auntie to the 19th power

#19

portland, oregon welcomed a new citizen 2 weeks ago when my brother jay and his beeyooteefull wife had their first baby.  he’s pretty cute and, judging from his parents, will only get cuter.  my brother posted a cute little video of the new baby boy max hiccupping while my brother giggles like a school girl in the background.  classic jay.  and little max makes 19, 19 nieces and nephews.  since i was 11 months old i’ve been an aunt and the older i get the more i appreciate the differences and characteristics of these people my brothers and sisters have produced.  the oldest of the 19 even got married a little while ago.  married.  what. the. eff??  talk about making me feel not only old, but like the biggest loser ever.  my nephew, 11 months my junior, beat me to the altar.  so not fair.

speaking of nephews, i like to try to take my sister jen’s 2 sons out for little trips and whatnot.  they’re the perfect ages (10 and 12) although they are definitely mature for their ages.  they don’t whine or complain or cry.  like when i took them to six flags discovery kingdom in vallejo last year, they were perfect!  they didn’t bitch or moan or beg for anything.  they are polite, but fun, you know?  and this is coming from me, a chick aspiring to never have kids of her own.  i don’t love kids, i just love certain kids.  i love those two boys.  so since the oldest of the two was out of town for spring break, i took the younger one to the movies.  originally i wanted to take them both to a skate park that sounded super awesome over in santa cruz, but their mom, my sister, thought it might not be a good idea since they’re still young and the kids at the park might pick on them for not being “local.”  i get it– kids in santa cruz can be on weird side.  so, the nephew chose to see “knowing,” partly because it was the only choice beside the hannah montana movie that wasn’t rated r.  i thought “knowing” might be creepy and it totally was.  i hate creepy/scariness because i totally internalize movies like that until i convince myself that whatever horrible disaster is torturing the characters in the  movie will soon effect moi.  so the nephew told everybody the next day that “auntie cait cried.”  first off, i didn’t cry from fear, i teared up when nicholas cage had to leave his son, ok?  it was kinda sad!  i did however hide behind my hands everytime those creepy staring guys showed up.  whatev, nate, i’m not ashamed.

weezer said it best...

i’m surprised i had any tears left in my eyeballs anyway.  i spent the whole previous weekend bawling my eyes out while watching movies.  “seven pounds” tore me up so bad the boyfriend was looking at me like i had lost my damn mind.  but, hello?  that movie is effing sad!!  i cried so hard that i gave myself a nasty headache.  then i watched “bobby,” a movie about robert f. kennedey’s assassanation.  i cried because of what america lost that day.  he was a revolutionary, he was obama but 40 years early.  i guess the country wasn’t ready for him.  but i cried because i felt the loss, i cried because he could have been great.  i cried because he was taken too soon.  i cried for my country.  then after i watched “milk” (finally) and felt the loss of harvey milk, a man who did such great things for the gay community, but who was still too radical in 1978 for some people.  what would he think of the progress that’s been made?  or would he see how far there is still to go?  i cried for him and for george moscone and for the people those men inspired and for those he didn’t get to inspire because dan white ate some damn twinkies and got away with murder.  i had to ask my parents (born in 1940 and 1948, respectively) how did they live through those years?  i had to ask how they felt watching every single symbol for hope or change be gunned down before they could realized their dreams.  mlk

..."say it ain't soooooooo..."

jr, jfk, rfk, malcom x, harvey milk, john lennon.  it makes you appreciate pres. obama even more because he made it to the top, he followed in the footsteps of the great men who went before him and then kept going to create footsteps of his own.

it almost makes me want to cry.

my gethsemane… partie deux

you may be shocked and amazed or just plain baffled that someone who just wrote a 1,500 word blog entry, like, 12 hours ago would have a single word left in her. then you’re still getting to know me because although i am often short on cash i am never short on words. anyway, i was still thinking about what i wrote and finally gave in to the unnatural desire to blog at 5am, plus, when your effing pug won’t stop snoring and your mind is racing, what else is a girl to do?

so, i was talking about my feelings for my former religion. my post lit a flame within me that had been blown out a long, long time ago and it just got me to thinking. how do i really feel about the church? am i capable of feeling the holy ghost anymore? and the kicker: will i ever return to the church and be an active member again? and if i were to, under what circumstances? at the moment, i feel like my personal politics interfere with the fundamental beliefs of the church and it’s very likely that this will not change in any significant way any time soon.

the problem is i’m starting to wish i could dress in white and be welcomed into the temple by cute little old men whose white hair match their snowy outfits so that i might participate in some of the sacred (and secret) ordinances that would bring me closer to my god. but usually i snap back to the reality of this wish: only a senile bishop who’d never met or heard of me before would ever issue me a temple recommend… and the senile bishop would only do so after i told him a series of elaborate lies in which i simply skip over the more sordid details from a few years of my life. only after that oscar-worthy performance could i be considered “worthy” to enter a temple.

**speaking of entering the temple, this story may give you some insight into

oakland temple: beautiful on the outside, but don't bother asking me what it looks like inside!

how seriously the church takes its worthiness policy** one of my oldest and dearest girl friends, shelby (i’ll tell you all about her in a future post), married her return-missionary husband in a ceremony in the oakland temple. i’m sure it was lovely, but i wouldn’t know because even though i was her maid-of-honor, i had to wait outside in the courtyard until it was over. usually when i tell people this they think it’s crazy and unfair that the mormon maid-of-honor stood waiting outside during the actual wedding ceremony. i don’t, though, because i understand the reasoning behind it. the temple is a true house of god that has been blessed and dedicated to, well, to god and only those who are deemed worthy in the eyes of the church may enter. it’s like a really exclusive clubhouse. plus maids-of-honor don’t participate in temple weddings the way they do in non-mormon ones. hey, i grew up with this, so, you know, i get it. i wasn’t offended. it did kind of suck to have to dress up and drive to oakland just to take pictures outside the temple, but those are the kinds of things you do for a friend’s big day. **vanity alert** plus i was like 30 pounds lighter at the time, so the photo i have of me and shelby is such a great picture of moi… i’ll have to scan it into my laptop somehow so i can post it here. seriously, i look so cute. oh, and shelby looks nice, too. hahaha. just kidding shelbs.

anyway, i digress… so, i visited the church’s official website out of curiosity and a deep seeded desire to hear something inspirational, something that might stir the still small voice that has become smaller and smaller over the years. i found a 10 minute little video (slightly reeked of propaganda, but what else can you expect from a church production?) that was hosted by steve young **hubba hubba** and some former miss usa, but it also showed clips from some of the adorable late president gordon b. hinckley (by far my favorite prophet– his death last year was one of the catalysts to this whole re-examination experiment). the video was dispelling common misconceptions and myths about the church’s history, its reputation for being isolated from mainstream america, claims that mormons are not christians, etc. like i mentioned, it was a bit brainwash-y, but not in a mean-spirited or negative way. if you get 10 free minutes it might be worth watching, especially if you’re not familiar with the church… plus you get to look at stevie for most of it! i may not attend church anymore, but my devotion to steve young will never die. he’s our boy. go niners!

so, i guess that’s that. i just wanted to get that last bit off my chest. i’ve never admitted to anyone my feelings because with the political climate as it is, it’s not exactly a popular church in the bay area at the moment. i don’t want to say, “oh, when the prop. 8 stuff settles down then it’ll be okay,” because it won’t be okay. i will still remember the disappointment i felt toward the general authority in utah after they issued statements for california mormons, urging them to give their time and money to ensure the passage of the gay marriage ban. i feel like this support of hate legislation (no matter how the church phrases it) just strips away any good feeling i may have been starting to feel again.

and then there’s the situation with my parents. my dad holds the melchezidek priesthood, he can lay his hands upon my head and bless me, he used to volunteer q week at the oakland temple, but when the church decided to get involved in prop. 8 he quietly resigned from his calling and turned in his temple recommend. my parents have stopped paying tithing. i can’t remember the last time someone came by to collect his fast offering (that’s a special tithe you pay the first sunday of each month that goes toward the many lds-run charities or to help poorer families pay for their son or daughter to serve a mission, stuff like that, the kind of stuff that reminds me how much good the church and its members offer to the world…). and each sunday they have taken to going on trips to the beach or to watsonville for fresh fruit or someplace fun like that instead of dressing up for church.

i must say here that my mother was always the best dressed woman in that chapel. while most of those relief society women look unkempt or dress haphazardly in frumpy laura ashley knock-offs with runs in their stockings and ugly shoes with little or no accessories to speak of (unless you count small children hanging on you as an accessory), my mother is a lone swan amid a sea of ugly ducklings. i used to sit on the toilet lid as a child and watch her get ready on sundays. she wears light make-up, has naturally perfectly arched eyebrows (which i pray i inherit someday), smooths on a natural hued lipstick, reddish-brown or nude-y, that complements her outfit *natch* and then, at least she did when i was little, sprinkles lavender talcum powder down her front so she smells clean, but with a hint of provence. then she puts on some very daring, very sophisticated ensemble over her immaculate stockings and silky slip (i used to feel so fancy when i wore slips under my sunday dresses as a child) usually topped off with some fabulous wrap or jacket that doesn’t resemble laura ashley in the slightest. finally she slips her small feet (where my size 8’s came from i may never know, damn genes) into a pair of very likely brand-new heels (my mother owns more shoes than the former first lady of the philppines… ok, i exaggerate but i bet if my mother had all the money in the world she could compete with imelda marcos, who owns like 3,000 pairs of shoes– she even opened a museum which just displayed her collection of footwear.)  lastly, my mother would choose a pair of beautiful earrings and some piece of unique jewelry, a chunky necklace or tiffany bracelet, to complete her outfit.  my mother’s oldest daughter has similar memories of our mother getting ready to go out, so i know that this has been her routine for over 30 years.  tradition can be nice.

so i guess that’s something i’d be losing, that she’d be losing, too, if our family leaves the fold for good.  of course, we’re all sealed together for time and all eternity, so, you know, we’ve still got the afterlife. ha.

fin.  i promise… for now.

j’adore les jeudis (i love thursdays)

jeudi– my favorite day of the week (besides sunday when i could literally sleep all day and not miss anything).  thursday is the last day of classes for the week, i only have to work six hours in the fluorescent tomb (aka the pharmacy), the boyfriend usually comes home from bezerkley (he’s smarter than me, so he goes to uc berk), it’s payday (well, not anymore–effing cee-vee-ess changing my payday to friday- hurumphh), and my precious tivo records all my favorite tv shows for me so i don’t have to miss a single second of  “the office,” “30 rock,” “kath & kim,” or “csi.”

some people get embarrassed or ashamed of watching too much tv, but that’s crazy talk!  you can never watch too much tv.  it’s not physically possible.  you can watch too many commercials, that’s why i would give my tivo chocolates on valentine’s day if i didn’t know my dad would end up eating them.  even my mom suffers without tivo when she sojourns to the homeland (that’s north texas) to visit my tootie who hasn’t converted to tivo worship.

oui, there is such a place.

hmm, now tootie may be someone who does watch too much tv.  she still gets a frickin tv guide, like the kind made out of paper and resembles a little book you may remember them from your childhood, or from a glass case in the smithsonian.  walking into tootie’s climate controlled house (i don’t think it ever gets above 65 degrees in there) is like walking into a time warp– there’s green shag carpeting as far as the eye can see, her toilet seats have cushions on them, she still has an ashtray next to her armchair even though she quit smoking over 25 years ago, and papa’s armchair hasn’t moved a millimeter since his death exactly six years ago today.  she may be single handedly responsible for global warming by keeping her air conditioner on full blast 24/7 from april to october.  my papa used to say it was like a morgue and would take breaks from the cold by standing outside in the texas summer heat to “warm up.”  now i don’t know how many of you have visited north texas in summertime, but it’s not just hot.  it’s fucking hot… and fucking humid.  it’s what i imagine purgatory to be like, if mormons believed in that sort of thing.  so for anyone to want to go out into that palpable, wet wall of heat that hums with cicadas and horseflies and mosquitoes (my sister ash and i once had a contest to see who had the most mosquito bites by the end of our visit to tootie and papa’s house–ash won with i think 27 bites…) blows my mind.  it’s the reason i used to want to visit in fall or winter… until papa died in february and i realized that there was no good time to live in texas.  my mom is so lucky she got out of there before a tornado took off with her house or she got struck by lightning.

isn’t funny how you can start out rambling on about something as mundane as thursday night “must see tv” and end up talking about the anniversary of your grandfather’s death?  his funeral was weird because for some godforsaken reason someone thought it might be fun to videotape this particular moment of my family’s life, so i have a vhs copy of my grandparent’s little baptist church’s chapel with my papa’s flower covered coffin displayed up front and rows of church pews filled with stetsons and big hairdos.  most of my family got to sit quietly passing around a box of tissues, but oh no, not caitlin.  no, caitlin had to get up and talk to that stupid video camera and read the private letter i had written to papa before he died.  since he died before my mom could give him the letter, i guess everybody decided it was public property and they read it.  by the time i arrived a couple days later, the letter had not only been read by half my family and dozens of texan baptists, but it had been printed onto the programs for the service.  yea.  i don’t remember who told me that i going to be reading that letter out loud in front of people (please note aforementioned fear of public speaking).  oh, and if i didn’t want to do it myself, the pastor would read it for me.  oh double yea.  i didn’t want that pepsi-drinking d-bag (we later found out that the man who had been at my papa’s deathbed was a liar and cheated on his wife and basically just was not the guy papa thought he was… plus he drank pepsi in my grandfather’s presence.  how rude.)  to read the heartfelt words i had meant only for papa to know.  even now, six years later, i’m getting all choked up about it.  because in the end i did read the letter out loud– caught on video.  so, to this day i have a copy of the one of the top 5 most horrible moments of my life on tape!  we’re not a tape-every-precious-moment type of family, so it trips me out to even know there’s a videotape of me.  but i have gotten really drunk and shown the video to some of my friends.  even though i hate that tape, i can’t bring myself to dispose of it.  it’s one of those things.  i told you i have a lot of things.

i talk too much.  is it blog too much?  i need to pace myself– this could have been, like, a week’s worth of entries.  oh well, c’est ma vie.

bon jeudi…

mom’s advice

so, my sister m.k. married d.k. and when she did my parents inherited a new handyman. before a.c. married j.c., d.k. was the guy you called about computer malfunctions and whatnot. now he is simply called on whenever someone in my house breaks something. cait pulled the cord out of the attic fan? call d. dad thinks house needs new copper pipes? call d. somebody needs to go under the house for some godforsaken reason, but nobody will? call d.

today the dilemma was as i have dubbed it: “the mystery of the running toilet.” for several weeks now the hall toilet can be heard running about every 10 minutes non-stop. you really only notice it when it’s nighttime and the rest of the house is still, the only other sounds being the snores emanating from charlie the pug in my bed and the usual creaks of an older house. that running toilet reduced my mother to a regular plumbing mcguyver the other day when she couldn’t sleep and the sound was driving her nuts. i, too, was up one night, victim to insomnia, when i was tortured by the constant running. only i don’t possess any mcguyver-like qualities and thus popped some more diphenhydramine (benadryl to you) and forced my mind to sleep. but a string tied to the inside of the tank on one end and to the flusher/handle on the other will not a functional toilet make. so it was time to call in reinforcement: call d.

d. came promptly as per usual (he never says no and he never says tomorrow) and knocked on the door. charlie did not like this. charlie went into hysterics, a tantrum i chose to listen to from my bedroom rather than go attempt to stop him (it wouldn’t have worked anyway). d. entered and not only diagnosed the problem within a few minutes, but ran out to get the necessary part immediately and returned triumphantly soon after to put an end to “the mystery of the running toilet.” no nancy drew skills required, just a bmw mechanic.

this whole saga reminded me of something my mom said at thanksgiving dinner this year. she pointed out that my sister a. had married j.c. who is super helpful with anything technical from setting up the new wii to removing spyware from my laptop. like d., j.c. is a master. so, with a. being married to someone who can load my dad’s ipod and m.k. marrying d. who can fix absolutely anything, my mom told me that i should be careful to marry someone useful as well, like a lawyer or doctor or insurance salesman.

i need a husband who will come over as soon as my parents beckon him and perform tasks that my parents have become either too old, too lazy, or too important to do and pay someone else to do for them, like the bi-weekly house cleaners. my brothers each married smart women who aren’t expected to come replace pipes, but are expected to produce decent grandkids (s.e. has five while s.m. is working on first one). since i don’t want kids, it has become ever more apparent that i must marry someone useful. shawn is good looking and very smart, but he can’t fix a computer or tivo or repair a running toilet or burping garbage disposal. ah, but he can argue with reason and quote socrates… that’s useful right? who knows when my parents may need help with a logic problem or whatever? hmmm.

well, i still love him so maybe putting up with me for nearly four years is his special skill.  haha. pretty impressive.