Somewhere North of the Rainbow

Two Seminary Classes and a Funeral

2010-03-17T12:16:00.002-05:00

It's just one of those days. Today I subbed in early morning seminary, came home, couldn't find my phone, went back to church to look for it, came home again, got everyone off to work and school, worked on the home study seminary assignment to hand out to my class tonight, assembled a batch of funeral potatoes, stuck them in the oven, dressed for a funeral, went (with the potatoes) to said funeral, played the organ at the funeral, and came back here to a messy kitchen and a home study seminary assignment that still needs work.

So what am I doing now? It starts with a B and rhymes with "clogging." :-P

Actually it has been a good day in many ways. It probably looks like I'm always subbing in early morning seminary, since that's what I was doing last time I blogged, but in reality we have a very good early morning teacher who is almost always there--except for when she's sick or out of the country, which almost never happens. Except now, of course.

So it's a rare treat for me to get to teach the early morning kids. And today we got to read the "best" chapter of the whole Book of Mormon--3 Nephi 11, where the Savior comes to the people in the Americas. I hate getting all teary when I bear my testimony, especially to a bunch of teenagers who just look at me funny, but what an awesome opportunity to testify of the reality of our Savior and the truthfulness of the prophecies of His coming.

The funeral was for a great man who had given countless hours of service to his family and to members of the Church (and to others, I'm sure). One of his lasting legacies to our congregation here is the chapel we use today that was built under his watch years ago when he was bishop.

And home study seminary...These kids are the coolest of the cool. They don't just show up in the morning and sleep through class. They do homework and read the scriptures on their own. I know they're reading their scriptures and thinking about the material because I see what they write on their homework.

To add to this...I just got a phone call from a dear friend from college. It was fun chatting with her for a while. (I know I'm warped today because I would never, ever normally call anyone a "dear friend." "Good friend," maybe. "Old friend," yeah, I'd use that too. But "dear friend"? What's with me? Am I going to start talking about everyone being "special" now??)

Anyway, it's natural to kind of surf along on a spiritual high, given all the opportunities I've had today to serve. It is also unfortunately easy to feed that little voice in my head that says, "But what about me? I'm spending all this time helping other people and doing church work, but when do I get what I want?" Right now that voice is being quiet for once. Maybe that's the kind of thing Joseph Smith meant when he said we should "waste and wear out" our lives in the service of God.

I don't doubt that the little impish "me me me" voice will come back; it always has before. And I don't mean that we shouldn't take care of ourselves and our own families as we serve others. But right now I am happy and at peace.

Good and Bad

2010-03-05T11:29:00.007-06:00

There are a few things running around my brain (yeah, that's a first, isn't it?) that I think I can sum up by describing the good as well as the bad about them.

1. Our temperatures have been inching into the 40's. That is, they're on their way up from temperatures in the 20's and lower.

The good: It's warm! Spring must be coming! The snow is melting off! The roads are clearing off! It is so amazing to see the streets in our neighborhood again, after having them covered with ice and snow all winter.

The bad: The low temperatures still get below freezing, so places where the water pools from the melt-off get really icy. And of course those are the places the dog wants to go when I walk him.

Bottom line: But I can't complain much. Except for those areas (admittedly, they're all in the best walking spots) the roads are clear and dry and beautiful.

2. We're learning the song "Follow the Prophet" in Primary.

The good: It's a fun song with a great message, and the kids love it. And to shake things up, I taught them to stand up every time we sing the words "Follow the Prophet." That gets their wiggles out.

The bad: I've discovered that I am not as good at sitting down and popping back up when we sing "Follow the Prophet" as I used to be. Actually, last time I tried to pull myself out of my seat in time with the music, I'm sure the chair pulled back. Where did those Primary kids get all their energy?

Bottom line: Common sense says that the Primary chorister (me) can't jump up and down all through the song anyway. Someone has to hold still and lead the music. That's what I'll tell everyone, anyway.

3. Subbed as the early morning seminary teacher today and brought bread, fresh and warm from the breadmaker, for a treat.

The good: The bread was a hit.

The bad: Bread makes crumbs. Crumbs have to be vacuumed. Also, the tables have to be cleaned up and broken down on Fridays after class.

Bottom line: I should have thought of all this before I dismissed the kids and let them all run off.

More good: My teenage son did not run off. I was his ride home. He helped clean up and vacuum. Also one of the dads came back and helped with the tables.

More bad: Teenage son expects to be handsomely rewarded now. I think he is already handsome, so I'm not worried.

4. Still reading books for Whitney Award academy voting.

The good: Having a marvelous time! And I've picked up a few books that I wouldn't have otherwise, which has made the adventures that much better. I've been reading and experiencing and feeling some new things and getting out the same old rut I always seem to be in. And I have to say, so far I'm really impressed with the quality of these books. I think LDS fiction as a whole has come a long way.

The bad: Getting in a new rut? Reading too many books?

Bottom line: Always trying to keep a balance, and always thinking I should be able to do more than I really can. But sure loving the reading. :-)

God Is Good. So What's Wrong With Me?

2010-02-24T19:47:00.004-06:00

A few years ago I was asked to play the piano at a baptism at our church. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary; our ward was historically a high-baptizing one, and when you're one of only a few ward members who play the piano, you have to expect to help out with these things sometimes. This one was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon, but since our family didn't have anything else planned I didn't think it would be a problem for me to hop over to the church for an hour to play for the baptism.

Well, the problem came when I remembered the baptism in the morning, but flat-out forgot about it by the afternoon. And it wasn't as if we were doing anything important or special; I was just hanging out, and then looked at the clock (which now said the baptism was half over) and it suddenly dawned on me that I was supposed to be somewhere else.

It is not a good thing to miss an event where you were supposed to play the piano, because that leaves the other people stranded. If you were scheduled to give a prayer, and missed the meeting, someone else could probably give the prayer. But it isn't always easy to come up with someone else to play the piano at the last minute when the scheduled pianist flakes out. So I wasn't feeling too good about myself as I quickly changed into a skirt and flew off to the chapel. I'd really, really blown it this time.

But, lo and behold, when I arrived, there was someone else at the piano. Another piano player in the ward, Sister W., had gone just to watch the baptism, but (as she told me later) she felt like she should bring her big hymn book along. Sure enough, her services were indeed needed at the piano. So she played everything as it had been planned, and the service went quite smoothly. Despite my shortcomings, the Lord in His tender mercy had provided another pianist.

Which has always left me wondering. . . why was Sister W. the one who received the inspiration? Why wasn't I inspired to look at the clock sooner, for example? Frankly, I don't have any good answers for that one. It might be that He did prompt me to get myself to the baptism on time, but I was so busy goofing off I didn't catch it. Or perhaps I was angry about something and was not receptive to the Spirit right then. Then again, there may have been a reason why I needed to be home at that time instead of at the baptism. (If so, I don't know what it was. But it's possible. We don't always know.) Or there may have been a reason why Sister W. needed to be the one who played at that baptism.

Learning to heed the promptings of the Spirit and allowing the Lord to work in our lives is one of those vital things that we must learn here on Earth. And yet as we do so, it's so easy to start adding our own interpretations and conclusions to what we receive: I'm supposed to do this thing because of this reason (which the Lord never actually stated, but makes sense to us). Or, because I have this problem, and I'm trying to live the way I should, God should help me fix it this way. And sometimes we can get pretty frustrated when we want--or expect--to see the hand of the Lord in our lives in ways that it just isn't being manifested.

The thing is, unless God tells us, we don't always know why the Lord does some things or why He asks us to do certain things. We may come up with reasons that make sense to us, but in the end, we just don't know. We may expect that God will bless us with a certain insight or wisdom or reward or answer because it makes sense to us, but what is our limited vision compared with God's? He sees the whole picture. He knows the end from the beginning, and His wisdom and perspective are infinite. We only see a small portion of the whole, and without God's help we are limited to our own meager understandings to make sense of it.

But if we truly put our trust in the Lord, and humbly heed His promptings, we need not fear. Things may not work out as we would have chosen for ourselves with our limited understanding, but He will make all things work together for our good.

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7)

The Whitney Finalists and Why You Should Read Them

2010-02-18T11:04:00.006-06:00

It's that time of year again! For those of you not familiar with the Whitney Awards, they're given each year to honor novels by LDS authors. Many of these are books with Latter-day Saint themes, but quite a few are on the national market as well. The books are nominated by readers (that's us) throughout the year; those books receiving enough nominations (currently 5 or more) go before a panel of judges who read each of the books in a given category and vote on the top 5. These "top 5" were announced as finalists at the beginning of February.

For those of us who weren't on the judging panels, this is where the fun begins. Many LDS authors, publishers, and others involved with LDS books are on the Whitney Academy, and we get to read the books chosen as finalists and vote on the winners in each of the categories. (Yep, I'm on the academy--go to www.whitneyawards.com/academy.html and if you squint hard enough, you will find my name on the list there in itty bitty letters. :-)

It's a lot of reading to squeeze in to just a couple of months' time, but I've been having so much fun trying to hunt down copies of these books and making time to read them. Most of the nationally released books are available through our public library here in Wisconsin, and I had an Amazon gift certificate just begging me to use it to buy some of the other books I couldn't get locally. (Yeah, it had to beg me pretty hard...) I've ordered the other books through Interlibrary Loan; ILL hasn't been able to find a couple of titles, but they're usually pretty helpful at hunting down all these LDS titles that one can most often find in Utah libraries and bookstores.

To be honest, I probably won't get to read all of these books before the deadline. But I hope to at least read the ones in my favorite categories so I can vote on those. If I have time, I'll add in my next favorite categories. Most of the categories are really my "favorite" in some way or another, so I really hope to get lots of reading done.

If you visit www.whitneyawards.com/ you can click on a printable PDF with all the finalist books listed in their respective categories, with the author's name, publisher, and ISBN. It's very handy for taking to the library and asking them to order Interlibrary Loan books for you.

So why should you read these books? First off, while there are other good books out there by LDS authors that did not make the list, the ones on the list have been recommended by readers and voted on by judges familiar with the category. I was on one of the judging panels last year, and we began with many more books to chose from than the ones that ultimately made the finals. Personally I enjoyed reading most of them, but the finalists had that special "something" that pushed them over the top. So if you're looking for something good to read by an LDS author, the books on this list will all be good reads.

Second, for all you LDS authors out there reading this, we need to keep up with the other books on the market--particularly the "best" ones. We need to know what's out there and what people are reading. In that respect, I admit that sometimes I prefer to read a poorly written book so I can feel proud of myself for being able to write better than that (yeah, I know, that's a horrible attitude to have; I admit it), but what really inspires me to stretch and improve my own writing is to see the great things that others are doing with theirs. To that end, of course we should be reading other books as well. But, particularly if we are writing for the LDS market, we shouldn't lose sight of what others are doing there.

So there you go. Enjoy your reading, everyone! And don't forget, you can also nominate books published in 2010 for the Whitney Awards next year, again at www.whitneyawards.com/. In fact, I just nominated one myself. It's a good book and I wouldn't want it to be overlooked when awards time next year rolls around.

A Not-So-Glamorous Missionary Opportunity

2010-02-09T18:16:00.006-06:00

Today I bribed The Teenager with pizza in exchange for snowblowing the driveway. (A little bribery can be a good thing sometimes, and everyone's happy in the end.) While he did the honors, I shoveled the sidewalk and the porch. An unfortunate side effect of this was that my nose started to run by the time we went inside. I don't know what it is about being out in the cold that makes my nose drip, or other people's noses drip. I guess it's just one of those things.

Well, The Teenager was a real trooper and cleaned everything right up, including the big mound of snow left by the snowplow at the end of our driveway when it plowed our street. So now it was time for me to pay up.

I hurried off to the pizza place in the shopping center down the street. I didn't have any Kleenexes in the car, but since my nose was just dripping a little and not running like a hose I wasn't worried. I parked the car, went inside, briskly gave my order, and then turned my head downward so my nose wouldn't be too obvious. And, of course, I had to look down to count out my money. So I really did have a good reason not to look at the cashier.

But she noticed my ring. "What does that stand for?" she asked.

Well, I guessed she wasn't asking about my wedding ring, so she must have meant my CTR ring. "Choose the Right," I said brightly.

"Choose the Right," she repeated, with a question in her voice. And suddenly I realized the motto must sound very political to people who aren't familiar with it. (Choose the right? Or choose the left?)

The seminary teacher in me took over. I looked her in the eye--my nose still glistening--gave what I intended to be a wise smile, and said, "Make good choices."

She seemed to think that was OK. At least she didn't respond with, "Ewww, your nose is running." I paid her for the pizza and she said to have a good evening or something.

As I drove home with our car smelling like pepperoni pizza, I thought of the shield shape of the CTR logo and how making right choices really is a shield or protection to us. In seminary we're reading about Captain Moroni and how he prepared his people to defend their land, families, and liberties in part by providing them with breastplates and shields to protect them against the attacks of their enemies. Making right choices based on eternal truths really will hold us steady and keep us strong in so many ways.

So when I got home, I made a couple of right choices. I surrendered the pizza to The Teenager. And then I blew my nose. I feel better now.

Is He Here Yet?

2010-02-04T16:43:00.001-06:00

I'm waiting at the ophthalmologist's office. All I have to say is, it sure was nice of them to hurry and get my pupils dilated so I can wait, with my eyes seeing all weird, while the doc visits with not one, but two other patients.

Fortunately I can still read things like e-mail. . . or blogs. . . as long as I keep my glasses off and concentrate on focusing But if I try to leave my chair and take off somewhere, I just might get lost and never be able to find my way back.

One of the aides just offered me something to drink. "Coffee? Juice? Melted snow from the parking lot?" Well, OK, I'm kidding about that last one. There is no melted snow here; it hasn't been above freezing for many days. That's something about the frozen North: it's frozen.

But I digress. Of course, looking around at my surroundings--an examination room that I can't see clearly anyway--I am not sure what I am digressing from. There's a big round thing on a shelf that's staring at me; that's probably an eye model. There are little boxes of things I can't read. A mirror I can't see in. An orange thing on the wall that looks like a target, except it's missing the point values. Two phones. A trashcan. A big Thing with lenses and a chin rest that I've had my eyes checked on a zillion times before, but I've never thought to ask what it was called. A different thing on a shelf that's yellow and looks like Pikachu. No, not too much interesting going on here.

Actually I thought the doc would be in here before now, so I'm rambling and wondering how I'm going to finish this--short of saying "He's here!" Because he isn't. And also because when he finally comes in, do you really think I'm going to make him wait while I type HE'S HERE? Well, I guess I could, but I'd rather just finish and go home.

By the way...he's here!!

NOT!

Am I Not a Man? The Dred Scott Story, by Mark L. Shurtleff

2009-11-11T20:23:00.003-06:00

I graduated from college with a degree in history, and have taught American history and written numerous test questions over various issues in American history. But I have to admit that I didn’t know much about Dred Scott before I read Mark L. Shurtleff’s Am I Not a Man? The Dred Scott Story, newly released by Valor Publishing Group. (Disclosure: I received an advance reader’s edition of the book from the publisher, with the expectation that I would review the book.)

I knew the basics—the kind of thing you read in American history textbooks. Dred Scott was a slave in the years before the Civil War, and lived with his master in a free state for several years. Because slavery was illegal in the free states, he sued for his freedom on that basis: once free, always free.

At first this was granted by the court. But then—as we see in the opening chapter of Am I Not a Man? --his owner had that decision reversed. Eventually the case Dred Scott v. Sanford went all the way to the Supreme Court. Here the court delivered a stunning verdict that slavery could not be outlawed in any state, because to do so would be to deprive owners of their property. The American ideal that all men were created equal did not apply to blacks. As a result, the Missouri Compromise, which had been keeping the slave and free states in an uneasy balance for the last few decades, was unconstitutional. The slave issue continued to spiral out of control from that point, and the Civil War began only a few years later.

So that’s what we get in the basic history books. But Am I Not a Man? shows us Dred Scott and his family as real people, torn apart by injustice. It shows some of the background of the slave question, the history of Dred Scott’s family and the first family who owned him (who were shown to be good and caring people, by the way). It shows Dred’s faith in the American system of justice all the way to the point where it completely betrayed him by declaring that as a black and a slave he had no rights.

The book does not quite read like a history book, although it is full of information and quotes from real individuals. Neither does it really read like a novel. It’s something in between: something a reader can learn from, and something with historical information, but probably not something a scholar can definitively quote from because scenes have been dramatized and to some extent fictionalized. Chapter notes would definitely have been helpful; in any given scene, I wondered how much dramatization had occurred. However, there are also long strings of narrative that simply explain background situations; these are the parts that read more like a history book and less like a story.

The action of the book begins at the crucial event of Dred’s being arrested and returned to slave status. The pivotal event is a great place to start. Then it explores several backstory lines, and returns periodically to the “real” story of Dred trying to regain his freedom. Dates are given at the beginning of each chapter, and I understand a chronology is available in the final printed version. Still, there is a dizzying array of events and people spanning multiple centuries in non-chronological order for the reader to keep track of. That said, it creates a nice effect of showing the contributions of many individuals to Dred's final triumph--or defeat.

The story of Dred Scott, slavery, and the conflicts that led to the Civil War are important for Americans to understand, and this book does a fine job of laying these out. Yes, these things are in our past, and there are few people who would support slavery today. But it did happen. It is a part of our past and we need to understand what went wrong. Besides explaining the ongoing issues of civil rights and other difficulties blacks encounter and overcome today, it reminds us that Americans—even those who consider themselves enlightened, pious individuals—can support causes that are terribly wrong. And no amount of legislation and trying to keep the peace can change whether something is wrong.

A Man of His Word, Or, OU Really Should Have Won

2009-09-10T12:58:00.003-05:00

Let's face it: the Sooners really, really should have trounced the Cougars in the big game last weekend. I mean, this is the Sooners we're talking about. The Sooners live, breathe, and die football. They have little bitty footballs flowing through their veins. I'm an OU alum myself, and even though I was never interested in football as a sport, I couldn't help but get excited about it when I lived on campus. It was just something in the air. (Or maybe it came from living across the street from the stadium.)

But OU has been a consistently strong team and has brought home several national championships. BYU won the national championship once, in a fluke season when no one could figure out a good reason not to give it to them. (Yes, I said that! Boomer Sooner!)

This situation, in which the Sooners really SHOULD HAVE won, sets the scene for an interesting tale from Eagle Mountain, Utah. Much of Utah, of course, is Cougar country. But Alen Howard, a teacher at Rockwell Charter School in Eagle Mountain, is a graduate of OU and a true Sooners fan. (I know this because he is also one of my many awesome brothers-in-law.) Knowing the sport and the teams like he does, his prediction of an OU win didn't seem unreasonable to, well, anyone. (At least, to anyone who wasn't a Cougar.) And before the game, he made a wager with his class that if BYU won, he'd eat a cricket.

Guess who had to eat a cricket.

You have to agree, Mr. Howard did keep his word to his class. Of course, I'm sure his kids have just loved the whole thing, and they all think he's really cool because he ate a cricket in class. And I'm sure they love having the video up on YouTube to show everyone.

But twenty years from now, they won't remember specific lectures their teacher gave, or most of the information he tested them over. They may not even remember their teacher's face (except from re-watching the YouTube video). But they'll remember that he ate a bug in class. And they'll remember that he kept his promise to them.

Well, there's your inspirational thought for the day. Enjoy the video!

BOOMER SOONER!!

GO UTES!!!!!

Altared Plans, by Rebecca Cornish Talley

2009-08-26T15:49:00.003-05:00

As a teenager, part of me thought teen romance novels were really stupid. After all, falling in love as a teenager and scoring a date to the prom certainly were not end-alls to everything in life. Besides, as soon as the hero and the heroine are introduced and the sparks fly, you already know how the story’s going to end. It doesn't matter what else happens; you know they'll be together in the end. Why read a whole book about it? (Incidentally, there is a reason why I was voted “Best Scholar” of my graduating class, and not “Most Romantic.”)

But part of me enjoyed reading teen romances anyway. I liked the idea that there was someone out there who cared deeply about the heroine (and maybe that meant that there was someone out there who would care deeply about me, too). And I have to admit I was fascinated with scenes that actually showed how guys and girls acted when they were interested in each other and how relationships were built. (Yeah, that’s me again—taking something romantic and turning it into an educational opportunity.)

I bring all this up because as a teenager, I also was very curious about what it would be like to date LDS guys with the objective of marrying in the temple. After all, I knew that as an LDS girl, that was supposed to be my ultimate goal as far as romance went. So I think I would have really liked Altared Plans by Rebecca Talley, if it had been available a few+ years ago. It’s now available in bookstores.

Altared Plans is a fun romantic novel that does in fact involve students at BYU dating with the objective of marrying in the temple. Books with characters at this stage of life can be hard to classify, since marriage involves adults, but most adult readers are older than typical BYU singles. Altared Plans has been listed as a young adult novel. And while I enjoyed reading it myself, and I’m sure many other adults would enjoy it as well, I think it would best resonate with young adult readers looking forward to this time in their lives. It does address some serious issues such as marrying outside the temple, the importance of commitment, and dealing with nonmember parents and painful break-ups, but the whole tone is light-hearted. The banter between the characters is great, the dialogue is well-executed (especially important for young adult readers) and the whole thing is fun.

The book starts with Caitlyn’s wedding day—or, with what is supposed to be Caitlyn’s wedding day. She arrives at the temple only to find that the groom has decided to date someone else instead. Without anything better to do, Caitlyn returns for more school at BYU, but with an enormous chip on her shoulder against the whole dating scene. This eases with time, and with some good masculine attention. But she’s still afraid of trusting her heart to anyone again.

That’s the gist of the story. I could discuss individual characters and twists to the plot, but—hey, it’s a romance. You can guess how it will end.

I would have liked the relationship between the hero and heroine to be fleshed out more; I felt like their mind games took precedence over a real courtship. But then again, I’m probably the only female in the world who thinks Bella should have just decided she wasn’t going to date until college and then skipped the Edward thing altogether. So all you romantics out there, do take what I say with a grain of salt. Or two.

And enjoy Altared Plans. I did. And while I was happy for the characters in the end, I was sorry the book was over.

Blueberries for Sal and My Lifelong Dream

2009-08-14T23:39:00.004-05:00

Today I fulfilled a lifelong dream: I picked blueberries. Now, it's not my only dream, and it's certainly not the only thing I ever want to accomplish. But it's something I've wanted to do since I was about four.

You see, my mom checked out Blueberries for Sal from the library for me when I was little, and we read it together. And I remember being completely enthralled with the story of Sal and her mother picking blueberries together. Her mom had a big bucket, and Sal had a little bucket. Sal picked her own blueberries, and they fell plunk! into her pail. And she could eat the berries, too. In fact, she ate all three berries in her bucket.

The pictures in the book were beautiful, and Sal and her mom looked so happy. By the time the story was over, I knew what my mom and I needed to do.

We had to go pick blueberries.

However, there was a small problem with my plan. We lived in Oklahoma, and there were no blueberries there. It wasn't just that we couldn't go right that minute, or it wasn't the right season. We couldn't go, period. Ever.

The idea that I just couldn't do something I wanted to, no matter how much I wanted to do it, was quite a concept. After all, I still believed kisses made owies better.

Fast forward a few years to today. I'm, well, a lot older now. My own kid outgrew the Sal book a long time ago. And I don't live in Oklahoma anymore. Here in Wisconsin, there are blueberries to pick.

And when friends invited me to go berry-picking with them, I figured I at least owed it to myself--my four-year old self is still in there somewhere--to go pick blueberries just like Sal.

And you know, in a way it was as magical as I'd imagined. The berries are sweet and plump, and come right off the bush when you pick them. They're full of good flavor, unlike the bland ones from the grocery store. I'd tried the grocery store ones occasionally over the years, and always wondered if blueberries were really as good as they were supposed to be.

They are. The real ones are.

Another interesting parallel is that Sal met a baby bear when she picked blueberries. I did not meet a bear today, but I did manage to bring home a tiny slug who was hiding in my berry bucket. I even picked it up and let it crawl on me, and I forgot to be grossed out.

Now that's some real magic.

The Day I Locked My Keys (And My Husband's Keys) in the Car

2009-06-04T15:40:00.003-05:00

Author Janet Kay Jensen is running a contest at her blog, which you can find at http://www.janetkayjensen.blogspot.com/, where readers are sharing stories about times that they've locked their keys in the car. After writing out my sad story in Janet's comment trail, I looked at it and thought...hey, this looks like a blog entry. So, my apologies to anyone who has already read or will read this on Janet's blog, but here is (drum roll) THE STORY OF THE DAY I LOCKED MY KEYS (AND MY HUSBAND'S KEYS) IN THE CAR--with some paragraphing and other edits added in that I couldn't make when this Blog Entry was only a Comment.

*********
I have some fun stories about times (yes, multiple times) that I've locked myself out of our house or apartment over the years. And times when I've "lost" my keys and had people looking everywhere for them, including the dumpster, only to find them later in my coat pocket.

But the time I actually locked all of our keys in the car, we were about to hike the Narrows at Zions National Park. I didn't have any pockets in what I was wearing, so I'd already put my keys away carefully in the car. My husband let me use his key to open the trunk for some last-minute rummaging around--making sure we had everything, making sure I was wearing the shoes I wanted, and so forth. I set the key down while I took care of my business. When I finished, there was a split second between the time that I slammed the trunk lid and the time that it actually latched where I suddenly realized that I'd left our only key in the trunk! Of course, the split second was not long enough for me to have a second realization that I really should stop the lid from closing and grab that key!

I felt very sheepish as I told my husband what I'd done. Our solution? We went on our hike anyway.

But when we came back, we had to involve the park service in unlocking our car. And they had to involve a highly technical device known as a coat hanger. It left little scratches on our newly tinted windows, and the fancy security locks were tricky to get past. But they did finally get our car open.

New Glasses

2009-05-12T09:42:00.002-05:00

I ordered some new glasses last week. I've worn glasses since grade school, so I've been through this ordeal several times over the years. And I have to say that I've never really enjoyed it. Actually, it's kind of scary to choose something that's about to become a part of my face.

At the optical shop last week, I did everything I was supposed to do. I found several frames that I liked, tried them on in front of a mirror, narrowed down my choices, and finally settled on the one I liked best. It helped when the saleslady oohed and ahhed over one frame in particular. (I have to wonder if she was ooing and ahhing over the price tag more than the style.) Well, I liked them, and I decided they looked pretty good.

But one thing I failed to take into consideration was that what I could see in the mirror at the optical shop was not actually quite in focus. They have lenses in the frames there, but they certainly weren't the same as my prescription. So, what I saw when I looked in the mirror there was slightly blurred--sort of like those hazy glamour shots that blend away your flaws and make you look like an angel on a cloud. Or something like that.

So when my new glasses came in yesterday and I tried them on, I was amazed at how crisp everything looked--including every single wrinkle and line on my face.

To be honest, I'm not sure I like these new glasses. I'm still going through the shock of seeing myself every time I pass a mirror, because I'm not used to seeing these new glasses on my face. So I can't really be sure if I like the style of the frames until I'm not surprised to see them. Meanwhile, I do like seeing the world around me in crisper detail. So I guess the new glasses are a good thing, whether or not I end up liking the frames. But I'm not sure I like seeing myself so clearly.

The Brilliant Writings of My Unconscious Body

2009-05-04T22:22:00.004-05:00

I am living proof that trying to get more done by getting less sleep just doesn't work. And until early morning seminary is over in a couple of weeks, I'm going to keep proving it. 5:30 comes awfully early every morning. In a couple of weeks I'll be getting a little more sleep.

Today I actually accomplished quite a lot, and I didn't feel sleepy at all...until I sat down to work on my book. A few paragraphs into the scene, I was nodding off.

Yeah, I know; it doesn't sound too good for an author to talk about falling asleep while writing her own book. But my book really isn't that boring, I promise. I can assert this on the basis that it doesn't always put me to sleep. Just sometimes.

Today, after snapping out of my fog, I eagerly checked my computer screen to see what I'd come up with while I was out. After all, maybe my unconscious mind had come up with something so utterly profound, or so completely creative that I'd be praised later for the brilliant insights contained in my book...someday, after it's hit all the bestseller lists and sold millions of copies.

Turns out I did actually type something during that brief moment when I was out. And now, here it is, completely uncensored and in its entirety:

dddddddddddddddddd

I still may find some way to work that in to the rest of the book, but I have a feeling I'll be cutting that line.

Does This Make Me a Twit?

2009-04-27T15:57:00.003-05:00

After months of resistance, I have finally joined the Twitter revolution.

The annual LDStorymakers writers conference was this weekend, and since it was in Utah and I was not, I wasn't able to attend this year. Fortunately, a couple of Storymakers on set up a Twitter grid that allowed them to send tweets from the conference. And so...I followed.

And even though I wasn't there, following the Twitter grid made me feel like I'd been there a little, in spirit, participating and cheering everyone on in some disembodied sort of way. Very cool. So I really have to thank all those who supplied the tweets to those of us who wanted to be there but couldn't--particularly Marsha Ward, Matthew Buckley, and Ben Crowder.

And, of course, there's this little side effect now--I now know how to Twitter and I now have an account. So I've been giving it a go. I think I've sent two whole tweets outside of the ones I sent during the LDStorymakers conference.

I was worried that Twittering would be incredibly time-consuming, sending out periodic tweets and keeping up with everyone else's. But at first glance, it seems like keeping up with the occasional tweet might actually be a lot easier than writing big blog entries and keeping up with everyone else's. (Sorry, blog fans; that's just how it is.)

We'll just have to see how this thing goes. After all, the experience of my two tweets and six followers has not yet catapulted me into the position of Supreme Twitter Guru.

So, if you're in the Twitter neighborhood, you can find me there at @katie_parker ... Yes, that underscore between "katie" and "parker" is important. No, I don't know who snagged the username without the underscore before I did. But you might get to if you try to follow her instead of me.

Seriously, though--I'm not going to say that everyone has to go Twitter now. But I will say that it might not be as crazy as I'd previously thought.

And, congratulations to the LDStorymakers for putting on a fabulous conference this year! I might not have been there personally, but I could tell it was definitely fabulous.

Way to Go, Miss California!

2009-04-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

Big kudos go to a young lady who demonstrated recently that there are things more important than even the Miss USA crown--something that she'd undoubtedly worked towards for a very long time.

During the recent Miss USA pageant, as a finalist for the crown Miss California was asked whether she thought that every state should legalize gay marriage. None of the questions for the finalists were meant to be easy, but this one was a loaded cannon. Her answer, quite simply, was that she believed that marriage was between a man and a woman.

Since that time, she's been razzed, first off, for stating her personal beliefs in such a forum as the Miss USA pageant. (But why shouldn't she? The judge asked her what she thought. What else was she supposed to say?) She's also been razzed for not coming up with a more middle-of-the-road answer that would have pleased everyone. She was so close to winning that crown; if she'd just told the judges what they wanted to hear, she very likely could have had it. She could have said something more general, such as, "I think the states should decide this issue for themselves," and she could have been crowned Miss USA.

But even that wasn't really what she thought. Instead, she stood up for her beliefs and she called it like she saw it. After all, dumping the responsibility on the states still doesn't change the real heart of the question: Do you believe that this is what they should choose?

In an interview on the Today show, she said that she'd realized that winning the Miss USA crown wasn't God's plan for her. She went on to explain to the skeptical interviewer that the pageant outcome has opened up many opportunities for her already to share with people the idea that they should stand up for their beliefs, no matter what the consequences may be.

After all, it wasn't the woman who'd ultimately won the Miss USA title who was receiving all this publicity now. It was her, Miss California. She's now in a far better position to spread that message than she ever would have been if she'd hedged on her answer. And she knows that even though she may have offended some of the judges with her answer, she did not offend her own conscience. Nor did she offend her God.

So, way to go, Miss California! You've already made a bigger impact by staying true to your beliefs than you would have if you'd simply kissed up to the judges. Thanks for your example and for continuing to handle the situation gracefully.

A Word to the Wise

2009-01-26T13:14:00.000-06:00

Do not keep houseplants on your television set.

Especially if you're going to water them.

Especially if you're going to water them too much.

Breaking Dawn and Other Library Holds

2009-01-23T12:36:00.000-06:00

I had never been even remotely interested in vampire stories before, but I've been working my way through Stephenie Meyers's Twilight series by listening to them on CD's checked out from my local library. And, of course, there's been quite a waiting list of patrons waiting to take their turns with the CD sets--particularly with the most recent book, Breaking Dawn.

So this morning I wisely wondered if I might be able to get Breaking Dawn more quickly if I requested the print version instead. After all, the library system would have more printed copies than it would of the audiobook version.

It was a wise idea indeed. Now I can proudly tell you that, even after all these months after the book's release, I am number 146 in a queue of 147 patrons who are waiting for the print version of Breaking Dawn.

Obviously I must have something going for me, because I am not number 147.

Missionary House Rules

2009-01-22T12:56:00.000-06:00

When the missionaries in our ward moved into our house a little over a year ago, we were encouraged by our stake leaders to give the missionaries a list of rules and expectations up front. I've always thought this was a good idea. As various elders have come and gone over the months, I've added to our initial list. I always thought I was clarifying our expectations, but all I was really doing was making the thing so long that the guys weren't reading it anymore.

Since we're getting a new missionary today, I've spent some time revising and cutting the list. Rather than try to enumerate every little thing that could possibly happen, this time I've tried to keep our rules broad, clear, and simple.

Here are a few I considered, based on our now-vast experience. But they didn't make the cut, for whatever reason:

1. Squirrels are not pets.

2. Missionaries aren't allowed to have pets anyway.

3. Whether you think it's a stupid rule or not, it's our house and if we want to make a rule, you'd better keep it. (This refers to rules we make in general, not anything about the squirrel. In fact, the squirrel never made it into our house...that we know of.)

4. Keep your clothes on. I don't like to hear missionaries scream when I go into my storage room. (Note for the uninitiated: our missionaries have to go through our storage room to get to and from their bathroom.)

5. If you think you need to build a fire outside, you should consider going out tracting or doing a service project or something. Without the matches.

5.5. Yes, we realize that you have to build a fire outside if you're going to ice-glaze the interior of your igloo.

5.75. Which you built outside.

5.9. After all, what's the point of serving a mission in Wisconsin in the middle of the winter if you're not going to build an igloo with all the snow piled outside your door?

5.95. We are sorry we didn't take a picture of your igloo before it melted last year. It was truly amazing.

5.97. I really do mean this.

6. It is helpful, when you have other missionaries stay over before zone conference, if you introduce them to us when you bring them upstairs to make breakfast, and we stumble into the kitchen half-asleep before school and see all these strangers in our kitchen.

7. "Lights out at 10:30" does not mean turn off all the lights at 10:30 and then stay awake in the dark.

8. We love you guys and admire and respect you so much for taking this time out of your lives to serve the Lord and your fellow man. We know the work is not easy or even always pleasant, and it can be tough to be away from your families and loved ones at home. And we know that guys are interested in squirrels and fires and things whether they're missionaries or not. But you are doing such a great thing, and becoming great men and great leaders in the process.

Well, maybe I should put that last one on there anyway (I say oh-so-nobly). Someone once mentioned to me that if all young people would spend two years of their life in volunteer service like the LDS missionaries do, they'd have such a different picture of the world and their place in it and their need to contribute. I have to say I agree wholeheartedly.

But hey, these guys don't stop being individuals just because they wear missionary name tags. They're all one-of-a-kind, and they're all pretty cool.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-21T07:44:00.000-06:00

I was pretty excited about watching the Presidential inauguration yesterday, even though I watched the coverage on TV instead of in person, and I was mending a pair of shorts while I was watching.

(Yes, you read correctly. I needed to mend a pair of shorts in the middle of winter in Wisconsin where we just emerged from a frigid spell of temperatures of 30 below. And the reason why I needed to mend a pair of shorts in the dead of winter? Well, think about it. You think I'm going to be able to buy new ones off the rack at this time of year?)

Being something of a history junkie, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to watch a piece of history being made. And whether you agree with Barack Obama's philosophies or not, you've got to admit that the fact this man with an African name and dark skin to match was able to become President of the United States is pretty inspiring. The United States is still a land of opportunity, and it's still a place where people of all races and creeds can belong and contribute.

I was impressed with the way President Obama emphasized our need to work together as a people to put our nation back on track. He recalled the pioneer spirit that built our great nation in the first place, and the ways that so many have worked diligently and sacrificed so much to make this a land of freedom and opportunity. Now greed, laziness, and out-and-out evil have gotten us into some pretty big messes as a people, and those who suffer today are often not even those at fault. But as I listened to President Obama's speech, I felt hopeful that as a people we could turn this nation around--on principles of hard work, sacrifice, and selflessness.

However, my hope diminished quickly. In all of the interviews and news analyses that followed the broadcast on the station I was viewing, the emphasis was not on Obama's speech or on turning the country around or any of that. Instead, people seemed blinded by the fact that we now have a black man as President.

Yes, this is an exciting and inspirational moment for our country. It's the result of the sacrifices and tears of many others who hoped and fought for a brighter future for African-Americans. But it's not the end-all.

No matter what color our President is, we need to unite as a people and work together to turn our country around. We're in the middle of two wars and an unprecedented economic crisis. Schools are failing, health care is a mess, and values and work ethics are going downhill fast. It's time--past time--for us to go to work as a people. It's not time for us to rest on our laurels because of who we managed to vote into office. There's a lot of work for us to do.

And if we will do the work and make the sacrifices, we can do great things. Greater, even, than paving the way for an African-American to become President.

Proposition 8: It Affects Us All

2008-10-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

My intention is not to turn this into a political blog, but I feel this is something I must speak out on. On November 4, voters in California will be voting on a measure called "Proposition 8." This measure, if passed, will amend the California state constitution to say that only marriage between a man and a woman is legal in that state.

Now, I don't live anywhere near California. Normally I wouldn't worry about their local issues. But seeing the commotion that has ensued surrounding this issue, and some of the "unplanned" ramifications of legalizing gay marriage in other states, has made me realize that this is not something that those of us outside California can just ignore.

I am in favor of the amendment. If I were a registered voter in the state of California, I would vote "yes." That isn't to say that I think gays are subhuman or should be denied basic rights. I think the real essence of the argument boils down to whether the majority of the voters believe that homosexuality is a moral issue, or whether it is a diversity issue.

By "diversity issue," I mean that there is a movement to classify sexual orientation along with other simple divisions we see among individuals--like race, for example. They didn't talk about "diversity" so much when I was in grade school, but it's an important part of curriculum and children's programming today. Children (and adults) are taught that people come in various colors, shapes, and sizes. They have different backgrounds and customs.

And there are a lot of folks out there who lump homosexuality right in there with ethnicity. They believe that it's an integral part of their makeup. I can't say that I can't sympathize with that sentiment. We've all experienced things, good or bad, that have become a part of us and help make us who we are. To try to eliminate those inclinations can be very difficult.

But as a Christian, I have to say that this isn't where homosexuality belongs. It is a choice. It is a moral issue. And I know that people who feel that this is a part of them as much as their color is don't like to be told that they're actually making a choice (and that it's the wrong one), but that doesn't change what it is.

Alcoholics, child abusers, and drug addicts have all made choices as well. What would happen if we made child abuse legal? The possible consequences make me shudder. The same goes for numerous other choices that people can make. As a society, we cannot afford to continually legalize things that are morally wrong.

Now I know that a lot of people out there will argue with me that these things are in fact morally wrong. I know this debate will continue: is homosexuality a moral issue, or merely an issue of diversity? We as a society need to understand that it is a moral issue. I don't wish to come out and condemn anyone, and I want to stress that our Father in Heaven dearly loves ALL of His children, no matter what choices they make. But His laws do not change. Just because society leans in some particular direction does not mean that God follows them. On the contrary, if we ignore the laws of God it will be at our personal perils and at the peril of our society.

After all, God made us, and not the other way around. Don't you think He would know what would truly bring us joy?

Here are a couple of links:

The Proclamation on the Family (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

LDS Church Resource Links (lots of info here)

The Recession We Aren't In

2008-10-08T13:55:00.001-05:00

I found a page at about.com that tries to explain the difference between a recession and a depression. I say "tries" because, as the author points out, there isn't just one definition that everyone uses. But if you're curious, the link is http://economics.about.com/cs/businesscycles/a/depressions.htm

Here's hoping and praying there's some way out of this mess...but I guess, like anything else, we have to expect to face the consequences of our actions--or, in this case, the actions of some. Either way, we can't expect an easy fix just because we want one.

You Know You've Been in Primary Too Long When...

2008-10-06T11:58:00.001-05:00

...when they announce in General Conference that the Tabernacle Choir will now sing "Do..." and your brain automatically fills in "Do As I'm Doing." (Can you imagine the Tabernacle Choir singing "Do As I'm Doing" in General Conference?? That could be kind of fun, actually.)

What they were really singing was "Do What Is Right." It's one of the great hymns of the Church, but it has no actions that I know of.

October BIAM

2008-10-01T13:10:00.000-05:00

That's "Book in a Month" for the non-writer-types out there. Traditionally, participating in a BIAM means that yeah, you really pretty much drop everything in your "real life" that you can and churn out the book in your soul in 30 days. For a lot of people who don't want to drop out of real life, it just means that you set a goal for your writing and try to achieve it during the month. Tristi Pinkston is hosting a BIAM on one of her blogs at tristischallenges.blogspot.com this month. I've participated in a challenge or two of hers before, and I think it can be pretty fun, as well as motivational, to be virtually surrounded by a group of people committed to achieving great things with their writing this month. Those participating set goals at the beginning of the month, and submit their goals to the group. Tristi posts motivational messages on her blog to spur us on, and everyone participating checks in with a comment every couple of days and reports on how they're doing with those goals they set.

I'm sure Tristi would welcome you with open arms if you want to participate. And this concept might extend to other areas where we could set goals. Maybe you could host something of your own. How about LCIAM (Learn Chinese in a Month)? COACIAM (Clean Out a Closet in a Month)? POOCCIAM (Pay Off Our Credit Cards in a Month)? GROAOJAHAGSIAM (Get Rid Of All Our Junk and Have a Garage Sale in a Month)?

Maybe BIAM is easier to spell...but some of these ideas might not be too bad. How about we invite all of Congress to participate in NNTIAM (No New Taxes in a Month)?

Win a Free Copy of Room for Two by Abel Keogh!

2008-08-23T23:53:00.001-05:00

I saw this contest on Anne Bradshaw's blog, and I thought I'd pass it along. She's giving away a free signed copy of Abel Keogh's book Room for Two. All you have to do is:

Post information about the contest on your own blog, and include a link back to Anne's blog. (Which might explain why I'm posting this...)
Leave a comment on Anne's blog telling her you completed the first task.

A winner will be chosen at random on Thursday, September 4th 2008, and
announced the same day. The book will be signed and mailed directly to
the winner by the author.

Anne conducted an interview with the author Abel Keogh, available here on her blog. Here's the description of the book:

Room for Two is the true story of the year of Abel Keogh’s life following his wife’s suicide. The book begins as he steps through the door of his home and hears a gunshot echo from the bedroom. His worst fears are realized when he finds his pregnant wife dead. Their premature baby is rushed to the hospital. She dies nine days later.

Whether or not a reader is going through tough times in life, he or she will find inspiration in Room for Two. The story is gripping, compelling and heart breaking reading. Despite opposition, Keogh manages to rebuild his life and share lessons he learns from the death of Krista and baby Hope. He eventually finds forgiveness, peace, and love—enough to make room for two, allowing another woman (Julianna) into his life.

Intrigued? Me too! Good luck in the contest, but remember you're gonna have to fight me for the prize.

I Am Cinderella

2008-08-23T01:23:00.001-05:00

Well, not really. But I was reading Candace Salima's blog and saw the link to this quiz , and since it was 1 in the morning and I had nothing better to do (well, besides sleep, but who needs that?) I had to take the quiz and see which Disney princess I was. Having watched our nieces go through the Disney princess stage where EVERYTHING they owned or did or wore or said had to have something to do with princesses, I thought it would be fun to see which princess I am. Ta-da! Here's what my results said about me:

Dignified and hard working. With a gentle and soft-spoken manner you have something many people don't. Patience. Even through the moments of heartbreak you're still able to hold onto all of your hopes and dreams. Bide your time; your dream will come true.

I'm quite tickled to find out that I'm patient. That was something I didn't know. I'm pretty sure that no one else who knows me knew I was patient, either. I always thought I was just a royal procrastinator, but...patient! I like that one.

A Pitfall of Taking Videos of Your Kids

2008-08-12T19:43:00.001-05:00

Well, I've been humbled. Or rather, humiliated.

So, we've been watching some of the old videos we took of our teenager when he was much smaller. Today we watched one I'd shot in the bathroom of our apartment when this kid (today I'll call him "Albert") was about a year old. See, I'd had some sinus problems and had spent several days running to the bathroom for toilet paper and then blowing my nose rather loudly. And little Albert had figured out that you were supposed to unroll the toilet paper, hold it up to your face, and blow raspberries. It was really cute, so of course I wanted to capture it on film for posterity. So I put him in the bathroom by the toilet and turned on the camera. I figured he'd eventually find the toilet paper roll and do his little trick.

This much I remembered, even today (years later). The rest I'd forgotten.

On the videotape, little Albert did find the toilet paper and blow his adorable little raspberry. And then he found the toilet.

Little Albert opened the lid and inspected the potty for a moment. Then he reached his hand toward the bowl. Before he could complete the deed, I told him "No-no" behind the camera in that stern mommy voice you use for your little kids.

And continued to film him.

Startled, he stopped and looked at me for a moment. Then he turned back to the toilet and proceeded to play in the water.

And what did I do, as the mother of this precious little baby splashing in the toilet? I laughed and kept filming.

"Someday I'm going to show this to your girlfriend when you bring her home in a few years," I told him from behind the camera. "And I'm going to show it to all your kids."

Meanwhile, in the present, the much-older (much, much older) me winced and cringed and sprouted several more gray hairs. I could not believe that this lady taking this video (who was she, anyway?) was letting her baby play in the toilet--and was filming it! And laughing!

"All your kids are going to say, 'Ewwww, Daddy played in the toilet when he was little!'" the lady taking the video crowed.

"GET YOUR BABY'S HANDS OUT OF THE TOILET!!" I screamed to the videotape.

"I hoped you washed my hands," the teenage Albert said levelly, looking me straight in the eye (which he can do now, since he's taller than I am). Did I mention how many, many years ago this videotape was made? And how very much older and wiser I am now?

Thankfully, the toilet scene ended. But the next scene was worse: the idiot lady taking the video had decided to repeat the scene from a different angle, presumably for the sake of artistry. We now had an overhead view of the toilet, and we got a stunning look at the little ripples Baby Albert was delightedly making in the bowl.

"Why were you standing in the bathtub, Mom?" Teenage Albert asked me. "Do you think you'd washed my hands yet?"

"Do you think it mattered?" I asked through gritted teeth.

Much as I'd apparently planned to use this video for blackmail in the future, I vowed right then and there that Albert's children will never, ever, ever see this video. They may think it's funny to watch Daddy play in the toilet, but that's not the point. Albert's future girlfriend and wife might think it's funny, too, but that's not the point either.

The point is that these people will find out that Grandma actually let her baby play in the toilet. And that is not something they need to know.

I do believe we'll be editing these videos. Censorship is alive and well today--at least at my house.

Overheard in Primary

2008-08-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

From the mouths of babes...

Last week we were talking about baptism. The gal running sharing time asked the junior Primary, "Just because you get baptized, does that mean you get to live with Heavenly Father? What else do you have to do?"

And one little voice responded, quite seriously, "Die."

(Sorry...ever since I was called to be Primary music leader, I've had Primary on the brain!)

Crashed Computer

2008-08-06T15:17:00.000-05:00

Last week my computer crashed. I didn't have it all week. So I didn't post anything here. I used my newfound time to do things like, oh, clean out the file cabinet and weed the yard. Stuff like that. Useful things.

I hate to say I need my computer to crash more often, but...well, I won't say it. I just won't say it.

Pay Attention to those Magazine Renewal Notices!

2008-07-21T15:47:00.001-05:00

We've subscribed to Scientific American for a couple of years now. We've tried a few different science magazines, and found them all to be either too technical, too dumbed-down, or on topics that aren't of interest to our family. But we've found SciAm to be a good fit for us.

However, like any magazine, they've been sending us the standard "WARNING!! YOUR SUBSCRIPTION IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE!!" letters for the past several months, about six months before expiration actually occurs. And they kindly offer us a 1-year renewal for $34.97. Or we can get a 3-year renewal for $88, which comes to $29.33 a year.

The subscription rate seems kind of high, and I clearly remember paying quite a bit less for it when we initially subscribed. Sure enough, when you visit their website, they offer a 1 year subscription for--get this--$24.97.

Bizarre, isn't it?

Maybe I'll just let that subscription expire, and then re-subscribe at the lower rate.

Primary Music Review Ideas

2008-07-18T09:52:00.000-05:00

At long last, here is the list of Primary music review ideas I promised to post. (See my previous post for the background on that.) Not that the ideas are anything profound, but hey--if they help someone with their calling, they're worth sharing. Since ours was a student stake, we had lots of Primary leaders who hadn't worked in Primary before and were scared to death of the upcoming sacrament meeting program.

You have to imagine it typed up in a cutesy font that Blogger doesn't support. Also notice the liberal use of exclamation points (!!!)

Ideas for Music Leaders on Coping with Reviewing for the Primary Sacrament Meeting Program!

Practicing Songs:
For songs that they don’t know so well, do some intensive work on these. Make sure they have an understanding of the song (re-teach it if you have to—it does no good to practice a song if they don’t know the words) and then have them sing it and sing it and sing it. Some ideas for making the repetitions interesting are:
· Stop and Go Signs
· just boys or just girls sing
· Sing as loud as you can (within reason!)
· Invite a special guest to listen and comment (hopefully they will try hard and the comments will be good!)
· or have a puppet listen to them sing and comment; a puppet can be easier to take critiques from if they don’t sing well, and can be a lot of fun
· make a tape recording of them singing the song and play it for them; try to make a better recording if the first one didn’t sound so good
· If they need lots of practice on remembering the words, and you’ve been using visual aids, take one (or more) away each time they sing the song. This makes them have to only memorize a little at a time, and meanwhile, they’ve repeated the song lots of times and are learning it!
· Another idea is to have different groups of children learn different lines of the song. Have a teacher with each group who can practice the line with them a couple of times. Then sing the song. When their line comes up, their group sings it. Then switch lines between the groups.
· Tell the children you are listening for the best singers, or the ones who are trying the hardest, and give them a small prize like a sticker or a certificate. Or give them a privilege like letting them pick the next song or hold the next sign.
· Let the children take turns standing up front and leading the song… You can use this as a “best singers” reward, too
· Anything else you can think of! The idea is to keep your practice times interesting and enjoyable, so the children will love the songs and their messages!

Here are some other ideas:
· Make games out of the review process. Choose ‘n’ review games are great to review songs that they know pretty well. (Don’t ignore these songs! They forget them quickly if they don’t sing them often! And they love to sing songs they know.)
· Enlist the parents. Send copies of the words, or copies of the songs home with the children (or pass them out in Relief Society). Ask the parents to sing the songs with the children at home. (Some will, some won’t.)
· One ward last year made a tape of the songs they were singing for the program (from the Primary CD’s and the Hymn CD’s when needed) and gave copies to all the children. The loop of songs was recorded over and over on both sides of the tape so that the tape could be left on without having to stop and rewind it. It worked well because the children loved the tapes and played them often at home. (Present-day Katie's note: Yeah, this was written long enough ago that cassette tapes weren't completely obsolete.)
· If you have any other wonderful ideas that have worked well for you, please pass them along! Let me know and I’ll either send out another list like this or include the ideas in a future stake training meeting. Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for the wonderful work you are doing! The children are so important, and the songs they learn in Primary are something they can keep with them always.

Love,
Katie Parker
University 3rd Stake Primary Music Leader
(Present-day Katie's note: but not anymore!)

A Letter from Myself

2008-07-07T15:57:00.001-05:00

OK, OK. In case you are wondering, it is no longer below zero here--despite what my perpetual last blog entry might indicate. No, we are actually inching up into the 80's. (I love the summers here in Wisconsin!) And so, at the request of my many readers (all six of you), I am venturing forth with a new blog post for your reading enjoyment.

I've been trying to organize all the zillions of little documents I have on my computer. Being both a writer and a history aficionado, I love to write lots of stuff and then stash it all away for historical purposes. The result is, well, folders on my hard drive full of documents I haven't read in years. It's easy enough to just ignore them, but lately I've been wanting to make some sense of the mess. So I've been going through them.

And interestingly enough, I just found a letter with ideas for reviewing songs in Primary to help the kids prepare for the upcoming program. I've been serving as the Primary chorister in our ward for the past couple of months, and the program is looming ever closer and I've been wondering how we're going to get those sweet kids to regurgitate all those songs in an efficient manner. And, of course, we don't want them to just regurgitate them, but to love them and internalize their messages. We have about 20 minutes a week to teach them 9 songs. The calling can be fun, but the challenge of getting them to sing all those songs well enough to perform in sacrament meeting can be daunting.

Anyway, this is the third time in my life that I have served as Primary chorister. I also served as the stake Primary music leader in our student stake in Salt Lake City several years ago. So, although callings can always be a challenge, this one is at least something I've encountered before and worked through multiple times.

Well, back to my little story. So I found this letter with the music ideas, and I eagerly read it through looking for "new" ideas for keeping the songs from getting boring as we review them. I was wondering where it had originally come from when I read the signature at the end:

"Love,
Katie Parker
University 3rd Stake Primary Music Leader"

It was a letter from myself! Little did I know when I wrote that letter nine years ago for the music leaders in my stake, my "older self" would be reading and appreciating the ideas in it as well.

My younger self had no idea what life would be like for her in nine years, but she would have been pleased to know that she and her family did finally move out of student housing into a real house with a garage, a yard, and storage space. She probably would have been stunned to know that they would be living in Wisconsin, but happy that things were going well and that Wisconsin is a beautiful place that doesn't get too hot in the summer. And, of course, she'd probably have been flabbergasted to learn that she would be serving *again* as Primary chorister.

In case you're interested, I'll be posting the music review ideas separately at a later time. Stay tuned...and welcome to my time warp.

Below Zero

2008-01-22T08:34:00.000-06:00

Greetings from beautiful Wisconsin! Right now we have plenty of snow on the ground, a bunch of dirty snow on the roads, and mountains of snow surrounding all parking lots and driveways! (Last night when I was shoveling the driveway I was having a little trouble finding anywhere to put the snow I scooped up. We surrounded our driveway pretty good when we were shoveling from the last few snowfalls.)

More good news is that we seem to be headed for a heat wave. Today our high temperature is expected to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit. To many of you, this may not seem warm at all. However, when you've been experiencing temperatures well below zero for the past several days, 10 degrees Fahrenheit feels downright balmy. Honest to goodness! It's 20-30 degrees warmer, and you can definitely tell. The first year we lived in Wisconsin, we had a week of subzero temperatures. Then one day I opened the back door and I felt a distinct warmth in the air. It was 22 degrees! Hooray! Yes, I really did feel warmth in the air. Call me crazy, but I really did.

My friends in Oklahoma give me strange looks when I try to explain this phenomenon to them. They think anything below about 50 is chilly. Since moving to Wisconsin, I have learned that anything above 20 is warm. Anything above 40 is really warm. Anything above 70 is hot.

But we could contrast this to the time we went camping in Oklahoma in July and temperatures were well over 110 during the day. We always felt great relief when it cooled off in the evenings...to the low 90's. I had never before thought 90 degrees would feel cool.

And frankly, it didn't. But it was a heckuva lot better than 117.

Contest at "TheInkLadies"!

2007-12-28T17:39:00.001-06:00

All right, all you out there who like winning things: An LDS authors' blog that I contribute to, "The Ink Ladies," is running a contest. You can win a free book from one of the authors! (Like mine...and seriously, who could win a better prize than that??) Just match each author correctly with the weirdest gift they've ever received, and you win! It's not hard, it's lots of fun, and right now you have a very good chance of winning because there aren't too many other entries. Just go to theinkladies.blogspot.com and start matching away!

The Reason for the Season

2007-11-26T09:54:00.000-06:00

When we were out shopping the other day, I decided to pick up a box or two of Christmas cards. Having them available in your home, after all, is a crucial step that must take place before the actual addressing of the Christmas cards and mailing them out. And frankly, I felt quite pleased with myself for even thinking of picking some up before Thanksgiving.

The store I went to had some really cute cards. But as I searched the shelves for that one particular style of cards that I felt good about putting our family's name on and sending to people all over the country, I made a startling discovery.

There were no cards that had anything to do with the birth of Christ.

There were cards with snowmen. There were cards with brightly colored ornaments. There were cards with Christmas trees. There were cards with presents tied with pretty bows. But there were no nativity scenes, wise men on camels, or anything else having to do with Christ.

I mentioned this to my husband, and he chided me for my concern. "What does Christ have to do with Christmas?" he said with mock seriousness.

Feeling a bit ornery, I decided that I would buy my cards somewhere else. I did find a couple of religious scenes at the next store I checked, but they weren't in styles I felt comfortable with. I finally bought a box of cards at the third store I checked. There's a picture of Joseph and Mary headed to Bethlehem on the front.

Sending out Christmas cards can be a wonderful opportunity to testify to others of the Savior and of His importance in our lives. As we turn our hearts to Him we experience the real meaning of Christmas.

Now the next step for me, of course, is to get those cards addressed and sent out. I know perfectly well that they won't do anyone any good if they're just sitting in the box. But I'm very good at putting things off like this. Any bets on how long it'll be before I tackle that project? New Years, maybe? Valentines? Easter?

Happy holidays, everyone!

Time Out For Women

2007-11-15T17:22:00.001-06:00

I just saw the 2008 schedule for "Time Out For Women," sponsored by Deseret Book, and I just had to make a plug. And no, they are not paying me to do this. I noticed that they will put on an event in Oklahoma City in April, as well as a host of other cities throughout the year. You can check the schedule here at http://deseretbook.com/time-out/schedule.

But with my ties to people in the Oklahoma City area, I did want to put in my 2 cents worth. I attended the event in Minneapolis in September. I went because several other sisters in my ward were going, and I thought it might be a fun girls' day out. I was frankly a bit leery of the way things were set up, with several Deseret Book authors speaking to us in the auditorium and their books for sale in the lobby. Being an author myself, I know how these marketing things work.

But it was such a great experience. From the time the first speaker got up there, I was scratching down all kinds of notes in my notebook and occasionally (I admit it) bawling my eyes out. Because these people were able to address us in a unique position. It wasn't an official Church meeting, so they could address the whole spectrum of what it means to us to be Latter-day Saint women, struggling with our families and callings and jobs, and trying to do the best we can. I came away with so many ideas I could incorporate into my life and with a firm desire to seek out what the Lord really wanted to be doing, and to try to simply become the best ME I could be in my own special circumstances. I felt assured of the Lord's love and His desire for me to excel in all areas of my life--from other women (and a man or two) who were working through the very same things.

It was amazing. And I really encourage you all to go when you have the opportunity. And reread those notes you take, and keep on hangin' in there.

So that's my plug for the day. And by the way, I did not buy any books there. I did, however, buy a very cute Family Home Evening assignment board and a scripture trivia game for my family. And I still love them. (That is, I love the things I bought...and, of course, I love my family.)

Changing Truth

2007-11-02T15:50:00.001-05:00

Well, one of the things I did this week was write a blog for LDSBlogs.com on "Things As They Really Are." At least, that's the published title of it. Since it's about truth, my working title was, well, "Truth."

So I hammered it out for a bit on my word processor, and then tried to close the window. Immediately a pop-up came up that said:

Save changes to Truth?

And that struck me as funny, since of all the things you can try to change in the world, you can't change the truth. That's the whole nature of it (and what my blog was about). We can try to change things we don't like, but once you start trying to change the truth, it stops being the truth.

But somehow I beat the system. Somehow, despite the true nature of it all, this week I accomplished the impossible. I successfully made (and saved) changes to Truth.

Jennie Hansen, Family Home Evening, and a Big Fat Newsletter

2007-10-25T15:20:00.001-05:00

One of my more memorable posts this week for LDSBlogs.com has been my interview with Jennie Hansen. She was truly delightful to visit with, and several people have told me how much they've appreciated reading the interview. She's become a very respected LDS author over the years. Two of the three installments are currently up; one more is on its way.

I have to say that along with that interview, I'm pretty proud of myself for getting the jpegs of Jennie and her books to fit in with the published blog.

Another blog entry I put up recently was called "Family Home Evening Basics." I wrote that one after talking to a friend who is an LDS convert. She admitted that she didn't really know how to hold a family home evening. And it got me thinking...when you attend church enough, you might pick up on how to give a talk in sacrament meeting, or how to give a lesson in Relief Society. But family home evening is something you don't see modeled so often, since it takes place in the home. The good news about that is, since it takes place in your home, you don't have to worry that the family home evening police will arrest you if you don't do it "right." The important thing is to take the time for your family.

In other news, I've been compiling the LDStorymakers New Release Newsletter for this month and it's just about ready to go. I'm thrilled at all the books announced in it; the LDStorymakers members have been busy! So check it out (click here to subscribe) and find yourself some good reading material. You can also visit the blog version at http://ldstorymakersnewreleases.blogspot.com/. (And remember that even though you won't see my name on it anywhere, I put the whole thing together. Unless, that is, you don't like it.)

Am I Old Yet?

2007-10-24T15:53:00.000-05:00

All right, all right. Even as we speak, my child is laughing at me for referring to a portable stereo as a "ghetto blaster." He thinks that's the funniest thing he's ever heard. Compound that with the fact that he sees no reason to carry one of those things around with him, in this day of the iPod. Why would you need to haul around something so huge with external speakers that force everyone else to listen to your music?

He thinks Pac Man is lame, too.

And if you think so, too...you're probably younger than I am.

LDSBlogs.com, or Adventures in Blogging

2007-10-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

I started blogging for LDSBlogs.com a couple of weeks ago. The site launched just last week and already it's grown into something pretty big. Right now I'm covering both the "Gospel & Doctrine" and the "LDS News" categories. I've already made some great contacts, I've got some fabulous LDS author interviews lined up for the coming weeks, and I've been pushing myself to up my output. It's been quite an experience already. I've been impressed with the site as a whole and the fine content that people have been posting.

So come on over to LDSBlogs.com and check us out! And then come again! As the site evolves and we add more blogs to the mix, it will only get better and better.

New Website Glossary Shows Autistic Behaviors

2007-10-15T22:31:00.000-05:00

For a disorder that I don't think I'd even heard of until I was nearly grown, diagnoses of autism have become astoundingly common. According to an article on cnn.com, one out of 150 children have some form of autism. You may know a child--or several--diagnosed with the disorder.

One of my more memorable encounters with a student with autism came when I was helping in a high school special ed class. A young man with autism had been keeping busy alone with a book on tape. I went to check on him--and saw him sitting in front of the tape player without his pants on.

He wasn't able to speak, but when I asked him (calmly, I hope) about his missing trousers he showed me that he'd spilled something on them. Then he went back to his tape.

After my initial surprise, I realized that this kid saw what he'd done as perfectly logical. He'd spilled something on his pants, so he couldn't wear them anymore. He'd completely missed the social mores that require you keep your pants on at school--but in his eyes, he'd done the only logical thing.

Folks with autism may follow the rules. Their rules just leave some of the rest of us a bit baffled.

That's where the new video glossary at Autism Speaks comes in. They have videos illustrating various autistic behaviors to help people recognize them. This is potentially very helpful; articles and books with descriptions of these behaviors abound, but actually being able to see them is a completely different experience.

Critics caution that some viewers will jump to conclusions upon seeing any of these behaviors in others. It's important to leave making diagnoses to the professionals. In fact, every child is different and some of these autistic behaviors will occasionally be manifested in non-autistic children. So it's important not to appoint yourself a psychologist. But approached rationally, this new video glossary can go a long way toward educating the public about the true nature of this condition.

Fun Website # 4576

2007-09-27T09:43:00.001-05:00

I found a fun website today while I was looking for ways to make interesting scripture mastery clues for seminary. It's a license plate generator; you can choose a state and plate design, and then you can customize it with your own words. In this case, I'm putting in scripture keywords and then putting them on a worksheet for the students to do at home. But I'm sure there a million and one other uses for a fun website like this. Use them to customize your e-mails or websites, delight your children with customized license plate images from their own states, use them to make states-and-capitals worksheets...

The site is http://license.plates.txt2pic.com/ . Enjoy!

Kiss Your Brain!

2007-09-26T16:22:00.000-05:00

I spent most of today helping students in kindergarten and first grade. While those little darlings were busily trying to learn how to write 2's correctly (and it can be pretty tough if you've never done it before), I learned a new phrase from the teacher. When they'd done a good job, she told them, "Kiss your brain!"

Now I don't know about you, but I don't think my lips will stretch up that far. Still, you can complete the image just fine by kissing your fingers and then touching your forehead.

So, everyone out there who's done a good job today, whether you've learned to write 2's, or written 3000 (or 500) words today, or managed to prevent kindergarteners from rioting on the playground, or designed a supercomputer and negotiated a pay raise with your boss, way to go! And go kiss your brain! It's been working hard and it deserves it!

And so do you.

Making Progress

2007-09-25T13:14:00.000-05:00

If you scroll down my sidebar a ways, you'll see my "stats" for a Book-in-a-Month I'm participating in. (See Tristi Pinkston's blog for details, this particular BIAM is her baby. And she's doing a great job, by the way.) The idea behind a BIAM is that the participants set aside some time every day for writing, and they write as much as they can without going back to edit. This is key; for a lot of writers, that internal editor will keep them from ever finishing anything because they keep going back and changing what they've written. After you've finished your book and your story has sufficiently evolved, you can go back and fix things.

During the BIAM, participants are held accountable for what they produce. Every day, they report back to the others how many words they've written. They might discuss their writing adventures and cheer each other on. And the BIAM ringleader (in this case, Tristi Pinkston) often shares words of motivation to keep people going.

Now, to be honest, I've participated in BIAM's before. And I really like the original idea behind them, where you actually begin and complete a whole book in a month's time. (See the NaNoWriMo site for more information on this adventure.) That requires a lot of writing, as well as time-juggling if you're not used to putting in that many hours at the keyboard. If you write 3000 words a day for 30 days, you'll have a 90,000 word book to show for it at the end. Pretty cool, huh?

But if it takes you half an hour to write 500 words, it's gonna take you six hours a day to write 3000 words. That's nearly the equivalent of the time spent on a full-time job. For many people, setting that kind of goal isn't practical. Much as we'd love to churn out a whole book that quickly, many of us don't have that kind of time. And besides, many of us can't think of that much to say in one sitting.

Well, back to my point. In the past, I've set higher word-count goals for myself. I've wanted to approach that finishing-a-book-in-a-month thing, and I've set higher word count goals than perhaps I should have. And I've also ended up missing many days because I simply couldn't spend the time writing that much.

So this time I've set what I consider to be a modest goal: 500 words a day. And it's amazing how much easier it's been to stick with it this time. Sure, I'm not going to have 90,000 words written by the end of the month. But check my stats--so far I have over 6000 words written and the number's only going higher. It's progress!

You can apply this lesson to your own lives in terms of realistic goal setting, sticking with things,
or whatever else you can dream up. As for me, put a star on my forehead because I'm actually moving forward! Woo-hoo!

Typhoons vs. Hurricanes

2007-09-18T15:51:00.000-05:00

No, it's not a football match-up. But in light of the typhoon that is currently pummeling China, the question has come up: What's the difference between a typhoon and a hurricane?

The basic answer is, they're the same kind of storm. The difference is that hurricanes occur in the Atlantic and the north Pacific east of the International Date Line. Typhoons occur in the north Pacific west of the Date Line. That's why we're always getting hurricanes in North America, but in China they're getting a typhoon. But it's the same principle. If you know what a hurricane is like, you can picture what's going on in China now. Let's hope and pray that all goes well for them.

Visiting Teaching Message: Unity

2007-09-17T13:41:00.000-05:00

"Unity" is one of those words we throw around without perhaps fully registering its true meaning. We know we need to be unified in our homes, in our families, in our wards, and in our places of employment. Our governments need to be unified in order to accomplish anything. We need to be unified, "of one heart and one mind," in order to build the city of Zion.

And on it goes. Families, couples, and organizations that aren't unified can quickly find themselves in trouble. One vivid example comes from Bill Nye the Science Guy. In one of the episodes of his TV show, he showed a two-headed snake. Yeah, they're pretty rare, but he managed to come up with a film of one. The background sound featured some tiny voices saying, "I wanna go this way!" "No, I wanna go this way!" "No, this way!"

Bill Nye's objective wasn't to teach viewers the importance of unity, but the example of the two-headed snake still works pretty well. With two heads controlling it, and each trying to take it in different directions, the poor snake couldn't make any progress anywhere. The same happens in our families, our wards, and in our governments. When people in a group are not united, and they're each pulling in different directions, the net result is that the group stays still...or falls apart.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have to admit that sometimes I hear the admonition to be as one, and I start thinking, "Yeah, unity's very important. Everyone else should figure that out and come support my agenda so we can be unified!" Understanding the importance of unity doesn't get us very far unless we are willing to truly live the principle. And that means being willing to bend our own wills and work together towards righteous goals--not necessarily our personal agendas.

(Let's hope my husband doesn't read this post, or he's going to think I'm going to try listening to him more, or something...;-)

This month's visiting teaching message can be found at http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,2044-1-4227-1,00.html

The Marvelous James Dashner

2007-09-13T10:15:00.000-05:00

I first heard about the Jimmy Fincher series by James Dashner a couple of years ago, about the time my book came out. I knew it was by an LDS author, and published by an LDS publisher, but the books weren't specifically LDS. I didn't know much else about them, except that kids liked them and some of my fellow authors thought they were really great.

So I bought the first book at our local LDS bookstore, and read the first chapter or so. It seemed to be some kind of scary dangerous fantasy adventure story. Except the tone of the narrator was so engaging lighthearted that as you read, you were tempted to both laugh and scream at the same time. It seemed like it might have possibilities.

My fourth-grader son liked fantasy-type stories, except for the fact that he refused to actually read any. I don't remember specifically what I did to get him to read this one, but I do remember he flat-out refused. He would not, would not, WOULD NOT read this book or any other book. But somehow he ended up seated on the couch, glaring, and reading the dreaded thing. A timer was set, and Junior had to read for half an hour before he was allowed to put the book down and leave the couch.

Two hours later, he was still reading.

Now, I could tell you how a few days later he was begging for all the books in the series (and they weren't all out at that point, so that was tough to deliver). I could tell you about how we then had to read them all aloud together at bedtime. I could tell you about how the stories kept us simultaneously on the edge of our seats and on the brink of giggles, and how Dashner's imagination thrust us into all kinds of wild and seemingly impossible situations, and how his characters never once had things made easy on them.

But I think my son's reaction speaks for itself. And I expect that Dashner's new series, The 13th Reality, which debuts in the spring, will be at least as thrilling and exciting and charming as the Jimmy Fincher series. If not more so.

If We Could Talk to the Animals...

2007-09-12T12:14:00.000-05:00

I'm always fascinated with stories of animals who learn to communicate with humans. There are apes who speak sign language (such as the famous Koko and her kitten All Ball) . Parrots are fun because they actually learn to mimic human language. News was just released regarding the early death of one parrot who could identify fifty objects, said "I love you," and could even express his frustration when the research on him became too repetitive.

There is some disagreement over how much these animals are really communicating the thoughts of their hearts, and how much they are simply performing to please the humans.

Still, I wonder what my dog would say if he could speak. He'd probably talk of food and chasing rabbits and squirrels all day long. Maybe it's just as well that he can't.

A Tragic Mistake

2007-09-07T08:41:00.000-05:00

A story has been in the news lately about an Ohio woman who forgot her two-year old was asleep in the back of her car, and left her in there as she went to work. Here's a link to one of the more recent updates to their story. You can read earlier chapters in the saga through links on this page:

http://www.wlwt.com/news/14040944/detail.html

There's also a haunting video of the mother's grief that was broadcast on NBC Nightly News last night, and the Today show this morning. To view this, go to www.msnbc.com and scroll down to "Videos." You'll have to do this fast, though; this location will likely change. But the title of it is "Ohio Mom: I Want to Die."

Even if you aren't able to see the video here, the title should give you some indication of how the mom feels. Let's face it--how would any of us feel if a dumb mistake on our part caused injury or death to another person? Particularly our own child?

Sometimes dumb mistakes have small consequences--paper cuts, for example. Or spilled milk. Sometimes things happen that we didn't want to happen, but they are easily taken care of and forgotten.

And other times dumb mistakes have disastrous consequences. We're all capable of making dumb mistakes. In fact, we all make them. Period. Some of us just have the dubious distinction of creating consequences that make national headlines.

I really feel sorry for this mom. We all know we're not supposed to, but it is so, so, easy to leave those kids alone for a minute while we attend to other responsibilities. And (we hate to admit this part) our other responsibilities often run much more smoothly when we don't have a kid in tow. This could have happened to any of us.

This particular mom was an assistant principal at an elementary school. She had a million things on her plate, and left home early that morning to run some errands. Her daughter fell asleep in her car seat, and Mom left her there as she bought doughnuts for the teachers and then went to school to drop them off for a faculty meeting. Exactly what happened next is not clear from the news stories, but one can assume that she was bombarded with work responsibilities once she walked into the door at school. And, at some point, the mental note that she'd made to herself that her daughter was in the car and she needed to take her to the babysitter just disappeared.

And yet...how often do we ignore our kids, our spouses, or other important people in our lives "just for a minute" while we attend to other responsibilities or pastimes, only to have that "minute" away grow longer and longer?

Read some of the other news releases regarding this incident, and you'll see that this was not the first time this mom had left her daughter unattended in the car. There was another occasion reported only a couple of days earlier, and just how many other times she'd done it is something only she knows. (And God, too, of course...) How many times do we do things we know we shouldn't, but when they work out okay we do them again?

This family's heartwrenching story serves as a chilling reminder for all of us. Yes, sometimes doing things we shouldn't still works out okay, or at least seems to. And sometimes there are disastrous consequences.

...And the Latest on Harry Potter

2007-09-07T08:35:00.000-05:00

Well, we finished it. A long time ago. We downed the book in a series of late-night reading sessions. I was reading aloud to everyone else, and when I became so sleepy that my speech slurred and I was reading other words besides those on the page, it was time to sleep.

The book was great. I wasn't sure how Rowling would pull off the ending to the whole series; it had to be something really good that would make sense within the world she had created, without alienating all the readers. I think she did a fabulous job.

And, of course, the memories of those late-night reading sessions together are priceless. If only there were more to the series.

Harry Update--The Latest

2007-08-08T12:56:00.000-05:00

I'm a little over halfway through Book 7. All I can say is, I've still got something to look forward to in the Harry Potter series. Unlike the rest of the world. So there.

Surreal

2007-08-01T21:28:00.001-05:00

We just learned of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis that happened this evening. We were in the area just yesterday. We didn't go over that particular bridge, though. That would have been really surreal.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. At this time we hope the rescue crews are able to work quickly and save as many as possible.

Harry Potter 7 Update

2007-07-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't finished the book and this post isn't going to be full of spoilers. In fact, we're still barely at the beginning. Our tradition has been to read the Harry Potter books aloud together as a family, and finding times when we're all ready and able to read together has been a little tricky. So, alas, I am still unaware of how things work out for Harry--whether he lives or dies (though I suspect he lives), whether Snape is good or evil, who dies, whether Ron and Hermione end up together, and all that other stuff.

So, if you start spilling information about book 7, I'm going to stand here with my fingers in my ears and HUM LOUDLY so I won't find out anything too early. Unfortunately, I know this strategy won't work forever. It won't be too long at all before the world is freely discussing everything that happens.

You'll have to excuse me now...I've got some reading to do.

A Moving Experience

2007-07-24T13:21:00.000-05:00

Packing up everything in your home and moving it someplace else can be an overwhelming task. You don’t realize how much “stuff” you have until you try to pack it up and fit it in a truck. Just when you think you have things under control, you find another cupboard you forgot to empty, or you run out of boxes to pack things in. Some of the worst things are the odds and ends scattered throughout the house that manage to avoid getting packed into boxes until the very end.

During the past couple of days, we’ve had the opportunity to help a family in our ward prepare to move to another city. Despite their good-natured accusations that we’ve just been trying to get them out of here faster, we’re sad to see them go; they’ve been good friends and great assets to our ward.

As we and several other ward members helped this family last night with those pesky odds and ends and the ever-looming house-scrubbing, I remembered the help we received during one of our own moves. It was when we moved from our apartment in student housing to a house in the city. Feeling over-ambitious, we decided to fix some things in our new house before packing up our apartment. We were sure we had enough time to make our renovations before we had to get packed.

To make a long story short, the work we wanted to do on our new house was much more difficult and time-consuming than we’d anticipated. We finally had to admit defeat and turn our attention toward packing and cleaning our apartment. And the evening before we had to be out (by 7:00 in the morning), we weren’t anywhere near finished. We were already exhausted from the packing and moving we’d done so far, and all the work we’d tried to do on the house before that. At that point, I felt very small and pathetic as I followed the move-out checklist from student housing and attempted to clean the windows of our apartment with a bottle of Windex and a stack of newspapers and tried not to think about the catastrophe in the rest of the apartment.

One of the nice things about student housing at the University of Utah is that your apartment complex is also your ward. Ward leaders, home and visiting teachers, and those you have stewardship over yourself are all right there. And when the Relief Society president strolled by and saw me struggling with the windows, she not only offered to help but she also rounded up a couple of other sisters to come help as well.

That was several years ago, and it still means a lot to me now. The few hours that they spent cleaning windows and scrubbing the kitchen probably made the difference between us getting out on time and paying a fine, for starters. But there was more to it than that. It meant so much to know that others cared enough to help us with our struggles—even though those struggles could have been avoided if we’d used our time more wisely in the first place. They didn’t judge us for that. They didn’t even ask why we had so much to do at the last minute. They just went to work, knowing full well that we were moving out of the ward and we wouldn’t be around to repay the favor when they needed help in the future. It was help we perhaps didn’t deserve, but desperately needed all the same.

I’d like to wrap this up with a profound statement, but anything I can think of to say only sounds arrogant. I just know that, no matter how often I have to remind myself of this, helping others truly feels good. The Lord meets the needs of His children through the hands of others. Sometimes that means others are sent to help us. Other times it means we are sent to help others.

Spotlight the Youth Contest

2007-07-20T13:01:00.000-05:00

To finish out the week, I wanted to put in a plug for the contest that fellow LDS YA author Anne Bradshaw's running over on her blog. It's your chance to give a special young person the recognition he or she deserves.

Here's what Anne says:
"Because of my concern for our young people's sense of worth, I’m creating some space in my blog for a competition of sorts. It’s a way of featuring young people out there who are doing fine things with their lives, maybe against all odds—or who love to serve others in some way, large or small—or who have an unusual talent."

For complete information and rules, visit http://annebradshaw.blogspot.com/2007/07/contest.html

There are some fabulous prizes lined up for the winners, so send those entries in and show those youth you care!

LDStorymakers New Releases Newsletter

2007-07-19T09:27:00.000-05:00

This week I'm spotlighting a few new resources in the LDS publishing world that bring authors and readers together. Earlier I mentioned the Whitney Awards. Today I'd like to discuss the LDStorymakers New Releases Newsletter .

The Newsletter is distributed via e-mail. It comes out bimonthly, with full-color images, and it features recently published books written by members of LDStorymakers. Many of your favorite LDS authors are members of this group. Check the bios page of the LDStorymakers website for a current list--we've got quite a group going here! Be sure to scroll all the way down--authors with last names that start with "P," for instance, don't show up until you're well through the list.

One of my favorite parts about the New Releases Newsletter is that upcoming releases are spotlighted (spotlit?) as well. So you get all the juicy information on new books that won't even hit stores for another month or two. Usually you get pictures of the covers as well.

We also include big news items. Our upcoming issue is going to cover the Whitney Awards and the "Spotlight the Youth" contest that is currently running. Previously we covered author Annette Lyon's "Best of State" award. There's always something important going on!

To subscribe to the LDStorymakers New Releases Newsletter, visit www.ldstorymakers.com and click on "New Releases" at the top. You'll be taken to a page with a button to bring you to the subscription page. You can also find us on yahoogroups.com, but I think it's easier to just visit the Storymakers website and click the button. If you're having trouble with any of the links, you can find the LDStorymakers website at www.ldstorymakers.com. Follow the links to the page you want.

There's still time before the next issue comes out, so be sure to join soon.

Announcing the Whitney Awards!

2007-07-17T12:08:00.000-05:00

You've heard of the Pulitzers, the Oscars, the Grammys, the Pearls...now Latter-day Saint fiction has an award all its own : the Whitney Awards! Best of all, you don't have to just hope your favorite book gets nominated. You can submit your own nominations right now.

An online nomination form is available at the Whitney Awards site at www.whitneyawards.com, along with complete rules. I think it's pretty cool. However, while I know everyone is dying to nominate my book Just the Way You Are, only books published in 2007 are eligible for awards.

Send in your nominations!

Seven Tips for Saving Time

2007-07-13T15:04:00.000-05:00

Today, as promised, I’m going to share some tips to help you save time in your busy lives. I had a huge response from readers hoping to share their tips; I’ll integrate some of them in here and discuss them as we go.

When you need to chop an onion for a recipe, try chopping the crosshatch pattern on the end of the onion first, before slicing. Then slice off the chopped-up end, and voila! You’ve got chopped onion. It beats slicing it first and then trying to chop up the slices.
--K.T. Parker

Thanks, K.T. I’ll have to give that a try.

Climbing stairs can wear you out if you aren’t in shape, and it can take precious seconds from your day. When you have something in your home that you need to take upstairs (or downstairs), try placing it at the foot of the stairs and taking it with you the next time you need to go that way, rather than making a special trip up or down the stairs just for one little thing.
--Kaytee Pahrkerr

Another excellent idea.

Two words, Katie: audio books.
--K.P.

Actually I think “audiobooks” is often used as one word, but my spell checker doesn’t like it. But yeah, these are great to listen to while you’re doing other things that don’t require your full attention. You can wash dishes or drive to work and “read” at the same time!

It often seems like cleaning up and keeping things organized takes extra time, but it can actually save you time later on. For instance, when you sit down to pay the bills, it can save you time if you already have a clean spot to work in, and if you know where your checkbook and calculator and stamps are.
--Kate E. Parkur

Good point. Sometimes we cut activities in our lives in order to save time, only to pay back double later on. The next comment brings this point home.

One thing to remember is that life isn’t just about saving time. Unimportant things can be cut out, and some tasks can be done more efficiently, but it’s important to recognize the important things and make sure they’re taken care of correctly. What happens if you cut out scripture study or church attendance in order to save time? Or family time? Will that help you make your life more effective?

The point is to make sure there is time for the important things, and use your time that way.
--Cady “Lady” Parkoor

You know, I don’t think I could have said it any better myself.

Finally, here are a couple of other ideas, in case all else fails:

Don't clean your house!! That saves lots of time!
--Tristi Pinkston
LDS Historical Fiction Author
Movie and Media Reviewer
http://www.tristipinkston.com
http://tristipinkston.blogspot.com
http://members.families.com/tristipie/blog

Hey, if we cut out laundry and dishes, we could have all sorts of time!
Erin Klingler
LDS Author
www.erinklingler.com

Very true, ladies. And sometimes, to make room for the important things, we need to do just that. Our families don’t exist for our clean houses; we clean our houses for our families. Sometimes our families need more than just a clean house.

Lengthen Your Stride

2007-07-11T13:34:00.000-05:00

President Spencer W. Kimball challenged us to "lengthen our stride" in the context of missionary work, but in the context of time management and getting stuff done in general, it still works pretty well.

Here's part of the original quote: “I wonder if we are doing all we can. … Are we prepared to lengthen our stride?” (“When the World Will Be Converted,” Ensign, Oct. 1974, p. 5).

So here's the big question to all of us (especially me, I might add): Are we doing all we can? Or are we stopping our own progress by doing less than all we can?

What does it mean to lengthen our stride? It means we keep doing what we're doing, but we do it more effectively. We push ourselves a little harder and take bigger steps.

Once when I was walking home in the frigid Wisconsin winter, I wondered what I might be able to do differently that would get me home sooner. I was so cold, I really couldn't walk any faster. But it occurred to me that if I "lengthened my stride" and just took bigger steps, I'd take fewer of them and I'd theoretically get home faster.

Did it work? Actually, I don't remember. I was so cold that no matter how quick the trip was, it was still too long.

But the idea's still a good one. What can we do in our lives to lengthen our strides? Or, if bigger steps aren't possible, how about taking faster ones? Sometimes improved efficiency is the key. Sometimes we get so caught up in taking our time that we spend too much time on routine tasks that really could be done more quickly.

The real key, though, is to determine what you need to do and then do it. (Another of President Kimball's slogans.) Just do it. Period. I can tell you that I probably need this advice more than anyone else reading this will. It's easy to think big and decide you're going to do something different, but it's a whole 'nother thing to actually make it happen.

I hope you all feel suitably motivated now, because next time I'm discussing some time-saving tips that can help you "quicken your stride." Tips from readers are very welcome. What do you do to save time in the routine things in your life so you have more time for the important things?

Flexible Time

2007-07-10T14:22:00.001-05:00

So much for the snappy title. I think one of the hardest things for me to deal with in terms of time management is flexible time. By this I don't mean free time, necessarily. I mean time that I have where I could do a variety of fairly important things, but none of them are pressing.

For example, in terms of taking care of my home, I've determined that washing the dishes and keeping up with the laundry are almost essential on a daily basis. (Yeah, I did say, "almost essential." There are ways around doing these things on a daily basis. But they usually don't end up very pretty.) Beyond that, and making dinner, I have a variety of choices. Do I balance the checkbook? Do I vacuum the floors? Do I clean out closets? Do I weed the garden? Or do I drop everything and go for spending "family time" with someone (preferably someone in the family)?

Well, any of you who have tried to take care of a family, or even just your own room, know that there are millions of choices you could make that fall under the umbrella of "Take care of the House" (or "Take Care of My Room," etc.). And that's where I often get stuck. Sure, everything's important, but I don't have time to do all of it today!

Nor should I have to. But, at the same time, I do need to make some progress or I'll never get anywhere.

The same thing goes for writing a book. Once you've written your quota for the day, what do you do? Do you work on promotional activities? Do you write something else? And if you do write something else, what do you write? Should you work on a new book, or churn out an article in hopes that some magazine will pick it up? Or should you post something to your blog? If you've made a name for yourself as a romance author, but you always wanted to write a fantasy, do you try that? Or do you stick with your romances?

Or do you clean out your closets?

That's where goal setting and prioritizing come in. When you know what's most important to you (and it may change sometimes), you're better equipped to make those choices about how to spend that flexible time.

You might take the Franklin Covey approach, where you divide your activities into broad categories of importance and then order them within the categories. Stephen Covey takes it a step further and uses four "quadrants" of importance. I've learned a lot from these systems, but I think Randy Ingermansen has a point in the article below: When you have too many to-do's on your list, it doesn't matter whether an activity is A29 or B32. You're probably not going to get to it today anyway.

Regardless of what planning style you choose, whether you go for the casual approach advocated in the article posted below, or something more formal like the Franklin Covey system, the goal is to move forward. Get the essentials done, and then do more. Maybe only a little bit more. Sometimes even the essentials won't get finished. That's life. But those days when you can stretch and go beyond the essentials--that's when you're really going to move forward.

(Those time management companies ought to pay me for this.)

Time Management Revisited

2007-07-09T14:39:00.000-05:00

As someone who has spent far too much time stressing over her daily task list and whether a particular chore should be prioritized as #21 or #22, or whether it's a "low A" or a "high B" category, I found the following article very helpful. (For a take on my own "Time Mismanagement" system, see my post from May 19, 2005. You can find it in the archives.)

By the way, the following article is pretty long, and I didn't write it. I'm posting it here with permission from the author.

Enjoy!

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Time Management for Writers -- Summary

Randy Ingermanson, Advanced Fiction Writing E-Zine, October 3, 2006, Volume 2, Number 7
I've been talking about time management in this e-zine
for the last several issues because it's important to
me and because I strongly suspect it's important to
many writers too. After all, we're the people who are
saving the world. And saving worlds is a big, big job.

I've laid out a number of ideas in recent articles. Now
I'd like to summarize and synthesize. You'll see that
I've improved on last month's Divide And Conquer method
by adding in an idea from an earlier column.

So here are the things I've been finding useful in
managing my time better:

a) Keep a log of how you spend your time each day. You
can't optimize something unless you can measure it.

b) Spend less of your time and money on things you
VALUE, and spend more of your time and money on
learning SKILLS or buying TOOLS that will make you more
productive.

c) Outsource or delegate stuff, but only when it makes
sense.

d) Make a list of the Big Things you'd like to achieve
in the next year. Put a star next to the ONE thing on
the list that you simply must get done, even if you
achieve none of the rest.

e) Make a list of several things you'd like to achieve
in the next quarter. These can be pieces broken off
from the tasks on your annual list, or they can be
smaller tasks that can be done in one quarter. Put a
star next to the ONE task on the list that you MUST
achieve this quarter.

f) Make a list of the things you'd like to achieve this
month. Again, these can be stepping stones to your
quarterly list, or standalone tasks. Put a star next to
the ONE thing you really insist on getting done this
month.

g) Make a list of things you want to get done this
week. You are clever and will know how to break down
your monthly list as needed. Put a star next to the ONE
thing that had better get done this week at all costs.

h) Make a list of things you want to do today. Put a
star next to the ONE thing that you will bust your gut
to get finished by the end of the day, (even if you get
nothing else done).

i) Every day (and week and month and quarter and year),
MAKE SURE you get the starred task done, even if it's
the ONLY thing that you do. It's nice to do some or all
of the other tasks on the list, but there is only one
that's required and you know which one it is because it
has a star beside it. Whatever else happens, DO THAT
ONE.

k) Whenever you cross a starred item off one of your
lists, decide whether you want to put a star on a
second item, or whether you're done with the heavy
lifting for that time period. It's OK to take a
breather after you accomplish something important.

l) If something happens to change your priorities,
change your lists to reflect them. This may even mean
(heaven forfend!) moving that star to another task.
You're the boss, so you get to decide.

m) At the end of the day, ask yourself two questions:
Did you spend your time well? Did you achieve your
starred item for the day?

If you read last month's column, you'll know that I've
souped up the Divide And Conquer method by adding a
partial prioritization to each list (putting a star on
ONE item). Note that assigning priorities to EVERY item
on a list would be a lot of wasted work and anyway it's
not very accurate. But you generally know what the #1
item is on the list. That's the one that should get the
star.

Here's why this scheme is efficient: It's a whole lot
less work to set one priority than to set 10 or 20.
When things change in your life, it's a lot easier to
reset one priority than 10 or 20. Be lazy! That's how
things get done.

Just so you'll know, I'm eating my own cat food (so to
speak). My list for today has 17 items on it. Of these,
the one with the star is "Write e-zine." The fact that
you are reading this is proof positive that I
succeeded. I've also crossed off 7 of the others. Yes, I
did some of the "lower priority" tasks first -- but
only because I knew they wouldn't interfere with
getting the e-zine out. I also delegated some tasks to
my wife.

If you ever cross off every item on your daily list,
call Oprah. You will have achieved Ultimate Success
and will probably get a book deal out of it. I have
never, ever crossed off every item on my list for the
day.

However, the odds are very good that I'll get
everything on my Annual List done by December 31. And
is that cool or what? Because it's the Big Things that
matter. Life is about selectively ignoring the Little
Things so you can achieve the Big Things you really
wanted to do all along.

This scheme is actually working for me. Some days it
works better than others, but it works. If it works for
you, don't tell me. Just send me large numbers of
unmarked $100 bills, because my Life Goal (achieving
Total World Domination) is going to be expensive. And
tell your friends that I'm responsible for making you
smarter, happier, sexier, and taller.

If it doesn't work for you, then please blame Congress.
They deserve a little recognition now and again.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 5000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Your Comments--and Some Responses

2007-04-17T12:55:00.000-05:00

My family is in the ending phases of PSFR (post-science fair recovery). My son was putting together a very ambitious but very cool science fair project--a robotic cart he could program to move by itself. With the deadline approaching last week, as well as the culmination of several other activities he was involved in at the same time, regular life as we knew it all but ground to a halt.

You'd think kids and their activities wouldn't cause this much trouble.

Nevertheless, we are now once again among the functioning members of society. And I'd like to take this opportunity to address some of the comments I've received that seem to have been piling up.

The first one comes to us from Janette Rallison, author of many fine young adult novels, including her most recent release, It's a Mall World After All: (how's that for a plug, Janette?)

My parents used to give me tomatoes with sugar on them when I was little. Really, I thought that was the only way people ate them. Since then everyone I've talked to about sugar on tomatoes thinks I'm hallucinating. I'm glad to know there is at least one other person on the planet who ate them (or in your case refused to eat them) that way. Janette

My answer: Wow! I never thought I'd come across another person who'd ever eaten tomatoes with sugar! Now let's talk about eating apples with salt...

Our next comment comes to us from Tristi Pinkston, author of LDS historical novels Nothing to Regret and Strength to Endure. She is also a blogger for families.com (which is quite a fun and informative site, by the way).

I was always so ticked off at Mahana's father. Honestly -- how dare he treat her like that?

And Johnny was a cutie. :)

My response: Well, first off, in case you can't tell, that comment was regarding the classic LDS flick Johnny Lingo.

And yes, I thought the way Mahana's father and everyone else treated her was highly disgusting. I could wax serious for a moment and point out that there are many people in the world who are unfortunately abused like this all the time. Verbal and emotional abuse are still as much abuse as physical abuse is. It all hurts.

(end serious aside)

But "Mahana, you ugly!" is such a memorable line. When my seminary students watched it, one of the guys shushed everyone else and told them, "This is the best part," right before the dad said it.

One more thing. Just in case my husband's reading this, I simply cannot agree with you regarding Johnny's cuteness. Besides, he already married some eight-cow chick.

Our last comment comes from Josi Kilpack, author of several LDS novels including Sheep's Clothing, to be released by Deseret Book in May. (Can you tell I edited the LDStorymakers New Release Newsletter last month?)

Josi's comment reads:

So what is it about Utes Gymnastics that has you so obsessive? :-)

My response: Well, it goes back to our poor starving student days when we lived in University of Utah student housing. As students we could get into the gymnastics meets for free. My husband's brother invited us to a meet or two. At first we thought they'd be pretty boring, but actually the Utah meets are really cool. They draw crowds of 10,000+ people, and there's a band and cheerleaders and loud screaming and the whole bit. The Utah gymnastics meets can be a great place to take little kids, because they don't have to be quiet. They can yell for the team and get hyper with the rest of the crowd. And the meets were free for us then. As poor starving students, we were always thrilled to find something we enjoyed that we could do for free.

Anyway, so we started going to all the home meets. It became a family tradition of ours for years...till that fateful day we moved out of the state and away from our gymnastics team.

The nice thing is, we can still see the home meets via live streaming video on the internet. It's not the same as watching in person at the Huntsman Center, but you can at least see what's going on. We can also still follow the team via press releases and newspaper articles released on the internet. And we can "watch" away meets via live scoring on the internet. This means you stare at your computer and watch the scores come in, one by one. (Heavy action, let me tell you.)

I enjoy watching gymnastics; it's an amazing sport. And of course I still love the Utes, and I'm really glad they stepped up and did a great job at regionals. I'll be rooting for them at nationals, via the internet! Go Utes!

That still doesn't explain why I had to check their website fifty times so I could find out where they were going for regionals. I haven't figured that one out myself.

Go Utes!

2007-04-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

Well, it is now 5:00 PM and I finally know where the Utah women's gymnastics team is going for regionals. For some reason I thought the announcement would come out this morning. When I didn't see it, I kept checking back...and checking back...and checking back...

So if anyone at the Utes website is wondering who visited their site fifty times today, that would be me.

It's a good thing I don't pay attention to the basketball playoffs, or I'd never get anything done.

New Scriptures

2007-03-27T14:46:00.000-05:00

I've had the same set of scriptures since I was 11 years old. They saw me through four years of seminary, college, holding small children on my lap during sacrament meeting, family home evening, family scripture study, and now a year of teaching early morning seminary. I think this year really did them in. They went from looking well-loved to, well, pretty junky.

So I finally gave in and ordered myself a beautiful new quad, with my name embossed on the cover. I've been looking forward to having new scriptures, but frankly, I'm almost afraid to touch them. They just arrived at my door about two minutes ago. Rather than dive into them immediately, and start the ominous task of marking them with the years of notes and markings in my old scriptures...well, you can guess what I decided to do instead. My new scriptures are back in their box and I'm hiding out here!

102 Top LDS Books

2007-03-26T19:24:00.000-05:00

Here's a list of favorite LDS novels compiled by several LDS authors. The original post can be found at http://www.josikilpack.blogspot.com/.

I can't say that these are the top 102 LDS novels of all time, since it's not compiled from 20 years of sales data or a massive church-wide survey or anything like that. But these guys have picked some good ones. I'm sure that if a more scientifically compiled list existed, many if not all of these books would be on there.

I pride myself on the fact that I've heard of most of these, but unfortunately I haven't read nearly enough of them. I'm boldfacing the ones I have read. Feel free to copy this list to your own blog and indicate the ones you've read yourself. (And don't forget entry #103; see below.) If you're looking for some great LDS books to read, here's a bunch of 'em!

1) A Heartbeat Away—Rachel Ann Nunes
2) Almost Sisters—Nancy Anderson, Lael J. Littke
and Carroll H. Morris (I haven't read this one yet, but I bought it this weekend)
3) Angels Don't Knock—Dan Yates
4) An Old Fashioned Romance—Marcia Lynn McClure
5) A Question of Consequence—Gordon Ryan
6) Ariana: The Making of a Queen—Rachel Ann Nunes
7) As the Ward Turns—Joni Hilton
8) At the Journey’s End—Annette Lyon
9) Baptists at Our Barbecue—Robert Farrell Smith
10) Charly—Jack Weyland
11) Charley’s Monument—Blaine M. Yorgason
12) Chickens in the Headlights—Matthew Buckley
13) Children of the Promise, Vol 1: Rumors of War—
Dean Hughes
14) Children of the Promise, Vol 2: Since You Were Gone—
Dean Hughes
15) Come Armageddon—Anne Perry
16) Daughter of a King—Rachel Ann Nunes (picture book)
17) Dead on Arrival--Jeffrey Savage
18) Double Cross--Betsy Brannon Green
19) Dusty Britches—Marcia Lynn McClure
20) Emeralds and Espionage—Lynn Gardner
21) Escaping the Shadows—Lisa J. Peck
22) Fablehaven—Brandon Mull
23) False Pretenses—Carole Thayne
24) Faraway Child—Amy Maida Wadsworth (I really enjoyed this one)
25) Fire of the Covenant—Gerald Lund
26) First Love and Forever—Anita Stansfield
27) Flowers of the Winds--Dorothy Keddington
28) Ghost of a Chance—Kerry Blair
29) Gustavia Browne—Alene Roberts
30) Jimmy Fincher Saga Vol. 4: War of the Black Curtain—
James Dashner (my son LOVES the Jimmy Fincher books)
31) House on the Hill—Annette Lyon
32) House of Secrets—Jeff Savage
33) House on the Sound—Marilyn Brown
34) In a Dry Land—Elizabeth Petty Bentley
35) Lifted Up—Guy Morgan Galli
36) Love Beyond Time—Nancy Campbell Allen
37) Mary & Elisabeth—S. Kent Brown (Non-fiction)
38) MaCady—Jennie Hansen
39) Molly Mormon—Tamara Norton
40) Mummy's the Word—Kerry Blair
41) My Body Fell Off—BJ Rowley
42) My Not So Fairy Tale Life—Julie Wright (I really loved this one)
43) No Longer Strangers—Rachel Nunes
44) Nothing to Regret—Tristi Pinkston
45) On a Whim—Lisa McKendrick
46) On Second Thought—Robison Wells
47) On the Edge--Julie Coulter Bellon
48) One in Thine Hand—Gerald Lund
49) One Tattered Angel—Blaine M. Yorgason
50) Out of Jerusalem 1 (Of Goodly Parents)—H.B. Moore
51) Out of Jerusalem 2 (A Light in the Wilderness) —H. B. Moore
52) Out of Jerusalem 3 (Towards the Promised Land)—
H. B. Moore
53) The Peacegiver—James L. Ferrell
54) Pillar of Fire—David Woolley
55) Poison—Betsy Brannon Green
56) Prodigal Journey—Linda Paulson Adams (this is a good one)
57) Pursuit of Justice—Willard Boyd Gardner
58) Return to Red Castle—Dorothy Keddington
59) Race Against Time—Willard Boyd Gardner
60) Sarah—Orson Scott Card
61) Saints—Orson Scott Card
62) Sixteen In No Time—BJ Rowley
63) Spies, Lies and a Pair of Ties—Sheralyn Pratt
64) Standing on the Promises Vol 1: One More River to Cross
--Margaret Young and Darius Gray
65) Strength to Endure—Tristi Pinkston
66) Surprising Marcus—Donald S. Smurthwaite
67) Tathea—Anne Perry (actually I only read part of it--does that count?)
68) Tempest Tossed—Josi S. Kilpack (excellent)
69) Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites—Chris Heimerdinger
70) The Alliance—Gerald Lund (on my to-read list)
71) The Book of Mormon—Nephi thru Moroni (non-fiction)
72) The Believer—Stephanie Black
73) The Coming of Elijiah—Arianne Cope
74) The Counterfeit—Robison Wells
75) The Emerald--Jennie Hansen
76) The First year—Crystal Liechty (reading it right now; very fun)
77) The Fragrance of Her Name—Marcia Lynn McClure
78) The Killing of Greybird—Eric Swedin
79) The Last Days, Vol. 1: The Gathering Storm—
Kenneth R. Tarr
80) The Last Promise—Richard Paul Evans
81) The Looking Glass—Richard Paul Evans
82) The Miracle of Miss Willie—Alma J. Yates
83) The Single Heart—Melinda Jennings
84) The Visions of Ransom Lake—Marcia Lynn McClure
85) The Work and the Glory Vol 1—Gerald Lund
86) The Work and the Glory Vol 2—Gerald Lund
87) The Work and the Glory Vol 3—Gerald Lund
88) The Work and the Glory Vol 4—Gerald Lund
89) The Work and the Glory Vol 5—Gerald Lund
90) The Work and the Glory Vol 6—Gerald Lund
91) The Work and the Glory Vol 7—Gerald Lund
92) The Work and the Glory Vol 8—Gerald Lund
93) This Just In—Kerry Blair
94) Time Riders—Sierra St. James
95) Time Will Tell by Julie Coulter Bellon
96) To Echo the Past—Marcia Lynn McClure
97) To Have or To Hold—Josi S. Kilpack
98) Towers of Brierley, Anita Stansfield
99) Twelve Sisters—Leslie Hedley
100) Unsung Lullaby—Josi S. Kilpack
101) Wake Me When it’s over—Robison Wells
102) Winter Fire—Rachel Ann Nunes

And, my personal addition to the list:

103) Just The Way You Are--Katie Parker :-) :-) :-)

Happy reading, everyone!

Vote for Nauvoo!

2007-03-22T12:24:00.000-05:00

This link was forwarded to me, and I thought I'd pass it along to you all:

http://www.enjoyillinois.com/sevenwonders/western.html

Apparently the state of Illinois is designating "Seven Wonders" for their state, and if you go to this link you can vote for Nauvoo as one of them.

The restoration done at Nauvoo is truly a wonder, and people of all faiths should find the site and interesting and inspirational place to visit. It's a great slice of our pioneer heritage, and what the settlers accomplished here in a few short years is simply amazing. It would be great for the area to get some extra recognition and publicity.

Seminary: A Memorable Day

2007-02-16T08:46:00.000-06:00

Early morning seminary teachers have certain responsibilities. One of these is to study the scriptures and prepare engaging lessons every single school day. Another is to drag themselves out of bed at 4:50 AM so they can get to church and set up before the students arrive at 5:50. And yet another would be to bring their keys to the church and unlock the doors so the students can all assemble inside.

I just started teaching early morning seminary in our ward this fall. So far I've done pretty well in carrying out these responsibilities, I think--well, except for a few days ago when somehow my alarm was set for 7:30 instead of 4:50. Mercifully, my eyes snapped open at 5:18 and I managed to be out the door about 15 minutes later. So that worked out okay. But today...well, today was a memorable day.

It all started this morning when I forgot my church keys. And, of course, I didn't figure out that I had done this until I arrived at church. (In case you're wondering, I did actually used to have all my keys on one chain. But because heavy keychains are not good for car ignitions, I divided mine up. Smart move.)

It is not a happy thing to be standing outside your car in the church parking lot in the middle of the night in subzero temperatures feeling really stupid that you left your church keys at home. You might spend several minutes searching every possible bag you brought, every coat pocket, and crevice in your car, just in case you really weren't that stupid--maybe you really did bring your keys and you only stuck them someplace stupid. Besides, you have nothing else to do while you stand in the parking lot in subzero weather. You can't get into the church.

I considered driving home and getting my keys, but the students would arrive before I could come back. Since I didn't have a good way of leaving a note for them, they'd wonder whether I was even coming, or if they were supposed to stay, or leave, or what. So this wasn't a good option (even though I suspected that several of them would just take the opportunity to leave). So I just waited for the students to arrive; a couple of them had valiant parents who drove them to seminary every morning and would hopefully arrive complete with church keys.

Sure enough, the students arrived, and we were in. But that was only the first hurdle. We were in the church, all right, but the only people who had keys to the seminary closet were me and the home study teacher. And the home study teacher wasn't there. To top it all off, in a stroke of brilliance, yesterday I had left the supplies for today's lesson in the closet and locked the door. So....

Well, to make a long story short, it's amazing how you can spend hours studying and preparing perfect lessons, but that doesn't impact your students the way a day like today did. I couldn't get into the seminary closet, but I could get into the library. So I pulled out the TV and VCR and--at the suggestion of the students--we watched "Johnny Lingo." It's so old and cheesy and delightfully quotable. ("Mahana! You ugly!") Despite this, it still has a great message regarding the worth of souls and how treating people kindly helps them reach their potentials.

I am not sure the students cared much about the message, even though after the video they were going around talking about how many cows they were worth. But ten years from now, like it or not, what seminary lessons are they going to remember? Are they going to remember our endless discussions on the law of consecration or the importance of building up Zion? They may vaguely remember some of the concepts, but I doubt they'll remember the specific lessons. (For that matter, even I don't remember too many specific lessons we've had.)

What they'll remember is the day that Sister Parker forgot her church keys so she let them watch "Johnny Lingo" instead of having the lesson she'd prepared because it was locked in the closet. I'll remember how they paid remarkably close attention--probably watching for cheesy lines to laugh at, but they paid attention just the same. I hope they'll remember something of the message of the film. But they're most likely to remember the disorganization of the day, and the fun and (dare I say it) bonding that ensued as we made the best of things. That can't be all bad.

Explaining What I Didn't Explain Last Time

2007-01-25T13:51:00.000-06:00

I've been informed that I need to explain a few things--namely, what's this "Tag, You're It" business? (If you don't understand this, you probably didn't understand much of my last entry. Sorry.) Well, about a week ago, a member of LDStorymakers wrote a blog entry that "tagged" several people. These people, also bloggers, then had to tell five things about themselves in their own blogs that no one knew, and then "tag" five more people to write in their blogs. And these people had to tag five more people, and so on, and so on... I don't know who started it, but things got pretty crazy among many of your favorite LDS authors for a few days there as they were all busily "tagging" each other.

I haven't gotten around to issuing any of my "tags" yet, though. But you know what? Things calm down a lot when you put an end to them...;-)

In case you want to read some of the other LDStorymaker blog entries, here are some links:

http://sixldswriters.blogspot.com/--"Six LDS Writers and a Frog"
http://www.annettelyon.blogspot.com/--Annette Lyon
http://janette-rallison.blogspot.com/--Janette Rallison
http://mywriterslair.blogspot.com/--H.B. Moore
http://a-bad-hair-life.livejournal.com/--Tamra Norton
http://www.juliewright.com/blog.html--Julie Wright

These are only a few of them; I'll try to post more later. In the meantime, enjoy!

I've been tagged!

2007-01-18T13:40:00.000-06:00

I've been tagged! My friend and fellow LDStorymaker Annette Lyon tagged me on her blog. (See http://www.annettelyon.blogspot.com/.) This was after she got tagged by a couple of other LDStorymakers on *their* blogs, and...well, unfortunately I think we're about out of LDStorymakers with blogs, so I'm going to have to branch out a little if I'm going to tag anyone.

But first, I have to tell five things about myself that most people don't know. This could be tricky. There are things about me that even I don't know.

Here goes...

1) I don't know how to ride a bike. Not really. My parents never got me one when I was little. When I was older, they bought me a junky unappealing bike at a yard sale that I wasn't too interested in riding. Then they didn't show me how to ride it. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, yeah, and there might be that little part in there about me being uncoordinated as all get-out. I have tried a few times through the years to learn how--I tried to teach myself when I was in grade school, but wouldn't let go of the side of the house. My little sister tried to teach me after I graduated from high school. My boyfriend tried to teach me in college. (His assessment of the situation was, "You have no sense of balance.") A few years later, after I married him anyway, I tried practicing late at night when we were living in student housing. Enough people talked to me about it later ("I saw you trying to ride a bike last night") that I didn't do it again.

A few years later, our son took me to the church parking lot and tried to give me pointers. But hey--last summer I even made it all the way down the block and around the corner. I was so proud of myself that I quit right then.

2) The last thing was so long, I think it should count for #2 also.

3) And #3.

4) I don't like tomatoes much. Actually, they're great in salsa, and really I can tolerate them just fine otherwise, but I still don't particularly appreciate them in my salads or on hamburgers.

When I was a kid I refused to eat them at all. My mom, apparently distressed about this, told me that sometimes little girls liked to eat tomatoes with sugar on them. I agreed to give it a try. So, next time we had tomatoes, Mom cut some up special just for me. As she brought them to me, she said, "I've got some tomatoes and sugar with your name on them."

Well, I looked and looked, and I did not see my name anywhere on those tomatoes. I couldn't eat them, of course, because I might eat the part with my name. Finally I gave up and asked my mom where my name was. Of course she thought this was very funny, and she explained that she just meant that the tomatoes were for me, not that my name was really on them.

After that, those stupid tomatoes just didn't taste very good anyway.

5) I still keep track of the University of Utah women's gymnastics team, even though we've moved to Wisconsin and I've completely missed attending any meets for the last two seasons. Go Utes!

Okay, now for my victims...

Well, now I'm supposed to tag five people with blogs. But most of my friends with blogs (mostly LDStorymakers) have already been tagged, darn it! I have a couple of other friends I'd like to tag, but since their blogs are geared towards close friends and family, I'll ask them before I link to their sites here for the world to see. Meanwhile, if you'd like to be tagged, hey, leave a comment and I'll add your site to my "tagged list" here! TAG! YOU'RE IT!!

Drivers License Part 2

2006-05-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

Well, I know you all are dying to find out how my driver's license crisis turned out. The first thing I did after returning from the DMV was call up our electric company and ask if they could pretty please put my name on the next bill after my husband's. Sure, it's kind of an odd request, but if it would convince the state of Wisconsin that I live here, it would be worth doing. (Strangely, the first person I talked to at the electric company wanted to talk to my husband first to make sure this was okay with him. Like it matters...like I couldn't have just gotten the next door neighbor to come make the call instead...)

Next I made a phone call to the state DMV the next day to find out what I could do--I mean, I've lived in the state of Wisconsin for nearly two years and it's illegal for me not to have a Wisconsin driver's license. Yet they wouldn't give me one because I didn't have any of their required proofs of residency.

The first thing the lady on the other end did was laugh. (I am not making this up.) She explained that Wisconsin has been experiencing a lot of residency fraud and they had to tighten their requirements, but she thought it was pretty silly when there were honest residents out there who couldn't qualify. (I agree.) She suggested that I gather up every document and piece of mail I could possibly think of that would have my name and address on it, and she gave me the name of a supervisor at the local DMV I could talk to. "I know these things aren't all on the document list," she said, "but hopefully if you bring the right information, reason will prevail and they'll give you your license."

So I did just that. After our electric bill arrived, I pulled out all kinds of stuff and loaded it into a folder--insurance statements, magazine bills, thank-you-notes--and headed off to the DMV. Theoretically the electric bill is supposed to be thirty days old before it proves residency. So I wasn't quite out of the woods yet. But frankly, I wanted to see if they'd continue to be so ridiculous about the whole thing. Plus I have to send the part of the bill with my name on it in with my payment. So I can't keep it for thirty days.

Well, I got there, and all the personnel there were standing at the little booths helping people who were waiting in line. I didn't see a good way I could just jump in and say, "Excuse me, but could you stop what you're doing and get me in to see Mr. Supervisor? Since I'm more important than all the other customers, of course." So I took a number like everyone else and waited.

Then someone important-looking walked in the door. He was tall and dressed in a suit, and was immediately hounded by several people. This, I guessed, must be Mr. Supervisor.

Then I got a good look at him. He was the same guy who had served me at the window two weeks before and told me he wouldn't give me a license! Somehow I doubted that any kind of reason would prevail with this gentleman. He was clearly a to-the-letter kind of person.

I thought about leaving right then, but I went ahead and waited out the lines. (I abandoned my previous ambitions of getting in to speak with the supervisor, and just hoped I'd get to talk to someone less picky instead.) Sure enough, after a nice DMV wait time, I got up to the window and got to speak with a different gentleman. He looked at my electric bill, said that was all he needed, and--guess what? I now have a Wisconsin driver's license!!!!

I'm not sure that's me in the picture, though. The person in the picture needs to lose some weight.

How Much Money Writers Make

2006-04-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

One of my nieces told me this week that she's writing a book! I was very excited for her, of course. I have lots of happy memories throughout my childhood of writing my own stories...of finding some paper and folding and stapling it into a book, and then grabbing my trusty pencil, turning to the first page, and spinning fabulous tales that would take me anywhere I wanted to go.

Well, some things have changed. My niece tells me she's writing it on the computer. I can't say I blame her; that's what I do myself, now. But there's something charming and inviting about those folded-paper books, and flipping through those blank pages and wondering what will be on them as my story unfolds.

After we discussed her story a little bit, she asked me how much money I made from my book Just the Way You Are that was published last year. Well! Kids these days do know what's most important. I told her "not as much as I wanted to make," but I think that was a little more vague than she was wanting.

OK, Niki, here's the scoop. When someone publishes your book, there are a lot of people involved. There are usually a few people who read it over and help you fix things that need to be fixed. This is their job and they need to be paid for it. Then there are the people who actually put the book together into a book--people who make the pages look nice, people who design the cover, and so forth. They also need to be paid. The company that actually prints the books and puts them together needs to be paid, too. And the publisher who's overseeing all this wants some money, too.

But that's not all. Then someone has to "distribute" the book. That means they get it put into bookstores. If no one distributes it to bookstores, then guess what happens? Your book won't be in any stores! And if it isn't in any stores, it's pretty hard to get people to buy it. Distributors also get your book put in online stores like amazon.com and deseretbook.com. (It is kind of fun to bring up these websites and see your book for sale there, and to see comments people have left about your book.)

Then the bookstores buy however many copies of the book that they want. They pay a lower price than people who buy the book at the store will pay. The reason why is because the bookstore needs to make money, too.

If you look at the back of my book, you'll see that it has a price on the cover at the bottom. The price is $16.95. This is how much it will cost you if you buy the book in a store. The store can offer a discount if they want. They might sell more copies of a book if they offer it at a lower price, but then they won't make as much money from selling it.

So, after all of these people get paid from putting together my book and selling it, guess how much money I get for each copy of the book that is sold? $16.95? No way. $15? $14? Not even close.

I get about 74 cents for every copy of my book that is sold. 74 cents! So, if they sell 1000 copies in bookstores, I get $740. But if they sell 100,000 copies, I get $74,000. (That is, if I don't demand that my publisher increase my royalty rates because my book sold so many copies.) So, you can make lots of money IF lots of people buy your book. But the truth of the matter is--and this is the sad part--most books don't sell anywhere near 100,000 copies. (And many of those that do are sold in bulk and the author makes even less per book than I do.)

But there are other ways to make money. I can buy copies of my book from my publisher for a lower price than you can buy them in the stores. Then I can sell them for more money. So, if I sold them for $5 more than I paid for them, and I sell them to 20 people, I'd make $100. Some writers "self-publish" their books--they pay a company some money (instead of the company paying them) and they make the book for them. Then these writers have to take care of distributing the book to bookstores themselves, and advertising, and everything else (unless they pay someone else to do it), but the nice thing is that they get more money for each book they sell. People who are good at selling lots of things by themselves can do really well with this option.

And there's always the chance that a movie producer would want to make a movie from my book and would be willing to pay lots of money for the movie rights. Part of that money would go to my publisher, but I'd get to keep the rest. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

But so far I haven't been approached by any movie producers. I don't think it will be happening any time soon. But I'll let you know when it does.

(Maybe then I can buy an iPod.)

Still iPodless

2006-04-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I told my family that I'd invented a new word. When I had their attention, I told them: "iPodless," looking meaningfully into my husband's eyes.

Both husband and son laughed. "You'd better get used to using that word," Husband said. "You'll be using it a long time."

...and all this time I only THOUGHT I lived at my house

2006-04-20T12:59:00.000-05:00

True story. After having lived in Wisconsin for nearly two years, yesterday I finally got myself down to the DMV to get my Wisconsin driver's license. I know, I should have done it sooner, but I can give you a million reasons why I had to put it off (or forgot). Anyway, I'd done my homework. I knew what they'd ask for. They wanted a couple of forms of identification, including my old Utah license, and they wanted proof that I actually lived in Wisconsin now. I found a few bills that I expected to do the trick, and I was on my way.

Anyone who's been to the DMV knows that the wait is very, very, very long. So I'll skip that part. Those of you in Oklahoma who can go to tag agents in your neighborhood instead are extremely lucky.

My number was called, and I went up to the window and presented my application and supporting materials. When the nice gentleman got to the part about documenting my residency, I gave him our electric bill. What follows is pretty much exactly how it happened. True story.

Nice Gentleman: We can't accept this. This doesn't have your name on it.

Me: It has my husband's name on it.

Nice Gentleman: It has to have your name on it.

Me: But the utilities are in my husband's name.

Nice Gentleman: It has to have your name on it.

Me: (whipping out my "Plan B" documentation, having anticipated this problem earlier) Well, here's a bill with my name on it.

Nice Gentleman: This is a cell phone bill. We only accept land line telephone bills.

Me: (feeling smug) Ah, but look. This bill with my name on it shows the same address as the electric bill with my husband's name on it.

Nice Gentleman: We only accept land line telephone bills.

Me: IT'S THE SAME ADDRESS!!

Nice Gentleman: I'm sorry, we can't accept that.

Me: (whipping out my "Plan C" documentation, feeling miffed) Okay, here's another bill. This is a cable bill, and it has my name on it and my address.

Nice Gentleman: We can't accept that, either. We only accept electric bills, gas bills, and land line telephone bills.

Me: (feeling desperate) What about a house deed? We own a house in Wisconsin. My name is on the deed to the house.

Gentleman: No, we can't accept that, either. (He pulls out a list that I've already been over many times.) This is the list of what we accept of proof of residency. You clearly need to study this list.

Me: I've already been over this list, and I don't have any of these things.

(He doesn't believe me and goes over the list item by item. I shoot down every single item on the list. I don't have a Wisconsin bank account because we've been happy with our banking in Utah and we like it where it is. The utilities are all in my husband's name. I'm not attending school in Wisconsin, so I don't have official records there. I don't have a paystub from a Wisconsin employer because I work freelance, and so far I haven't worked for anyone in Wisconsin.)

Me: Look. I've lived in Wisconsin for almost two years, and I should have a Wisconsin license.

Gentleman: Yes, you should.

Me: But I can't have one.

Gentleman: Nope.

So, according to the DMV, I don't live in Wisconsin. I fully understand and support their reasons for requiring proof of residency, but when I can live in the state for almost two years and still not meet their requirements, something is wrong with the system.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's iPod...

2006-04-12T12:29:00.000-05:00

...or thy son's iPod. Or thy husband's iPod.

You know, up until recently, I thought an iPod would be fun to have, but it wasn't anything I really thought about. Even when my son got a Nano for his birthday last year at his request (demand?) it was way down there on my own list of things I aspired to own. Things like, oh, a house, a car that worked, bathtowels that weren't frayed on all four sides, maybe a blender--things that we needed were much higher.

Not anymore.

My husband's birthday came along not too long ago, and my son decided that what Dad really wanted was an iPod of his own. After thinking about it for about ten seconds, I decided, sure, why not? So I went to the store, picked one up, took it home (well, OK, I paid for it first), and hid it until the magic hour of birthday presents.

He was happy with it, all right. I was glad I'd gotten him a good present for once.

Then he spent several evenings ripping CD's. And he and our son exchanged songs. They've been comparing notes on how many gigs they have filled up with music. My husband can listen to his iPod for 2.4 days straight and never hear the same song twice, he says. And that's only the beginning. We have to buy more CD's now so he can fill up his iPod. Or buy more music online.

I am left out of these discussions and collaborations because I have nothing to contribute.

I watch them walk around connected to their iPods. They can take music with them wherever they go. Meanwhile, I'm still fumbling with the family stereo, and turning up the music too loud so I can hear it in another room. While I have to run and switch CD's out, they can flip instantly to any song they want.

I used to be happy with the family stereo.

The ultimate injustice came last night at the dinner table. Both Husband and Son were hooked up to their music. I could hear bits and pieces drift through their respective earbuds. But I ate my meatballs alone in pitiful silence. Poor, poor iPodless me.

I'm going to have to come up with a way to get even. I'll have to turn up the stereo louder than their iPods so they can't hear. Or I'll have to start talking really quietly while they have their earbuds in their ears. I could say, "Honey, I'm taking all of the money out of your wallet now and putting it in my piggy bank," and if their music's too loud they'd never know. Or maybe I should just get up in the middle of the night and hide their earbuds in, say, the fishtank, and solve the problem altogether. Wah ha ha ha...

Or I could just wait till my own birthday in a million years and hope I get my own iPod. But that's the mature, patient way to deal with things. Maybe that'll happen when I'm patient and mature. Meanwhile, boys, hold onto your earbuds.

The Disappearing Money Trick

2006-01-12T15:14:00.000-06:00

Now that we're making house payments, we have to come up with some sort of budget to help us manage our money. It's interesting how we were always able to make ends meet years ago on our meager student income in our dinky little student apartment at the University of Utah, but now that we can afford to buy a few luxuries (like, a house) we suddenly feel like we should be able to buy LOTS of luxuries. And we feel rather chagrined that our income and budget won't allow it.

I mean, how many years did we spend in that little student apartment staring at the cinderblock walls and dreaming of the day when we'd have a real house with real walls that we could (dramatic pause) pound nails into? Or when we'd have one of those neat things with big doors called a garage that we could park our car in and keep tools and bikes in? Somehow it always seemed that when that magical day came in the hazy future, we'd have not only that, but everything we ever wanted.

Not only would we have real walls, a garage, and a home to call our own, but we'd be able to eat out at every meal if we wanted. We'd try all the restaurants in town and choose our favorites and come back often. And we'd see the world. We'd travel wherever we wanted without worrying about the cost. And when we wanted to buy clothes, we'd march right into the mall and buy whatever we wanted--not just what was on the clearance rack.

Well, so far that much of it hasn't happened. We may have a real house, with walls and a garage, but somehow we still have more plans for our money than we have actual moolah. We have more space than we used to, but now we need to figure out how to buy some more furniture to put in the space. And we have lots of bare walls. I still gravitate toward the clearance rack and signs that say "SALE!" We still don't eat out every night. Some things never change.

At least I've seen Seattle.

Author Update

2006-01-05T11:44:00.000-06:00

Here's what I have currently in the works:

An LDS novel, currently titled Almost Everything, about a young woman whose life was shattered by the divorce of her parents several years earlier. Now she is making decisions regarding how she feels about the Church, how she feels about her parents, and how she feels about a young man who is not LDS. The book addresses tough issues and remains completely faithful to LDS beliefs. It's coming together very well, and while its progress has been slowed by things in my life like moving to a new house (ahem) it should be ready to go to the publisher soon.
A humorous LDS novel about some missionaries sent to a very challenging mission. My son wanted me to write a "boy book," so I've got him in mind as I write. So far it's been a hoot, but it will be faith-promoting as well.
A sequel to Just the Way You Are. Find out what happens to LaNae, Jane, Mandy, Hanna, Emmett, Corey, and the rest of the gang from the University of Oklahoma institute. Some new characters are introduced, and some things have happened that have even surprised me! Personally, I can't wait to see how it ends.
I'm still working on a science fiction kids book, but by the time it's finished it might be my grandkids who appreciate it instead of my kid. Seriously, I think maybe I'm trying too hard on this one. Science and accuracy are very important to me, but you can't let these things overwhelm a fictional story. I should take my own advice and get busy writing the story instead of trying to figure out the scientific details.
I've also been putting together some Christmas memoirs and hope to have this collection ready for a Christmas release in the near future (I say, dodging any specific commitments to a specific year). It's shaping up to be a fun and heartwarming book.
For my editing projects, I'm in the final stages of editing a biography entitled Riding with Miss Lindsey, about the life of a girl who was born with Down syndome and serious heart defects and died at the age of sixteen. The book was written by her father, and even though I've read it zillions of times throughout the editing process, and I've never met Lindsey personally, I am always impressed with her sweet spirit and her determination to exceed her natural limitations and milk every drop of life out that she possibly could. The story is truly moving, and it's amazing to see through this everyday account just how much Lindsey touched the lives of others. The author of the book is James Alexander, and it will be available soon through American Book Publishing at www.american-book.com.
I am also editing a true account of the reunification of Germany entitled My Heart Beats on the Rhythm of United Germany. The author is from France, and was attending school in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall fell. She details the things she saw and experienced, and what it was like to live in the area at the time from a young person's perspective. The things she discusses are fascinating, and I've really learned a lot from this project. The time frame on this one is a little farther out, but it is also being published by American Book.

As you can see, I've got a lot in the works, and more to come! As I always tell aspiring writers, you've got to just do it one thing at a time. Writing one page a day may not seem like much, but at that pace you can have the draft of a book finished in a year. And it sure is a lot more than zero pages a day--that kind of work will get you nowhere.

I'd love to hear your comments on any of these upcoming projects. Feel free to contact me at katie@katieparker.net.

Hoo-boy!

2006-01-05T11:21:00.000-06:00

Well, you may have noticed that my posts have been slacking off a bit (as in, not happening at all) during the past few months. The first personal journal entry I made after my last post was expressing excitement over a phone interview my husband had with a company out in the Pacific northwest. That's right, we were thinking of moving--again. We weren't too sure how things were going to work out in Wisconsin, and at the time they were looking pretty dismal. We'd even put off buying a house here, and were squished into a little apartment that we'd rented when we first arrived in Eau Claire. The apartment was originally supposed to only be temporary, but we never felt good about buying a house here, and we just stayed in the apartment indefinitely until we found a house we felt good about--or until we found a job someplace else we felt better about.

We did all the things we were supposed to do--fast, pray, do our best, read our scriptures, fulfill our callings, walk our dog, scrub behind our ears, etc. etc., but still didn't feel led in a particular direction...till this house popped up on the market. After only briefly seeing it twice, we were in our agent's office making an offer. (Our poor agent had been so patient with us. We'd been looking at houses for over a year and hadn't bought anything.) We were elated to finally, finally, have a house to live in! It has a yard, it has a garage, it has space for us to work, it has space for us to walk around without tripping over each other.

I guess that means we're living in Wisconsin for a while longer.

Anyone who's moved knows that moving in and of itself is a challenge. And even though our house is really great, and we're delighted to be in it, there are still challenges that come with a new place.

Far be it from me to complain about having a bigger living room, but I was a bit daunted the first time I approached it with a vacuum cleaner. How was I supposed to vacuum something this large? I finally went in strips, like you do with a lawnmower. (Maybe this will make up for the first time I mowed the lawn by myself, and I pushed the lawnmower back and forth like a vacuum cleaner.)
Strangely, I kind of miss our laundry area in our apartment. The washer and dryer were in a closet in the living room. When we moved in there, I really did not like the idea of standing in the living room doing my laundry. But you know what? It was nice to be able to switch loads around and fold without leaving the family. In our new house we have a separate laundry area. It feels remote.
Everything is further apart. In our apartment, everything we owned was crammed into a very small space. But that did make it easier to get to things we wanted; it was all just right there. All you had to do was turn around and walk a couple of steps. In the house, it feels like we're setting off on a long journey just to get something on the other side. Needless to say, we're getting a lot more exercise.
Shoveling the driveway! We didn't have to do that at all when we were renting the apartment. There are bonuses to renting.
Plus, one of our cars threw a rod the week we closed on our house and needs a new engine. At least we had a garage we could put it in now.

Real Residents Don't Ask Directions

2005-09-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

One important thing to remember about driving around in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is that Mall Drive does not go to the mall. Once you remember that, well…you know how not to go to the mall.

We had lived here for several months before we learned that there USED to be a mall on Mall Drive, so they cleverly named the street after it at that time. Then someone built the Oakwood Mall in a different section of town. This is what we in Eau Claire today refer to as “the mall.” The old mall on Mall Drive was shut down and razed. So now Mall Drive goes to, among other things, a big field and an old parking lot with faded yellow lines and weeds pushing up through the cracks.

But if you really want to go an existing mall, you can take Golf Road. This street will also, for the time being, take you to a golf course.

We moved to Salt Lake City almost exactly ten years ago, and while it was a bigger city than I was used to (having grown up in western Oklahoma where we thought anything over 10,000 people was a city), it wasn’t too difficult for me to learn to navigate the place. After a year in Salt Lake I felt like an old pro at the area, and even occasionally ventured downtown or other far-away and exotic places like Taylorsville. The system of numbering streets in Salt Lake County (as well as in other cities in Utah) made it relatively easy to figure out where I needed to go. Still, we laughed the lack of “real” names for most of the streets. Did the Mormon pioneers who designed the town not have any imagination? Were they so sick of moving around and building town after town that they didn’t feel like coming up with any other names besides “100 South” or “900 West”?

Well, we’ve been living in Eau Claire for a year now, and I must say that I’m missing the street numbers. Sure, “Fairfax Street” may have a more poetic ring to it than “7th East” or “10600 South,” but it doesn’t give you a clue where it is. I did learn that “Water Street” is near the water. So that helps a little, as long as I can figure out where the water is and which water it’s referring to. Western Wisconsin has some very picturesque areas and is full of lakes and rivers, so there’s plenty of water they could name streets after.

To make things even more interesting, streets here in Eau Claire have a habit of starting and stopping and curving at random. Part of this is due to the fact that they’ve had to build the streets around all these non-linear bodies of water. I am not sure what the rest of it is due to. There is one neighborhood here that I always, always, get lost in. I try to turn toward major streets and I only end up going deeper into the neighborhood until I hit one dead end after another and finally have to attempt to go back out the way I came in. It seems like no matter where in the city I am venturing, I always end up in this same neighborhood. And I still don’t know how to get out of it. Yes, some street numbers would be very helpful about now. (So would carrying a map of the city in my car, but that would be too easy.)

On another note, as for why we needed to take our trip to Seattle last month, I still haven’t seen any big reasons. Perhaps it’s just a quiet thing, like the need for our family to spend more time together. Perhaps it was for a reason we’ll never know.

But we did learn that an apartment building down the street was struck by lightning and caught fire while we were gone. So we avoided being caught in that. But, hey, that was all the way down the street.

Swimming...or Not

2005-08-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

I've always thought it would be fun to have season passes for the swimming pool, and this year we live just down the street from our community pool. So before the official beginning of summer, when we heard passes were available at a discount, we went for it. We got a pass for everyone in the family, plus what they called a "punchcard" which we can use to bring guests with us. We can also use it to go to any of the other community pools in the Chippewa Valley here in Wisconsin. I thought that might be fun; surely we wouldn't have enough other things to keep us occupied over the summer.

The first week school was out, we went to Madison. We did swim in the hotel pool, but that doesn't count. Right after we got back from Madison, our son Kevin went to a two-week "Summer Institute" program that they run here. They offered all kinds of fun classes. One of the classes he took was about building model rockets. Fun stuff. But since we had to drive back and forth to Chippewa Falls to get him to and from class (about half an hour from Eau Claire (where we live) each way, depending on how fast you drive), that didn't leave a lot of swimming time. So we didn't bother going during that time.

Right after Summer Institute was over, we drove out to Salt Lake City for a family reunion and camping trip. We went swimming then, too, but our passes to the Eau Claire pool didn't work too well in Salt Lake City.

Then Kevin broke his toe.

And all our plans changed.

He hobbled around through the camping trip (he even carved a really nifty walking stick for himself) and then spent much of the next few weeks at home with a sore toe. He got to play on the computer a lot, and got waited on a lot, so it wasn't too bad. But we didn't think jumping around in the pool was a good idea.

Just when it was starting to heal enough that we could consider swimming, we ended up going to Seattle. The week after that was Cub Scout camp. He did go swimming at scout camp, in the lake with the other boys. He had a lot of fun, too. Meanwhile, those pool passes have been burning a hole in my wallet, so to speak.

Now it's the week before school starts. And it's the end of August in Wisconsin. And it's starting to feel like fall. The weather has really cooled down. But, darn it, the pool's still open through Labor Day. And, darn it, we're going to use those season passes if it's the last thing we do. So today we're going to bundle up and go down to the pool, and sit and splash and swim in the water, and we're going to freeze, but WE ARE GOING TO LIKE IT. So help me.

Home Again AGAIN!

2005-08-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

Summer has really thrown a lot at us this year, including a last-minute trip to Seattle last week. On Friday afternoon at about 4:30 the week before, I got a phone call from my husband that went something like this:

Him: "Should we go out to Seattle next week?"

Me: "Uhh...you mean, should YOU go out to Seattle next week, right?" He travels a lot for work and I'm used to him scheduling trips. Especially to Seattle, where he'd already been earlier in the week, and also the week before that.

Him: "No, I mean, should we go out to Seattle next week?"

Me: "Uhhh..."

Turns out that his company wanted to send him to Seattle yet again for work, and he decided that if he was going he wanted to take us with him. Our son's still on summer vacation, so it really would work pretty well. Except for some small details, like getting space in a kennel for our dog for the weekend at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Not to mention his bordetella shot, which is required for boarding a dog at a kennel, but our dog's previous vaccination had expired exactly three days earlier. (Talk about timing.) Strangely, though, while it did take some effort and several phone calls, we were able to get him an appointment for a shot and a spot in a kennel we felt good about. And we felt good about taking the trip, too. It almost seemed like we were supposed to go.

Which really has me worried. We really had a great time in Seattle, visiting the piers, some local museums, and taking a ferry ride across Puget Sound. But why was it so important for us to go? Does this mean something terrible's going to happen to us now? Is there some great reason why we were supposed to visit Seattle together?

I don't know the answer to that one--yet--but we did have a marvelous time.

Home Again

2005-07-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

It's good to be back! We just returned from a few weeks in Salt Lake City. Latter-day Saints who have never been there tend to think of it as a kind of paradise, where everything is wonderful and there are so many important things to see and do. But when you've lived there for a while, you start taking the opportunities there for granted. And, for the most part, it becomes a regular city just like anyplace else. Your house is there, you go to work, you go to school, you go to church...the difference being that you can walk to church and most of your neighbors are there, too. But there is plenty of normalness about Utah and Salt Lake City that you'll find anywhere else. There are stores there, there are good people there, and there are also people who do things they shouldn't. Just like anywhere else.

For those of you who aren't familiar with my background, I grew up in Oklahoma and attended a small branch that we had to drive half an hour to get to each way. My parents still go to church there, though it has grown enough that it's now a ward. But the drive's the same. I was one of only a few Latter-day Saints in my high school, or in any other school I attended, and I didn't know any other way. After I'd been married a few years, we moved to Salt Lake City. Talk about culture shock! Here I was, used to being one of very few Latter-day Saints in the area, and SLC was swarming with them! But we grew to love the city and the people...and, I admit, we got a little spoiled having our church and the temple so close, and having many of our friends and associates being LDS or at least understanding who Latter-day Saints were.

And now we're living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It was a little jolt to our systems to be away from "all the Mormons" again, but the circumstances here aren't anything we haven't seen before. The nice thing is, the Church is true wherever you go, and you don't have to go too far anymore to find a Latter-day Saint congregation...and home.

A Really Quick Entry

2005-07-01T11:28:00.000-05:00

I'm posting a bit irregularly because we're on vacation right now. But through the miracles of modern technology, I can still write when I get a chance. Isn't the Internet cool?

We're visiting Salt Lake City for a couple of weeks, and I've been travelling to many of the LDS bookstores in the valley and meeting the managers and employees. I've been impressed with how friendly and helpful these people are, and how many great LDS books are available on the shelves. Of course, I am a book junkie and sometimes wish I could spend all my waking hours perusing bookstores and buying books. If I could actually do that, I think I've found some great ones to spend those waking hours in. I did come away buying more books than I originally meant to. (Don't tell my husband. ;-)

Till next time...

Katie

Learning to Swim

2005-06-17T12:44:00.000-05:00

(A poem by someone (me) who doesn't claim to be a poet.)

When I was a young girl,
my mother tried to teach me to swim.

She held me in her arms
and helped me to float on the water.
Then she told me she would let go.

Well, I knew better than to let her do that.
My earthly experience with water had taught me
that if you don’t have something holding you up,
you sink.

I tried to explain this to her,
but my mother didn’t seem to understand this fact.
She told me to just be still and relax,
and I would float.

I felt the support of her arms leaving me,
and I kicked and struggled to stay above the water.
“See,” I told her. “You sink.”

“Just be still,” she told me. “The water will hold you up
if you let it. I have been swimming for many years
and I know these things. If you are still,
you will float.”

Eventually I tried it.
And the funny thing was, I did float.

Sometimes I remember this now,
when I don’t like the trials that come to me in this life.
(This happens often.)
Sometimes I kick and struggle to get out of them,
or at least argue that they should not be happening.
My earthly experience has taught me
that my trials are not a good situation.

But God has been God
for much longer than I have been me.
And I must have faith.
It isn't always easy.
Usually it is very hard.
But we are here to learn to walk by faith
and to trust in Someone we don't even see
but who knows that if we will,
we can float.

Be still, and know that I am God.

Vacation in Paradise

2005-06-09T11:18:00.000-05:00

We just spent the last several days in Madison, Wisconsin, which is about three hours away from where we live in Eau Claire. Since we are new to Wisconsin, we'd never been there before. We weren't too sure what we'd find. Madison is one of those cities you learn in fifth grade when you memorize the states and capitals, but it isn't one you hear of much as a tourist spot or big-league city. In fact, every time I asked friends in Eau Claire what there was to do in Madison, the response was pretty much, "Uh..."

I've come to the conclusion that Madison doesn't have many big attractions that tourists must see the way Disneyland or Washington D.C. does. But Madison's a pretty cool place. It's got an atmosphere all its own. State Street starts downtown and ends up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it's closed to cars, so it's a great place to go walking. And walking is one of my favorite things to do. There are lots of interesting stores (the travel guide we read called them "funky") and tons of restaurants with all types of cuisine and open-air seating right on the sidewalk. (This, of course, would not be nearly so much fun in the wintertime.) After dinner, you keep walking up State Street and end up at the university's student union. Get some really yummy ice cream inside and then go outside on the terrace, which is directly on Lake Mendota, and watch the sunset and chat with the people you love. How cool is that?

We also travelled down to Janesville and went on a tour of the GM factory there. Then we visited the LDS bookstore there, Line Upon Line Books. What a neat little store! I am amazed that there is an LDS bookstore in the area at all, since there aren't tons of Latter-day Saints or a temple nearby. But there it is, and the owner is a neat lady who loves LDS books. I remember growing up in our little branch in Oklahoma and feeling so disconnected from other Latter-day Saints in general, but when we had the rare opportunity to visit the LDS bookstore in Dallas it was almost like coming home. There were books and music there that spoke specifically to me and my needs and beliefs. People in the Janesville area or who visit are very lucky to have this gem in their midst.

I think that one reason we remember the places we vacation so fondly is because everything is just right when we go. Usually we don't have to worry about work, homework, school, bills, housework, laundry, making dinner, or any of that stuff. We can just relax with our loved ones and have a great time. So I will remember Madison and Janesville very fondly. I've got that sunset etched in my mind forever.

Random Thoughts

2005-06-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

I have no brilliant thoughts popping into my mind today. And I looked through my journal entries for the past week and learned that I've had no brilliant thoughts for about a week. (Well, one could argue that I've NEVER had any brilliant thoughts, but that's another story.) Anyway, so here are some random things going on with me.

Today's my son's last day of school. He is very excited. Yesterday he told me he was bored already.
We saw Star Wars Episode III not too long ago. I wish they would have cut down on the battle scenes and spent more time on plot and character development, but overall it was a pretty good ending to the saga. I thought Palpatine was particularly convincing as he twisted the truth in order to lure Anakin to the dark side. Pretty scary, isn't it, how the dark side and the Evil One work just like this in our own lives--making bad things appealing with half-truths and shreds of goodness.
My dog sometimes meows like a cat. Go figure.

Enjoy the summer!

The Laundry Scene: Creating Fiction from Reality

2005-05-26T15:10:00.000-05:00

(Note: I recently cut this entry down because it was so much longer than the others. If you'd like to read the longer, more detailed version, please e-mail me at katie@katieparker.net or post a comment here and I will be glad to send it your way.)

Some readers have asked me how I created the scenes and characters in Just the Way You Are. First, let's start with how I did not create them. A natural impulse of someone trying to write fiction might be to write about something that really happened and change the names and maybe a few details, and call it fiction. This is how I wrote one of my very first novels, one that will never ever see the light of day. (NEVER EVER!) I wrote it when I was fourteen and bored with my life. The story was about a girl who looked suspiciously like me, acted suspiciously like me, lived in a house in suspiciously the same location as mine, and had a family suspiciously like mine. Then she had experiences that were strangely just like mine were. I just changed all the names of the characters. Sometimes I got really creative and changed the hair color, too. Oh, and the other main difference was that the guys the main character liked (who were identical to the guys I liked in my own life) actually liked her back.

This is a good way to get started in writing, but it isn’t fiction until you start deviating from real life. Really writing fiction is more complicated than changing a few details. The more I write, the better I get at completely creating scenes and situations and characters from scratch. (At least, I think I do.) But every writer still borrows details from reality every now and then.

I like to use the first scene I wrote with Catha/LaNae in Just the Way You Are as an example of a process you can go through, because the way I did it is very straightforward. The first scene I wrote with her was not the first chapter in the book. It was the one where Emmett is in her dorm room chatting with Mandy, and Catha/LaNae believes that he is actually there to visit her, since he had shown an interest in her before. Then it slowly dawns on her that he is chatting with Mandy because Mandy is the one he came to see.

But the first thing I started with was the other characters and the general idea of the story. I already knew about Emmett and his dating habits. I already knew Mandy the space-case roommate, because I’d previously written a short story about her. (Her story does not appear in the novel.) Neither of these were people I pulled from real life, by the way. They started much the way this scene did—with some basic ideas, and then watching them to see what happened. I drew the general situation from something similar that I experienced when I was in college. I thought that with the right starring character, it could be an interesting scene. And so, Catha/LaNae was born.

The conversation material concerning raisins came from a discussion I had in early high school with a Real Boy. I do not know why we talked about raisins. I don't remember what we said about them. But it made it into my journal, and it was something I could use later when I needed a ridiculous conversation for this scene.

So far we have snippets of a few different occasions in my life, plus three unique characters. The clincher of the scene comes when Catha/LaNae gathers up all her laundry, hoping to get Emmett’s attention because he will feel obligated to carry her load for her. Now, this is something she did on her own. It's a real thrill when you get your characters to a point where they just start acting independently of anything you have planned for them.

People who don’t write fiction often don’t understand this aspect of fiction writing, and probably wonder what mental issues we writers must have. For those of you who are more scientifically-minded, you can think of it almost like a formula. This happens to this character, and so she does…this. If it had been Jane or someone else in the same situation, she would have behaved differently. Try the same experiment with yourself: If you were in this situation, what would you do? Now put someone else you know in the same situation. They’d do something different, wouldn’t they? When you know your characters well enough, you know what they’ll do. Then it’s just a matter of writing it down.

But using details from life is something that a fiction writer can never entirely get away from. Our writing, no matter how vivid our imaginations, is a product of who we are, and we are products of the lives we live.

Time Mismanagement System

2005-05-19T11:26:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been feeling like I'm not getting enough accomplished in a day. Actually, I feel that way quite often. When that feeling comes over me, the first thing I do is revamp my goals and time management system. Surely if I'm not getting enough done, then it must be due to problems with the system and not anything that I myself am doing wrong...right?

So yesterday I came up with yet another fantastic refinement on my system that I’m sure will be a winner. I've described it here in detail for you.

1) Pray for help. That way I have someone else to blame if it doesn’t work. ;-)

2) Write down on a big piece of paper everything that’s been nagging at me that I need to do.

3) Go through my schedule for the next month and identify more things I need to do. Write these tasks on my paper also.

4) Go through my goals and find yet more things I’m not doing that are making me feel guilty. Write these things on my paper.

5) Copy each item onto a new paper, this time dividing them into four categories:

A-level items (important and urgent)
B-level items (important, but not urgent and could be put off, which means that I probably will until they become urgent)
B-level items that I’ve been putting off long enough that I feel incredible guilt over them and they are now almost as urgent as A-level items
new B-level items that could reasonably be put off several weeks so I don’t need to feel guilty over them yet.

6) Decide I’d rather have these pages in my day planner for easy reference instead of on big loose papers. So, after I’ve copied down all my items into one of the four categories, the next step is to spend several minutes cutting and punching paper to fit my day planner (because I’m out of paper and buying more would be too easy), and recopying my lists again.

7) Now that these pages fit my day planner, the next step is to take a weekly planner page and recopy all of the tasks again, distributing these items by day so days are more or less equally weighted and more urgent things are scheduled for earlier in the week.

8) Remember that I forgot to take my schedule into account when I distributed my task list over every day in the week. Go back over my schedule for the week and recopy the tasks again, making sure that more tasks are scheduled for the days I have fewer appointments.

9) Recopy tasks again into daily planner pages so I know what I'm supposed to do every day.

10) Buy a new pencil, since I've decimated the last one I had after recopying my task list in fifty different places.

11) After Day 1, panic because I didn’t get everything done that I needed to.

12) Repeat as needed.

So far it has been working well. I've gotten everything done on my list, except for the things that I looked at and decided I didn't feel like doing. Maybe I'll have to fix my system again next week, so I'll have a better chance of getting some of these other things done.

Seminary Woes

2005-05-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

I'm the home study Seminary teacher in our ward, and we're hitting end-of-year crunch time. In home study you have to go through the assigned activities in the book on paper and turn them in to the teacher for a grade, sort of like homework. (Well, it makes sense, considering that it's home study Seminary.) But it's easy to put off doing the assignments, especially when you're busy with school, and our deadline is right around the corner. I'd heard that last year they'd had a chat room where they worked some of the assignments together, and that had worked well. (I was not the one teaching last year. This is why it was news to me.) Anyway, I thought it might get the students motivated a little, and give them a break from having to work through all those exercises themselves. So I figured out how to set up my own chat room, worked up a big involved schedule for us to work on the assignments during the next week, and called everyone to invite them to participate. (I was very proud of myself.)

The time for our chat arrived, and no one logged in! I guessed that no one was interested, and I went about my evening. Then about 20 minutes later I got a phone call from one of the guys who had been trying to log in, but couldn't get it to work. So I worked with him for several minutes, trying to get the problems solved for him. Then I got another phone call from another student in a similar situation.

The end result was, we spent the whole time trying to get the chat room to work, and it never did. Well, it did when I logged into it. My husband could log into it, too. But apparently no one else could. I feel bad that it took so much of their time that they COULD have been using to work the activities on their own! It seemed like such a good idea at the time I set it up.

But I really have to put in a plug for Seminary here. It is such a GREAT program! I graduated from home study Seminary myself in Clinton, Oklahoma, and I learned so much. In fact, much of my understanding of the scriptures and my testimony of the gospel stems directly from the time I spent plowing through those Seminary lessons. So keep at it, guys! It is so worth it in the end!

Translation Problems

2005-05-05T12:58:00.000-05:00

I grew up in western Oklahoma in the midst of a bunch of “Okies.” Neither of my parents are from Oklahoma, so I didn’t pick up too much of an Oklahoma accent, except for a few things like short “e’s” being pronounced with a long “a” sound. I worked really hard on that one after I grew up and moved to Utah with my husband, actually. I had spent my life eating “aiggs” for breakfast, shaving my “laigs,” and thinking that Greg and Craig would be good names for twins because they rhymed.

I tried to overcome this tendency in Utah, so as to sound more like the natives. When I thought of eggs, I would mentally remind myself to pronounce them like “ehggs,” and not “aiggs.” It usually worked pretty well. When I went back to Oklahoma for my high school reunion a few years later, in fact, I suddenly discovered that all of my old friends had very pronounced Okie accents that I’d never noticed before.

I can’t comment much on strange accents in Utah. My dad is from Utah, and I grew up thinking that he sounded pretty normal. Some people probably think that Utahns sound pretty weird, but I am not one of them. But my sister in Oklahoma started making fun of me for pronouncing the word “mountain” with a Utah accent after I’d been there for a few years. Well, if you think about it, that really would make sense. People in Utah talk about mountains a lot more than people in Oklahoma do. The landscape in Oklahoma’s about as un-mountainy as you can get.

After spending nearly nine years in Utah, now we’re living in Wisconsin and facing new language challenges. One thing we’ve noticed is that sounds that we’d pronounce like “ow” are often pronounced here with more of a long “o” sound. So, in Wisconsin we don’t live in houses. We live in hoses. We don’t go “out and about.” Where we go sounds to us more like “oat in a boat.”

And then there’s the long “a” sound. Here in Wisconsin, words like “bag” and “flag” are pronounced with something of a long a sound, like “baig” and “flaig.” Which presents something of a problem for me. My mental translation processes that I worked so hard on in Utah really break down here, because the long “a” sound no longer necessarily represents an “e.”

For example, the first time I bought something at a grocery store in Wisconsin, the checker clearly asked me, “Wanna beg for that?” I stood there panicked for a few seconds as I wondered what she wanted me to do before she gave me what I thought I’d just paid for. Who knew what kind of strange customs they had here in this foreign land (Wisconsin)?

But I finally answered yes, hoping that was indeed the correct response to her question. And a few moments later, my purchases were happily riding home in the beg…or bag, or baig, or whatever it is.

White Sheep

2005-04-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

Hi, everyone! I am so excited to have this opportunity to visit with you all on a regular basis. The Internet is truly an amazing thing.

Well, enough of that. I have tons of things I'd like to say, but before I get started with those, I have a matter of business that's been on my agenda for the last 28 years or so.

You see, when I was in first grade, we had to do an assignment where we were to look at several pictures and color the ones that started with a "sh-" sound. So, for example, we were supposed to color the picture of the shirt and the shell, but not the dog or the refrigerator. We were also supposed to color the picture of the sheep. This I did. Since many good sheep are white and fluffy, I chose my white crayon to do the job.

You guessed it. Mrs. Smith didn't notice that I'd colored my sheep white, and she counted it wrong. (I have to admit that I had a hard time seeing that I'd colored it myself.)

So now, once and for all, I'd like to make this clear: Mrs. Smith, I realize that it may not have been obvious at the time, but I really did know back in the first grade that sheep starts with a "sh-" sound! And if I'd been braver when I was six years old, I would have come up and told you then.

Thank you all for allowing me to set the record straight here. I don't know if there's any great lesson to be learned from all this--maybe, don't be afraid to speak out and defend what you know to be true? Yeah, that sounds good.

The other lesson would be, don't color with white crayon on a white paper and expect your teacher to be able to see it. If you want to make your mark in the world, you gotta use a color that will show up.