The Great Mormon Novel

Musing over many things lately.

On the writing side of things, I was getting very discouraged because I keep getting rejections, and I haven't looked at my novel for a while so I'm not sure it's any good anyway, and I just couldn't get excited and into writing the next novel. So I stopped to re-evaluate, and realized that I need to just go back to writing what I feel like writing, telling my stories for me with no other audience in mind, and stop worrying about selling them. That's what the editing phase is for. Then I realized that I've been only querying agents who specialize in fantasy, but that is probably the wrong approach because, while the "Poison Spindle Problem" could be classified as fantasy, the next two novels I am working on are definitively NOT fantasy. One is a Western, and the other is a Thriller (complete with terrorists and plots to destroy Las Vegas). So getting a Sci-fi/Fantasy agent for my career would be a mistake--most of what I'm going to write is not sci-fi or fantasy. So I got on the agents search website and looked up agents that do both fantasy and thrillers. Only 12 came up. Six of them already sent rejection letters. One of the other twelve actually requested my stuff and we lost the packet before mailing it--and then the whole job thing and the whole Christmas thing and the whole get home thing came up, and I haven't thought about it since then. I couldn't find any info online that made me excited about her, anyway.

So today I decided to rethink, and I looked her up online again and realized that last time I misspelled her last name. So the only info I got about her came from people who also misspelled her last name. This time, spelling her name right, I found out that she is the managing agent of an agency that was established in 1928 and is the agency for such well-known people as Mary Higgins Clark and the estate of John Steinbeck. Had I found out this info before I sent the query, it never would have gone out because she's not listed on many sites as specializing in the areas I think I write. But she does specialize in "Women's Fiction," which could include what I write, I think. Doesn't matter--she wanted to see more. So tonight I wrote I nice letter apologizing for the delay and sent her what she asked for. Why WOULDN'T I want to work with one of the top agents at one of the top agencies?

She'll probably say no, too (as have three of the top agencies after looking at my stuff), but it's flattering that she wanted to see more!

So, with that encouragement, I have been once again pondering that recurring question that comes up among intellectual Mormon writers: Is there, and will there ever be, "The Great Mormon Novel"? It is parallel to the "Great American Novel" debate that will never be settled. It always comes up among my writing friends, who are all sure that Mormons ought to be writing great literature but they aren't for some reason and why is that? Is it that "Everyone who is good never suffers" belief that seems to permeate the church? Or the "Righteousness is rewarded with financial gain" belief? Or that Mormon men and women are too busy to write? Or too out of touch with struggles? Or is it that the way we solve problems is something we don't want to splash around in a "literary" novel? Are we afraid people won't understand so we just don't talk? Are Mormons afraid of real honesty with themselves? And why is it that everyone who seems to be writing Mormon Literary Fiction is apostate? And why do non-apostates either write "inspirational" literature, or gospel commentary, or "relationship" books?

And then, after all those questions, finally the most pertinent questions to the debate surface: What exactly is a "great" novel, and what exactly is a "mormon" novel? Those two things must be defined in order determine which book most closely fits the classification. And those things are much harder to define than they seem.

Tim says the "Great Mormon Novel" has been written. By Orson Scott Card. And it's called "Lost Boys." He says it is a fabulous picture of what it means to be Mormon, and how our culture works, both in pleasant times and under stress, and all the foibles and strenghts of the culture. And, using the Great American Novel debate as a paradigm, he says that fits most closely with what people are looking for.

But Mormons reject it because it deals with touchy issues that Mormons like to pretend don't exist (priesthood holders who are pedophiles?). And because Card SWEARS in his book.

So can the "Great Mormon Novel" be one that is rejected by Mormons for not following the standards they have set? (I personally like Card's work. He is a fabulous writer).

I always come from the debates saying, "Fine. I'll write the Great Mormon Novel." And then I think about it more clearly and say, "Oh, yeah. The Great anything Novel has to be literary fiction, and I don't read or write that kind of crap." And why is it that so many of the members I know who like "Literary Fiction" don't actually believe in the church? Is the key to the whole issue?

But it always leads to a second debate for me, which I DON'T bring up with my Intellectual friends. That is: Where is all the Escapist fiction written by Mormons to Mormon standards? Mormons balk at reading works by Mormons that has swearing or graphic sex in it (nobody seems to mention violence, but that bothers me a lot), but they want to read escapist fiction, so they read the same stuff (swearing, violence, sex) written by non-members. So if people are going to read for fun anyway, why aren't we producing stuff that's fun to read and Clean--to our standards?

You are countering, Yes, but there's Heimerdinger. And The Work and The Glory. And Charly. Yes. But three is not enough. And not everyone likes historical fiction and romance.

And why not write stuff that is "Mormon", and Mormon appropriate, but also accessible to a general audience? There are a few who are doing this--and this is what I think Mormon writers should be doing. Anne Perry does it. Card does (although there is that swearing issue). And there are a couple of others (Mom reads a series where the protagonist is a detective who also is a member, I assume written by a member).

And this seems to be the real issue. Far more important than the "Great Mormon Novel" issue. Why are we not flooding the world with good, edifying literature (and art, and film), that tells great, fun stories that are exciting, entertaining, and righteous? I personally know several authors (Jon included) who have the talent and the ideas. And Satan is doing his part to flood the earth with trash. So why not counter, and fill the earth with great fun stuff? They can even be Mormon stories, but isn't it time to stop excluding the rest of the world from our art and make great stuff that everyone can enjoy? Surely we can do that without denying who and what we are, and without making a spectacle of sacred things....

Now that is a challenge I think I can take up.

Do you believe in magic?

Last summer we ended up touring with a magician named Tim Gabrielson. His wife was another Rebecca, and his "thing" is comedy magic, so we all hit it off really fast. Fabulous guy. We caught his very funny show at least twice, and Caleb was hooked. Now he wants to be a magician when he grows up (all the kids get a kick out of the similarity between the words "magician" and "musician"). He told Tim G. that and Mr. Gabrielson gave Caleb a kit to teach him how to palm a squishy ball--with the instructions and materials.

Jon was really into magic when he was young, too, and I played "assistant" a lot. It was really fun for both of us. I only learned how to do one trick on my own, though--palming a small object. So I tried to show Caleb how the trick worked. Only I couldn't get the squishy ball palmed right, so I used a coin, like Jon showed me. Caleb was impressed. I had to repeat the trick a lot, "blowing" the coin out of my hand and into the air, and then pulling it out of their ears or heads or pockets. Then I told him maybe Uncle Jon would teach him how.

So when we went to Utah in December, Caleb asked Jon. And Jon showed him exactly how the trick worked--and all four children there still believed that Jon was magically making the coin disappear and reappear in their ears or whatever.

So just a couple of days ago, I showed Caleb again how the trick is done, and explained it, and didn't try to hide it at all, and he STILL believed that if I would just blow on it, then the toy would really disappear. Magically.

No matter how much we explained, showed, illustrated, and revealed the trick and technique, Caleb refused to believe in any but the most magical reasoning. We've never really done the Santa thing (never really NOT done it either--we just have avoided the whole issue), and Caleb believes in Santa, too. It's amazing. Something in him really WANTS magic to be real, so much so that no other reasoning will suffice. I understand the feeling. That's a major reason why I write. When I write, I get to live in world where not only does magic exist, I get to set the terms for it and then play with them. I get to continue to "Play", the same way Jon and I did when we were kids--doing magic, chasing bad guys, and making up stories that we could live to our heart's content.

I suppose I could go into all kinds of analysis about belief versus science versus reality, and people (in all camps) just seeing what they want to believe.

But I won't. I don't have the energy.

Daniel seems to have caught the bug, too, though. Today he put a toy barn on my lap and hid a train in it. Then he signed to me, "Where is it?" I said, "Where is it?" back to him, and he immediately blew on the place he hid it and then, with a flourish and mock surprise on his face, he produced the little toy train. I guess Daniel understood the reality of it better than his siblings.....

Kids are Still Funny

Tim is applying for a job as an administrative assistant for a booking agency. One application down.

The kids have been funny lately. Last night Anda walked by with a big lump in her jammies. Using my mother's intuition, I asked, "Is Baby Kitty in your jammies?" Anda said, "Yes. I'm a car tonight, and cars have passengers." A few minutes later, Caleb walked by with several lumps in his jammies. I didn't ask. He was probably being a van.

mishmash of musings

I read Jon's blog (http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/) and it made me cry--lots of travails just trying to get home, and nothing working the way they intended it to, despite their best efforts to prevent problems, be aware of issues, and plan ahead. It just seemed like their entire trip was representative of life in general. Aren't we all on this journey, here for the people instead of for the destinations or the adventures, and it NEVER goes the way we plan? But if we get home with our families intact, it's all okay.

I've been watching Dan lately and realized once again that some talents "show" well, and some show up early (like Caleb's verbal skills) and make your kid look like a genius (and therefore you a good mother), and some don't. And the ones that don't are often the most important ones. For example, Daniel seems to have a gift for tuning in to what people need and providing it the best he can. Just yesterday, Tim lay down on the couch for a nap after church (and after an unusually bad night--he got 4 hours of sleep and I got about 3). When Tim had fallen asleep, little Daniel toddled over with his arms full of the biggest, softest blanket he could carry. He tucked it all over Tim's head and shoulders (that's the part that's "Daddy", right?), and then gave Tim a kiss and walked away. Anda fixed the blanket so Tim could breathe, and Dan, noticing his work had been adjusted, went back and tucked the blanket all around close to Tim and kissed him again. Then, for the next 2 hours until he himself fell asleep, he wandered back over to Tim every ten or fifteen minutes and checked on him, kissed him, and then went back to his games.

That's a lot of nurturing coming from a 15 month old, who usually think first of themselves and then of how you can help them. It's a gift--that will never show well but will bless countless lives.

On the news front, we've finally honed in more closely on what kind of career Tim wants. I think Tim wants to be what is alternately labeled an "Artistic Director" or "Music Director." If you're dealing with film, TV, or video, the same job is "Music Supervisor", and if you're into software design, the job is called "Sound Designer," but it's all about the same job. Technically, an "Artistic Director" is the person who decides what shows to do and who will direct them for arts that are presented in theaters, like opera, drama, and dance; a "Music Director" is the conductor of the orchestra or the person who is responsible for rehearsing the music of a play. In general use, however, all the terms become interchangeable. Essentially, the "Artistic/Music Director" determines everything art-related about a performance, including what the group will wear, what they will look like, what kind of movement there will be (choreography? by whom?), and what music will be performed and how it will be performed. The Artistic Director is then responsible for rehearsing the group and conducting during performances. They also "produce" all recordings the groups makes, sitting in the studio and supervising, giving the performers and audio engineers instructions as they go. The Artistic Director is the one with the "vision" of what the group really is, and the one responsible for making it happen.

Really, it's the same job that used to be called "Conductor," but conductors wanted people to know they do so much more than just wave their arms during a concert, so the term/terms were invented in the 1950s to express what the job is really about. We've been accused of making this all up before, but it's a legitimate job in the classical music world. And Tim wants it. And he specifically wants to work with all aspects of vocal music (choirs, a cappella groups, etc).

People actually hire other people to do this. It's not a "Far Out There" kind of job, like saying, "I want to be the next Mel Gibson." But it is a highly competetive job, and to get the really good positions, you have to have a DMA (musical equivalent of a PhD). Full-time jobs take a MM (Masters of Music), which is what Tim is working on. The rest of the people have to have experience (he does) and luck to get a part-time position, or a couple of part-time positions. This is what we're praying for, searching for, waiting for. There's actually a position open not far from here, but it's for an orchestra instead of a choral group, and Tim doesn't have the qualifications to conduct a youth symphony orchestra, I don't think.

Amazingly, you have to have a huge amount of musical talent in multiple areas to do this kind of job. The kind of broad array of experience nobody in their right mind collects. The kind of broad experience and talent Tim has. So he's on the right track. We're just waiting for the jobs to show up and pondering what we need to do to MAKE the jobs.

Tim's ultimate goal is to work in a University as a professor, do Artist/Music consulting on the side, keep performing (how could he not?!), and to take choral music to "disadvantaged populations"--prisoners, families in shelters (women's shelters or homeless shelters), children who are too poor for traditional "Arts" education, disabled people, etc. There are hundreds of programs that take choirs to these populations, but almost none that allow the disadvanted to make the art themselves--and that's what Tim wants to do. Not just take a choir of college kids into the prison to sing at Christmas. He wants the choir to be made up of prisoners.

But for now? We'll take whatever we can get, I think. Let us know if you hear of anything.....

Long time no see

I've mentally written three or four blog posts but couldn't log in to blogger for a week. So you'll have to miss them.

So this is mostly news.

I revised my novel again. This time it's really done. ;) I actually took out two characters, Sirena and Fina--I'll use them in a sequel some day because I still like them and the interplay between two bad guys who think they're good but in opposition to one another. I also like the idea of someone who thinks they are in charge but are really being manipulated extensively by the "conquered" one. Anyway, they didn't really add to this novel--I cut 5000 words and only had to write two sentences to replace it and sew up the seams. That says, "Not vital info here." So now we're getting close to the "acceptable" range for a novel--157,000 words (I've now cut 57,000 words from the book!). I also rewrote my query after reading anaylses by two agents of hundreds of queries, and then I sent it out to a pretty big agency--and got a rejection from a rather small one.

Anyway, that done, the "stupor of thought" that was stopping me from writing my next book completely dissolved, and I got going with the goal to finish before the baby comes (very possible if I write 1000 words a day--and with the last book I wrote 4000 a day). It all went well for a minute, and then I froze up again. Realized later that night that I had made a mistake in the narrative, and I suspect if I fix it, the rest will flow.

It has been amazing to me that if I make a mistake or leave out some important detail, or write something that doesn't work, I can't write any more. And then if I go back and fix the problem, the words flow again. It's bizarre. Many times I've frozen up and couldn't think of a single thing to write and had to pray about what I'd done wrong in order to figure it out--sometimes the missing piece or the wrong part is not clearly wrong until many many pages later. But I've learned to just go with it. If I force myself to write through the block (common advice for writers), I just end up having to delete the junk later.

I have finally learned what Mom told me years ago--just go with what you feel like doing. If I don't feel like writing, I don't. I sort toys. Or read. Or play with the kids. Or stare at the wall. Or make something tasty. Or whatever. Doesn't do any good to force yourself to work--on the house or the book. It just makes for physical pain and stuff you have to redo later.

Writing has been a lesson in revelation for me. It works the same way, with the genuine joy and excitement when I'm doing it right, and the stupor of thought so that I can't even remember what I was going to say when I've done it wrong. And the slow, day-by-day coaching that is challenging but never too much to handle. And when I do what I feel, and pray daily for the next instructions, I feel happy in so many other areas of my life.

The question as I cut the most recent 5000 words was "Why didn't I just do it right in the first place?" And the answer was, obviously, that I've learned more about writing from having to cut a fourth of the book out than I ever would have learned from doing it right the first time. Besides, the learning happens on the journey, not at the destination.

And it's all about learning, isn't it?

Christmas is Not Yet Over here

There was supposed to be another blizzard starting right now, but it turned into a rainstorm. It will probably develop into nasty snow overnight. I'm just glad the garbage man made it....

And the mailman. "Santa Clause" hasn't stopped giving yet. I don't know if it's the same anonymous person who provided such a delightful Christmas for my family or another generous soul, but we got a gift card in the mail, for WalMart (just what I needed, actually), for $200! I can hardly believe it. And, to add to the mystery, the package came via regular postal mail, but without a postmark. I have no idea where it came from. I was expecting a gift card from Grandma Jones, but she told us she was sending it--no reason for her to sign it "Santa" and be anonymous....and I doubt she has that much to give since she provides gifts for 6 children, 6 spouses, and 15+ grandchildren.

This on top of the $100 to King Soopers and $50 to JC Penny the ward gave us. And on top of the bishop racing down to Denver to get 2 weeks of food for us before this new storm hit. So now we have fancier food than we usually get, money for things we need, and hope for a job soon.

So who is the mystery person/persons? I have no idea. I keep trying to guess, but I'm a miserable failure at that. All I can do is promise to do the same for someone else some year when I am able. And I have this inkling of an idea that maybe when I know a family that is unemployed, I should be doing like things for them when it's not Christmas. Maybe someday when we're comfortable and can sacrifice $200, I should get the gift card from Wal-mart in July and give it to the bishop to deliver to a family that he knows needs it...

I hope that when I do have enough to share, I WILL share. Being poor can make people miserly, and I hope that doesn't happen. I hope it makes me frugal so I can be generous with my excess some day.

So if any of you happen to know who has helped us so much, tell them Thanks. Big Time.

Christmas For Mommy

Thanks to a couple of sets of Grandparents and a wonderful anonymous, we had a nice Christmas. The kids all got new clothes and jammies that I looked at and said, "Too Big," but that actually fit. Anda put on all of her new clothes at once and wore them as she opened the rest of her presents. Daniel didn't really "get" it except that each package that did get opened was suddenly his favorite--especially the doll that "anonymous" gave to Anda with three little bottles. Dan really wanted one, too. And then a package from Anda's cousin had Another doll--and she very generously gave it and its bottle to Dan. Once Caleb found that he DID get a train for Christmas (from Anda), he could appreciate his other presents, too. So all the kids were happy.

They spent all day sharing their toys, taking turns playing with everyone's everythings happily. We all played six games of Candyland together--that, too, was a success from anonymous. Daniel discovered that painting is great fun. Everyone colored in coloring books, did crafts, ate candy, "went shopping", and generally had fun.

Tim had already informed me that they didn't buy me anything, and I knew it was okay. I only got him lunch meats and swiss cheese--that's all. But then Christmas Eve, as I put presents under the tree, I didn't find a single one for me from anyone. I learned a few years ago that I really DO want something for Christmas--just one package that I don't know what's inside that I didn't buy for myself. So I went to bed sincerely praying that I wouldn't care in the morning, and that I would have a genuinely happy day. Then I had a terrible night--Dan was up every hour or so.

Then I woke up enough before the kids that I got a shower before they got up--how often does a mom get a peaceful shower alone? And it turned out there were two presents under the tree from Anonymous for me--nice things, too. And some for Tim, too.

And then I realized that I got everything a mom REALLY wants for Christmas. Tim and the kids cleaned the house for me. It hadn't even been picked up since my birthday, so it was a disaster, and they got it clean. Even mopped the floors! Then everyone was happy with their presents and felt like they got what they wanted. Tim moved all the big furniture I wanted moved--even the piano. And Tim made breakfast for everyone.

And then I had the one-in-a-million absolutely peaceful day. Nobody fought all day. Nobody got hurt. Nobody cried. Nobody was sick. Nobody was mean. Nobody broke or spilled anything. Nobody demanded my time. Nobody made me get up and do anything. Nobody screamed in the other rooms, or played loud music, or made me watch their TV programs with them. Nobody even made me read to them, which I don't mind. Everyone helped pick up the wrapping paper messes without being asked twice. Everyone was patient as we struggled to open and put together myriad new toys. Everyone SHARED everything--even the crafts they got to do, and the paints, and everything.

Then Tim prayed a good night's sleep for me--and it worked. For the first time in over a year, nobody woke me up all night and nobody slept in my bed. Even Daniel slept all night in his own bed in the other room without waking up once. I actually got to wake up by myself in the morning an hour before anyone else and laze around like I used to before I had kids.

What else could a mom want for Christmas? And it's all stuff that you can't ask for and get. Nobody plans those things. Nobody can just try really hard and make them happen. And nobody can predict them.

So it was a really nice Christmas.

Those Darn Jones Kids

Right now the kids are looking up Israel on the globe, and Bethlehem on the map in the Bible. Anda told Caleb the Christmas story, and they stopped just as baby Jesus started looking for a pet store because they determined there were probably no pet stores in Bethlehem. And where is Bethlehem, anyway? Thus the globe.

They've been cute all day.

Dinner conversation, for example. (This is not exact. I can't remember the exact words they said. This is the gist of it. Remember, Caleb and Anda are only 5 and 3):
C: This is perplexing.
A: No. I'm perplexing you.
C: You can't perplex me.
A: You can't perplex me either. Only I can perplex me.
C: You can't perplex yourself. It's not possible.
A: I can't perplex myself? Outside can be perplexing.
C: I can't perplex myself. But I can perplex the Perplexing Pool [a level in a nintendo game].

Other cute stuff:
Daniel is sitting on the floor singing along to the timer beeping as he pushes the buttons. Earlier, he was dancing to the beeping of the timer.

And, on a very sweet and touching note, Caleb wrote Anda a Christmas card on a scrap of newspaper they were using to wrap presents. He taped it to the present she picked out for him to give her at the Dollar Store yesterday. The note said, "Merry Christmas, Anda. I love you as much as God loves me."

Now that's the way it should be.

Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness

Merry Christmas, everyone.

We had a nice church time (Tim sang "O Holy Night" and it was beautiful. Made me cry. We got so many comments afterward that it made us uncomfortable in the same way you feel awkward when someone says, "Congrats" when you get made Primary President.). Then we came home and slept some.

We're still digging out from the blizzard, and most of the merchants in the area are saying they lost several key days of sales. Judging from the stream of cars outside, people are making it up today. Merry Christmas and Happy Sabbath Day to you all, right?

Anyway, we did our shopping last night, calculated for a time when the grocery store would be empty of the crowds. Everyone, suddenly freed from the freeze yesterday, hit the stores to replenish and Christmas shop. And Tim and I were no different. We'd stocked up before the storm because we thought Tim was leaving town, but we had to face two days (Sunday and then Christmas Day) with no restocking possible, so we had to go out and get milk and bread, mostly, and a few other thisses and thats.

Amazingly, there was almost no bread in the store. Only specialty loaves that cost $4.00/loaf, and not even much of that. And who wants peanutbutter on marbled rye? Not my kids. And we can't spend $4.00/loaf anway. The store was mostly or completely out of a few other things (eggnog, chips, sugar, flour, shredded cheese, etc.). This was something that made perfect sense, considering that no ground or air traffic moved for several days through the entire state, but it was a surprise nonetheless.

I stood there looking at the empty bread row and said to the kids, "That's okay. We'll just go home and make bread. It's cheaper anyway."

And then I started thinking about food storage and emergency preparedness. Granted, we don't have a year's supply of anything right now. But we do have a supply--more than a couple weeks usually (now is an unusual time for us, but I still have 20 lbs of flour left). And--the key thing that I realized they talk about but I never focus much on--I know how to make bread.

It seems like everyone in the US, unable to fathom any but the most unusual emergency that would require a year's worth of food on hand, justifies the requirement for a year's supply of food by saying, "You never know when your husband will lose his job." I've heard it a hundred times in Relief Society. Usually paired with, "Besides, obedience has its own reward." The problem with that justification for food storage is that it brings to mind a different sort of food storage requirement. When you are storing in case the world still functions but you don't, you store things like a year's supply of cheerios, and a year's supply of canned chili, and other things that you eat everyday--usually you can come up with a few dollars for what you lack, right? This is the kind of food storage we've usually had. And justifiably. Don't they say, "Store what you eat"? So I always have, say, 30-50 lbs (3 months supply) of frozen hamburger on hand.

But the church ALSO says to have the basics on hand, and to know how to use them.

Why? For our family, today, it is clearly because there are times when the world DOESN'T function, no matter how much we trust our governments to dig us out or fix what's broken. And it's not so distant as the once-in-a-hundred-years New Orleans Disaster or World Trade Center Disaster or ....okay, maybe even in America it hits frequently. And when the world doesn't function, we suddenly need that massive amount of flour and sugar. It really doesn't take much to disrupt the shipping lines--and without shipping, our cities shut down very fast. And then you not only need flour, and yeast, and sugar. You need to know how to make bread and tortillas and you need to have canned stuff (fruits, veggies, protien) around. Because sometimes the stores actually DON'T have it. And then what?

I have a friend who has a year's supply of money on hand. Been useful since her husband lost his job 6 months ago. Wouldn't have helped her get bread this weekend. Fortunately, she has the other food storagey stuff, too.

Luckily for us, we got to the store right after the first truck did--so they were completely overstocked on fresh fruits and veggies, which was a main thing we needed. And they were stocked with milk. But I definitely came away saying, "Wow. I suddenly wish I had just one or two sealed cans of powdered milk on hand." Sure, it doesn't taste good. We'd almost never use it. But, you don't have this stuff for everyday (okay, you have to rotate it). But I understand now why we're instructed to have enough of the basics on hand to keep you alive FIRST, and then worry about the cheerios. Even in America. Lucky for us, this emergency didn't last a year. And it didn't include loss of heat or power (then we would have been in trouble). But having some on hand left us with enough to share, had we needed to.

And we are thinking now about what to do if we did have a loss of heat and power. Already I've said, "Maybe we should have the coleman stove in an accessible place. Maybe we should test it occassionally--have a yearly outdoor barbecue on it to keep it functional and make sure we both know how to use it. Maybe we should make sure we can a can of fuel for it also accessible. Maybe we should think about how would we keep warm in an emergency since we got rid of our (nonfunctional) standalone fireplace."

Oh, and we HAVE been using our food storage to supplement Tim's job when he was teaching choir and also his joblessness now. It's good for that, too. And we do have a lot of the recommended emergency supplies on hand--candles, matches, first aid stuff (and the knowledge and resources necessary to use it), medicines, bleach, diapers in all sizes, warm clothes, consecrated oil, ward list, etc. We have also (wisely, I see now) kept a year's supply of "something to do" for each of us in the house--things to do with and without electricity. That's been nice, since everyone still needed to stay busy, and we couldn't rely on the library to entertain us like we usually do.

And now I'm thinking, "How easy would it be for something to not only foul but also completely disrupt the water supply? Phones? Heat and power?"

Probably not so hard.

Once again, the Lord is right, and I am grateful for the limited amount I obeyed, and anxious to become completely obedient in this thing.

Now if he will just bless us with a job so we can.....

Blizzard--for real

It's never been so quiet outside our house during the day.

I woke up at about 8:00 am because there were sirens outside that stopped somewhere near the house. When I got up to look and make sure my neighbors were okay, it was just barely snowy. But it was windy. An hour later, Tim got up to drive to the airport to fly to Las Vegas for BYU's bowl game--moosebutter was performing at the tailgate party. He made it six miles to the freeway and about four miles down the freeway before he heard the radio announcer say that flights were being cancelled--so call the airport before you go out there. He pulled off and called--his flight was cancelled. So were all the rest. So he came home--back that same ten miles. Driving the ten miles each way got him home TWO HOURS after he left. To drive 20 miles. WHY?

Because the entire central part of the entire state has been hit with a massive blizzard. A real blizzard--the first I've ever been in. Tim couldn't get another later flight, and then at 2:45 pm they closed the airport entirely--until Thursday night at the earliest. All the freeways are closed, too, from Wyoming to New Mexico, Denver to Kansas and Denver to Nebraska. So we're snowed in.

It's actually been really fun. We ate turkey-broccoli-corn with rivels soup, and the kids and Daddy played outside until they were freezing. We turned on Christmas music, and we're going to make cookies, and Tim is finally getting to watch "Nacho Libre". We did all our shopping last night in anticipation of Tim being gone, so we have everything we need. We kept water warm on the back burner of the stove all day for hot cocoa. It's like a holiday for us--and so nice to have a holiday with all of us here and feeling festive (I don't often feel festive, after all. Holidays usually make me just tired).

There is so much snow we can't really believe it. There was so much in the back yard that the kids sledded down the balcony steps to the yard below--without any bumps like you'd expect from sledding down stairs. The UNDRIFTED snow was up to Tim's knees at six when he went out to shovel the walk--and it's snowing harder now than it was all day. The drifts are so high that we left the garbage can out by the street and Tim stuck a shovel into the drift on the other side of the driveway so we can find the way in and out. Our privacy fence has about 18 inches showing at the top, with a foot of snow balanced on the top of the slats. The two dead cars (which we actually sold last night for $60 for both--but the guy couldn't get a tow truck up here to take them away yet) are totally covered with snow. You can see by the lumps where they are, but not an inch of car is showing--not even on Hector, that tall old Toyota van. Tim had to dig paths out of the house using a large toy bin to scoop the snow away--and now the part he shoveled by the back door is snowed in again. When we open the door, we're met with a foot deep undrifted layer of white stuff.

Now it's just after 9:00 pm, and the places that Tim shoveled earlier have well over a foot of snow on them. Tomorrow he's going to have to climb up on the roofs and shovel them, too. That's the routine when you have a flat roof, I understand. Fortunately, the snow is all powder (I'm sure the people snowed in at the ski resorts think they've died and gone to heaven). It's not as heavy as it could be. But three or four feet of powder is still heavy. We're praying the power doesn't go out and the furnace exaust vents on the roof don't get plugged. Maybe we'll have to shovel the roof tonight....

And the storm just keeps getting worse.

How's this for how bad it is: They even closed the malls at 5:00 pm--five hours early, and just a few days before Christmas.

For us, though, all snug and together in our home, it's been really fun. Just what Caleb told the bishop he wanted for Christmas.

Christmas decorating

We adopted some other country's tradition of hiding a glass pickle on the tree (whoever finds it gets good luck for the coming year). Anda liked that idea. So she hid a pink stuffed bunny on the tree--the "Christmas Rabbit." That lasted a few days. Today, I looked on the tree and found she had replaced the bunny with a small pot. From the kitchen. WIth a stuffed gingerbread man in it. I didn't even ask what she's thinking. I suspect we are the only family that has decorated their Christmas tree with such utilitarian kitchen items.

Mom and Dad lent us their wheat grinder for a while, and yesterday we discovered that Daniel had found the hole in the top (where you put the wheat) and stuck a lollipop in it. We had to get tweezers to extract it. We did make "homemade flour" though, and the kids really thought it was cool. They ate it plain. Uncooked. By the pinch.

I keep having nightmares that we are on the road full time traveling in one big van with the rest of moosebutter, wandering from the back stage of this theater to the back doors of that university like gypsies. When I wake up, I'm glad to be home, even if two kids managed to pee on my bed last night.

The kids are really funny lately. There are wrapped presents scattered all over the house, unhidden, and nobody has even mentioned them. They don't touch them. They don't shake them. They don't open the creases and peek. They don't even ask about them. Wow.

They did ask about getting the stockings out tonight. I didn't feel like going out in the garage, so Caleb went down to the drawer I keep full of stray socks that I let the kids use for art and craft projects (socks make GREAT teddy bear shirts). He came back up with five long white socks, none of them the same, and pulled out the stamp kit Julie bought him at the dollar store. Then all three kids sat happily at the table stamping red and green designs on each of the socks. Caleb found a permanent marker and wrote one person's name on each sock, and then Anda found push pins and we hung up the stockings. I suppose Mary will forgive us for not using the ones she made for us that we usually use. This year we have REAL socks for our stockings. The kids were so delighted with how they turned out that they dug up the fanciest socks they could find in the drawer and made more stockings -- and labeled them "Julie", "Mary", and "Ben." One for each of the single people, plus Julie for some reason.

They also informed me that if the baby is a girl, we could name it Julie, Mary, Beth, Chas, Lindsey OR Madeline, and if it's a boy, we could name it Ben, or Joe, or Jon, or Ryan or Jared or Daddeline. Then they went down and got stockings for Everyone in the extended family that they forgot. I guess you all have to come here for Christmas.....or maybe we'll mail your stockings to you.

So now it's 2:30 am and Anda and Baby Kitty are racing around the house killing invisible Pikmin monsters while Caleb decorates the additional stockings and Daniel salts the chairs (I don't know HOW he got the salt--I hope he didn't pour it into the wheat grinder). They started killing monsters after the batteries in all three smoke alarms went bad in one day--so occassionally we hear chirping in the house, always coming from a different room, like a wandering monster.

It's nice to be home.

Decorating for Christmas

We finally made the trek out to the garage and dug up the old Christmas tree, which is looking pretty ragged to me. Caleb declared it "Beautiful."

We put 3/4 of it up on a low table against a wall--that way it stays flush against the wall and takes less space. Nobody was going to look at the back anyway. Caleb said, "It's an evergreen." Anda added, "It's a dark green."

We pulled out our lights and found a box that we'd never opened. It had this warning on it: "Handling the wires on this string of lights exposes you to lead, a substance known to the state of California to cause birth defects. Wash hands after exposure." Who knew Christmas lights were deadly?

And then we decorated. I decided I'm not a good decorater of trees. At least, it didn't come out exactly how I envisioned it. For one thing, the silver balls kind of disappear in a green tree with white lights. And then the problem came because Dan decided to have a nap in the middle of the festivities--so I couldn't teach the kids how to decorate in a hands-on kind of way. I guess that's okay. The tree is for the kids, anyway. So now we have invisible silver balls all over, and ratty gold and silver ribbons that the kids literally tossed up onto the tree (the fun way to decorate, they say). There's a band of equally -spaced marshmallow snowmen the kids made with Mary a couple of years ago in a nice even line as high as Anda can reach, and another as high as Caleb can reach (I told them not to put the snowmen where Dan can reach and eat them). I moved a few of the decorations that were touching each other up to the completely naked top of the tree (with the kid's permission) after Dan woke up.

Finally awake, Daniel took one look at the tree and began happily ripping almost-invisible-except-to-him silver balls off the branches and started banging them together and throwing them joyfully around the room. I was instantly glad that I had replaced all the glass balls with plastic last year when I found them for 10 cents a box at the dollar store after Christmas. So now we have a tree that is naked around the bottom (or, at best, sparsely and unevenly decorated), heavily snowmanned around the middle, and sort of evenly decorated around the top. And it's only been up for about 15 minutes.

Caleb declared it "done" and "beautiful."

I guess he's right.

gone and back again

I haven't posted anything in ages because, well, because we were with most of you in person. So there.

It was a nice trip.

The van's suspension wasn't shot, like Wal-Mart said. It was the tires. So Taysom Tires got $257 to fix it, instead of them getting $100. So blah to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, right after we got home, the plastic/rubber wheel well guard behind one of the rear tires completely fell off and got shredded on the road. So much for that.

Now we're done touring. Tim said so. Next time we come to Utah will probably be for Ben's farewell party. Probably. That's probably good because our van wouldn't last too long on that heavy travel schedule--we put 16,000 miles on the van since we bought it in May. That's a lot. Especially for a car that started with 139,000 miles in the first place.

Job search continues. Tim is looking at applying for a job in New York City as the production manager for a choir there. Also picking up as much contract work as he can in the mean time. We just have to get these last few shows with moosebutter out of the way so he has time for things like eating, sleeping, breathing, and signing applications.

The kids are happy to be home, but having a hard time adjusting to having a big house. Especially Daniel. Any time anyone walks out of the room, he panics--he can't figure out where in the house to look for us. He also hates the mess--he can't walk over it. I am trying to work on that part, but my back is hurting so I can't bend or sit on anything hard. If I do, I can't stand up straight or walk--literally. I stand there and can't move my feet forward or lift them over the junk if I manage to shuffle sideways. So reaching the floor is even harder than it already was. Still, I did the same thing this time as I did last time we were away from home for a while. I came in and immediately could see some things I could do to make the house run smoother--things that involve major moving of furniture. Tim will be able to help me with this next week, but I am impatient. I want to move the guest bed upstairs to give it to Daniel, and move his dresser/shelves thingy downstairs to become the linen closet. Then I want to rearrange the bedrooms so every kid has their own bed that they'll actually sleep in. Then I want to move all the adult books (not that kind of adult books....) and Tim's choral music collection into the library, which will entail moving lots of the shelves from other places in the house into the library to hold those things, which are scattered around house and garage right now, mostly not on shelves and getting ruined. Then I want to get rid of the hide-a-bed (it's so old it's uncomfortable to sit on), except the mattress, of course, and replace it with a couple of rocking chairs in the family room, and maybe one in the library along with the desk that's there so people can use the room comfortably. Lots of work, but it should make the house easier to keep tidy. I might also take the couch out of Tim's office (it usually just holds junk) and put it in the living room, and put the living room couch in the family room (since it's the prettiest couch we own).

By the time I get all of this figured out completely, we'll probably be moving and I'll have to start over.

Anyway, cute kid things:
Daniel found a cassette tape today. He's fairly mechanically inclined usually (he figured out how to use the CD player all by himself yesterday--now he can insert his cd of choice and play it, even setting the volume where he wants it), but he couldn't figure out what the cassette was for, even after I showed him how to put it into the tape player. He finally took it out and turned it round and round and apparently concluded it was a harmonica of some kind--he tried to play it by blowing into it for several minutes.

Writing update:
I got another rejection yesterday, so I sent another query. At some point, I hope someone looks at my stuff and says, "I know JUST who wants this." Someone who read a big chunk rejected it for fear it couldn't stand up to Jasper Fforde's stuff. Unfortunately, only the first book in the series compares to his. The rest take the same concept but apply it to other source material--but an agent couldn't know this from reading 50 pages of Poison Spindle. Oh well. Now that we have food in the house and I've figured out where to put the Christmas tree, I'm ready to start writing again--on both the Western and the first Maggie Book, which is 10,000 words long so far--1/10th done.

So Merry Christmas!, and I'll write more later.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who gave us gifts, especially for the kids. Thanks for the shoes for Anda, too. She LOVES them and the socks. And thanks to the mystery person who gave us Christmas for the kids, whoever it was. A relative, we're sure, but WHO? Everyone denies any involvement.....

addendum to kids are funny

Today Anda revised her opinion of Teletubbies. Now they have bums--that have horns (there's no right way to say that in this context....beepers, honkers, tweeters, etc. all have "issues"--So think Car Horn--they go beep beep or aaoooga) and bells in them so that when the teletubbies bump into something, they know.

Caleb also said something funny today. "Nobody knows everything," I said confidently. "Except me," he said. "I have a lot of knowledge, just like Nobody."

Wow. Double--or is that triple--funny in one conversation.

Funny kid perceptions

I'm having to type one-handed a lot again. Not so bad until Caleb used my computer and now the S key is sticky and stiff...

The kids have a totally different view of the world than I did when I was five. When I was five, computer still meant "one who computes." Now computer stuff fills our minds and lives. For example, Caleb was supposed to be going potty so he could go to bed, but instead he was standing in front of the potty, dry, but not letting anyone else have a turn. And we were all waiting. Finally, I said, "Caleb, do you even need to go?" He replied, "Yeah. I just have to wait for the pee to load."

I understand that finally being fully potty trained, even at night, makes going potty an interesting thing in Anda's world, but I was pretty surprised when she announced, "Mom, the Teletubbies don't go potty." "What?" I said. Then, trying to teach a little science whenever I can, I said, "Anything that eats has to go potty." "No, Mom," Anda said. "Teletubbies eat, but they don't go potty. They don't have bums." "They don't?" I said. "Nope," Anda said. "I looked. I watched on TV, and they don't have bums." Caleb, too, informed me later that day that Teletubbies don't go potty. Maybe I should watch TV with them in the future so I can hear what they talk to each other about....

Next time you happen to see Teletubbies, you might take note. The kids are right--they DON'T have bums.

Dan is getting precocious. He climbed up on the table today. Yesterday he tried to run his own bath. Fortunately, he was out of the tub, he got the plug in crooked so no water accumulated in the tub, and he could only reach the cold faucet. His new hobby is taking all the cans out of the cupboard and putting them back in. When he can, he takes all the food out of the fridge and puts it back in. He also spends dinner putting the lids back on things like sald dressing bottles. And he can't stand to watch movies downstairs unless the ficus tree is standing up in its corner and the piano bench us in its place. How any child could get the idea that things should be in their "place" in my house is a baffling mystery. Things actually have a place?

Yesterday I was humming a tune, and Anda came to listen. Finally she said, "Sing it again." So I started over. Then she interrupted with, "No, Mom. Use your tongue." She wanted me to Sing, not Hum, I guess.

For our bedtime story a couple of nights ago, I told the kids the story of the premortal life, and the war in heaven, and Adam and Eve. They were enchanted. When I finished, they said, "Tell it again." They requested it the next night, too. It's received far more attention than any other story ever at our house. It's the only story Anda has ever sat all the way through. It was exciting and fascinating to her. Wow. Now she runs around telling stories where Heavenly Father and Jesus are the superheroes killing bad guys. And Caleb tells stories of how all his "sons" (trains) conquer Satan. I guess they "got it".

Anda and Dan have a neat little racket going. Anda won't use crayons unless she's taken the paper off first. Then Dan finds the stripped crayons and eats them. He won't eat the paper, so Anda's discarded crayons are just his thing.

Caleb has refused to eat oranges for two years. So the other day when I bought a box of clementines, he didn't want any. Then he saw that the side of the box said, "Mandarin Oranges." He likes the canned stuff, so now the little fresh ones are his snack of choice, and he'll eat a big one if he has to--as long as it doesn't have seeds. Labels seem to be everything in his world.

The kids have this new habit of trying to manipulate things with artificial cause-effect relationships. Like this: "Mom, I want to use your laptop to play a PBS kids game." "I'm working on my novel right now." "Mom. If I fall down here, and then pop up, you have to give me a turn right now." Or: "If I flap this flap on the couch, then it won't be bedtime any more." I wonder if it's a result of us counting to three to get the kids to do something. It really is a totally artificial thing, but the kids respond, even though the set punishment is "I'll carry you to your room" (not so terrible...).

Anda is suddenly into the "Why?" thing that Caleb never did. "Don't kick me." "Why?" "Because it hurts." "Why?" "Because bodies aren't made to be kicked." "Why?" Suddenly, in her mind, Mommy has a cartoon fit. Anda doesn't seem like she's trying to be malicious, but I can't figure out what she is doing. I try to answer, but some things either are circular after some point, or too complicated even for a bright three year old ("You see, there are nerves in my legs, and when you kick them.....").

Caleb has informed me that we won't be having as many kids as he thought (am I that mean when I'm pregnant?). That's good. Last I heard he was planning on having 12 brothers and 12 sisters--before you add the inlaws. Now he's saying we'll have three more kids, including the current tummy baby. What a relief! I wonder where he's getting these numbers? I told him more than four but less than elevan kids, and he concluded six all on his own.

Meanwhile, the kids have chosen names for the baby: Madeline if it's a girl and Daddeline if it's a boy. I suppose this came from an analogy like Madeline:Mom, so Daddeline:Dad. Funny, I was thinking more along the lines of Elizabth or Benjamin.

We shall see, I guess.

Research Help Request

I am doing research for my new book, which needs a title. It's set in the Old West of american folksong (think, "Clementine" or "Oh Susanna" or "Sweet Betsy from Pike.")

These are things that I want input from people on:

If you can think of a folk song or a list of folksongs, I'd like that.

What are different ways you could rob a bank in about 1870? Kate is trying to get something from the safe, so she can't just get money out--she needs to actually look into the safe. Brainstorm any and all ideas. Creative is good.

What are different ways you can break someone out of jail, also around 1870? The person on the inside is a man, good with a gun, but injured in a gunfight (probably shot in the shoulder because I'm actually aiming to use cliched conventions for stuff like that in the story). They have horses available after they break out, but how are they going to get him out of the jail? Again, any and all ideas work. Creative is good. It's just mostly to get me thinking.

Finally, what is some place you could look through the door into and immediately identify as familiar? I want it to be some place unexpected--not "Mom's house in the kitchen" but more like "the bathroom in the high school". Except I think she probably wouldn't recognize this out of the blue. The situation, for background, is Kate is standing in the old west looking through the door, and needs to recognize the place even though her surroundings are completely out of sync with what's on the other side of the door.

So there you go. I hope I haven't given away too much of the plot by asking for help. I ask because your ideas on waking a sleeping beauty using science helped me organize The Poison Spindle Problem so well.

Email me your ideas, or post them as comments on the blog and they'll come to my email automatically.

Thanks for your help!

The Bookstore Series

Out of nowhere, when I was trying to do research for the next book in the Bookstore series. I got the idea that catapulted me into the outline of the fourth book, which is the direct sequel of the first! So now I have 4 book for that series, but only one written.

Here's what I'm thinking will happen:

Book 1: The poison spindle problem--Kate gets kidnapped into a world peopled by fairytale characters where the witches have taken over the kingdom and are planning to execute the handsome princes unless she can find the missing heir to the throne in time....This one is finished.

Book 2: Needs a title--Kate goes to a world peopled by the characters from American folksongs and western lore. She chases down a ring of criminals that are selling women into slavery, helps solve a murder mystery, finds a lost mine, and stops the US Cavalry from wiping out a tribe of Native Americans.

Book 3: Porphyra--Kate finds herself in the Victorian England of the horror lore. Vampires are after the heros of Bram Stoker's Dracula again, and Kate helps them track down the source of the vampirism and destroy it, killing all vampires at once--except the one that escaped to Provo, UT. She finally meets Uncle Stan and helps him in his own adventure--saving a kidnapped Egyptian Princess from the men who want her prematurely mummified so they can take over the kingdom.

Book 4: The Icicle Dagger--Goldie and Jerusha (from book 1) set out to get revenge for their humiliation at the end of Book 1. They collect the "bad guys" from Oz, Neverland, and Wonderland, kidnap both Dorothy Gale and Elizabeth, Kate's sister-in-law who is 9 months pregnant, and set a trap to catch Kate and get rid of her permanently.

I have some ideas for other books in the series, too, with Kate playing sidekick to superheroes, going to outer space on a mission to save the galaxy, finding herself in the amateur detective role to find out who is murdering the Easter Bunnies (at a convention of all holiday-related folktale characters), wandering a world peopled by Shakespeare's characters but controlled by the conventions of musical theatre and light opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan), wandering a more traditional fairy fantasy in which malevolent fairies are kidnapping human girls to act as slaves, and lost as the female romantic lead in a gothic romance inspired by a story from Wilson Family History that Grandma Wilson told me. I also want Kate to be in a pirate story, but I don't even have a brief plot for that, only the name of the other main character, and a picture book in which each page is written and illustrated in the style of a different famous author or author/illustrator combo. I need a plot for that, too. And, I guess, I'm digging for a plot for the Shakespeare--I can't decide if I should steal a plot from one of the plays, or one of his rival's plays, or make a conglomerate plot, or just come up with my own.

Anyway, to put this all briefly, I am having a lot of fun. But I think I have a whole career's worth of writing here--and this doesn't even cover the young adult series I have three books outlined for (and one chapter written), or the Maggie the ex-spy Mormon Housewife series that I've started the first book in the series and outlined at least 4 more for. I don't seem to lack for ideas.

Now if I could just get an agent. Or a publisher. Or maybe not. This way it's all just for fun. Maybe I'll let my kids publish it all after I'm long gone--as a sort of inheritance for them.

Anyway, what' I've discovered is that when things are rough in one area, there is often some delight sitting right there to distract me, or lighten things, or give me joy despite the stresses of life.

My View of the New Yorker

A friend gave me an old copy of the New Yorker a few months ago, and I didn't really look at it until now. I knew it was the entertainment magazine of choice for intellectuals, so when I found the magazine in the pile of toys on the floor the other day I rescued it and started poking around. Just for background, my favorite "entertainment" magazines are Smithsonian and National Geographic. That gives you an idea of the kind of writing I prefer--lightweight, full of facts and informative, not dry. I also like a magazine to cover a broad variety of topics, and not play with my emotions at all. Especially when I'm pregnant.

I was sorely disappointed with the New Yorker. It is the intellectual equivalent to Especially for Mormons, or Reader's Digest. The New Yorker is full of intellectual smaltz. Of course, if any of my intellectual friends read this, they'll disagree. But there is a culture of intellectualism (perhaps I should capitalize it: Intellectuals), and the New Yorker feeds the sensibilities of that culture, with articles intended to manipulate the emotion just as much as the "my three kids died in a car accident but everything will be okay because I _felt_ something" or that stupid kid on the train tracks movie that Mormons get fed. Just instead of being fed warm fuzzy Heavenly Father Loves me stuff, the NYer is full of warm fuzzy liberal we are above traditional morality but part of a higher morality stuff.

And, for all of its acclaim, the writing was poor at best. It was wordy, rambling, "artsy" stuff--like "literary fiction" that I find so gaggy. It took each author at least a thousand more words to say what they wanted to say than they needed, and, in the end, I could restate most of it in one sentence--and a short sentence at that. Without leaving anything out.

And I was disappointed that, just like the pulp fiction they so disdain and the pop movies they disregard, the Intellectuals filled their magazine with sex and violence, just couched in many many words, or done openly (cartoons of naked women) with the attitude, "If you're offended, you are provincial, and Everybody Knows that provincial is Not As Good As I Am" because everybody who is anybody in the Intellectual world knows that people have sex, and so we should not ever need to be discreet about it, right? Of course, the Intellectuals would never admit that sex and violence are still tantalizing--even to them--so they verbalize it differently. But it's all the same stuff, just wrapped in different paper.

I finally threw it away.

Just for balance, I'll mention that I also hate The Reader's Digest. We got it for a year, and I read it cover to cover every month and felt like I'd wasted several hours each time (at least it was readable--the New Yorker is so poorly written that it's unreadable). It is the semi-educated housewife's equivalent to the New Yorker. Different audience, same goal and same result: we want to "entertain" by tickling your fancy and manipulating your emotions. Both magazines even use the same formula, with a combination of "news" (mostly science, health, and political news that is full of spin, several months outdated, and not truly informative or accurate), emotion-manipulating "real life" stories, and humor. Both magazines are a waste of time.

Most magazines are a waste of time.

Maybe I'll go bury my head in that article on the history of wigs that's in the old Smithsonian magazine I got in the free pile at the library.....

update on the magic marker on the wall

I got it off. One of my friends suggested alcohol on cotton balls. I didn't have cotton balls (the kids played with them until they got lost), so I used a wash cloth.

I got the magic marker off.

The paint on the wall came off with it.

I don't know if this was a good solution or not, since I doubt I'll get around to repainting that spot any time soon, despite my best intentions.

Oh, well. Next time I'll try toothpaste on a toothbrush.

Creativity in Kids

Right now, all three kids are sitting in the kitchen playing (I'm not making this up) spin the frozen turkey. Whoever it points to gets to spin it the next time. They're laughing and enjoying themselves, and I think they're taking turns riding it occassionally. And they're singing, "The turkey in the straw" and "The turkey in the well." Now they're pushing and carrying it. Hopefully the thing survives to become our meal. I suppose the evening's activity is "What can you do with a frozen turkey"-- 3 and 5 year old style.

It's a very hands-on version of the old game I used to play with my school class: 101 uses for Alligators. It was a game suggested by the artist James Christiansen to awaken creativity in your students. And it always did. You try it--try to come up with 101 uses for alligators. At first, you get things like shoes, luggage, purses. Then you get to things like "guard dog". Eventually kids come up with stuff like "swimsuit model" and "ferry." And other equally creative things. This game is too abstract for small children. But hand them a new object (Anda is now sitting on her "turkey burkey" the way a duck sits on its eggs) and give them full reign to explore, and they do. A friend once told me that the best toy for a three year old is an electric typewriter. My kids played for hours with theirs. I guess any new thing works though. Like a frozen turkey.

I was at a party with some friends on Halloween and we were talking about our yards. A few of us have partially or completely unfinished yards--full of dirt. And I was the only one who let my kids go out and play in the unfinished yard. The rest couldn't stand the mess that came inside. I said, "That's why my house looks like it does." And then I realized that I was right. It's not just that I'm disabled by fibromyalgia. It's not just that I can think of a hundred things I'd rather do than clean up. It's also that I hate to stop the kids from learning stuff. So I don't. And so my house looks like it does. And my kids are like they are. It's a package deal.

What I didn't tell my friends was that not only do I allow my kids to play in the dirt, I taught them how to turn the hose on and make mud so they could play in that, too. I'm also the one that taught them how to cut magazines into bitty bits, and blow bubbles in their milk, and paint with watercolors, all manner of other messy but fascinating activities. And I buy them "kits"--like train tracks, or cooking sets, even though lots of my friends avoid those kinds of toys because the pieces get spread everywhere. They do. But a cooking set can give a kid hours and hours of creative, educational fun. Why would I give up on that? Besides, they entertain themselves with creative toys, so I get time to read or write....

I'm not saying my friends are wrong to avoid the messes. We all do what we have to in order to survive with the kids we got. Their kids will all grow up with a strong sense of social propriety, and with the ability to fit into sequential systems, and will be less likely to challenge "the way it is" and authority. My kids will struggle with those things.

What's been interesting me is the idea that Heavenly Father knew I would parent like this, and so I suspect he sent me kids that need this kind of upbringing. It's the kind I got. Mom once said she wondered how she got all these creative kids, when she "doesn't have a creative bone in her body." (I would take issue with that, by the way. Problem solving is, by nature, a creative activity, and Mom is a great problem solver.) I think it's in the upbringing. If kids are allowed to be creative, and to try new things, and to play spin the turkey, and to pursue their interests relatively unfettered, why wouldn't the creative sides of their brains be developed?

Messes may be impractical and socially anathema, but they are so good for creativity. I once told Tim that the kids see a clean floor as a blank canvas, begging for a project. That's why the floor doesn't stay clean for long.