Perks of having a husband working for the airlines: spontaneous trips home for holidays! We flew standby to Arizona, and this time, despite having flown multiple times before, Beckham was for the first time enthralled by flying.
Showing posts with label Scary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scary. Show all posts
The summer went by at the perfect speed. I have felt rejuvenated since finishing school, and now I feel ready to jump into the next adventure: my career.
Two weekends ago Dallin’s cousin got married up in Boise. We drove up to join the Urness clan, and I had such a fun time getting to know the extended family better. It was 107 the day of the wedding, which no one expected, but Dallin and I agreed that we would love to live in the beautiful state of Idaho close to Dallin’s cousins. During the drive we listened to the entirety of Where the Crawdad Sings and got to meet with some of his old mission friends in Northern Utah on the way back.
This last week-and-a-half I have been busy with my new job as a school speech therapist. It’s been mostly trainings, but I’ve also had days in my new speech room getting ready for the kids to return to school this following Wednesday. The school mascot is the Vikings, and I already had a bunch of Scandinavian decor ideas saved online, so I got to work making the little classroom my own. I even designed and printed digital watercolor prints of the maps of some Scandinavian countries, and I made a poster saying “Welcome to Speech” in full Viking style.
Nannying has involved some rather unfortunate events such as:
- After getting paint in her hair, one child asked for privacy while she bathed. I agreed but said she needed to keep her older in the bath with her and keep the door cracked so I could hear them chatting and know they were safe. Well after a while they called my name to reheat the water, and low and behold they had colored the entire tub and themselves with Halloween face painting pastels. I had to cover the entire carpeted hall with towels, wrap them up and have them go downstairs to the basement shower to clean up. After 20 minutes in the shower they said they couldn’t get it off so I gave them several dish rags to scrub their skin with. Then I got to work cleaning the tub. A bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, some laundry bleach and a whole container of Comet later, it was finally clean. It took hours.
- This weekend I walked way too far with the kids to Winco so I could get the last ingredient for their dinner, only to find out Winco doesn’t accept credit cards. After watching me get frustrated at the ATM because I couldn’t manage to pull out cash, this really nice guy offered to buy the ingredient for me and wouldn’t let me Venmo the $3.30 back to him in return.
- After Winco I was cooking and distractedly poured water and rice into the family’s InstantPot without the pot, instead into the electricals.
- The next morning the two big dogs got into a fight and I was scared to death as I straddled the back of the aggressor trying to pull her by the collar as she latched onto the face of the other. It took a full five minutes before I was able to walk the two of them backwards while they kept fighting and push the aggressor out the door. I was pretty hysterical all day. Luckily the only thing that happened to me was a tear in my pants and some scratches and bruises on my leg, probably from their nails when I intervened. The mom of the family said she is going to rehome one of the dogs now.
- Funnier was when we were shopping and the younger girl saw the grape juice and exclaimed, “Yum! Blueberry milk!”
Other than that, summer has involved a lot of random fun things here and there. My sister Liv moved up here since returning from her mission in Croatia and Serbia. Together we have volunteered at a cat rescue lounge, been workout buddies, and made family dinners. Her lease for her summer apartment expired but she can’t move into her new place for a few weeks, so for now she is living with me. I picked up a $40 mattress from Facebook Marketplace and turned the office into a temporary bedroom.
I have also spent more time with my sister-in-law Kaeli! She is a gardening wizard, and yesterday she made a delicious but VERY spicy soup with the veggies from her garden. We went with Cooper and our friends Anna and Louis to attend Salem Days and got caught in a downpour during one of the most impressive firework displays I have ever seen. Earlier this summer she invited me to go to the reservoir to chill out on floaties, and we held ourselves onto the “No Wake Zone” buoy until we were red as tomatoes while we talked about life.
Of course, I have to share pictures of my cute kitties:
Flowers that died in the fire:
It's been three months now since I accidentally burned my house down, and I can confidently say that I am doing significantly better than I was.
The thing is, though, I was already clinically depressed before that happened and had been denied from receiving services through the university counseling center due to my history of anorexia. I required "specialized services," but the only actually specialized services I could find outside of the university, covered by my student health insurance, had a wait list several months long. Being me, I didn't sign up for the wait list and cut off contact with my case manager, who couldn't understand that someone outside the university counseling center who "specialized" in 20 things--with eating disorders being one of them--was not truly an eating disorders specialist. I was told when I was first diagnosed with anorexia that I am stubborn with a will of steel, and I guess that hasn't changed. It's not a good thing, so I'm not bragging about it. I guess I'm just baffled that a progressive university wouldn't offer services for their students with eating disorders, because heaven knows eating disorders run rampant among this age group.
Fires don't help depression, and depression doesn't help healing from the psychological "burns." I've stopped having nightmares about fire finally, but people can't talk about their pet fish without me biting back tears. Looking through my phone photos or old blog posts, something that would usually be sweet, is now bitter as I remember the house I burned and the beautiful clothes I will never wear again. Hell, going through the candle aisle at TJ Maxx or having a campfire makes my mind flicker back to the fire and think about what could happen if I dared tempt fate again by striking an innocent match. I love my new home, and I am beyond grateful that my husband, roommates, and cat are safe, and usually if I avoid those triggers that bring back the memories, I don't feel residual trauma. And, well, as long as I triple check that I turned the stove and oven off or didn't put the fork in my bowl in the microwave or leave the curling iron plugged in, then I don't fear starting another fire. The suckiest thing is being paranoid every time I leave the house that my upstairs neighbors will start a fire while I'm gone and that my cat will be trapped. I kid you not, this thought goes through my head every time I shut the door.
I'm doing pretty good in school, but I find myself forgetting meetings or not meeting as high of a standard as I should. Mostly I'm just worn out, but every three weeks or so the depression sucks me back in. I had written this rant of a poem a few weeks back to describe the feelings I thought no one else could understand:
i feel like im drowning in a vast ocean. my body is pulled in two directions, by the current and by the boat that pulls me by a rope, and in the struggle i am choking on the waters, unable to come up for air. more often than i want i wish that i could just cut my life vest, sink into the dark depths and succumb.
I promise that I am not posting that as a cry for help now, it is just me trying to explain the rollercoaster of emotions I have going on for far too long. My meds have stabilized, so I don't feel that dark anymore. Really, I'm pretty good 80% of the time. But that doesn't mean I didn't burst into tears today during a meeting I showed up to 15 minutes late because I forgot about it.
I don't have a tidy way to wrap this up. I know I might get calls from people worried about me. Maybe it's unorthodox to be this straightforward in public. It's just honesty.
It all started with a thorn bush.
We moved into the home in Orem in November, 2019. Dallin and I had only been married since May, and our father-in-law Danny had decided to grant us with the best wedding gift we could ask for: a place to live. Dallin is the second oldest of six on that side of the family, so Danny told us that this would be a sort of investment for any of the children who decide to attend college in Utah. Dallin's grandfather had done the same for his children back in the day. We lived on the main floor with three rooms and huge windows, and Dallin's brother Cooper lived in the basement. His friend Reed had roomed with him over the summer, but when the fire happened, his friends Louis and Porter were living there.
The thorn bush was a giant tangle of brambles with no aesthetic or nutritional value--no pretty flowers, no edible fruit--so Dallin and I decided to tear it out. It took weeks of hacking it down, and once we got it out we had to figure out what to do with it. We didn't have a truck to carry it away, and when I tried to throw some of the branches in the trash, it filled up the whole can without putting a dent in the pile of thorns and thistles. So I had a better idea: burn it. I ordered a small fire pit, and then once or twice a week I would cut the branches into little pieces, throw them in the pit and systematically burn them. I listened to audiobooks to make the work less tedious.
Sunday, April 18.
It was a very tough fire to start. No matter how good of a "teepee" I built or how many pieces of kindling I lit in the fire pit, I could not get the fire to stay lit because of the wind. When I finally got the fire going, I burned branches from 6 PM to 8 PM, when I stopped feeding the flame. I made sure no branches were sticking over the edge of the small pit, put the lid on, and left the fire to burn itself out. I peeked out the window to periodically check on it and make sure it went out. That night at 10, I heard the sprinklers go off. I remember it specifically because the sprinklers were very loud, more so than usual. In my mind, that meant the fire pit (which was situated in the grass) was getting doused. Looking back, I wonder if the loud sputtering was due to a problem with the sprinklers. They had been leaking between cycles, and maybe someone had touched the valve. I don't know. If the sprinklers were going properly, they would have soaked the ashes at 10 PM and at 6 AM.
Monday, April 19, 2 PM.
I got home from the clinic in Salt Lake City following a speech therapy session. I had only a brief break between speech therapy and my online lecture on autism. I don't know why I decided that short break was the best time to dump the ashes in the outside garbage, and heaven knows how badly I wish I didn't. You see, the last time I had burned branches, I left the ashes in the pit for a couple weeks. The ashes became soggy and caused the brand new iron pit to rust. I didn't want it to rust any more, so I decided to dump the ashes out now. I was wearing a beautiful red pinstriped jumper, and when I dumped the ashes in the trash, they puffed up in a cloud of smoke. I jumped back, very surprised, because I expected the ashes to be soggy from the sprinklers. I just assumed the water evaporated quickly or something. It was very windy and the ash was blowing around, so I went quickly back in the house (leaving the garbage lid open) and asked Dallin if my romper smelled like soot. It did. I changed into an oversized yellow horizontal striped tee with my too-long, blue-and-red vertical striped PJ pants. I know, what a look. I didn't care because my class was on Zoom and I was only visible on the camera from the chest up.
3 PM.
Dallin had the window open briefly, and I had him close it because the smell of the dusty ash from the trash can was in the wind. It was a warning sign I should have recognized for what it was.
I had my camera on at the beginning of class but eventually turned it off because I get really fidgety in my chair. One of my classmates and I started a private DM in the class chat. She had complimented me the week before because, during the class break, I had gotten completely ready for a photoshoot with another friend. Now we were joking about how I had reverted from wearing false eyelashes and a beautiful dress to pajama pants. "At least you're wearing pants," she typed. "I'm not wearing any!"
Boy am I glad I was wearing pants that day.
4 PM.
Dallin was fiddling with his wedding ring and accidentally sent it flying beneath his desk. He was in the middle of a work call and decided to find it later. The call ended, and Dallin looked up to notice black smoke curling down in front of his window. Is that coming from the roof? He ran out of the office and found the kitchen completely ablaze. He ran back to where I was obliviously listening to my lecture and yelled, "GET OUT!" I tore my earphones out, snatched up the cat who was obliviously chowing on his lunch in the hallway next to the office, and made a beeline for the front door. I didn't know why, although I think because of the ash smell earlier I suspected fire, and I swear I heard a fire alarm as I was crossing through the door. I didn't turn toward the kitchen and therefore didn't ever see it on fire. Dallin started following me out but pivoted back. He pushed the power button on his computer, waited the whole damn ten seconds for it to properly power down, and carried it out of the house. I can't blame him too much for going back in the house to get his computer because it had his senior project on it, but seriously?!
The side of house with the carport was engulfed in flames. I stared in horror, screaming. A man who was out on the street for a jog was already on the phone with 911. Dallin sprinted toward our neighbor Evie's house, and I sprinted to Belva, dropping my cat Arlo in her grass. I tried to open her door but then pounded on the door and rang the doorbell furiously. "The house is on fire!" I cried out when she opened up. She thought I meant hers, but my assurance that it was only my house was hardly an assurance. Monstrous winds pushed the flames across my house at a horrifying speed, and Dallin had needed to take the hose to douse the flames that had started up on Evie's fence. Once Belva was out, I sprinted barefoot and in my pajamas to the neighbors' house directly behind ours. They have lots of little kids. As I headed toward their front door, they rolled down the window of their car and said, "We got out! The kids saw the fire from the backyard!"
I remember thinking that the firefighters were taking forever to get there, although they actually got there quickly. Dallin and I cried out as we watched the house go up. "Are Louis and Porter home?" Dallin suddenly asked. I gasped in realization. "I don't know!" I screamed. I didn't think so--the lights had been off when I went down to do my laundry after clinic, but how could I be certain? Neither would pick up his phone. Now, in the face of the inferno, we could not be heroic like in the movies and run into the burning house to save our friends (who might be there). No. The only staircase to the basement was on the side of the house where the fire shot high up into the sky. Going in or getting out via the staircase was impossible. We would burn to death before we could even make it downstairs to see if anyone was home. Looking back, I should have run to the back of the house to see if I could search for them from the basement windows, but my mind was frantic and I was not thinking. Neighbors and firefighters alike asked if everyone was out of the house, and all we could say was a gut-wrenching "I don't know!"
And then they answered the phone. They were together at work, safe. A weight lifted from our chests, and we felt we could breathe for the first time despite the black smoke in the air. If they had been trapped in that basement...heaven only knows I could not have lived with myself.
Now all I could do was pull Arlo out from his hiding place under Belva's car and watch the complete destruction of my house, which due to the strong winds could not be impeded before the quick arrival of the firefighters. I remember it was raining lightly and wishing that would be enough to douse the fire.
I don't know at what point I made the connection between the ashes I had dumped in the trash can and the fire that now consumed my home. For a long time I thought perhaps it was an electrical issue. Maybe it was denial; maybe it was a testament to my naivety, that it took so long to cross my mind that 18-hour-old ashes could reignite.
You never think it will happen to you, and when it does, it is the most surreal and crippling thing. After knowing that my roommates were safe, I remember thinking on all the things that were likely turned to ash: my mission journals, my nativity collection from around the world, my Austrian dirndl, my artwork, the real pearl and real diamond earrings from the jewelry store my grandparents used to own. I had left my phone on the desk and therefore had to wait to use Dallin's phone to call anyone. When it was safe enough, the firefighters asked if there was anything we needed them to retrieve. Dallin asked them to get our box of important documents such as passports and social security cards. Then they came out with every book in our office bookcase and almost every painting on our office wall. I wept with disbelief.
The next few hours are honestly a blur in my mind. The entire street of neighbors was crowded around us, offering us shoes and jackets since Dallin and I had fled barefoot. Before we knew it, boxes of donations were piled up in one of the neighbor's lawns: for Arlo cat food, a litter box, a cat carrier and bed; for us and the boys gift cards, cash, boxed and canned food, pots/pans/utensils, clothing, etc. Every time someone offered us new donations I began to cry.
If you can describe a cat as being hysterical, then Arlo was hysterical. Between seeing the house burn, smelling the awful black smoke, and being surrounded by noisy firetrucks and dozens of people, he was freaked out and trying so hard to get out of my arms. I tried to put him in his donated bed and he bolted. For the next several hours the young women and primary girls tried searching for him.
I had left my phone on the desk, so Dallin and I took turns with his phone. He was able to call Danny, who happened to be in South Jordan and was able to drive down. I waited at least an hour before calling my sister or parents...what was I supposed to say? I would only worry them, and there was nothing they could do to save my house. But when I did call, my mom immediately called an old friend to get her on the first available flight, and my sister and cousins drove over. I remember Paige and Nguyen crying when they saw us. Nguyen hugged Dallin, asked if we were OK, and then asked if Dallin's computer was OK. "Yes, I got it out!" Dallin cried.
Cooper was out of town with his fiance Kaeli, but her family showed up. I cried when I told them what happened. They offered us a place to stay until we got things figured out.
At one point I was shocked when the firefighters brought my phone out. It was black with soot but worked perfectly. I called my supervisor and one of my classmates to inform them of the situation and to ask them to get my class and clinic schedule postponed for the week.
After a couple of hours, the firefighters finally allowed us to enter the house. It happened because one of the firefighters said that there were fish swimming around in the tank, which I thought was a cruel joke. I had only just remembered that the fish tank was in the house and was devastated at the thought of them all burning alive or their tank exploding or what have it. He wasn't kidding. I ran through the charred doorframe and saw a dozen fish and shrimp swimming at the surface. Their lid had completely melted into the tank, the water was black, and giant chards of glass pierced up from the bottom. Evie gave us a bucket filled with warm water and I took out as many as I could find alive with my bare hands. The next morning, only three or four still lived, including the pregnant fish, so my sister took them to an animal sanctuary.
I remember feeling so relieved that everything wasn't completely reduced to dust that I was in a fairly pleasant mood as we walked around the house. My nativities had survived. Some, though not all, of my souvenirs from my mission in Germany had survived. My dirndl had been on a hanger in a Walmart bag. Though the fire had completely discolored and ruined all the shirts hanging up next to it, the bag had melted off the hanger, causing the dirndl to fall to the ground and be protected from the worst of the smoke and heat. My mission journals, though a mere few feet from the couch that had been reduced to a blackened frame, sat in the bookcase completely legible. Yes, the leather bindings disintegrated at the touch, but the pages were safe. Other books had pages scattered across the family room. In the same room, the TV was melted beyond recognition.
We walked around the block multiple times calling Arlo's name before he finally came out of hiding. We brought him to stay at a friend's house for a few days. Arlo refused to eat, drink or go to the bathroom for days. I know the feeling. I couldn't sleep that first night, and I was angry at those who forced me to eat. All I could do was sit in the bathroom crying and cursing myself for what I had done. My chest ached from smoke inhalation. I was hysterical when I saw an advertisement from the local news app talking about a fire caused by "recreational fire ashes," because the news reported hadn't talked to me let alone asked if I consented to having this horrible tragedy that was my fault posted online. An equal invasion of privacy was finding out that some people went under to fence and broke into the ruins of the house a few weeks later. I know we abandoned everything, but it still just felt so dirty.
The next day, I went back with my mom, sister, Dallin and the boys to salvage as much as we could. We were sunburned from so much time out in that yard working, but our neighbors were so kind and gave us food, waters, and a pop-up tent for shade. To be honest it was a waste of time, if maybe it helped to give some sort of closure. I took so many things out of the house only to throw them away that same week. My clothes tore at the seam when touched, or had turned from green to pink or white to brown. Everything stank. Everything in the kitchen was warped, shattered or melted, including hundreds of dollars' worth of cooking equipment. Anything that wasn't melted was ruined by smoke. A family friend who experienced a house fire a while back told us that no amount of money spent on fire restoration could get the smell out. We spent hours digging around for our car keys as well as Cooper's, scared that we would try to dig through the rubble of the collapsed room and instead dig a hole into the fragile floor. In the basement, the ceiling was weighed down by water and collapsed in several places. We found Cooper's, but we had to get a new set of keys for our car before we could leave the state. Luckily, despite usually having a car in the driveway, all the cars were safe on the street. Danny's 1970s Canadian Bricklin had been sitting in the carport for a year, but out the blue the month before he had decided to drive it back to Arizona.
What we wanted to salvage, we left in Paige and Nguyen's garage before going to Arizona.
It's been two months, and I have nightmares frequently about burning houses down...my own house...the whole street... It's always my fault in the dream, like it was in real life. But yesterday I visited the house, now demolished, and found that the fire lilies had popped up. They must have still been bulbs in the ground and had therefore survived. I transplanted them from my old place to my new place, where I can see them out the window and wait for them to bloom. It's haunting in a way, but it's also beautiful.
Fall Festivities
Our friends recommended that we visit Kuwahara's Pumpkin Patch, and boy were we not disappointed. Hanna, our AZ girl, was absolutely in awe at how festive it was, telling us that it reminded her of a movie! Nope, this is just how Utah is!
For date night with the 2 Conners, Kenzie and Ailey, we drove up to SLC to visit the Old Dutch Store, which has delicacies from the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Germany. Conner served in the Netherlands, and I served in Germany, so we went to town buying all the random food goods that are so common in those European stores. Then we enjoyed dinner at Bruges, following Conner's advice of which Dutch sauces to put on our french fry sandwiches. After that, we did a Halloween boat tour down the end of the Provo River. Was it for children? Yes. Was the tour guide a guy dressed up like a pirate? Yes. Was it fun anyways? My vote is yes. On our way back, we picked up apple cider donuts and watched a scary movie.
Too Many Scary Movies
In other news, we watched most of the show The Haunting of Bly Manor with Kenzie and Conner. Me, being the terrible friend that I am, became impatient after we watched the first half of the series together and ended up watching the second half until 4 AM one night. I didn't even wait for Dallin. The next weekend, once everyone else had time, I happily watched it all again. Mind you, I hadn't watched any scary movies since Dal and I got married {he's not a big fan}, but I seem to have indulged myself a little too heavily this Halloween season. My HS friends and I watched Us in their gigantic living room fort, and on the date night talked about earlier we watched As Above, So Beneath, which I chickened out in the last time I tried to watch it in HS. Combine this overindulgence in scary movies with the new medication that the pharmacist warned may cause "vivid dreams," I have been having the most HORRIFYING nightmares. I'm talking skeletons taking chainsaws to surgeons and patients in an emergency room, and a lady making possessed dolls out of the people she murdered. Yuck.
MY DARLING SPOOKY HOME:
Some Unfortunate Events: Dallin's Night Terror
Last night, when Dallin went to bed at 2:30, I accidentally woke up and couldn't fall back asleep again until 7, a potential side effect of my new meds. At some point I moved to the guest room and snuggled up on the bunk bed with Arlo. It didn't help. My mind started wandering to the terrifying faceless ghosts of Bly Manor. Right at that point I heard this animalistic SCREECHING. At first I thought maybe the cat had gotten hurt--no, he was asleep on my chest, until the screeching startled him awake. I felt my body go cold as ice as my first thought was ghost! Then I heard Dallin screaming "HELP ME HELP ME!" bloody murder, and I realized he was having a night terror. "DALLIN DALLIN!" I shouted. "I'm right here!" Arlo hogged the ladder {he still hasn't mastered getting down and is painfully slow at it}, and I didn't want to jump down when it was pitch dark, so when I finally was able to run to Dallin and turn on the lights, he was awake now, holding himself and moaning in pain. Our bulky nightstand had fallen forward, chips of wood on the carpet, the drawers dislodged, contents spilling everywhere, lampshade detached from the base and picture frames in the adjacent room crashed to the ground. We're not sure if the night terror caused him to fall on top of the nightstand and knock it over, or the other way around. He just says that he was suddenly in pain and had no idea what was going on! Poor guy is bruised and swollen now.
**Update 10/20/20: even MORE unfortunate and TERRIFYING
So this last night I woke up at 4 AM for some reason and couldn't fall asleep for the next hour. I lay in bed and then thought maybe if I turned off the kitchen light leaking through my doorframe I could fall asleep. I walked out and realized it was actually the basement light, and Cooper was on the phone. Hm, that guy sure does like to stay up late! Then at 5 he came in, his face the epitome of concern, phone pressed to his cheek and I thought SOMEONE IN THE FAMILY DIED. Then TO MY RELIEF AND THEN HORROR, he said, "Someone is in our backyard. He said he's hiding from the cops. The police are on their way." Basically Coop got home from his friends' at around 4 and saw a guy laying in our backyard. The guy was like, "Who are you!?" and Coop was like, "WHO THE F*** ARE YOU?!" The guy answered, "Keep your voice down, man! I had to run from my girlfriend's place, she called the cops on me and now they're looking for me! Please, I don't want to go to jail! I unscrewed the porch light so no one could find me here!" Cooper was like "I am going in the house and you better leave NOW!" So Coop went inside, getting his gun and pacing around for a little, then called his friends asking what to do, then finally called the cops before alerting me and Dallin to the situation an hour later. When the cops showed up, the guy was still there. They said they weren't even looking for him, he was just "on a bad trip." We didn't press any trespassing charges.
Some Unfortunate Events: Arlo's Injuries
Arlo has proven himself more accident prone in his nine months of kittenhood than Jasmine has in her entire 19 years of existence. When we were trying to watch the first few episodes of Bly Manor on my birthday, Arlo tried to lay on my chest and I had to move him because his paw smelled like he'd been frolicking in his litter box. I thought it was just because he needed to take a bath, a minor annoyance since he'd gotten so filthy earlier that I'd already had to give him 2 baths that week. It took us a few days to realize the poor cat had an infection on his paw caused by ripping out his entire claw. I had to strap him down in my arms to try to pour antiseptics on it and didn't let him outside no matter how much he begged. When I initially locked him in the bathroom so he wouldn't get ointment all over the house, I came back in and found that he had found the bag of catnip, chewed it open, and was literally ROLLING in it, happy and high as a kite.
Then yesterday, he and Dallin were playing, and Arlo got his arm jammed in the crevice of the door near the hinge. His yawling was so sad! He limped around the rest of the night but still insisted on climbing up and jumping off the bunkbed like the fool he is.
Then this morning I was trying to focus for my online class when I noticed a clump on dirt on his back. A further examination showed that he actually had a puncture wound that was still bleeding. So, using all the supplies I had bought last week, I cleaned it out and treated it with antiseptics while watching my lecture on the bathroom floor.
More pics from Kuwahara's:
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| The goose gourds |
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| The Mario mushroom pumpkins |
About Me
Katie Urness
SLP, Wife, and Mama
Welcome to Kate of the Desert! I've shared my life stories here since 2008. Here you may find the dramatic musings of an 11-year-old, the romanticized tales of a high schooler, the adventures of a young adult living in Hawaii and Europe, the journeys of marriage and motherhood, and all the ups and downs in between. Read More
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