Let’s celebrate with two of my favorite Christmas poems.

Behold I Stand
By Gerard Kelly

When the night is deep
With the sense of Christmas
And expectancy hangs heavy
On every breath,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

When the floor is knee deep
In discarded wrapping paper
And the new books are open at page one
And the new toys are already broken,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

When the family is squashed
Elbow to elbow
Around the table
And the furious rush for food is over
And the only word that can describe the feeling
Is full,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

And when Christmas is over
And the television is silent
For the first time in two days
And who sent which card to whom
Is forgotten until next year,
Behold, I stand at the door.

And when the nation has finished celebrating
Christmas without Christ
A birthday
Without a birth
The coming of a kingdom
Without a King
And when I am
Forgotten
Despised
Rejected
Crucified—

Behold, I stand.

The Wicked Fairy at the Manger
By U. A. Fanthorpe

My gift for the child:

No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort—
The workshy, women, wimps,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases, poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.

…but an interesting challenge nonetheless.  M&M gave me a gentle tag–posting 5 things about myself that you may not know. Considering that my reading audience is largely family, ooh, this is tough on so many levels. Hmmmm…

1. Bizarre shopping impulses

I have a really hard time passing up a good deal. When I see an incredible sale, well, I’m most likely to buy an insane amount of it. Behold, some of the crazy history:

~Marzetti’s Apple Caramel Dip tubs on sale for $1. Came home with 20.

~Nestle Chocolate Chips, milk and white chocolate varieties, $0.88 for a 2.5 pound bag. I’m still not sure exactly how many I came home with, but it was at least two cases full.

~Cold cereal, all varieties, when it’s less than 10 cents an ounce. Our garage shelves currently house about 50-60 boxes, but then again they haven’t been my shopping lists this month either.

        Hospital Preferences

I’ve been admitted to the hospital about a dozen times since we’ve been married, and by definition that doesn’t include my ER or OB triage visits. A good pair of slipper socks is a must for any hospital stay of mine. Broccoli soup makes my list for food requests along with fresh(!) fruit.  Richard brings me a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to enjoy after giving birth, like Chunky Monkey or New York Super Fudge Chunk. Audio is a necessity, music, recorded books, radio shows, because some medications blur vision to make reading or watching TV near impossible.

       Generating Trouble

18 November 1994, Star Trek Generations premiered in theaters across the USA, and I was judging at a speech & debate tournament in Boise that weekend. A group of us at dinner that night talked about going to the movie theater for the midnight showing, as it was only a couple of miles from the motel.  The guys took off not long after that and left me and a fellow judge behind. Later that evening, I’m talking to the coach and he mentions the team captain and couple of other guys are missing after a room check. I let him know that we’d talked about going to see this movie tonight but apparently they had ditched us, so they’d probably be back later. The coach went to the movie theater in the school bus and with the police dragged the boys out right as the Enterprise starts to crash on the planet’s surface. They were kicked out of the tournament and suspended from the debate team for a time. All’s well that ends well, you know, and Richard the team captain has forgiven me for it. Of course, he did find out at least three years after the fact, but hey, he’s the one who ditched me, right?

        Word Play

The general challenges I find indicate I have some talent with words, or at least word games. Jumbles, word searches, Taboo, Scattergories, Boggle (though I bow to Ruth when I play with her), Password, lots of fun with letters, words and definitions. I have a special place in my secular heart for the game show.

       Scary-oke

A choir member I’m not, but I did sing a Dirt Fisherman song at open mic night at the Pony Espresso back in high school. These days I love to karaoke [care-ah-okay] at home with family. We’re working up to including friends in that mix, and with the recent addition of a second microphone we’re exploring duets and sing-offs. We use the Konami video game version(s), and since the same people brought you Dance Dance Revolution there’s a sing-n-dance option. Haven’t busted a move to that degree though, grooving as I hold a microphone just happens naturally  =)  

*whew* I made it! I bet most of you can’t wait to stop reading to comment on your new found knowledge.

This has been Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Me. Tune in next time to hear Téa discuss her fascination with 14th century Korean Soap Operas.

First off, I need to state for the online record that this management company hasn’t impressed me as they’ve managed repairs. I hope they handle the rent checks better than this…

Leak survey team shows up 12/14. I let them know that the management company plumber turned off the electricity to the water heater and how he warned me about the bad on/off valve–he couldn’t get it shut off all the way and said if I turned it on it might not turn off IF I could get it to turn on. The team can’t get the valve to turn at all.  They tell me to call and make another appointment when the valve is replaced. (Leak locators, as it turns out, do not have to be plumbers and if not may not have any plumbing expertise, thus they were unable/unwilling to perform this repair)

Yes, a simple repair that the management company (MC) knew about the week before but hadn’t authorized the work to switch to a $15 lever switch valve (quoth the MC, “I don’t see why that’s necessary”). Leak locator team apparently convinces them otherwise and the MC plumber is assigned the repair, which he cannot complete until late afternoon. A call into the locator office reveals that their one truck is in Gilbert now and they are overbooked for Friday so would sometime next week work for me? No, no it wouldn’t. Too bad, cause we can’t get out there anytime before that…

Leak located 12/18, Monday morning. It is determined to be about 14 inches under the closet in the purple room, so thankfully no tile will be harmed in the process. Plumbing company agrees to come out first thing Tuesday.  Monday afternoon water is spilling out from under the bathroom sink–when it leaks, it pours.  Call MC, report leak, told MC plumber will be contacting me. He says he can be there Wednesday, in the meantime, shut the water off to the bathroom sink.

Tuesday morning–Plumber hammers through concrete, hauls up buckets of mud, extracts pipe section, replaces pipe section, runs the water line, sees water still seeping from further down the pipe, determines entire line is bad and will need rerouting. He calls into the home office, they call the MC and he is told that rerouting will require owner approval and that he is to clean up, pour new concrete and go. He explains to me that it will be less than a one-day plumbing job to reroute it, but that someone else will have to come fix the drywall later. After he is finished with the concrete, etc, it has been a couple of hours but he has not heard back about approval.

Tuesday afternoon–call MC to find out what is going on with the owners. Told that Juby* (names changed for the hell of it) is out of the office today and she will try to contact them sometime tomorrow. We are on day 12 without hot water, but this elicits nothing from Racbel*. Racbel tells me that they are doing all they can, and I tell her that if they’re not calling the owners today then they are absolutely not doing all that they can. She replies that they had to pay $1000 for today and “he didn’t even do anything” and “I don’t think the owner will be happy to pay another $4000 for this repair. “  We still need hot water, I tell her. “What do you want me to do about it?”  Do your job! Call the owner! Keep this process moving, because the ball has been dropped too many times already. Racbel tells me Juby will be in tomorrow and Juby will deal with it then. I tell her I will contact the owner myself if they are unwilling to do so in a timely manner because if he’s not going to pay to fix the water we will need to leave. End of conversation.

Tuesday evening–place phone call to owner, explain what’s going on and that I am calling because I wanted to know what his intentions are so this can be resolved one way or the other. He is astounded that the MC would even suggest that he wouldn’t want to fix the hot water problem. He assures me that he wants to do everything he can to keep the house in working order and to keep us as renters there. He tells me that he wasn’t notified until the 14th about the problem when they let him know that it had cost $1000 so far (the two visits from mc plumber and one from survey team–still charging him for the house call/time/travel whatever). He was concerned about the mc response as well. He said he would wait until 30 minutes after opening time tomorrow for Juby’s call, and then he would call them. Either way, he would call me and let me know what was going on.

Wednesday morning–Owner calls to tell me that Juby isn’t in the office, supposedly she is running around trying to find a plumbing company for us because she thought this company wanted too much money. I have a hard time picturing her physically going from company to company because that’s miles beyond the effort she put into finding anyone back on the 8th. He told them he wants this done and they need to get it done. He apologizes again and asks me to evaluate the MC when this is all done. MC plumber comes and determines that the leak survey people caused the overflow when they pumped gas into the water line. Good news there, anyway, as it should be an isolated incident. 

Wednesday afternoon–plumbing company calls to arrange a time for Thursday repairs. Juby calls to inquire how things are going, if the plumbers have called, etc and says how sorry she is that this is happening. This from the woman who told me that my family would have to “bite the bullet” back on the 8th and “live life without a dishwasher, hard if you’ve been spoiled that way, I know”. No sympathy *at all* for the idea of my driving my children to another location just to get clean, just to “bite the bullet”, repeated at least 5 times during that conversation. The owner must have had an inspiring conversation with her. Sometimes it pays to take it to the top, eh?

Thursday morning–plumbers arrive and start in on the job. Juby calls to make sure that they are there and things are going well–now I really wish I was a fly on the wall for that conversation with the owner!  4 hours later and it’s all done, we have hot water again.  I send Richard a text message: WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!   I turn off the stovetop for the first time in two weeks, no longer in need of the stock pot water simmering away.

Thursday night–I start filling my own tub, jump in my shower to scrub body and hair, and hop back in the tub for a wonderful warm bath.  An hour later, I emerge from my room clad in warm pajamas & slipper socks, with a towel on my head, living the good clean life again.

So there’s the end of that adventure, we hope.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie! A hot shower at home instead of the YMCA!

I was set apart as a Relief Society teacher on Sunday. I’ll be teaching in Relief Society every third Sunday. Astute calendarists will note that this coming Sunday is, in fact, the third Sunday of the month. Unless the Second Coming happens between now and then, I will be leading the discussion of Wilford Woodruff’s thoughts on that very subject from 3:53-4:25pm.  My January lesson is Spencer W. Kimball’s “Tragedy or Destiny?”. Will I have my own tale to tell?  Hmmmmm….

That’s right, it’s time for another wacky round of Guess the Latest Adventure!, the game where you, the reading audience, tries to guess just what wild and crazy events are happening to Téa and her family! Let’s welcome everyone’s favorite game show host, Guy Smiley!

Thank you thank you thank you! I am Guy Smiley and we’re here to play Guess the Latest Adventure! Here’s how to play the game: I will give you  a series of clues and you can buzz in by posting your answers below. 

Put on your thinking caps contestants! Here we go!

Clues given 12-9-2006 

~~part of the freshest ice cream on earth

~~it’s not an onion