rational thinking is low. Today I am grouchy—ridiculously yet justifiably so. Major lack of sleep. Here’s the story. Cue scene:

2:45am Jacob’s alarm clock goes off. I stayed up late reading after he went to bed, so I am very groggy. I somehow manage to slink off the bed long enough to use the restroom, gave him a quick hug and kiss goodbye. Unfortunately, I always have had a hard time falling asleep (even when I am exhausted) so after I make it back to the bed, it still takes some time before I finally get back to sleep.

3:10am I have just drifted away and the bedroom door opens. Jacob is digging through his dresser. He informs me that he can’t locate his keys for his vehicle that is sitting in Pocatello. Without them, he can’t get from the bus stop to the school. This has happened many mornings before and he always manages to find them, so I am unalarmed. After minor rummaging, Jacob leaves the room and I roll over to once again to try to fall back asleep.

3:15am Jacob reenters the bedroom and continues his search through the bedroom. At this point I realize he must need help if he still hasn’t found the keys. So I give up on sleeping for the moment and get up to help in the search.

3:25am After 10 minutes of desperate searching, I opened the front door to see if perhaps Jacob had left the keys in the door when he unlocked it yesterday (which he hadn’t) and I see his shuttle sitting in front of the house. Shortly thereafter we get a call from the driver, who can no longer wait for him and keep to his schedule. Driver leaves.

3:45am Still no keys. Up to now we have been (mostly) tiptoeing around the living room and using hallway lights only to avoid waking up the bird, Belle. She has the habit of making a high pitched squeal or a loud squawk if we are awake and she is still locked in her cage and covered up. (Side-note: until this morning I didn’t realize where she learned the squeal. Now, after having opened and closed the front and back door a million times this morning while trying desperately to be quite so as not to wake up the upstairs and downstairs neighbors, I am quite aware and embarrassed at the awful squeak both doors make—which I am sure my bird has learned to imitate). At this point we can no longer search without the main lights off. We turn lights on. The following conversation ensues:

Belle: “SQUAWK!!!”

Jacob, in a furious whisper: “Belle! Knock it off!”

Jennifer, directed at Jacob: “It’s not her fault! She is confused at what’s going on. Let her be!”

Belle: “SQUAWK. SQUEAL. WHISTLE. SQUAWK!!!”

Jennifer shouting at the top of her lungs: “SHUT THE HELL UP, BELLE!!!!”

Unjust on my part? Obviously. Like I said, high emotions and low rationale.

4:00am My house is completely turned upside down. The original keys are still AWOL and spare keys haven’t been located. Jacob has dumped out everyone of his who-knows-how-many junk drawers and boxes, as well as some of my very well organized storage boxes. We have looked on every shelf, in every drawer, under the beds and couches, emptied his backpack and gone through the whole laundry basket. The bird is dancing around on my shoulder and pecking at my ear, begging to be scratched. I am sitting on the bed trying my hardest not to make snide comments about Jacob’s “organizational” skills (by the way, my hardest wasn’t good enough and I failed miserably at being nice).

Jacob: “Why don’t you just go back to bed?”

Jennifer: “Oh sure! I’m positive I will sleep through all the ruckus and lights. Especially since I’ll be wondering what you are going to do now. Why don’t you just take my Mini and drive yourself there? You are going to miss your class if you don’t leave soon.”

Jacob: “How are you going to get to work, then?”

Jennifer: “I’ll ride my bike.”

Jacob: “In the ice and snow?”

Jennifer: “I will figure it out later. Can you please just go so I can go to bed?”

4:10am Jacob is outside scraping the ice off of the car. I feel guilty for being so rude, so I run outside to give him a hug and kiss goodbye and ask one more question about the last time he saw his keys. He tells me that he swears they were on the table. I go back inside and back to bed. As I lie there thinking about the missing keys, I realize that the last time we saw them on the table was before we left for dinner—and we left the house unlocked when we left. Now my imagination goes wild and I am picturing someone that has come into my house, stolen only the keys and is planning a mass break-in and theft later. I can imagine the guy watching the house and seeing Jacob driving away. Now I am never going to sleep.

4:15am In an attempt to stop thinking about the man who has stolen my keys and is now planning to rob all my possessions, rape and kill me, I run through the events of the evening (while praying vigorously) to try and remember any pertinent information surrounding the keys. All of the sudden, I remember Jacob taking out the trash and making a joke about going outside in his bathrobe. Leaping out of bed, I went straight to the keys. It would be a much better story if I could say the keys were in the trash, but they weren’t. They were, however, in the pocket of his bathrobe which was hanging on the back of my bedroom door. I call Jacob and he turns around to head back to the house.

4:20am Jacob no longer has a shuttle that will get him to his class on time. He sets up a shuttle which will leave at 6:15ish and get him to his next class at 9:00. Being such a loving husband, he volunteers to sleep the rest of the “night” in the guest room so that I don’t have to wake up to his alarm in an hour and a half. Great! Sacrifice accepted.

5:20am I am lying in bed, still awake. My body is pumped with adrenaline, along with traces of frustration, anxiety, and anger from the previous saga and impatience at not being able to sleep. On top of that garbage, I can feel bile bubbling in my stomach. Every night before bed I take a medication that has the tendency to make me nauseous. Normally I would sleep right through this wave of nausea. Not so this morning! In fact, I think the mad-dashing increased the symptoms and I now find sleep impossible.

6:10am Sleep had finally found me. Then my bedroom door opens and the light of a cell phone falls directly across my face. I snap awake. Jacob is standing in the doorway.

Jennifer: “Why did you come in here?!”

Jacob: “I just wanted to tell you I loved you before I left for the day.”

Oops. There I go again. Bye, sweetie! Have a good day and I love you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! Now I will lie in bed stewing over losing my temper (once again) when he was just trying to leave on a good note.

6:30am My alarm clock goes off. Good morning!!! And I think it’s gonna be a long, long day.

The conclusion is this: Nothing good happens after midnight and before the sun rises the next morning.

The Autumn Leaves Drift By My Window

Remember when i said i loved Halloween? Part of the reason is because Halloween comes in the fall. And i love Autumn. Crisp mornings. Gold and red leaves (and, oh! to crunch them under foot!) Pumpkins in the windows. Sweaters, hats and scarves come out (but don't have to hide under a heavy coat yet). Most of all, i love fall food. It's warm, comforting, flavorful and brightly colored. This fall i did more cooking than last year. Maybe because i have a husband to cook for this season. i baked zucchini bread, made squash soup, shared apple and yam bake with my co-workers...and then there have been the apple pies.

One of my friends had a small orchard overflowing with apples. Jacob, my sister Stephanie, her husband, and i went and picked a huge laundry basket full of apples. I've made quite a few pies from those apples already. Today i will have my first attempt at canning and can the rest of the apples as pie filling for later. When we were apple-picking, we couldn't resist capturing some of the colors in photos. Happy Autumn! I hope you enjoy the sights, smells and tastes of the season!








Photos by Stephanie Patterson

This is Halloween

i love Halloween! i love the decorations. i love the costumes. i love the fall food. i love the candy. i love everyone running around looking ridiculous. and i love parties. My sister and a couple of friends threw a Halloween party at my house. What a blast. The best part was showing off our superb costumes (thanks, mom, for all the help!) i thought i ought to show them off here too!

Here is what we were going for:


Here is our version:


and my sister looked stunning as Rainbow Bright


i hope you had as fun of a Halloween as we did!

Losing faith in humanity

At work there is a back room where all the drivers check in and out. Located in that room is our lost and found. On Friday, my husband rode the shuttle and left a very nice book on the van. i immediately called the driver who confirmed that he had the book. He wasn't scheduled to arrive back at the office until 8pm...a few hours after i check out of work. i asked him to leave the book in this back room in the lost and found so that i could pick it up the next day. Jacob and i stopped by the next day to recover his lost novel. Upon arriving, the book was nowhere in the room. i called the driver and confirmed that, indeed, he HAD left Sherlock Holmes in the driver's room. How disheartening. This is the note that i now have posted in their room. i hope that i see positive results ::sigh::


Dear Current Possessor of my Sherlock Holmes Book,

I am aware that my Sherlock Holmes book was in the back driver’s room all by itself. If you decided to adopt it into your own library, please note that it was NOT orphaned, merely momentarily abandoned. I would like to bring it home again. Please return it.

Thank you,

jo

P.S. At least return the bookmark inside—it has sentimental value.

As for me and my house

i know i promised Jacob's stories, and i AM working on them. Until then, here is a short story (that i received straight from the babysitter's mouth) that i simply had to share. Although the story is true, the names are changed by request of the somewhat embarrassed parents. Hope you get a laugh!

...After a couple of hours in the house with 6 & 7 year old Laurie and John, the babysitter decided that perhaps they would behave better if he let the kids run around outside for a bit. John was quickly ready to go, but Laurie dilly-dallied and wouldn't put her shoes on. Even with much beseeching from the babysitter, she was uncooperative and hiding in odd corners rather than getting her shoes on. John, anxious to get outside and play, finally lost patience with his sister and yelled, "Laurie, just put your damn shoes on!"

The shocked babysitter quickly pulled John aside and explained, "John! We don't say that word in this house!" The little boy looked up at the babysitter with an expression that conveyed both confusion and frustration and said, "Yes we do!" Now how do you respond to that?

Gratitude

Here are some things for which i am grateful this week:

*For words like xu, zit and qat which enable me to spectacularly win at Scrabble.

*That this talented girl is not only my sister, but one of my best friends.

*That the extremely fit girl on the treadmill in front of me at the gym finished her workout just as i started mine. Therefore, i didn't have to watch her skinny butt the whole time i sweated away.

*For a mom who gets just as excited about my Halloween costume as i do.

*For classic literature. And the fact that in reading it this time around, i can enjoy the novels on my own agenda instead of a teacher's.

*That pregnancy is not contagious.

*For zucchinis that are large enough to make four loaves of bread.

*For secret forts built in the living room so that Jacob and i can escape from "the world" for an evening.

*For puffs super soft, super plus tissues with lotion.

Cleaning Up My Act

Every fall, the leadership of my church gives us an incredible opportunity to receive instructions and revelations meant specifically for the women of the church. In this internationally broadcasted meeting, the President of the Church, President Monson, spoke about focusing on charity and being non-judgmental. He began his talk with an anecdote to show how often, when people judge, they do so unjustly--not knowing the whole story or seeing the other person through “tainted” eyes.

A young couple, Lisa and John, moved into a new neighborhood. One morning while they were eating breakfast, Lisa looked out the window and watched her next-door neighbor hanging out her wash.

“That laundry’s not clean!” Lisa exclaimed. “Our neighbor doesn’t know how to get clothes clean!”

John looked on but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, Lisa would make the same comments.

A few weeks later Lisa was surprised to glance out her window and see a nice, clean wash hanging in her neighbor’s yard. She said to her husband, “Look, John—she’s finally learned how to wash correctly! I wonder how she did it.”

John replied, “Well, dear, I have the answer for you. You’ll be interested to know that I got up early this morning and washed our windows!”
-President Monson

As I sat there in the meeting, President Monson’s words flooded over me, and this particular wave of a story almost knocked me over. With a quick assessment of the past months, I KNEW that something in my life needed to change. Contemplating the words spoken, I made a decision on how I needed to alter certain aspects of my daily living.

And so I went home and immediately implemented this change. I washed my windows. If I’m going to judge my neighbor, I sure as hell am going to do it through sparkling windows.