Hahahahaha!

I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog to announce that the following search term brought someone to my blog:


"Pat Sajak bra strap."


I can't even begin to tell you how happy this makes me. It's totally eliminated the need for a middle-of-the-night insomnia brownie.


Hahahahaha!

Ten's been done. I'm going for eleven.

1. The nerdiest thing I do: Watch Dr. Who with my husband.


2. My baby is driving me crazy right now. Oh, the whining. And then there's whining. And then there's some more whining.


3. The people who most need to be told to get over themselves are the ones who will not comprehend the message AT.ALL.


4. I bore my testimony of The Mormon Bachelor in our combined third hour meeting today. I also outed myself as having a blog. I made a valid point while doing so. But it was soooooo dumb to do that. The admitting to my blog part. The Mormon Bachelor is true.


5. My husband stayed home from church with the two little ones today. I don't think we'll do it that way anymore because HE BOUGHT GIRL SCOUT COOKIES while I was gone. I forcibly restrained myself from purchasing GS cookies from friends. I've held my own personal GS cookie fast. I was so proud! And he bought some. THIN MINTS. On a Sunday. Those cookies are doubly damned. I have already eaten five. They are rotting my soul and then clinging to my hips. Stupid cookies.


6. The surest way to tell Grant is sick is when he stays put on the couch. It's even more reliable than a thermometer.


7. I love having friends over for dinner. I love having a house big enough to do it. I love knowing how to  cook. I love my Thai peanut dipping sauce recipe. I love living where it's warm enough outside to grill the chicken that goes with the sauce. 




8. My 11-year-old draws me these funny, quirky comic strips every Sunday during church. Today, he made the lady next to me laugh so loud when she caught a glance of one that a bunch of people turned around to stare. I like him.


9. I am constantly frustrating people because I compose answers to emails in my head. I never actually send them. But I think of my reply and my brain files it as "done." I've earned myself the reputation of being a flaky correspondent. But I'm not. I'm just flaky on the typing it out and sending it part.


10. I put my hair up after church today and didn't take off my glasses. My husband said, "You look like Sarah Palin." There are worse people to look like. And it's way better than sounding like Sarah Palin (and I refer to both content and accent here). (I wonder how many people I just offended?)


11. My baby has four teeth and they are ridiculously cute.

I'm all cultured and stuff.

Thanks for the niceness on Monday's post. It turned out to be an all right day, one of those days where I realize, "Maybe I can make it as a grown up after all."


I wanted to share another favorite thing today. I keep thinking of stuff I want to tell you guys about and then forgetting. Seriously, I need to starting keeping lists that are better than "earwax." I find notes to myself like that all time, sometimes even accidentally publish them in Google reader, and then I have to figure out what I really meant. 


Anyway, for Christmas, I commissioned a painting for my mother-in-law from an artist I remembered seeing on another blog. The artist's site is called Audrey Eclectic and she specializes in folk art. If that's not your thing, you will find her stuff slightly disturbing. My mom was a big fan of folk art so it's comfortable and happy-making for me.


So I contacted the artist, Heather, and explained what I wanted. I sent her pictures of my kids and told her what colors I'd like and the feel I wanted. And then I got the painting:

I love it. Even better, my mother-in-law loved it!


And her prices are totally reasonable. 


That's why I'm commissioning THREE MORE!  Yay! I'm going to have her do a portrait of each of my kids so I can put them on a currently bare and boring wall in our family room. It's going to be awesome.


And that's my favorite thing this week. Oh, and also the Mormon Bachelor, of course. I liked that Beana girl way more than I thought I would but the down side to watching this week is that I won't be happy until my husband takes me on a trampoline date. Just saying.

Remembering

Four years ago today, I was sitting in my classroom at my desk, doing something on my computer. I don't remember what. Grades, maybe? I had a room full of eighth graders working in noisy but efficient groups to get a project done. It was fifth period and my principal walked in. He did that several times a week as a way for the kids to know that he was paying attention to his campus and he knew what they were doing. (He was the best boss I ever had.) Instead of walking among them and observing their groups, or even standing in the corner to watch for a few minutes, he headed straight for my desk.

And I knew.

"Mrs. Jacobson, could you get your things and come with me? Mrs. Lightfeldt will be taking over your class."

I didn't even ask why. I scooped up my purse and headed outside. Just outside my classroom door, my husband stood waiting for me. A newly minted husband of four weeks, to be exact. He held out his arms and I walked into them. 

My mom was dead.

I had texted him less than an hour before where he sat at a desk in her bedroom, working and listening for her rattling breaths. 

How is she?

He answered quickly. Fine. Sleeping.

But when he got up to make sure, he leaned over her and realized she wasn't drawing breath anymore. So he got my sister, and they checked again. We knew she was going to die. He was there with her so she wouldn't be alone. I couldn't take any more time off of work because I'd taken a week for my dad's funeral two months before and I'd have to take another week for my mom's since each of them was being laid to rest in Louisiana, two thousand miles away.

But Kenny was there. Kenny was there in her last moment, just like he'd been there in the very first moment that everything started to go terribly, horribly wrong.

I remember that night, too. I ended my cell phone call as we pulled into his parents' place and said, "Her doctor ordered a CAT scan. He's only doing that because he thinks the cancer is back and he wants to know how far it got."

The answer was that in three months' time, she'd gone from a completely clean post-cancer check up to Stage  4. It was in her liver and it was traveling.

It broke my dad's heart. He'd had issues of his own after a post-surgical complication that scarred his lungs. He couldn't take care of her this time like he had the first time. They lay on their bed together, frail and tired, and young. So young. He was 60. She was 59. The worse she got, the less he ate. 

And then a flu came. And he died. He weighed 104 pounds. My dad was almost six feet tall.

She fought a little longer. She held on until my wedding, plus a little more. I was married on their anniversary.

Then a few weeks later, she was done. She fell asleep. Then she didn't wake up.

I get busy. I think I don't miss them. I think I'm doing all right. But I can't really look at their picture. It hurts to breathe for a moment when I stumble across their handwriting in my papers somewhere.

My babies don't know them. My dad would have been whupped over Eden.

And I say to myself that it's fine because of someday.

And mostly it is. 

But today, I'll remember. It's been four years.

And I miss her. I miss them. I'm kind of even not really mad at my dad anymore. His heart broke. Sometimes it happens.

Keep your stones to yourself

I got an email the other day from a friend saying, "I don't know your position on rated-R films but we're going to see The Fighter if you want to come."


Well, my position on Mark Wahlberg films is generally "Yes, please." But my position on R films . . .


Is a little more ambiguous.


I guess I could sum it up as generally "no." Generally.


My overarching criteria for any movie is: Is it uplifting?


I can only define that for myself. I think I've seen five rated-R movies since Kenny and I started dating and only one of them was one that in hindsight didn't really fit the bill. The five are Slumdog Millionaire, Once, Up in the Air, The King's Speech, and This is Spinal Tap.


Up in the Air with George Clooney was a really well-made film and I enjoyed it, but I don't think I walked away a better person for having seen it, or having learned something about the wider world, or having some sort of transformative experience, or even really being uplifted.


Surprisingly, I got a little more out of Spinal Tap which we watched because Kenny owns it and said it was grandfathered in from his pre-rated R ban.


So to define uplifting for me and ME only . . .


Simply put, it enlarges my spirit. It challenges me to think and find a new piece of joy. It affirms that ultimately, people are good and that the human spirit will triumph when it chooses to.


For that reason, there are R-rated films I watch that fit that bill and lots of PG-13 films I skip because they don't. Ergo, I saw The King's Speech and I will be skipping The Dilemma. I'm really picky about R-rated films. I don't even like the stuff that's edited for TV. I couldn't make it through Wedding Crashers or The Forty Year Old Virgin when they were on cable. 


If I think an R-rated movie might pass the "uplifting" test, I check Kids in Mind to see why it got the R-rating. If it's for sex or nudity, it's out. (My brother convinced me to see Up in the Air anyway and granted, there was brief nudity but that was still about a hundred times more than I was interested in seeing. It was like living next to Kristina P's naked neighbors for three seconds) If it's for violence above a "5", it's out. If it's language, I'll probably put up with it unless there's an excessive taking of the Lord's name in vain, in which case, I skip it. The other guideline I use is recommendations from trusted friends and family members. They know how I am and don't point me wrong. Except my brother with that one scene, but he's a heathen.


I can guarantee you that I have good friends reading this right now who are shaking their heads and realizing that they never knew this about me and it's one of the oddest things they've ever heard. I have other friends who are at this very moment scandalized I would watch an "R" film at all.


I guess that's why it comes down to using your judgment and being honest with yourself about what feels right. Believe me, I watch a lot of brainless fluff that has zero socially redeeming value at all, but it's also fluff that doesn't shove images in my brain I can't get out again. I've just figured out what works for me and I stick to it.


Anyway, I don't know how someone who "confesses" to watching the occasional rated-R flick manages to come off sounding like a complete prude, but I guess . . . congratulations to me.


This weekend's movie: True Grit. I hear very good things so I'm looking forward to it.


On to The Mormon Bachelor. You're watching, right? My thoughts on this week: I think Rick Buck is a genuine guy. I like the Washington DC girl, Andrea, the best so far. Not sure how connected they were but she's my first choice. The biggest surprise to me was Samantha because I thought I wouldn't like her (her intro video was too much for me) but I found I liked her way more than I thought I would. And I think the coolest date so far was the horseback riding, but the cleverest date was the geocaching. If you're not watching, go watch. It's a very entertaining three minutes of your day.

Q-tips, please.

Some people call it karma. In our family, we call it earwax.


When my father-in-law was a kid in school, he noticed that the boy in front of him had a bunch of earwax in his ear so he teased him. Then guess what happened? The very next day, my father-in-law had earwax coming out of HIS ear. And now he doesn't tease people any more. I haven't heard him tease anyone the whole time I've known him.


But that's beside the fact. We're talking about earwax. Or karma.


A few months ago, I read a book from an author I like. And I was kind of let down by what I would term a little bit of the "sloppiness" I found in this book. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't as good as it should have been. Or as good as I've known her to be. There were little things, like metaphors that were too forced, words that were repeated that didn't need to be, slightly clunky dialogue tags. But it was distracting to me sometimes.


I mean, really, is it so hard to double check for some editing basics?


Ha.


HA HA.


I just read through what's called a press copy for my first novel. It's where it's all typeset exactly like it's going to look on the page. I was equal parts elated and horrified. Elated because it's one more step toward holding my very own real book in my hands. Horrified because it was riddled with mistakes. And here's the thing: I have read through it at least six times, start to finish. At least five other people read through it and pointed out mistakes. My EDITOR went through it. And still, there were mistakes. Not even grammar things or typos. Just stuff like using the word "wobbled" twice in two pages. Or overusing the word "just" even though I took a bunch of them out. Or saying something like, "She felt like the feeling in her legs was gone." (Or something similar and almost as bad.)


It's the kind of thing most readers won't notice. But I will notice. Most other writers will notice. It's mortifying.


But it's kind of a done deal on some of this stuff at this point. So I guess I'll just deal with it and learn for next time.


But man, earwax sucks.

Free toaster with purchase

What to do, what to do?

Actually, I know what I'm going to do. I just wonder if I'm crazy.

I'm a writer. (You've seen my header, right? This shouldn't come as a surprise.) And my first book is about to come out. And there are hundreds of people/blogs/articles out there telling writers how to promote their books, how to get them out there, lalalalalala.

Conventional wisdom says: start a blog, build a readership, get them to buy your book.

Hm. 

I started a blog. I built a readership. And then . . . that turned into relationships. And for the same reason I'm not going to hit you guys up to come hear about a great new business opportunity at my house, I kinda don't want to pitch my books to you.

Don't get me wrong. You'll hear all about them. I know a lot of you as my friends are going to be excited about my book and want to read it and I love you for it. I'll ask a lot of you to review it or post it about it on your blog. 

But what conventional wisdom also says is that I should be running around trying to make a lot of new blog friends so that THEY will want to buy/advertise my book for me too.

And I can't do that. I just can't. This blog has become a space for me to hang out with people I enjoy. Of course I'm going to do some giveaways and be all excited about my book and talk about it often for a while . . . but it's not really the point of my blog anymore. 

Honestly, if we saw each other in real life all the time and every time I saw you I was blabbering on about an amazing XYZ product you HAD to buy and it's all I ever talked about, it would get a little old, right? I have friends who do network marketing and are excited about their stuff (Avon, Scentsy, etc.) but it's not the ONLY thing we talk about. 

My blog isn't going to be all about my book. It'll be lot about my book for a little while because that's major in my life right now and I"ll focus on that the same way I fixated on getting our new house or having baby Eden, but that's just because it's a natural part of what I'm doing. I can't bring myself to be all like, "Help me get to 200 followers and I'll do this fantastic thing for you!"

I like having people come here who want to be here because we're at least slightly kindred spirits. So I don't think I'll do any contests where it's about trying to get more followers/readers. I mean, sure, I'll probably do something with a component where I can give someone more chances to win if they post about my book on their blog, but with the intention of getting more readers for my BOOK, not my BLOG, if that makes sense.

And then when the craziness of this book launch dies down in a while, this blog will still be my happy space, the place it's always been.

I don't have any issue with authors using their blogs to market their books. It's when they suck you in under false pretenses and then suddenly they're selling you something. You know, like if you went to lunch with a friend and then suddenly they started pulling out flip charts and rattling on about magnetic balance bracelets and how you should buy some and sell them to your friends. And then you're sitting there like, "What the heck? I thought we were hanging out?"

I don't know. I'm being weird about this, I'm sure.  And I realize I'm thinking out loud.

But it's my blog. That's what it's here for. :)

I loves it.

Today is a day where I have lots of things I want to blog about. It's a nice feeling. Of course, by tomorrow I'll have forgotten most of those things, but it's good to have a moment of plenty.


Anyway, I decided today while in the shower that I'm going to fill the void left by Oprah. (I don't mean in the going-off-my-diet sense. I'm working on the opposite of that at the moment.) No, I mean, I'm going to be a pimp for my favorite things. The reason I thought of this in the shower is because I was using this:

It ain't cheap, but it's awesome. THIRTY bucks a tube. But it lasted me almost two years, so I guess that's okay. Anyway, it's a body scrub only it's not oily and it doesn't dry your skin and it feels gentle and awesome. And it has this really subtle scent that's delicious and heavenly. I gave some to my friend for Christmas (she's pregnant so I got her this stuff, some candles, and a good book and told her to lock herself in her bathroom). She texted me the next day: I LOVE IT!!! I will think of you every time I'm in my bathtub now!


Awkward? Sure. But I knew what she meant. This stuff is that good. But please don't think of me during your bath if you buy it, okay?


Starting today (Thursday), one of my favorite guilty web pleasures is back in full effect: The Mormon Bachelor. Awwwwwww, yeeeeeaaaaaah!


Say whatever you want about the TV franchise, but I love this online Mormon version. The first season was The Mormon Bachelorette and it ended in October. Guess what? Now she's engaged to be married in March to the guy she picked! How cool is that? It's a far better success rate than the TV franchise, that's for sure. The first date airs tomorrow and you get a new one each day. The videos are 3-5 minutes long and the Bachelor this season is a 29-year-old dentist from Southern California who was on the last season but didn't win Audrey's heart. Check him out here:
 (Dude, I totally can't believe I figured out how to do that.)


I guess I'm not Oprah in the sense that I'm not actually giving anything away. Or black. Or rich. Or famous. But I'm the same in that I like some stuff and they are my favorite things.


I had a few other things I was going to mention, but I can't remember what they are at the moment. This is because I'm tired and not because those things are not awesome, because they are.


Oh, I know, I like the Turbo Fire workout DVDs. They make me happy. And if you remember me blogging about my crazy kickboxing class at my old gym, all my instructors are in this video. (Too lazy to link, by the way). It's fun.


Two favorite things is good for the moment. I'll add more as I think of more and keep my Oprah-ness going that much longer.


Seriously, though. For your next big occasion, treat yourselves to the Kiehl's. YUM.

I'm a Survivor

I subbed primary on Sunday.

It leads me to wonder . . . why did God bother sending Job boils? All he had to do was lock him in a tent for two hours with half a dozen Sunbeams*. Same difference.


Oh, wait. The point was for Job to survive his trials. Forget about the Sunbeams, then.


I subbed Grant's class, specifically. You'd think I'd say "we" subbed it since I thrust the baby daughter at a passing sucker and drafted Kenny into battle. "Elder's quorum today? Oh, I don't think so, husband. This is the worse part of 'for better or worse.' You're helping.'" However, he had to spend his entire time subduing the one truly wild child in the class: Grant. Of course.


Kenny is convinced Grant's just a little immature. I'm convinced Grant doesn't understand the concept of "Chairs." I have two years of direct observation in sacrament meeting to support my theory.


Apparently, last week the two (yeah, TWO) Sunbeams classes must have been pretty um, epic, because they brought in special weaponry to subdue the natives this week: Birdies. That they had to sit on to keep warm. 


Yep.


Little laminated birdies which each kid had to keep under his bottom or the birdie would get cold. "Ethan, get back in your seat. Ethan! In your seat, NOW. Leave Sister Johnson's skirt alone. Don't you care that your birdie is DYING? What is wrong with you?"


I can't say I was comfortable sitting on my bird because I kept seeing its one little eye staring up at my . . . me. Up at me. 


And all that was just sharing time. The only sane moment was when our six Sunbeams lost themselves in their dramatic interpretations of "The Snowman Song." Then they herded us down the hall to a tiny little shoebox of a room. They opened the door and waved us in, then shoved a battered manila envelop full of pretzels and thimble-sized paper cups at us before pulling the door closed and holding it shut on the other side. Kenny beat on it and yelled but they still wouldn't let him out.


I did have a few tools. I had smuggled in a baggie of mismatched crayons and some printer paper. "Okay, kids. Draw a picture of yourself." They did. It was sad. Based on the portraits, I think they might have terrible self-esteem.


After the last parent wandered by to pick up their child after church (and let's give them credit for that, because if those were my kids, I would have been bolting for the getaway car after the last Amen), we straggled back to the primary room to return the hardtack and grog they had provisioned us with. (Of course, one of those kids WAS mine but we couldn't outrun him.)


"How did it go?" the primary president asked brightly. How do they all have the exact same tone of voice regardless of their age, race, or throat polyps?


"How did it go? HOW DID IT GO? I'll tell you how it went--" but then Kenny dragged me out before I could finish screaming obscenities.


Guys, it was worse than CUB SCOUTS.


Yeah, that bad.


*Three-year-olds

IT'S HERE! IT'S FREAKING HERE!

I am delirious with joy (totally NOT an understatement) because I FINALLY get to show you my book cover for The List. It comes out in March and I just got the go ahead today to show you something I've been keeping quiet for six weeks.

Are you impressed I kept it under wraps for this long? You should be. It was killing me! But I just got permission ten  minutes ago to debut it, so here it is, my book cover!!!!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (Yep, I love it!)

And from the back cover:

Ashley Barrett doesn't want to get married. At least, not anytime soon. She doesn't care how many of her friends and family members and fellow churchgoers had weddings before they finished college--the last thing she needs in her fun-loving twenties is the dead weight of some guy. And that's why she created The List. By the time she completes all twenty-five goals---from learning a language to skydiving to perfecting the art of making sushi---she'll be more ready to settle down. Maybe.


This summer in California is a prime time for Ashley to cross two things off The List: Learn to Surf (#13) and have a summer romance (#17). And Matt Gibson, the best surf instructor in Huntington Beach and the most wanted guy in the singles ward, is the perfect man for the job. Ashley hatches a plan to love him and leave him before heading off to grad school in the fall (#4 get a master's degree). But when Matt decides he doesn't like the "leaving" part, Ashley's carefully laid plans are turned sideways. Now Ashley faces an unexpected dilemma: should she stick to the safety of The List, or risk everything for a man who might tie her down---or might set her free?

S***ting Bricks.

I present to you, completely unaltered, the email I sent to my son's sixth grade teacher this morning concerning their social studies assignment to make an adobe-style brick at home. Being a mom is so glamorous.

Dear Sara, 

 I have a question about poop. (You read that right.) 

 James made his bricks as soon as he got back from his dad's on Thursday. He made three different bricks so he could choose the best one. One was too crumbly, one was way too mushy, and the third one, made of soil from the side of the house and oatmeal, looked like the best bet. 

 When it looked like rain on Sunday, he moved it inside to the garage to finish drying, and later that day as we walked back into the garage, we discovered it had dried enough to smell sort of like . . . poop. 

 Now this is upsetting for a few reasons, mainly because I got a bunch of it on my hands when it was still wet and didn't smell like poop. GROSS! Secondly, we don't have pets. But Kenny says it smells like cats might have been welcoming themselves to our side yard at some point in the past. ALSO GROSS. Did I mention I touched it with my bare hands? SO GROSS. 

 Then, of course, there's the whole issue that I can't send him to school with a poop brick and by last night, when the odor chased Kenny out of his workshop, it became obvious that that's what we were dealing with. 

 So here's the deal. Bless his heart, James now has three bricks, none of which are fantastic, and truly through no fault of his own, not enough to time to try a fourth. Now granted, a lot of original adobe was made with manure but James definitely wasn't intending to be quite so authentic. Does he bring in one of the inferior bricks? The damp one will never dry in time, even baked, and the other one is so crumbly I'd be shocked if it made it to school as anything more than dry clumps of dirt. Or does he bring in the stinky brick but in a plastic bag or something? 

 This is officially the weirdest letter I have ever written as a parent. 

 Thanks!

 ~Melanie

Note: Her response was, "Sorry about your fecal fiasco."

Zappos, my new e-BFF

This Christmas was the year of the shoe, y'all.


Before you get jealous, you have to understand that my slogan for Kenny would be:


Kenny Jacobson: Making everyone else's husbands look bad since 2006.


He's just THAT good. 


Every year he buys me one pair of shoes for my birthday and this year I had a pair of worn out boots so he threw in a pair for Christmas, too. (Remember, I'm not quite as spoiled as I sound because my birthday is Christmas Eve.) Anyway, this is what he got me for my birthday:

Yeah, I know. He's awesome! He picked them out all by himself!

Then he got me these boots for Christmas and while I normally go for a higher heel, these are amazingly comfortable:

For my birthday gift to myself, I bought the ones I was eyeing (even though Josi says they look like her grandmother's couch. I bet they're as comfy as that couch, too. Love them!):

Then there was a little (okay, biggish) mistake on Kenny's order from Zappos and he got a $25 credit, so I've been needing some dressy/churchy brown shoes for about a year, and I think I might get these with my birthday money from my in-laws:

To be be perfectly honest with you, prior to this shoe little binge, I hadn't bought myself shoes in at least six months. (Yeah, I know. Cry you a river.) I haven't bought myself much of anything wardrobe-wise in about that long because it's not fun shopping for clothes when I have 20 pounds to lose. But shoes . . .

Well, shoes always fit since I don't gain weight in my feet. My butt and gut always claim it before it makes it's way down there.

I've started my get-healthy plan and I figure four months is plenty to lose twenty pounds, so that's the plan. (Then I'll be jonesing for another birthday and an excuse to go on a spree once more.) I scored Turbo Fire on Craigslist for half price today, I joined two different weight-loss challenges with some money on the line, I've broken out my favorite healthy recipes, and I'm excited.

IT'S NOT A NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION, THOUGH. So don't even say that.

I only made one resolution this year: wish people Happy Birthday on Facebook. That's it.

(Okay, I did do that thing where you pick a word to focus on all year and I picked: kindness. It's going to be SO HARD being as I'm evil.)

Happy New Year!