Your Comments--and Some Responses

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!

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.

I've been tagged!

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!!