It's here, it's here!

The new Mormon Bachelor season starts today, and already there's been drama. If you're not watching this online series, you should. SO FUN.

Ah, amore!

Me: I don't know why I watch this show.

Husband: . . . Research? . . .

Me: Grmph.

The show in question: Bachelor Pad. Yes, that giant televised STD that I mostly have to watch on fast forward.

But then after last week's episode--which I just caught up with--I found the answer to why I sit through it. It's because it's a fascinating character study. I hate all the making out. I'm nearly as bad as my tween son is when kissing comes on the TV while he's watching. I roll my eyes and hit the fast forward button.

But the dynamics between the players? I'm kind of sucked in.

The fakes are pretty easy to spot and they're fascinating because I sit and wonder if they really don't realize how transparent they are to other people.

But there are a few people on the show who are as close to genuine as people who go on Bachelor/Bachelorette type shows can be. Like Ames and Jackie.

One look and kablammo! They're in love! And when she gets voted out of the house, he leaves with her! And it doesn't sound very exciting even when I use quotation marks! But the thing is, if you've paid attention to Ames at all (and most of you are way too Klassy for this kind of TV), it was extremely exciting. I must have rewound and watched that three minute scene where he runs after the limo at least ten times. And I'm not that kind of girl. But there's something so priceless about the expression on his face as he walks away from the limo and then realizes he has nothing to say to the people still in the game. So instead of saying anything, he smiles at them and gives them a double-handed wave goodbye, and he runs after Jackie's limo with this funny little laugh like he can't believe what he's doing.

And then she opens the door for him and he says, "Do you have room for one more?"

And ohmygosh I wish I wrote that scene. The PERFECT ending for a book.

I don't recommend taking up the show because 1) ew and 2) I had to sit through about 117 minutes of crap to mine that diamond, but OH MY it was a pretty one.

And then I made my husband watch it and even he was like, "Uh, that dude's red pants are lame. Also, that was kind of cool."

I love LOVE!

Peeps

Today's blog post is brought to you by the letter I.


I finished my fourth manuscript. I turned it in. I ate a lot of chocolate. And now I gotta do a bunch more writing this week. And it's all going to be as elegant as that last sentence.


Drop a comment on yesterday's post to win the last copy of The List that I'm giving out, kids.


Also, you can check out a review of The List on DeNae's blog, My Real Life Was Backordered. Or rather, you can check out her legs. Whatever floats your boat. They are pretty nice.


And now, off to do some Turbo Fire. Because did I mention I ate lots of chocolate? Word to your mothers, yo.


P.S. Yesterday, I worked so hard to procrastinate my editing that I had like, a million things I kept wanting to put as updates on Facebook. Rather than drive everyone crazy, I decided to put it on Twitter instead. Because I sort of forgot I have a Twitter profile. If you want to follow it, my little name thingie is writestuff_Mel. (Really, I'm not that exciting over there. But now you know where to find everything I don't put on Facebook. Not because it's juicy. Because it so isn't.)

I like girls.

I do. I like hanging out with other girls.


If you meet a girl who does NOT like hanging out with other girls, be careful. She is possibly crazy. Here's exhibit A: if you ever watch a reality show where you hear a girl (usually a pretty one) say, "All my friends are guys. Girls hate me," then you just met the crazy contestant. I guarantee it. Women who have problems getting along with other women have those problems for a very specific reason: they are defined by male attention and are too emotionally damaged to find validation in healthy friendships with other women.


I'd go on my long psychobabble breakdown of my theory here, but let's just stick with: I'm right.


Having said that, I love my husband. Given a choice between hanging out with him or my five closest female friends, there's no question I'd choose him. It's not even a contest.


But . . . I draw a lot of strength from being around cool chicks. I have the friend where we're all about books and shopping, and the friend where we're all about our kids and shopping, and the friend where we're all about eating out and shopping, and . . . well, you get the picture.


I hate making Kenny do "chick" stuff with me, because he never complains. That's why I hate it. He's just so sweet and I hate taking advantage of him more than I already do. So I'm super blessed that I have such fun friends to hang out with in real life. As I get a little older and life gets busier, it's hard to find the time to do it, especially since some of my closest friends still work full-time. But we find a way and we have a fantastic time, every time, even if it's just sitting down to dinner.


I got to hang out with one of my best friends all night Friday and I'll see another one tomorrow. They're kind enough to drive a fair distance to come and see me when my babysitting isn't quite working out. And I come home happier and more delighted than ever to spend time with my husband.


I feel sad for women who have a hard time forming those relationships due to shyness or self-esteem issues. But the ones who drive me straight up the wall are the "other women hate me" types. Dear This-Type-of-Woman: trust me when I tell you that you have ISSUES. Learning to form real friendships with other women instead of attaching yourself to inappropriate males will buy you true happiness, okay? Also, stop going on reality shows.


Speaking of reality TV, I love it. Let's do a round up of last week. The Bachelor: I love Emily, a/k/a Mother Theresa Barbie. I think it's entirely possible she's the first sane woman to ever go on that show. Michelle is not actually crazy--she's shrewd. And Chantal: a tad emotionally unstable. Daddy issues, that's why. American Idol: I love this new panel and don't miss Simon at all. Thought I would, but Steven Tyler is absolutely MAKING this show. Love it. Top Chef: I didn't like Angelo on his season but I did here and was sorry to see him go. I think I want Richard Blais to win. I can't warm up to Dale. Survivor: Um, former federal agent man? Seriously, you said that you were trained to "read people." Trained by who? Emotionally deficient monkeys? You are a train wreck.


Edited to add: If you didn't read Anonymous's comment below, YOU MUST. Dear Anonymous, please be one of my best friends.

I TOLD you so.

Ah hahahahahahaha!!!!!!


Some of you think my delight in the Mormon Bachelorette is crazy. But it's so FUN. And now, I get to say I was ahead of the curve on a trend because look what showed up on LDS Living today:


This story. See? I  know a good thing when I see it.


Read it. Go. Now. It's awesome.


Notice this all grew out of Huntington Beach, CA where my new book The List is set, because it's a really fun place to be single and LDS. Have I mentioned my book? Here:

And I just finished writing my fourth one which means I'm ready to start my next one, and guess what it's going to be about? THE MORMON BACHELORETTE. I already interviewed Erin Shelton (who is awesome, love her) and got all kinds of inside info that started the plot wheels turning in my mind. 


Having said all that, it's Friday, so let's briefly discuss the Mormon Bachelorette, shall we? Okay, so Kimberly at Temporary? Insanity says it's Melanie for the win (not me. Melanie C, duh, otherwise my husband might have hurt feelings). And I like her best but I don't know . . . that date with Jane in New York may have the edge. (Or was that just the music in the video that made me feel that way?) Except Melanie C is moving back here soon from Ohio, so maybe it will be her, after all.


Oh, and my publisher sent me a link to this article in The Mormon Times and I opened it to find my face staring back at me: 


"Melanie and a bunch of other much classier people talk about Valentine's Day."


How fun is that?


Happy Friday, everyone. Oh, and Happy VD, too. No, I mean, Happy Valentine's Day. Kenny and I are celebrating early by going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream tomorrow which (shockingly) I have never seen staged, and by all accounts this production is excellent. Yay! Our very first date was to see Twelfth Night so I like the idea of passing this holiday with Mr. Shakespeare. (Dear Kenny, don't buy me a Valentine's gift this year, okay? I officially absolve you. Unless, however, you feel strongly that you would like to treat me to some Golden Spoon tomorrow night. That is all the gold I require, thankyouverymuch.)

Rules I live by

I was at my best friend's wedding this weekend. It was a great opportunity to wear rhinestones and catch up with my college friends. At some point in the evening, we decided to organize a girl's trip to NYC next year. Then they started teasing me about how I had to pick the restaurants because all my vacations revolve around food.


I can't deny it.


Possibly my whole life revolves around food. You know, the non-gospel, non-family parts. Although food is pretty close to a religion for me.


Here are the commandments I live by:


1. In any recipe, thou shalt double the garlic.
2. There must needs be opposition in all things: sweet and salty together are heavenly.
3. If thou shalt have a sandwich with meat, thou shalt also have onion. Otherwise, it's just plain wrong. Oops. I mean, it is an abomination.
4. If a recipe has cream cheese, surely thou art being guided rightly.
5. Tony Chacere's is any meat's crowning glory.
6. I only make one dinner. If thou don't liketh it, thou better learn to nuke your own frozen burrito.
7. Muenster is a holy sandwich cheese. Swiss is merely holey.
8. Artisan breads are divine. Man can't live by bread alone but I bet I could.
9. All hail the Fry Daddy (but not in a golden calf kind of way)
10. Home can be a heaven on earth. So can a dang good barbecue joint.
11. Woe unto you who do not know: food doesn't have to be fancy to be delicious.
12. But verily I must admit, sometimes fancy food is delicious, too.
13. This commandment I give last of all: thou shalt eat slow and savor. Remember you're blessed to have it.


Amen.

On the down low

My husband and I showed up at a friend's house, stuck the baby on her doorstep with a note tied around his neck and then ding-dong-ditched and ran for the car. We drove at top speed for an hour and checked into a lovely hotel in Pasadena. I'm sure the baby was fine. The note had instructions. It said:

1. Feed.
2. Give juice.
3. Give hugs.
4. Change diapers.
5. Put to sleep.
6. We'll show back up eventually.

See? Fine.

The hotel was lovely but we dropped our overnight bags on the fancy carpet and drove a mile to the Huntington Gardens and Library. Spectacular. There were Japanese and Chinese gardens, Australian gardens, subtropical gardens, desert gardens (full of strangely colored and questionably shaped cacti and succulents [which I'm sorry, but that just sounds like a naughty name for a plant]), candy gardens, Hot Wheels gardens, kitschy gnome statuary gardens, and pink flamingo gardens. Or so I assume. I withstood the heat only long enough to make it through the desert gardens before escaping into the air conditioning of the library.

There's a statue of George Washington and I stared at it while the guard told me to put my drink away and I defiantly swigged it down instead. I didn't get my picture taken with the General or visibly swoon when I saw his actual signature on some documents, because my husband's been slightly testy about the President ever since we watched the John Adams HBO series and I confessed that if Kenny dies first, I'm marrying George Washington.

I saw an original quarto of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and a Gutenberg Bible. And a bunch of other stuff.

It was a good day.

We wandered back to the hotel and I got a Dove bar and a new book from the hotel gift shop and peeked at the people in fancy evening dress that were milling about waiting for various brides to show up. Then I read for a couple of hours, as did my husband, and then we went to the Happiest Place on Earth:

Whole Foods.

I have heard of its goodness and glory. I have even seen brief snatches of its majesty on Top Chef.

But I had no idea.

We wandered the cheese and chocolate aisles in a happy stupor and planned a date night in the future where we do nothing but hang out in the Whole Foods. That's not a lie. We have one only thirty minutes away. I'm sure it's just as wondrous.

Then we ate at a place Charrette recommended (being as this was her old stomping ground) called The Parkway Grill.

Oh, yum.

I had pasta in a Thai sauce with duck and then half a roasted chicken that they imported directly from heaven with a side of goat cheese mashed potatoes too sinfully rich to come from heaven, too. Delicious.

The next several hours are a blur as I spent it in a food coma but we eventually made it back to our friend's house and knocked on her door. She gave us back our baby and they seemed to have followed directions. He gave us kisses and played with us the whole rest of the afternoon. Mainly he made up games, like "stick a pencil in this Indian flute and giggle when it falls out" and then you just kind of repeat that twenty or a hundred times. He also likes "roll this plastic bowling ball under the TV stand and then fish it out with the Indian flute" and "climb on Daddy's back while he reads and then bounce up and down" a lot.

I like weekend getaways.

P.S. I get to hang out with LisAway tomorrow, all you snooty-pants bloggers with your regular Utah bloggy get togethers. *Sniff.

What a bargain.

I decided to give up shopping for Lent. Only Lent started right after Christmas and ended on Saturday for me.

I'm not sure exactly what prompted that decision. Probably I was hung over from holiday shopping and decided to go cold turkey for a while. I also thought it would be interesting to see if I could apply the principle of "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." I thought about how if we buy a bigger house next year, our mortgage payment will increase in proportion to our square footage and how it might be a good idea to get in the habit of cutting back on luxuries now. And it occurred to me that while my husband is at the top if his field in what he does, in this economy there are no job guarantees and it might make sense to practice living on less.

Oh, and it helped that there wasn't a single thing I needed that I didn't already have in a drawer somewhere. It suddenly made sense not to buy more stuff.

So I set myself a challenge, to see if I could do it. Orange County is a shopping mecca. At anyway four way intersection you will find a nail salon, a Starbucks, a shopping mall and a Tuscan style house with a Spanish tile roof. I decided to skip the mall in favor of my closet and see what I could find in there.

I closet shopped.

And you know what? I didn't even touch half of what I have in there (it actually took me a while to determine the exact fraction on that, btw) and I didn't get bored, even without a trip to Nordstrom for a little variety.

I didn't even need to shop for the boys. James got stuff from his grandmother for Christmas that fixed him up just fine, and we lucked into two huge loads of hand-me-downs for Baby G, one from Kenny's boss and one from one of my old friends.

It was an interesting experiment for me. I have walked into South Coast Plaza and dropped a couple of hundred without blinking because I felt like it. It doesn't make any dents in our budget and I never really thought too hard about it. But a self-imposed shopping ban has helped me to realize a truth that most of you hold to be self-evident. Just because I can buy it, doesn't mean I should.

I'm adjusting my shopping philosophy now. I definitely think it's okay to pick up something for fun. I definitely see that I'm not a shopaholic and never really was. I was more just in the habit of taking for granted that I could buy something that I liked just because I felt like it, and that it's a blessing I definitely should NOT take for granted.

And most importantly, I think I'm more aware of when and why I'm busting out my husband's hard earned dollars. So the adjustment for me is this: I'll still shop, but I'll start with Stein Mart and Marshall's and Nordstrom Rack before hitting the big mall. I have a good eye and I'm discovering the thrill of victory when I find a great piece for cheap. And I won't always be concerned with whether I need something, but I will think more about how much I'll really wear it.

Oh, and outlet malls? Totally my friends now.

Best of all, shopping in my closet for a few extra minutes generally eliminates a trip to the mall altogether.

And I realize this isn't deep in the face of the difficult challenges people are facing financially right now, but it's a small little step for me, and I'm glad I took it. I'm always glad for those small little moments to stop and truly appreciate what I already have and this was one of them. It amazes me how quickly I've forgotten the years that I struggled as a single mother to make ends meet, where Target was the nicest store I could afford. But in much the same way that I couldn't care less about whether my car is new or used as long as it runs, and that I hoard discount movie tickets with devilish glee, and I go to three different grocery stores every week just to make sure I'm being thrifty as possible in my food shopping, my innate cheapness is rearing it's head over my wardrobe...and I'm glad.

Sorry, guys. I'm no longer doing my part to single handedly keep the retail sector alive. I hereby officially relinquish my role in the stimulus plan.

It's all about the swirly

My littlest son is obessessed with toilets. We spent a good part of our time yesterday chasing him out of the bathroom at my in-laws' house because the little kids kept forgetting to close the bathroom door when done, which sent an irresistible invitation to my littlest one: must come splash and play, NOW! And he'd zoom straight for that porcelain goodness, cute little diapered bottom wagging while he speed crawled to his personal toilet nirvana.

It was close a few times, but we managed to catch him every time. This isn't always the case. My nine-year-old got to give the baby a bath for the first time when he forgot to close his bathroom door after multiple reminders and baby G had a splashing good time before anyone caught him.

I know that this is some kind of commentary on my deficiencies as a mother and how I should take him to the pool more or something, but I'm going to ignore that and look for the deeper lesson here which is that....

Wait, I'm thinking. I'll find it in a minute...

Oh, I know! The lesson here is that we all need to look for the "toilets" in our life. The things that call to us to play but really are a bad idea. Which I guess makes my personal "toilet" the holiday cooking magazines I keep buying at the grocery check out stand. I knew my hips didn't need it, my budget couldn't take it, and my stress-related cortisol levels would shoot up dramatically, and yet I still made twelve brand new dishes in two days.

I need to flush.

Hm. That didn't sound right. I meant metaphorically.

And I'm so not taking my own advice because I just made it up so that I could pretend there was something worthwhile in all the toilet prevention yesterday.

Guilty Pleasures (Friday favorites)

(Seven comments before we move on. [You guys are rocking my world on that, btw]. And you may Blue Dog if you have to).

There are things we all enjoy that we would be embarrassed if people knew about, even our closest friends. And I am absolutley speaking for everyone in the whole world here because I refuse to accept that I am the only one who does this.

So today's list of Friday Favorites are my particular guilty pleasures. You know the sort; it's not even kind of a sin and yet indulging in or enjoying any of these things suggests that you are in fact not as refined and cultivated as you pretend to be, so you pretty much don't admit to them.

Seriously, say this isn't only me.

But shame isn't healthy, so I'm shining a light on my little secrets:

Guilty Pleasures:

Food: a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a bag of Reese's Bites (the little balls) on a night when the boys are gone.

Books: a thick Regency romance off the grocery store shelves (although I DO skip the bad parts, and I'm not lying!)

TV: The Secret Life of an American Teenager. This show is so far beyond ridiculous and yet I can't look away.

Movies: Talladega Nights. The hands thing kills me. And I'm so not a "stupid" movie fan. I just can't resist this one.

Internet: I read the CNN and MSN celebrity gossip links.

Magazines: I will read US any time I find it in a waiting room or at a friend's house, even if it's three months out of date.

Fashion: I would live in sweats if I didn't think my children would be embarrassed by it. And I live in brightly colored ankle socks when it's too cool outside for flip flops. But that'd have to be down around the thirties before I give up my Reefs.

Music: Um, I have Neil Diamond concert tickets. Seriously.

Time waster: blog stalking. Totally. Oh, and playing mindless free games online like Cubis, over and over again. Even if I've already solved it. Multiple times.

As for comments, well...you may comment on my total lack of taste. I'm prepared to take the hit. You can share your own guilty pleasure, if you dare choose. Or you may suggest the greatest guilty pleasure in any one of these categories that I might be missing out on. Or a category I forgot. Because I probably overlooked about....fifty dozen. (I'm too tired to multiply and figure out how many that is.) There are so many cheesy things I have yet to discover... but I'm trying really, really hard!