Now Playing: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

A lot of things changed the year I turned 12. A lot.

Let's start at the beginning.

I turned twelve on January 18, 2005. What a milestone! I graduated from Primary and entered Young Womens, I got to do the mall scavenger hunt birthday party, I was finishing seventh grade. . . life was grand.

Gah, they're so cute!

In late January, we went to UltraStar Cinemas to see March of the Penguins, a new nature film with Morgan Freeman narrating. That marked the first and only time I have actually fallen asleep in a movie theater. The penguins were cute and interesting at the beginning, but the endless snow, ice, and penguin waddles got to me and I drifted off. I was leaning on Jerry's shoulder, but he didn't mind. I didn't sleep through the entire film, but Morgan Freeman's soothing voice definitely sent me off to dreamland for a good half-hour or so. Penguins. It's funny, because they are still to this day one of my favorite animals, though I have no idea why. Except that they are adorable and I just want to hug them all the time. That's probably why. But anyway, I think that either a) I was too young to appreciate the natural behavior of Antarctic animals (birds? mammals? no clue) or b) I only like penguins when they are in huggable stuffed animal form. I'm not really sure, at this point.

That year also featured The Pacifier and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on the big screen. Pacifier was great because it brought me back to my Spy Kids days, but on a more mature level, obviously.  I've apparently always loved those secretive, spy-type movies, even if they are ridiculous. The Sisterhood excited me to no end because I had read the book (the first one, at least) and I was ecstatic about the idea of sending pants from one friend to the other during the summer. In fact, I was so ecstatic that I decided my friends and I would do the same thing. But with an old sweatshirt, since none of our pants were magic and fit all of us. Bummer, I know. Anyway, one summer day after seeing the movie, I gathered my friends together at my house and we took my old sweatshirt into the backyard and proceeded to paint, color, and write all over it. We promised to send it to each other from our vacation place that summer, wherever it may be. I passed it off once and I never saw it again. Apparently neither did any of my friends. We weren't very good at keeping track of things back then.

Herbie: Fully Loaded (a remake of the old Love Bug movies! Yay!!) and Fantastic Four (who doesn't love superheroes?) made for a great summer at the movies, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory freaked me out. Big time. I grew up with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the classic with Gene Wilder, and the uber-creepy, smiley Johnny Depp and the colorful oompa-loompas with weird songs just didn't seem right. That's not what oompa-loompas are supposed to look like, don't you know?! I was quite upset by the frightening Depp and his strange contraptions in the factory (hello, it was a goose laying a golden egg, not a squirrel cracking nuts!). Alterations to classics don't sit well with me, it would seem.
It's seriously weird. Take a look:

It was in 2005 that Dad and Jeanmarie got a divorce. It was that year that Dad told me it was my fault. It was that year that I refused to go to his house. It was that year's Thanksgiving that turned into a complete disaster. I was forced to spend Thanksgiving at Dad's rented house he had moved into. That day all I did was beg to go home to my mom, because he promised I could leave at noon. When noon passed and he refused, I sat clenched up in a corner and cried for hours. I didn't eat a single bite of food that entire day, though we went to Marie Callendar's for Thanksgiving dinner. At last, at seven o'clock, my mom came to pick M and I up, and I sobbed the entire drive home. It was a terrible, awful day and I have not regularly gone back since. I used to spend every other weekend and half of holiday breaks there, but after that day I never did, except for a few hours on Christmas Day. That Thanksgiving was when I had enough. It honestly changed my life. I lost any good relationship I might have had with my father in previous years. There was nothing left to rebuild because everything had been destroyed over the years of verbal and emotional torments and abuses at his, Jeanmarie's, Buddy's, and Lucy's hands. I knew when it was enough. And the year I turned twelve, it was finally enough.

Like I said, a lot of things changed that year. That was the year that a majority of my pain ended and I began to recognize myself as a person with choices and strength to stick up for myself when faced with bullying. I knew I deserved better. I knew my sisters deserved better. And I finally had better, all the time, in my mom's home.  

And so it goes.

Love, Me

Intermission: Surgery

Late November 2004, during Thanksgiving break, is when all the craziness went down. Earlier in the year my pediatrician had discovered a lump in my right arm. What we assumed was some sort of muscle turned out to be a tumor that was wrapped 7/8ths of the way around my bone. This was called an osteo-chondroma. What worried my doctor the most was when he first x-rayed it and thought it was an osteo-sarcoma, meaning it was cancerous. That initial diagnosis was not told to me until later years, but I knew this lump in my arm was pretty serious. 

In one of my most memorable spiritual experiences, I was given priesthood blessings—one by my dad and his friend and one by Jerry and Brother Dustin—that told me I would be healthy. Weeks later my doctor did more tests and discovered it was an osteo-chondroma, meaning the tumor was benign. It was a mass of tissue but nothing more. He scheduled me to have surgery during Thanksgiving break to remove the tumor.

So I went in for surgery on a Monday. I wasn't allowed to eat anything that day, so I remember my mom waking me up late Sunday night to eat some food. On Monday morning they rolled me on my hospital bed into an operating room, put a mask over my face, and told me to count backwards from ten. I made it to nine.

I woke up later in a recovery room, with a massively swollen right arm covered with bandages and tubes. I felt groggy and couldn't open my eyes or speak for a long time, even though I could hear my parents talking to me and asking how I felt. 

I was supposed to go home the next day, but I kept fainting whenever I stood up and I felt extremely sick. I couldn't sit up on my own because my arm felt heavy and painful in a way I had never experienced before. It was uncomfortable. Also my entire arm was so swollen that I couldn't close my right hand, my fingers and palm were so enormous. I also had a tube in the top of my arm draining all the excess junk that I don't even want to think about, which they couldn't remove yet. So I ended up going home on Wednesday.

I was in seventh grade at the time, a brand-new middle-schooler. For few months after my surgery I couldn't be in PE class (just fine with me!) because, well, I had had major surgery and my arm was in a sling. So instead I was recruited as a Teacher's Aide for one of the school's English teachers. I stamped homework and alphabetized and filed, but mostly I just sat in the corner and read books. It was fantastic.

Eventually I got out of my sling and my wound got all healed up, leaving me with a long, jagged scar that my mom insists I should say is from a shark attack. I haven't used that one yet.

So many people in my family, ward, and community brought me beautiful gifts and sent their loving thoughts and kind words to me throughout my ordeal. Never have I felt more love from everyone around me. People are good and kind, and I am so grateful that I was surrounded by the best during this trial.

And so it goes.

Love, Me 

Now Playing: National Treasure

The year I turned eleven was an eventful year — toward the end. The beginning was a regular ole year.

I was in sixth grade, and I had Mrs. Campbell, who was the best. Seriously. She was incredible. That year in school was one of my favorites. Mrs. Campbell did a Star Student of the Week program and after a few weeks she would take all the star students from those weeks out to lunch during school!! It was incredibly exciting. I got to go quite a few times with my friends, because my friends and I were essentially the "goody-two-shoe" types. We usually went to McDonald's or Subway, and we made it back in time to play a little bit before lunch recess ended. Those days were so much fun because they were out of the norm. Can you imagine going out to lunch during elementary school? Honestly, those were some of my favorites days in my childhood memories.

Sixth grade was also great because I had a lot of close friends.  We were a big group, never really pairing off.  The majority of us were all in Girl Scouts together as well, so we became very close and spent a lot of time together. The group consisted mainly of Katherine, Kaitlyn, Ivy, Jennifer, Shannon, Noriko, Adrianna, Megan, and me. Katherine, Adrianna, Megan, and I stayed close friends throughout middle and high school, while the others went to different schools so we lost touch. But in sixth grade we were all together, all the time.

I remember the very last recess of sixth grade, in June 2004, which we realized would be our last recess ever because middle schoolers don't have recess — they're much too mature for that. Katherine, Ivy, Kaitlyn, and I took off our shoes ("Is this allowed? Will we get in trouble?" I asked them repeatedly, and even though we all concluded that it was probably against the rules, we did it anyway) and ran around the grassy field barefoot. We laid out on the grass and rolled our bodies down the little hill, laughing and shrieking and making a big ruckus — but we were the big kids on campus so we could do what we wanted! I remember feeling so free and full of joy, like it was our last day on earth and we spent it exactly the way we should have. I have so many fun memories of sixth grade.

In the spring of 2004 Ella Enchanted came out, which I was uberly excited about because I had read the book in fourth grade during reading-circle — all of which I remember clearly because one day I was sent to Time-Out with Mr. Reynolds during recess because I forgot to do the reading for the day (an utterly humiliating moment for me that I was quite upset about). Despite my embarrassment I loved the book, and was delighted to see that Anne Hathaway from The Princess Diaries (another film I adored) would play Ella.

The other big movie for me that year was Shrek 2, because I saw it in a drive-in movie theater! Dad and Jeanmarie took all us kids to the drive-in and we watched it from inside the Suburban, which offered very little visibility but was awesome. That was the first and only time I have been to a drive-in movie theater. I wish there were more around, because they seem to be part of the "good old days" that I never experienced. . . because I wasn't alive in the 50s. It's too bad, really. I would've liked to have lived then.

An actual picture of Shrek 2 at a drive-in!
Thank you, Internet.

In November, Dad took us to see the new movie National Treasure. I thought it was real great until about 4 minutes in when Dad started talking. "No way that could happen." "Oh sure, the ship is right there, where they expected it to be." "He can't just go into the Library of Congress like that." "Oh of course! The board that he's hanging onto pops off, just to complicate things. They didn't even have nails like that back then." "Nicolas Cage has such a muffled voice. You can't understand him."

And so it went through the entire film. By the end I was just sick of both my dad's comments and the movie. Where is the fun in dissecting a movie while you're in the theater and watching it for the first time? Something about talking in movie theaters really bothers me. To this day. JUST ENJOY YOURSELF FOR TWO HOURS, WILL YA?

Riley from National Treasure.
I just love him.

Turns out I have a good 'bounce-back' thing going on because I now thoroughly enjoy both National Treasure films. In fact I own both of them. National Treasure actually got me interested in history. And I've always had a thing for historical fiction. I think it's fun and fascinating. Pretty much, historical fiction is my favorite.

Late November is when the craziness went down. Stay tuned.

And so it goes.

Love, Me

Now Playing: Peter Pan

2003 was really an uneventful year in movies and my life. I was in fifth grade and had Mrs. Livingston as my teacher at LCH. . . . And that's about it.  Let me think. Nope, that's all I got.

Look how young he is!

Holes came out that year (a great book, by the way) which I really enjoyed. I particularly liked Shia LaBeouf, because I always watched him on Saturday mornings on the show Even Stevens, and there he was on the big screen! Good for him.  That was also the year of The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which - let's face it - was completely awful. But I loved it! Another TV show I watched on Saturday mornings had come to the big screen and had very catchy songs and promised that I could be a rockstar when I grew up. Who doesn't want that?

Perhaps the movie I loved the most was Finding Nemo. Such a fun, colorful, entertaining, heartwarming film! I love that movie to this day, and I will freely admit that fact to absolutely anyone.  Come on, you cannot beat Dory! She's fantastic. I probably got to be annoying when I went around every day chanting "It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the tank is clean. . . OH NO! The tank is clean!" For some reason I just thought that was the funniest thing. I love that movie.

In the summer I went and saw From Justin to Kelly with Brooke, and I think I found a runner-up to Rocky and Bullwinkle for worst movie ever to be featured on the big screen.  My family and I are avid American Idol fans, and the very first American Idol (Kelly Clarkson) along with the runner-up (Justin Someone-or-other) were the stars of the movie, so of course we were going to see it! . . . Even by my ten-year-old standards, which you can safely assume were quite low, I thought it was miserable and, frankly, embarrassing. No one wants to start their acting career with something like that. Yikes.

December found us in Las Vegas once again, for the third and last installment of The Lord of the Rings and a new challenge to find something good for Jerry, Mom, Madelyn and I to watch. That year Mom chose Peter Pan, the new real-live-people version. M and I were actually pretty happy with this choice, as I recall.

Oh man. I fell in love with that kid who played Peter. I was enthralled by him throughout the movie, and I just knew that when I grew up I would meet him and marry him and we would live together happily ever after, the end, forever and ever. I was pretty excited. I had gotten to that age where it was sort of ok to start liking boys, and he was so dang cute. Just beautiful. (Actually, to be honest, in the first scene I thought he might be a girl. . . he's kinda girly looking, you know? Anyway.) Now that I think about it, I think I was just caught up in the magic of the film, because he really did look, like, pretty. That's weird.

All righty. That's all I've got for 2003. Like I said, not much excitement going on. Life was just life. The next year things got pretty adventurous though. Stay tuned.

And so it goes.

Love, Me 

Now Playing: The Rookie

Look at those puppies!

On my ninth birthday, a Friday at the start of 2002, I went to Dad's house for the weekend.  I was so excited that I could choose what we would do that night.  I wanted to see the new movie Snow Dogs, which came out that day, specifically because of the dogs.  I loved dogs so much that I wished for a puppy every Christmas (and I mean every Christmas).

So that night we all (Jeanmarie, Dad, Lucy, Buddy, Brooke, Madelyn, baby Kelly and I) went to Dairy Queen for ice creams then headed to the movie theater to watch Snow Dogs. There were grumblings and complaints but Dad simply told my siblings, "It's Melanie's birthday, so she decides what we see." The ability to choose was a power I was not accustomed to when at Dad's house, so I reveled in my chance to do exactly what I wanted. And in my opinion, I made a good choice.  That movie was awesome, my new favorite. It was an exceptionally good day.

The year 2002 meant I was in fourth grade.  There was this boy in my fourth grade class named Devon, and for some reason that I do not at all understand, he really liked me. A lot. As in, he followed me around every recess, he always talked to me, he tried to hit me with the ball when we played sports during PE, etc. etc. Anyway, he drove me nuts because I thought he was really weird, and boys were dumb and scary at the same time, and they were just gross in general. But he continued to follow me around and pretend that we were "together" even though I never said a word to him. So one day in March I was at home and the phone rang. Mom answered it and said it was for me. Devon called me. At home. He called me. How humiliating. Ew ew ew. I was not very happy but I was giggling like crazy because I was nervous. So I said the customary "Hello?" and he proceeded to ask me to go to his birthday party. Gah! I didn't know what to do, and I really didn't want to go. But I just said "Ok!" then practically threw the phone at my mom before I ran upstairs to my room. Because I had ended our conversation prematurely and thus didn't know any details about said party, my mom ended up having to call his mom and ask about the particulars. Turns out it was a fancy schmancy party that included me, him, and his best friend, Kevin.  Just. The. Three. Of. Us. Oh and his family.  His whole family. How would you like to meet the parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles of a kid who proposes to you once a week, and you're nine years old?? Yeah, I wasn't too happy about my situation.

Anyway, the day of the party came and I threw a fit (I assume) about not wanting to go but of course my mother made me (per usual) and told me "It'll be fun!" (per usual). So I got on a dressy outfit that I wore to our family Christmas party once and I climbed into that dumb kid's mother's minivan and away we went. First we went to a fancy schmancy seafood restaurant which was completely awful because the only, only food I cannot eat is any type of seafood. I think I ended up eating some plain pasta. Following that terrifying meal we went to the movie theater to watch the brand-new baseball movie, The Rookie. (Overall, The Rookie is a fantastic film that I have watched many-a-time; I have nothing against it. But that day I was so horrified by my circumstances that I was ready to yell at Dennis Quaid to stop being so sad and get off the screen!) (Luckily I didn't do that.)

Dennis looking very pensive. . .

Eventually, however, the film did end and we all went through the "Did you like it? Yeah it was pretty good!" routine. But then, gag, we had to go back to his house and do the whole presents thing. I got him a gift card to Barnes & Noble because I had no clue what he liked (besides me, I guess). (Like I said, I had hardly ever said a word to the kid.) When he opened it he was all "Oh, cool. Thanks. I like to read." and I was all "Dang it. He likes my present." It was after this fiasco that I finally got returned to my home. He didn't leave me alone for the rest of the year. In fifth grade I think he got bored of me and finally went away. Thank goodness for that.

On April 30th my little sister Kelly turned one year old. She was so adorable, but a lot of work. We all learned to change diapers, do laundry, feed her bottles, and more. Jeanmarie determined that with so many kids in the house, we should take the brunt of the responsibilities.  This idea also meant that we were drafted into the Cleanliness War, whose slogan was "Paint Walls, Pull Weeds, Scrub Floors, Wash Windows, and Never Ever Mess Up." When you messed up, you got yelled at.  If you cried, you got yelled at more because crying was against the rules. This was the hardest for me, because I was very sensitive as a little girl and prone to free-flowing tears. It was a painful time of my life, but I was steadily becoming tougher.

That summer, on June 1st, my family life changed dramatically. My mom and Jerry got married, and we all couldn't be happier. After three years of being a single mother, Mom found a husband who loves and cherishes her continually. As I mentioned before, Jerry was a family friend so he wasn't new to us, and Brooke, Madelyn and I welcomed him happily and even gratefully. We had a father figure in our mother's home, who loved us and never spanked or spoke cruelly. He was there for us when we needed him—for a hug, for a listening ear, for popcorn and M&Ms, etc. etc. In all, we became a stable family unit, the kind that my sisters and I missed when we were at Dad's house.

During Christmas break, we continued our tradition of going to Las Vegas. The new Lord of the Rings movie came out that week, so Brooke, Justin, and Kevin ran off to their movie theater while Mom, Jerry, Madelyn, and I decided what movie to watch. Mom settled on Pinocchio, a new foreign film. Exciting, right? Though I might enjoy it now (especially since I actually know Italian nowadays), I was frustrated during that entire film. The actors were speaking in Italian with English dubbed over, so the words being spoken were not in sync with the movements of the actors' mouths. That tormented me throughout the movie. I couldn't understand why the film was made in a different language if we were going to be watching it in English. It just didn't seem logical. It seemed ridiculously annoying, actually. Anyway, I'm sure I got over it relatively quickly, what with the excitement of Vegas and all.
Seriously, there were arcades and swimming pools. Very exciting stuff.

And so it goes.

Love, Me

Intermission: 9-11

2001: A hefty year.

September 11, 2001

A normal morning in the life of little fourth-grader me.  I woke up and started getting ready for the day, following my regular routine — wake up, make the bed, get dressed, go to the bathroom, go downstairs to eat breakfast.  I got out of the bathroom and walked to the top of stairs, directly across from my mom's open bedroom door (this was her old bedroom, before she married Jerry and before the remodel).  I paused when I saw her standing in front of her TV in the far corner of the room, arms folded and very still.

"What's that?" I saw billowing black clouds on the TV screen.
"This just happened in New York," she said. "Bad men flew airplanes into these buildings."
"What does that mean?" I didn't understand, I couldn't understand.
"Some very bad people just attacked our country.  Lots of people have died."
I understood that part.  How sad!

I was saddened by what happened.  But at the same time, it was so far away.  I went downstairs and got breakfast.  Then Mom walked me and Brooke across the street to La Costa Heights Elementary School.  I don't remember anything about that day except for the morning announcements.  Dr. Meek, our principal, gave the announcements over an intercom each morning but that day they were different.  She gave a heavy, brief explanation of the morning's events in New York City, then she asked us all to take a minute of silence and pray to our God, whomever He may be.  I sat at my desk and folded my arms in front of me, bowing my head with closed eyes.  In my head, I said a short, silent prayer. Heavenly Father, please watch over those people in New York.  Please save them.  Please help their families.  Please make the bad guys stop doing bad things.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

That day changed our country forever.  From then on, tight security was enforced in airports.  The Department of Homeland Security was established.  The United States of America was no longer an invincible nation.  We were attacked.  I was too young to understand the implications, and I was too young to understand the incredible extent in which that day changed America.  I didn't understand anything about Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.  But every year following that one, I learned in school about the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  I learned about them from news stories, from word of mouth, from living in California.  I grew up with September 11th.

And so it goes.

Love, Me