A Courageous Story of Natural Birth Against All Odds

First, thanks for all of the e-mails and texts asking me to pray for you. At this time, my prayer list is filled to capacity. If you are under thirty, you are low priority.

Background: I did not go to the classiest high school. I would like you to note that every time you entered the bathroom, you were engulfed by a giant cloud of cigarette smoke.

The following is from a Chicago newspaper: The Daily Herald
Headline: Streamwood High student gives birth to baby boy in school bathroom
A student delivered a baby boy Tuesday morning in a third-floor bathroom at Streamwood High School, officials said.

The mother and her newborn were said to be doing well and resting at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, but officials wouldn’t release other details due to confidentiality laws.

Streamwood police Officer Steve Kisch, who is assigned to the school at 701 W. Schaumburg Road, called the village’s fire department at 9:45 a.m. when he was made aware of the situation, Streamwood Deputy Police Chief Jim Gremo said.

Meanwhile, an announcement was made telling students to stay in their classrooms as part of a medical lockdown, which aims to keep the hallways clear so medical personnel can work unimpeded, Elgin Area District U-46 Safety Coordinator John Heiderscheidt said.

“Paramedics came in, took care of her and the baby and got them out swiftly and without interruption,” Heiderscheidt said.

Students were slightly delayed getting to their third-period classes, said Heiderscheidt, who’s never heard of a student giving birth at a U-46 school since he joined the district in 2006.

“I’d say this is pretty rare,” he said.

Gremo said that there weren’t any suspicious circumstances surrounding the birth and that police aren’t investigating it.

Please Bless the Desperate Girls to Get Married

When I was at BYU, I became concerned about a beloved friend who was 25, single and desperate. I thought that being single at 25 was such a lamentable fate that I started praying for her to get married constantly. For example, if we went on a road trip and decided to pray first, I would volunteer and then pray for this girl to get married. She started dating her husband a few months later.

Fast forward ten years to my friend's 30th birthday party. She stared sadly into the distance and said, "On my 31st birthday, we are breaking out the Vodka." She was my religious leader at the time, so I knew that straits were dire. I knew what to do, i.e. "Please bless the food and for 'Sandy' to get married." Maybe she was embarrassed when I kept doing it in public, but she got engaged this weekend.

We are at the point that I can't really narrow it down to one person, so I have just started saying, "Bless all of my desperate friends to get married." Maybe it isn't easy to admit that you are included in my plea, but do you really want to take that chance?

Guilty Pleasures

First, an update on the Israelis. As a swarthy man dabbed Dead Sea cream on my hand at the mall today, I confessed, "I wrote a blog about you," and walked away before he understood. Then, I briefly forgot where I parked and had to do a few laps to figure it out. The same man offered me moisturizer four times. The last time, I unfortunately started laughing in his face and he yelled, "Why you laughing?"

Ok, for this blog, I asked people to tell me their guilty pleasures. Mine are definitely gchat and reading weird blogs about religion and social issues. If I am not on gchat during the day, I usually receive a few emails about my absence. I also enjoy picking off my sunburn skin flakes. What bliss!

Now, for my friends:

1. Lingerie... even before I was married. I like sitting around the house and cleaning in it.

2. Dancing naked in front of the mirror, because it is hilarious.

3. My guilty pleasure was so bad it only lasted one season. It was a Hulu-only reality show called "If I Can Dream." It was not even trashy in a good way, it was actively boring, but I kept watching because I absoltely hate not having resolution & I wanted to see if any of them made it to stardom. Answer: No.

4. Hostess cupcakes. Sigh. I used to buy them from the vending machines at BYU. I would try to look really bored as I put my change in the slot, a very "I am totally buying this for someone else" kind of look. I don't know what that face looks like, but I made a serious effort. Then I would go down the hall into a quiet corner and eat them. Succulent goodness. I was busted when, one year, my friends threw me an Iron Chef party. The surprise ingredient? A Hostess cupcake. The winning team made a giant cake that looked like a Hostess cupcake. When you cut into it, there was the real Hostess cupcake inside. A perfect combination of my guilty pleasure and my favorite word, meta. They won hands down.

5. Guilt is optional. That is my motto. If guilt weren't optional I would say fabric shopping which is unpublishably boring anyway. Ed. note: Nope

6. Looking at pictures of myself on FB or anywhere pics of myself are stored. I used to hide this guilty pleasure from people. Now I own it! Ed. note: I have known this person for ten years and do not recall this ever being hidden. Said respondent had an entire wall of photos of herself in the living room of a BYU apartment.

7. I like the frozen cheeseburger you can get in those Hungry Man Dinners. I wrap it in a paper towel, nuke it in the microwave, and enjoy the heck out of it.

8. This is a tricky one for me, because the things that I'm into that most people would label "guilty pleasures" I feel absolutely no shame about. This includes everything from ABBA to pro wrestling to the fact that Denny's is my favorite restaurant.

Ooh, I just remembered one: near the end of my Mormon mission, a Haagen Dazs ad came in the junk mail. It was a promotional tie-in with the "Bridget Jones Diary" movie, and the ad showed Renee Zellweger as the title character leaning over and showing a moderate amount of cleavage. I kept the ad on a table in the corner of our flat for over a month, looking at it for a few seconds most nights before going to bed. Missionaries are strange.

One current thing that might qualify is Celebrity Apprentice, which started its new season last night. I know it's an awful show, and the only reason I watch it is to see Ivanka Trump. She's pretty much the perfect woman. I think she was created in a lab.

9. All one person:
I'm not above admiring my naked body in the mirror
Mint Chocolate Chunk Ice cream (a direct violation with previous guilty pleasure)
Watching 'Strictly Ballroom' on loop
Any Movie at the IFC -- a solitary activity which I refuse to include anyone in
Telling my mother a "secret" that I request she not tell my brother, and then betting money with him about how long it will take her to divulge that information
Drawing people on the train, but as they would look in their underwear
Sabon's Lemon Mint Body Scrub
Anything serial and from the 90s, Felicity, The Baby Sitters Club, etc.
Boys with curly brown hair and blue eyes
Speaking in a British accent for hours with my roommate
Pinterest
Baking elaborate things with a million ingredients
Yellow flowers (which I often buy for myself)
Words with Friends
Theme parties
Restaurants that I read about in New York magazine -- which I must go to

In Which I Buy a Weave From the Mossad

I didn't really want to admit to the following story, but I don't actually know most of you, so here goes.

When I lived in South Brooklyn, I often found myself surrounded by Orthodox Jews. Jewish law requires married women to cover their hair and many ladies accomplish that by wearing wigs that are much thicker and more beautiful than most people's natural hair. Once you know what to look for (jean skirt with a black shirt) it is really obvious, but they still look really good and I was jealous.

Those days are over. About a month ago I went to the mall and as I was coming out of J. Crew, a woman with a heavy accent accosted me and said, "Let me try something on your hair." I had to kill time before meeting a friend, so I sat down at her kiosk. Fifteen minutes later, I was magically wearing a headfull of perfectly curled, clip-on hair extensions. It was a masterpiece and I was speechless. I left that day with 10 lbs of fake hair attached to my head and a complimentary curling iron. I can't blame the girl's salemanship-my thin hair makes me vulnerable.

One of the perks of buying fake hair is that you can return to the kiosk whenever you want and they will style it for you. I went back a week later and was surprised to see that a man was the stylist. He had a very heavy accent that was nearly undecipherable and said, "You never think man do your hair in mall, right?" Accurate. Every time that I couldn't understand him, he said, "You like my sexy accent?" If someone who appeared to be a Spanish speaker walked by, he yelled, "Te gusta el pelo colocho?" If a black woman walked by, he evoked Joey Tribbiani and asked, "How you doin'?" But let me tell you, he was a Michelangelo with a curling iron.

Further conversation revealed that he was an Israeli, as was his coworker. Her English was better and she informed me that she had graduated from the M.I.T. of Israel, but enjoyed the stress-free lifestyle of styling weaves.

I know that I'm not the only person who has had a run-in with an Israeli kiosk worker. My mom said that the Dead Sea lotion left her hands silky for days.



Further investigation unearthed this little gem from the U.S. State Department. It warns Israelis about coming to the U.S. and illegally working at mall kiosks. I had no idea that it was so pervasive.

Tales of Cursed Cumpleaños

When I asked my friends to tell me about their worst birthdays, only a few had material for me. I am very happy that all of your birthdays are so great.

1. My birthday is September 12th. So my birthday in 2001 was a pretty big downer. No one was really thinking of wishing me happy birthday.

2. I had a big house party for my 16th birthday. A couple of my idiot guy friends pressed moons on our deck windows, and my dad got so mad that he threw everyone out at 10 pm before Nikki and I could even blow out our candles (it was a joint birthday party.) As a teenager this was extremely embarrassing...and he ruined BOTH of our birthdays, which was just unacceptable.

3. On my 18th birthday, I had just started as a freshman at BYU so I only had a few friends. They tried to plan a birthday party for me during visiting hours (when guys are allowed to come to your dorm room), except only one person showed up, this guy with a disfiguring facial scar. We barely knew each other so it was awkward and he left as soon as he could. Then, my family forgot to call me. I called them and yelled, "hey, guess what day it is today, it's my birthday!" They tried to make up some lame excuse that they were planning to call me but since it was pretty late, I had my doubts.

4. I met this guy at a work conference and he asked me out. It happened to be my birthday. Against better judgment I went, and we really hit it off. After a lovely evening together we made out for a while and said goodnight with plans to meet the next day at lunch. At lunch, he said he had something to tell me. He was married, but we had such a magical evening, could we still date each other? I said, "no thanks" and he said, "I'm surprised, I thought you would be okay with it". Not so romantic a birthday after all.

5. We had just celebrated my birthday at a pizza place and my two friends and I were driving back to the UNLV campus. I was dropping off my friend at his car; he had just injured his ankle pretty badly, so my best friend was going to have to drive him home. On the way, a car came pulled out of the gas station, and hit us! Then he pulled into the parking lot across the street. I followed him, assuming that this is where we'd exchange information, etc. And then he sped off!! I wasn't going to let this guy get away from me. I followed him. A car chase ensued. Red lights were run, the speed limit laws were broken. He drove into an apartment complex parking lot, where I lost him. I was really upset that we didn't catch him.

Then we started to think- what would actually have happened if we caught this guy? What were we going to do? Two 20 year old college-girls, and one boy with a bum ankle. It was ridiculous. We went back to the gas station to see if they had any security camera's that had this vehicles details (they didn't release anything to us). There were two motorcycle cops there, so we told them our situation, and we were able to file a police report. Then we took pictures with them because it was, after all, still my birthday!

Hey, that embedding actually isn't that good, so take my quiz here.

If you like it, please repost and send to your friends.

Taxonomy of American Latter Day Saints: What Flavor of Mormon Are You?

Taxonomy of American Latter Day Saints: What Flavor Of Mormon Are You? » quiz software

Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this. I would give shout outs, but I don't know if it is embarrassing to be associated with this project.

Bandwagons That I Refuse to Jump On

I'm on the New York-DC bus right now and I'm really bored, so I think that I am going to just write blog posts until I get motion sickness.

* Hating airbrushing. If I knew how to airbrush, I would have as many pictures on Facebook as my salsa dancer sister-in-law. People I haven't seen would leave messages like, "D@#n girl, back on Slimfast?"

* Fanny packs. Some of my friends keep shaming me in public by sporting them. In the early '90s, my mother bought a fanny pack for Disney World and my sister promptly hid it. She should be hailed as a brave defender of feminine beauty.

* Pinterest. Am I missing something?

* Blaming the decline of Western Civilization on supermodels. It has never occurred to me to strive to look like them (hobbit apathy), so I feel no need to post rants about how Marilyn was a size 14 or whatever. Why do people care about this?

* Laughing at stuff that isn't funny, especially at church.

* Saying "friendly reminder" in a passive aggressive way.

* Older girls demonizing younger girls. I will admit that I am more used to teens than the average person, but I like that they are less likely to be depressed and prone to long boring convos about not dating. And they usually like my stories (if you are reading this, ask yourself, "Am I under 25?" I feel like the odds are good). If men want to marry nineteen-year-olds, go for it.

* Buying weird stuff off t.v. In Latin America it is always something like snail juice with weight loss properties.

* Twilight-Self-explanatory

* Huge, ugly hair flower headbands.

* Very vocally hating Valentine's Day. Today my student handed me a box of chocolates and said, "Ain't no one love you but me." What is there to hate?

Yearly Reprint of My Birthday Post

1981 (I probably should have changed this to 1986 to improve my marriage prospects)- Born under Aquarius in Preston, Idaho-proud home of Napoleon Dynamite. I had a cone head (I’m the oldest) and my parents were terrified that I was deformed. My doctor was later convicted of arson.

1985- My mom blew up balloons and wrote the letters for “Happy Birthday Jill” on each one. Because it was my birthday, I was allowed to watch whatever show that I wanted and I chose a prohibited one-Transformers.

Sometime in the 80s-My mom gave me a picture of my crush, Fred Savage.

1989-While picking out a new dress, I threw up spaghetti in Kohls.

1993- I sat at home alone, watching Dances With Wolves, tears streaming down my face. I can’t remember the details, but I know that it involved my mom instructing ladies to decorate Keds with puff paint instead of staying home with me.

1994- My Aunt Penny sent me TeenBeat magazines to mark the milestone. Those were the early days of Leo, Zach Morris and Macualy(too lazy to look up spelling) Culkin. I started subscribing to “Teen” and one month I realized from the Table of Contents that my mom had torn out an article along the lines of “Everything You Need To Know About Sex.” It was a valiant effort, but at the first opportunity, I ran to the library and read it.

1998- My friends called me one by one, bailing on my birthday. As I sobbed uncontrollably, my friend Sylvia called and convinced me to go to a restaurant with her. When we arrived, my friends were there. I was happy, yet ashamed that I had cried off all of my makeup.

1999- I passed out while donating blood and concluded that I was being punished for doing it to get out of class. My crush that year was too skinny to donate blood.

2002, Santiago, Dominican Republic-I was enrolled in a class that was half American (I know, not p.c., but I’m not saying United Statesian), half Dominican. Mid-lecture, another student raised his hand and said, “Jill y yo somos novios (basically “Jill and I are dating”).” This was not true. The Cuban teacher had an expression of panicked confusion on his face and the Dominicans in the class started chanting “Beso! Beso!”
In a rare recognition of my existence, my host family gave me a jewelry set.

2003, Provo, Utah-My friend Drea and I went to a BYU devotional (speech), where the speaker talked about how each year that you get older, the quality of your marriage options rapidly decreases. Later that night, my cousin, Brandon, gave me clam juice as a gift and my friend chugged the entire thing.

2006, San Pedro Sula, Honduras-The toilet in my bathroom broke, so my parents paid for my friends and me to stay in a hotel- it was a good way to forget where we were for a second. My class ordered pizzas in honor of my birthday, and ended up chucking the empty pizza boxes into the fan.

2007, San Pedro Sula, Honduras- For inexplicable reasons, I was very depressed about turning 26. But my fate was better than Anna Nicole Smith’s, who died that week. A few days before my birthday we did the hotel party again, and ended up watching several hours of the paternity drama on CNN.

On my actual birthday, my Honduran friend Thania made Mexican food (trust me, it is hard to get decent Mexican food there-people always put sick cheese all over everything) and somehow found root beer to honor my cultural heritage. The ladies from church were learning how to make jewelry at the time, so I got some pretty sweet gifts. This birthday receives an A+.

2009, New York, New York- I worked for a heinous devil, so I did not mention the blessed event. I do remember that my boss left work at 1:00 p.m., which was all the present that I needed. Luckily, someone who shared the office suite with us had a birthday, so I got some cake.

2010: I had a bad attitude about my birthday, but suddenly changed and told my friend Emily that I wanted to have a party at the last minute. She was a good sport about it and pulled together a dinner for 20+ people in like twenty-four hours.

2011: Everyone felt sorry for me because I turned thirty and bought me presents. I seriously received more than $200 in assorted gift cards alone. The Turkish school birthday cake had my name spelled incorrectly and as I was taking a pic of it, the secretary foiled me by slicing the spelling error with a knife.

2012:

Photo credit: Stef. For some reason we thought that the Rice Krispies box in the background made it more believable.

Sleeping With One Eye Open/Wondering If Living With Your Parents At Age 30 Is Really So Bad

WARNING: ADULT THEMES

I am going to have to restrain myself from sharing any personal experiences, because I have no idea who reads this. People kept responding, "I want to talk about so-and-so, but he/she reads your blog."

Best of "Describe Your Craziest Roommate" Roll Call

1. BYU: She was in massage therapy school and so we never knew when we would come home to a random naked person in our living room getting a massage; she claimed to see the spirit of her dead grandfather all around the apartment; and she kissed another roommate while said roommate was taking a nap and then pretended like nothing had happened when that roommate woke up.

2. Yale: roommate one: crazy redhead in her 30's who had a much older married boyfriend who was the most famous flute player in America. They had very loud sex with the door open and made her poor crazy cat tigger watch! one time, they miscalculated when I was leaving for the airport and i ran by their open door with my ears burning!!! after she moved out, we discovered disgusting porn magazines--like really hard core dirty stuff--under her bed and my roommate and i had to triple wrap them in layers of newspaper and bags so the neighbors wouldn't think they were ours when we threw them out!


3. Yale: second horrible roommate: she was a dirty hippie environmentalist (proving that some stereotypes do come from reality, although not all environmentalists are dirty or hippies) who argued with us about flushing the toilet--her argument, not flushing the toilet and leaving feces and all manner of things in water was conserving water. our rebuttall--its dirty! she also routinely left gifts of her dirty underwear and clothes in the bathroom. she left food to rot in room so that we thought an animal died in there and the worst thing she ever did was drink too much one night and get high off of marijuana, after a concussion (she was on pain meds as well!) and forget her key, knocking on our door then waking up our poor 80-year-old landlord at four am in the morning!

4. Probably the craziest was my bulimic roommate whose mother sent her money to buy "fruit only" after she told her mom that I got her to eat Oreos with me. She would also pound on the wall of her room if she thought anyone in the living room was being too loud.

5. Pratt: We shared a 12x14' room with two twin beds close enough together to confuse bedsheets in the night. E. watched 'Girl Interrupted' just about every single day. Sometimes she would write something on a post-it and when I asked her a direct question she'd just point to a slip of yellow paper stuck to a dresser drawer or attached to a door knob. She'd often 'diary on the fabric of her life', which involved scrawling on her designer jeans with acrylic paint. At times we would each carry on separate phone calls while sitting in our cell. I guess it's safe to say we weren't what you'd consider 'friends'. She'd send herself in to a hyperventilating panic whenever her mother came to town, scrubbing the tops of cabinets with WD-40 while she sobbed. On one such occasion her mother announced that "Bill" had phoned the house. E. swallowed a gasp and I casually let my eyes drift to her side of the room, "He's out??!" she clapped and giggled. It turns out that Bill was the boy she'd lost her virginity to "the first time". (E. lost her virginity on a bi-annual basis). Along with this juicy piece of information, it was also brought to my attention that when they were fifteen he'd stabbed their mutual best friend 8 times. He had nowhere to go after the half-way house and so in the Spring of 2001, I was introduced to Bill, my craziest roommate.

6. My roommate herself wasn't crazy, but she had a crazy cat. I moved in when this kitty was about the equivalent of a male teenager. Non-neutered. He fixated on me and decided I was his girlfriend, and he was a very jealous boyfriend. Anytime I came out of my room, or my bedroom door were open, he would leap at me, dig his claws into my arm or leg or wherever and proceed to, ahem, try to take advantage of me. Luckily I am much bigger and stronger and could fight him off. I had a boyfriend at the time who would also get attacked every time he came over. It got so bad that we plotted doing away with the kitty, and in the morning I would dread coming out of my room because I never knew if he would be waiting to pounce on me. My roommate FINALLY took him to the vet, and when he came home snipped he was a much calmer, though slightly confused cat.

7. BYU: Scary M. Very dirty. And did the nasty in the apartment common room on top of the pool table with a STRANGER. sick. Maybe this is too racey for your blog

8. BYU: This guy I shared a room with in Provo had some very strange ways of interacting with women. Less than a week after I moved in, he told me about a time he was trying to decide which of two girls to ask out, so he made a spreadsheet and rated them 1-5 in several categories. They ended up tied, so he didn't ask either one out.

I would sometimes see other spreadsheets sitting on his desk, with a list of girls' names in one column, followed by his most recent interaction with them, his assessment of how it went, and in the last column his planned next move. Often this next move involved trying to talk to them at a meeting of the BYU Too-Tall Club.

Once, he found a girl that liked him enough to date him for a while. I heard him talking about her on the phone with his brother. "She's pretty," he said, "but she's not REAL pretty."

In addition to this weirdness, he was also pretty self-righteous (as a self-righteous person myself, I'm good at identifying those tendencies in others). Once I had some friends over, and was showing them a sketch from the most recent SNL episode that I had enjoyed. Roomie walked in right as an admittedly off-color joke was made. He froze for a second, then grabbed the frame holding a copy of the famous Harry Anderson Second Coming of Christ painting, and laid it face down on the top of the entertainment center it had been standing on. I was flabbergasted.

Honduras Groundhog Memories

Oh my gosh, I am at parent's teacher conferences and I am reading my old Honduras blog to kill time. I just read a timely entry:

"We had a staff meeting today and the topic was coordinating the holiday parties. We were trying to choose which holidays to celebrate and a woman said, "Last year there was a holiday that never ended. It was called Miss Jill's birthday. I felt like I was living 'Groundhog Day,' because every day it just kept happening."

All I have to say is that kids are geniuses at throwing surprise parties for their teacher to avoid doing work. I think that I am going to start reprinting Honduras stories once a week, because reading this is pretty fun.

Honduran DJ Challenge 2006

All week we have been laboriously learning note names and rhythms-an activity that is not that exciting for the typical 7th grade boy. One of my classes is a notoriously bad class, but I haven't had any problems with them yet-probably because I am not teaching the most challenging class around. Early in the week two of the boys approached and said, "Miss, if we are good this week, can we have a DJ Showdown on Friday?" Who am I to stand between early adolescents and their developing talents?

Things went well all week, and the big day quickly arrived. Both boys brought in their mix cds and quietly sat through the boring part of class. Then I announced that the time for the contest had come. I gently asked, "Will you be ok if you don't win the DJ Showdown? I don't want to have any fighting after this." One of the contestants replied, "Miss, do you really think that we would get upset over a simple DJ showdown?" Ok, I guess not. Both DJs competed bravely, as they quickly had to eliminate songs that were inappropriate for school. The audience calmly sang along to every song, and the contest went off without a hitch. I collected the votes, and class ended before I could tally them.

The next period I had the 6th graders and at the end of class there was a crazy mess. I told them that they could not go to lunch until they cleaned up, but they were just staring at me blankly. This continued for several minutes, with only one suck up kid cleaning the room (yes, if we went back 15 years, I would be that kid). Then one girl suggested, "I think that we would do better if we had some background music." I let them put on a Reggaeton song of slightly questionable content and they started cleaning like maniacs. The entire room was spotless in less than a minute and one of the girls shouted jubilantly, "Miss, this song is inspiring us!"

As the sixth graders were leaving, the room was stormed by an army of 7th grade boys. They couldn't wait another minute for the results of the DJ Showdown. Since only ten kids bothered to vote, tabulating the results was easy. I announced the winner, and he looked at me in a stunned silence. He couldn't believe that he had had the good fortune to win the DJ Showdown. Finally, when he regained speaking capabilities, he whispered, "I must be the best DJ in the entire school!"

I would judge 25-year-old Jill if my honors class had not done Spanish MASH just yesterday.

In Which Google Is A Fountain of Youth Akin to Mormon Midsingles Events

Click here to have google guess your age and gender.

My results:

Your categories
Below you can review a summary of the interests and inferred demographics that Google has associated with your cookie. You can remove or edit your categories at any time.
Arts & Entertainment - Music & Audio - Urban & Hip-Hop - Rap & Hip-Hop*
Arts & Entertainment - TV & Video - Online Video
Beauty & Fitness - Hair Care
News - Politics
People & Society - Family & Relationships - Family - Parenting

* What the? I guess work related research has finally caught up with me.

Your demographics
We infer your age and gender based on the websites you've visited. You can remove or edit these at any time.
Age: 18-24 *
Gender: Female
* YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good one, South Carolina

I feel like this is the equivalent of me reading Korean spelled phonetically.