Crazy Enough

I have decided to write a book about Don. I am going to title it Crazy Enough. It will be about some of the crazy adventures I have had with Don. So far I have 33 possible chapters. Here is just one of them:

"Just Say 'No'"

Those of my generation remember Nancy Reagan, first lady at the time, telling children and teenagers all over the world to "Just say 'no'." She was referring of course to drugs. I grew up knowing that it was my right to say "no". What I didn't realize was how the phrase "no" at such a pivotal moment could be such a bad thing.

After a couple months of marriage, Don told me he was in Special Education throughout his schooling. With my background in Elementary Education I was horrified. Not only had Don struggled through school, but he had hardly attended in the first place. He graduated from an alternative high school in California.

Up until that point I had been determined that Don get his bachelors. It just wasn't a question or a decision that I thought had to be made. It became a question when I saw how hard school was for him.

Several years later we sent for his school records. His special education files noted several areas with which he struggled. It made both of us wonder where he was at now. Had he overcome all his disabilities? Were there areas that he could use some extra help? What could we find out to make schooling easier for him?

That's where Dr. Morris came in. He met with Don several times to administer various tests to determine his academic strengths. After several weeks we all met together in Dr. Morris's office for the final results.

We learned several fascinating facts from the testing. Don was able to understand and remember things he read when he read them out loud. He struggled with basic math skills. But he seemed to have no problem when it came to writing. The doctor also said that there was an unexplained missing connection in his brain. It could only be explained as brain damage or a brain tumor.

Everything else the doctor said didn't matter after that point. Don either had suffered some sort of brain injury or he had a brain tumor. With both of his parents deceased, there was a slimmer chance of finding out if he had brain damage. His other living relatives didn't recall any traumatic head injuries in Don's childhood. That left us with the possibility that Don had a brain tumor.

I don't remember exactly how old our first child Kyath was at the time, but I know he was just a baby. I was still getting used to being a mom. Our marriage was still adjusting to parenthood. Then we found out that Don could possibly have a brain tumor.

We made the appointment right away for Don to have a CAT scan. We wanted to know if there was anything to worry about and if our life was about to change, again.

I met Don at the office where he was getting the CAT scan. By the time I got there, Don had already gone in for the scan. I was nervous . I hoped they wouldn't find anything. I hoped that there wasn't anything to worry about.

Don came out smiling. He said the test went well. We would find out the results in a couple of days.

Don mentioned the waiver form they asked him to sign before the procedure. It was a release form giving the department the right to administer a dye needed to see the brain clearly for the CAT scan. There was a warning specifically mentioning that one in a million people could possibly be allergic to the dye and could actually die. Don read the warning and freaked out. He knew he would be the poor one person out of a million that would be allergic to the dye. He refused to sign the waiver, but insisted on the CAT scan.

Don had listened to Nancy Reagan all those years ago. He knew he could say "no" and he did. After all, it is his body and it was his right to say "no" to drugs. Drugs bad- say "no". Thanks Nancy, thanks a lot!

By the time Don told me it was too late. The test was over. I could not believe what Don had done. Why would he refuse a common dye that was part of the CAT scan? Why did he have the CAT scan done after he refused the dye? What if he really did have a tumor and the doctors would not be able to see it? These were all questions that I would never really get an answer to.

The results came back. It began with a huge disclaimer. It stated that the patient, Donald Moore, had refused the dye. It clarified that without the dye, the test would be basically inconclusive and inaccurate. There was not a way to see a tumor without dye and because there was no dye administered, the tests could not adequately determine if there was or was not a tumor.

Don read through the results. I asked him what they reported. Don looked at me completely relieved and said, "I don't have a tumor."

3 days until I am done at work. I am exhausted and ready to focus on just being a mom for a while.

Porter- The Early Years

When we were expecting our first child, I knew he would be a boy. I knew he would have blond hair and would be a chubby baby. So when they told me I was having a boy, I was excited. Kyath was born with thick dark hair. He was chubby, but not blond. He was just what I wanted. He just wasn't the baby I had seen years ago and told that he would be mine.

Confessions of a Crazy Mom- Kyath, the early years

Before I married and had children, I knew I was going to be the perfect mother. I had read all the books. I studied Elementary Education with a BA at Weber State University. I worked five years at a daycare and ten for the Salt Lake City School District. I knew all the answers.

My first son was a handful from day one. He cried in the car. He cried in the stroller. He cried in my arms. He had reflux and knew how to use it. Don, my husband, and I would spend hours each night walking up and down the street trying to calm Kyath. We figured people would realize we weren't abusing our child when they saw he was crying hysterically despite our efforts.

One day we realized the power of a wet washcloth. I don't remember how it came about. I just know that one time when Ky was crying, we put a damp washcloth on his head and it calmed him down. I still remember one time while visiting my parents, my mom frantically ran to get a washcloth to drape on his head. He had everyone at his beckoned call.


Ky liked to climb. I believe Ky started climbing before he learned to walk. He could pull himself up on the couch before he could take a step. When he was nine months old I remember him climbing up on the refrigerator while I was meeting in the kitchen with some of my co-workers. They freaked out. They were amazed that I was not surprised or rattled. But by nine months he had already taken any surprise out of me.

He was so much of a climber that I could never get him to stay in a car seat. He was like Houdini the way he could escape. I had no sooner buckled him in and he had already climbed out of his seat. I bought four other car seats and would swap them weekly to try to stay ahead of Ky.

Ky also had a fetish with keys. Sometimes I would just let him play with my keys because it was the only thing that would keep him calm. I remember one day in church a lady came up to me almost crying, telling me that keys were the worst thing I could let my baby play with. It made me mad that she would try to take away one of the few things that actually kept Ky quiet.

I knew I was in trouble the day Kyath escaped out of his car seat on the freeway. He was out of the seat like a monkey on crack. He reached for the door before I could stop him. He had it open with the freeway wind swirling in. I grabbed the handle and held the door until I could pull over. I was lucky he didn't fall out of the 65 mph car. He couldn't have been more than one and a half years-old at the time.


Kyath's fascination with cars and keys didn't stop there. He was two when he had his first accident. I was visiting Brandi at her house. Kyath was playing in the van with the keys. (Note to self: Never let children play in vehicle with actual keys.) Somehow he turned the key enough and pulled it out of gear. Just my luck, I was parked facing down on a sloped street. The van started to roll down the hill. I was quick to react and kept pace with the van, running next to Ky. I went to open the door to slam on the brakes. But Kyath had locked all the doors. He was crying and trying to hide while the van picked up momentum. Luckily, the van hit a tree. I don't know how an air bag didn't go off, but thank goodness it didn't. After the van came to a screeching halt, I tried to get Kyath to open the door. He wouldn't. I found the hide-a-key under the van and unlocked the door.


I thought we would have a hiatus from catastrophe, at least for a while. But Ky was just getting into his own. I always had to be a few steps of Ky because he was such a busy kid. He was always trying to escape out of the house, just so he could explore. Locking doors didn't help. He could climb the door and unlock it. (Yes at two. It was something you had to see for yourself to believe.) I put deadbolts up at the top of all the doors where he couldn't climb or reach. One would have thought that was enough.


One day my foster mother-in-law called. Don had just left for a bike ride and Ky and I were alone. I couldn't have been on the phone for more than five minutes. All the doors were locked and there was a dowel locking the sliding glass door that led to a fenced backyard. The house went quiet and I knew Kyath was up to something. I knew that I had created a sealed vault and there was no way to escape, or was there?

When I realized Ky had taken out the dowel, slid open the sliding glass door and escaped to the backyard, I was not surprised. I went out in the backyard expecting to find him playing in the sand. But he was no where to be found. I walked through the open gate and out into the cul-de-sac. It was quiet and held no traces of the Tasmanian that had just toddled past.

I preceded to check each neighbors yard. Surely he had wandered into one of the yards and was sidetracked by a grasshopper or butterfly. As I neared the end of the street, I realized that I may need more help trying to find the little guy. I wished Don were back from his bike ride, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I started asking neighbors if they had seen him. We quickly realized that he was no where to be found. There is nothing like trying to sense where your child is and feeling nothing. When we all started panicking, a neighbor yelled that they had found Kyath.

A good Samaritan found him a street away at the corner of a busy street, pushing the walk signal so he could cross. When he realized that this little two year old was traveling on his own, he called the police. The police man came down the street to see if his neglectful mother was even looking for her little child. He turned on to a street full of panic stricken people. Just then, Don returned home from his bike ride. He had a hysterical wife and an oblivious child that were both happy to see him.

Valentine's Day 2008

Whoever created Valentine's Day really should be shot. It is a day that women fill with expectations and men can never reach. It is so romaticized. As a child I thought for sure I would get a valentine from a secret admirer. I mean, it is the day to declare love. Why wouldn't a boy declare his love on Valentine's Day.



I remember the year I gave a boy in my 6th grade class a special valentines. I gave everyone in class one of the 32 Hallmark created whitty valentines. I can't remember what the theme was for the valentines, just that everyone in class received one from me except for that one special flame in my life. He had no idea that he was my flame. My friends and I made fun of him all the time for wearing those fake animal fur boots. The kind that was covered in fur. But that Valentine's day, I had to let him know that I thought he was something special. I bought a $3 card with a big heart on it. I think I just signed my name inside.



We had one desk buddy. I sat by my best friend Michelle. He sat right behind us next to Aaron. I can still see his face when he opened it. He looked at me in complete surprise. Aaron did too.

Cruise America

I had an experience this last week with Cruise America that had me asking, what has happened to customer service. I have friends from Germany that usually make it to America once a year. The problem is that they never call me until they are here and they expect me to drop everything. This time they called me on Friday night before General Conference. It was Noreen. She told me that they had rented a mobile home and that it was broken down at Taco Bell in Sugarhouse. Her sister Gutrun and brother-in-law Raph were with the motorhome. Noreen and Igrid were staying at someone's house because the motorhome was too cold. To make matters worse, Gutrun and Ralph don't really speak English. It was 10:00 PM and Don still wasn't home from work. I knew someone needed to be with them, but I knew I would not be able to get to them in time.

I called my brother and asked if he could go there and make sure that Cruise America came and towed them to an RV park for the night. Darin went there and waited. Cruise America sent a tow truck, but the truck wasn't big enough to tow the motorhome. They said that another tow truck would be there in 20 minutes. They waited and waited, but no one came. They called Cruise America again and they said to call back at 7:30 in the morning and they would make sure to take care of them. My brother went home and Gutrun and Ralph spent a cold night in Taco Bell's parking lot.

Saturday morning I drove there to meet them at 7:30 in the morning. I gave Noreen and Igrid my car and told them to go to General Conference. I called Cruise America and they said that they don't open until 9:00 and that we would have to wait until then. So there we waited, in the cold RV, for Cruise America to come. At 9:00 we called again and they said that the local Cruise America did not have a motorhome available and that they would call us when they knew more. I wondered why they couldn't at least tow this motorhome so that we could get on with our day. But they told us to wait. At 11:30 they called and said that they were able to get a hold of a tow company and they they would get there after they were done towing another vehicle.

It had been a long morning already. We had sat in this cold RV all morning. Gutrun and Ralph had missed the first session of conference. I called my mom and asked if I could borrow her car to take Gutrun around shopping while we were waiting. My dad met me at Taco Bell to drop off the car.

Gutrun and I went to all the typical stores that Noreen and Gutrun like to visit when they are in town. We hit Seagull Book, Big Lots, Thrift Town, Dollar Tree, ect. I can understand Seagull Book, but I don't understand their facination with Thrift Town.

After shopping we headed back to Taco Bell. The motorhome was gone. We hightailed it to Cruise America.

Ralph was there moving their stuff from the broken down motorhome to the replacement motorhome. The first thing Gutrun noticed was how dirty the replacement motorhome was. I was embarrrassed that such a company was representing America. The man at Cruise America told him that he couldn't go until he signed something. When I got there, they said he didn't need to sign anything and that they could be on their way. I pointed out the terrible customer service they had received. The tow truck driver said they could have called him last night. But he did not get a call till 11:30 AM that morning. So I wonder just what Cruise America was doing all that time that we were sitting in a cold motorhome.

By the time Ralph and Gutrun had moved everything over to the replacement motorhome, they had missed the second session of General Conference. I asked what they wanted to do and they said they wanted to come to my house.

Now let me just preface this. I am 32 weeks pregnant. It has been the worst pregnancy ever. I am exhausted and I have just used the last of my energy to help them get a replacement motorhome. Not to mention the amount of energy it takes to translate between English and German. Don had been home with the kids. I knew the house is a mess and I knew that Germans expect a clean house. I was ready to go home and just crash. But I love Gutrun and Ralph and so I told them to come home with me.

When I walked in the door, I surveyed the house and realized how drity it really was. I profusely appologized and began cleaning. Gutrun started making piles of things for me to put away. Ralph said that he always let the house go when Gutrun wasn't home. But I didn't really believe him because I know the German culture. I spent the rest of the night cleaning every part of the house that I thought they might see.

Gutrun wanted to wash some clothes. Those that know me, know that laundry is my Achilles heel. I have been known to hire people to come and fold laundry once a week. I just wash it and leave it on the laundry table. I was horrified to take her downstairs. When she saw, the first thing she said was, "What should we do about this room." I quickly began folding laundry and putting it away.

When I wasn't cleaning, I was folding laundry. Every room Gutrun went in, she would say, "And what should we do about this room." It would not have been a big deal if I wasn't already exhausted and not feeling very well.

Don and Ralph decided to go to the priesthood session. Even though Ralph doesn't really speak English, he can understand it. In Germany, many people have gotten used to listening to a lot of the LDS Church talks in English. There is not always a German translation.

When Don and Ralph came home, Don took Gutrun to WalMart. Ralph cornered me and started telling me all the things I am doing wrong as a mother. I think me favorite was him telling me that Zander should be potty trained by now. He explained that at age one they would put their children in underwear and tights. Then when they would have an accident, they had to take off the tights and underwear themselves and wash them in the sink. I thought that was a cruel manner to teach potty training. But what do I know? I was told that I don't discipline my children enough. Which they, by the way, were angels that night.

After the Priesthood session Don wanted me to translate so he could really talk with them. Translating would have been fine if it had been for any other person. But Don always says stupid things and expects me to translate them. He wanted me to mention the gay major, President Bush rubbing the German President's shoulders, and any other garbage he could come up with. It was almost to much to bear.

Ten-Thirty came and I finally had to dismiss myself to go to bed. Thus went my Saturday, set aside for watching and pondering conference, but instead turned to uncontrollable choas thanks to Cruise America.

August 6, 2007

I thought it might be high time to start blogging about my life. It is not like there is much to say. But it would be a learning experience to blog about my and my family's life.