My friend broke her boob.


Here's the thing. If yo're going to suffer a mediumish-to-major injury, you need to have a good story for it.


True lame story: the worst injury I've ever had was a dislocated knee. I showed up to eighth grade with a massive full leg brace and got to do physical therapy for three months. It was an impressive looking injury, and a highly visible one. I got like, a  million questions about how I hurt it.


Battling grizzlies, chasing down a purse snatcher, at the bottom of a tackle pile in Saturday afternoon football: all acceptable answers.


Not the real answers, but good ones. 


The answer I had to give: I did this getting out of bed.


Yeah. That's right. I ripped the cartilage in my knee my swinging my legs over the side of the bed like I did every morning.


NOT awesome.


James had a dramatic toe injury last week along the lines of oozing blood and an urgent care visit.


"It hurts!" he wailed.


I shrugged. "At least you've got a good story out of it."


"You are so wise, Mom!" is what he meant, even though his actual words were "What the crap are you talking about?"


He got the injury, in case you were dying to know, when he and I tried to rescue some wood from an HOA beautification project in our neighborhood to give to Kenny for his lathe. An extremely heavy stump defeated us and it landed on James's toe. That stump wanted to rage against the dying of the light, folks.


So back to my friend who broke her boob. At least it's because she was hit by a car crossing Pacific Coast Highway. Some ditzy blonde in her daddy's convertible mowed her down and it popped my friend's breast implant. 


But it's so much better than explaining she has to get a $16,000 surgical repair because she tripped on the carpet or something.


See? Silver lining.

Quit playing games

Our family is fond of games. And you can keep your Parcheesi and Monopoly to yourself, thank you very much. We like to walk the edge. Sometimes we teeter toward the brink of absurdity, like when we play Freeze Face. I've told you about this game before and if you aren't playing it, then you're  missing out. You need a DVR and a complete lack of ego to play and then you're all set. Just pick a show, any show, and randomly press the pause button. The person of your choosing has to duplicate the expression on the screen. You win by. . . um, actually, anyone not doing the actual face-making wins by virtue of getting to mock the face-maker. Good fun. (I'd show pictures but the oldest isn't cooperating. I'm not a fan of the spring break lazies so I sent him to his room to think about why laying around on the sofa and refusing to do anything until the third and fourth request is a bad idea, even if it's a request to pose for pictures of your mom's stupid game. But the banishment had more to do with 18 other things he refused to do this morning until I nagged him for the umpteenth time.)


Sometimes our games teeter on the brink of danger, like in the new Jacobson family classic: Refrigerator Tetris. This game takes nerves of steel and the steady hand of . . . well, Kenny, mostly. He's the champ around here. When you have three different kinds of milks, two varieties of juice, Egg Beaters and regular eggs, four different cheeses, and assorted containers of leftovers, it takes the dead eye and calm demeanor of a bomb squad technician to add anything else to the mix. Fail, and you'll 1) end up with marinara sauce down your shirt front and far worse, you'll 2) incur my wrath. "What do you mean you jumped to avoid a bath in fish stew? You should have just taken it like a man! Now you can scrub the stinky floor on your hands and knees. What? What does being THREE have to do with ANYTHING?"


Yep, I'm a joy to  live with.

I need your brains

Warning: I'm not proofreading tonight. Let's all just deal, okay?


We are having a super fun vacation in Washington DC at the moment or I'd be blogging and commenting more. However, I need to mention here like I did on Facebook that our house is being house-sat by a large man with a large dog and a large gun, so don't rob it, or cause it to be robbed, okay?


I'm actually popping in for just a second to ask a favor from creative friends. I need a title for a workshop I'm doing in August for a 16-stake midsingles conference. The conference theme is Mission: Possible (as in "With God, all things are possible.") My workshop is on Internet dating. And now I need a title for it. 


This is what my brainstorming has produced so far: 


Mission Possible: i-Date? Yes, You.
Mission Possible: How to Have Great Online Dating Experiences
Mission Possible: One Click Dating
Mission Possible: Online Dating is NOT Home Shopping


And, yeah. You see why I need help. I don't even need this to be phenomenal. Just good enough not to embarrass me when my name shows up next to the workshop title in the program. Also, it should make people want to come to the class.


If I hadn't just taken an Ambien to cope with my kids deal with jet lag, I'd offer some kind of prize. But I'm a little foggy right now, so I think I'll leave it at begging for help.


Help?

NOW it's Shakespeare. Kinda.

Know why I want to be Shakespeare? Do you? Do you?


Guess which of the following reasons is my real reason for wanting to be the next Shakespeare:


1. I could quit waxing my upper lip if I were a dude.
2. I would have an actual reason for rocking a massive neck ruff.
3. He has better hair than me.
4. I could wear tights as pants and it would be real thing, not something I do as if I could bend reality to my will.
5. I could settle the arguments about whether I really write my own stuff. But probably I'd just stir the pot for fun.
6. I could tell dirty jokes and be considered cultured.
7. I could probably get Kenneth Branagh to take my calls.
8. I'd get a lifetime front row pass to Central Park's Shakespeare in the Park every summer.
9. I'd be HUGE on the talk show circuit.
10. I could make up my own words.


The reason, of course, is #10. I would like to make up my own words and then everybody would have to run around using them in sentences like it was a thing. A real, honest-to-goodness colloquialism, instantly coined by MOI.


Shakespeare did that a lot, you know. Took poetic license when he needed something to fit his rhyme and meter and what not. Also, sometimes he just made up phrases because they were awesome and he was sort of a genius. Maybe even a word-coining savant. Did you know he made up these phrases: 

All's well that ends well

Be-all and the end-all (Macbeth)

Refuse to budge an inch (Measure for Measure / Taming of the Shrew)

Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI)

Faint hearted (I Henry VI)

Fancy-free (Midsummer Night's Dream)

Forever and a day (As You Like It)

For goodness' sake (Henry VIII)

Good riddance (Troilus and Cressida)

Heart of gold (Henry V)

In a pickle (The Tempest)

In my heart of hearts (Hamlet)

Kill with kindness (Taming of the Shrew)

Melted into thin air (The Tempest)

Naked truth (Love's Labours Lost)

Play fast and loose (King John)

And the list literally goes on and on.


So I want to be the next Shakespeare and coin my own phrases. I've worked up a few. Tell me what you think:


"Mac it up, yo!"--This means I don't know what we're having for dinner tonight so let's bust out the mac and cheese.


"DUDE!"--This means that I can't believe you, stupid driver, did something so idiotic while driving, but I can't say a swear word because kids are in the car.


Um, that's pretty much it. Nevermind the feedback. I'll keep working on it.


You know don't who doesn't have to keep working? REBECCA NELSON because the random number generator picked you to win one of Kenny's bowls for your reviews of The List on Goodreads and Amazon. Whoohoo!


Also, The List is now #8 on the Deseret Book general fiction list and #2 on the Deseret Book romance list. YES!


Lastly, if you still want to win something, you can check out the awesome prizes on the Worldwide Ward Cookbook blog. Killer!

Shakesp--wait, no. Bowls again.

All right, I had every intention of discussing my ambition to become the next Shakespeare (and not for the reasons you think--and no, I have no idea what you think, but I bet it's still not my reason), but it occurs to me we have a little unfinished business. 


Somebody is getting one of my sexyhot husband's wooden bowls. So, to make sure I know you want to be considered, make sure that you have either left a comment on THIS post saying you did a review or you can leave a comment on the post you're reading now saying you did a review. You get an entry for each one you did, and it doesn't matter whether you did it before I started this contest. If anything, it gets you bonus points. 


So go ahead and speak up if you want a shot at your bowl of choice. And then come back tomorrow and we'll discuss my Shakespeare ambitions.

Best review ever.

This is too funny not to link to, but you have to go see it now because the author said he built in a 36-hour-self destruct-bot due to his post exposing his sensitive side.


This is a review of The List by a dude. A dude I've known since eighth grade when he was a much older, cooler senior. Then twenty years passed and some of us old Louisiana friends reconnected via Facebook. John is an airline pilot now. After reading this review, it makes me laugh to picture him setting there in his pilot's uniform reading my book, at first surrpetiously, and then not.


I had no idea he'd even bought the book until he scrawled on my Facebook wall with vague threats of bodily harm and criminal mischief because he had started reading. Now that he's written his review, I understand why. Off you go. If you want to read it click here, because that sucker's coming down quick, I guarantee it.

Siss-boom-bah!

I'm confused.

The girl down the street, an eighth grader, is a competitive cheerleader. As in, she's on a squad. She goes to competitions. She takes tumbling classes to improve her performance. But she doesn't cheer for any team. The squad is sponsored by a local cheer coaching gym or something like that.

I kind of get this. If she's investing all this time and energy into cheer because she eventually wants to make the high school squad, I can see it. In fact, I asked her mom if she would be trying out to be on the the freshman squad.

"Maybe." 

Apparently, you can't be on both. If she cheers for the high school, which has actual teams, she can't cheer on her club squad. So she thinks she might rather stay on the club squad. Which doesn't cheer for anything. They just put on their cheer uniforms and go to competitions where they cheer against other cheerleaders who also do not have teams.

I do not understand this. Someone please explain the point. And let me clarify, I support cheering as a sport just like I do gymnastics. I like watching the national high school and college competitions on ESPN. But those cheer squads all have teams they cheer for during their athletic seasons.

I'm trying to figure out the concept of cheer squads that just cheer . . . because? 

I don't get it.

Bowling you over

Do you want one of Kenny's awesome wooden bowls? Like maybe this one:

Or this one:

Or how about this one:

How do you get a chance to win? Well, I saved my very most special giveaway for last, so this one requires a little bit of work. I need to scrounge up HONEST reviews for my book, especially on Amazon and Deseret Book's website. If you've read it (that's part of the work you had to do) and you're inclined to rate it (that's the next part) and give it a sentence or two in a review (that's the last part), then you are entered to win your choice of one of these three bowls. Just come back and let me know which ones you did, and you get a point for each entry. You can totally copy and paste your entries. (Also, while you're there, if you've read Josi Kilpack's Blackberry Crumble, you can do the same for her and be entered to win some different prizes via her blog. I had already planned this before she started hers, but some of you might benefit from the work of one stone here, know what I'm saying?)


Anyway, this has been a pretty fantastic month as far as book-related things go. You may want to look away for a moment because I'm going to shout all the things that are making me happy from the rooftops right now:


1. My local bookstore ordered 50 copies of The List. They sold out.
2. A month ago, 19 people had requested it through the Salt Lake County library. As of last week, that number was up to 184. Yes!
3. It's in this quarter's Deseret Book catalog, p. 28. THAT was fun to get in the mailbox.
4. The LDS fiction buyer for the Salt Lake library gave my book a shout out on Goodreads. She liked it! She said YOU will like it!
5. One of my writing mentors Facebooked me to say she read it and it was fabulous.
6. The List is now #3 on the Deseret Book romance bestseller list!
7. I've gotten messages from strangers almost every day telling me they loved it and begging for more.


And there's more. But that's enough Braggedy-Ann. I'm just happy.


Anyway, there are actually a bunch of ratings on Goodreads, none of which I solicited and (almost) all that I appreciate, but I've got nothing on Deseret Book and only 2 on Amazon.


If you have already reviewed it in one of these places (or any other review sites I didn't mention), and you want to win a bowl, leave a comment.


If you go leave a review at any of these sites, an HONEST review (I'm tough, I can take it), then come back and let me know which sites, you'll get an entry for each one. And then, next week, I'll let Random.org decide which of you awesome peeps gets a bowl.


Chop, chop, people! This is the best prize I've given away all month!


You don't have to read this part, but I want to emphasize, I mean it about the honest thing. I can always tell when someone's mother, sister, and aunt all put up a review of the writer's work. I like a spectrum when I'm reading reviews. I don't mind if you think it's a five star book. But don't say that unless you mean it, okay?

Good thing he's cute.

Maybe you remember the lovely note I had to send to James's teacher back in January regarding a certain brick. This was the note I had to send in this morning, unaltered. Yay.

Hi, Mrs. Yarrington.

We had a little issue with James's final literature circles project. He finished it late Saturday night. Some time Sunday afternoon, my three-year-old Grant got a little water on it. No big deal, just some sprinkles. James put the pages outside to dry. Then Kenny sent Grant out to play and turned on the hose for him, not realizing James's papers were outside. Grant watered everything thoroughly: the plants, the skateboard ramp, the patio furniture . . . and James's papers.

We dried them out and reconstructed the really messed up stuff as best we could. Kenny and James were up really late last night working on it. They're legible but still a total mess, I know. If you don't mind sending him home with another packet, we'll have him fill it in again so it's acceptable. We're making him bring in the packet in its current condition just so you know he really did complete it.

Sorry about all this. We seem to have some kind of curse on long-term projects around here. (Its name is Grant.)

Sincerely,

Melanie  

P.S. The winner of the last copy of The List is Jaime from Polka Dots on Parade. I'll get it on its way. :)

TV Guide

If I don't stop by your blog today, don't take it personally. I freaking hate April Fools.


I will hold my peace on the subject because I know many, many people LOVE it. I do not. That is all. (That's not even close to all, but that's all that really matters.)


In other news of things I don't hate, I don't think I've mentioned our neighbors. We like the peeps in our new 'hood, but we're especially close to the ones on our right. We share so many things in common, like . . .


Well, mainly TV. And honestly, it's a one-sided relationship. Because we just watch what they watch. We sort of have to.


The thing is, my clever husband met me a year-ish ago at the door to our new house that was in the dusty throes of a remodel. Instead of, "Hello, light of my life and my reason for living. I love you. How are you today?" he said, "Do you trust me?"


Uh, yes. In terms of the children's lives, my life, etc. But when you meet me at the door covered in drywall dust and looking anxious . . . less so. Much less so.


He led me to the family room wall. Or the shadow of its former self. What I saw now was a wall full of holes. Big gaping holes. Big gaping ragged holes with teeth and bad attitudes. Kenny went on and on about future-proofing and coaxial cables and  . . . 


Well, in the interests of preserving marital harmony, I tuned him out and decided I'd never seen the wall int its current state. I would refuse to see the wall again until it resembled it's old wall-y self. Then Kenny said something like, "And this way Grant can't press the buttons whenever he wants any more."


Wait, what? No more crackers in the DVD player? No more fingerprints and peanut butter smears across the face of our fourth child, the television? My faith is restored. Carry on, husband.


Turns out he'd run the wires for our EVERYTHING media-related through the walls into our laundry room so we could stick all of our gadgety entertainment-type doohickeys in a cabinet in there and NEVER HAVE TO SEE THEM AGAIN. This was made possible not by magic. Not by house elves. Not even by Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.


Nope, it was good ole radio frequency. See, most remotes work off of infrared which is why your remote has to be pointed at the object it's trying to communicate with. Most people (who are not me) know this. Most people (who are not me) do not stare at their "universal" remotes in befuddlement when it turns out that their remote controls DO have limits. These remotes do not change the channel on crying children. They do not mute screaming toddlers. They don't even start the washing machine from a distance.


Seem kind of useless, if you ask me. 


Anyway, most remotes are infrared and can't work through a wall. But radio frequency remotes do. They're pretty unusual because they're a little expensive, but when your husband is a huge tech nerd (but a very, very sexy one) and can do all the programming, then it reduces the price to the cost of a new entertainment center which we would have had to buy if we didn't do it this way, anyway. Behold, the result:

Yes, there is clutter on my mantle. Yes, I just barely took this picture. So yes, I could have cleared it before taking it. And, no. I don't care. And yes, I just spent more time defending the cluttered mantel than it would have taken to just clear it. 

Hooray! The same husband who can do all the tech stuff also repaired the wall (he's already taken, ladies)  and we were ready to rock and roll. Or Nick at Nite. Or stare at a neverending parade of freaks on TLC's evening programming. Everything came together beautifully. Until . . .


We turned it on.


It was actually day two before I realized the TV was possessed. I was trying to watch the VH-1 video countdown. It kept flipping to Penguins of Madagascar. I shrugged. New systems are always buggy. Then I was trying to watch a Say Yes to the Dress marathon. And it kept flipping to a CSI marathon.


And then, after several days of trying to figure out what the new "universal" remote was trying to tell me about myself based on its programming selections for me, I had a little light bulb moment. It happened on a Saturday morning when no matter what I did, my TV rejected Property Ladder and flipped back and forth between Penguins of Madagascar and The Wizards of Waverly Place. We don't watch those shows. But you know who would? The nine-year-old girl next door.


So I sent Kenny to investigate.

Guess who else has the only other RF remote in the neighborhood? Yep. The neighbors to the right.


Sigh.


At least they don't watch porn. And I've learned to make my peace with the QVC jewelry channel.


Oh, and today is your last day to enter to win a copy of The List by commenting on this post from Monday.