What I love today

I would like to have this now, please.

Note to teacher

Why, yes I DID just send this to all my eighth grade son's teachers. This is what happens when you trap me in a house with three sick kids:

Hello, teachers. 

 He fought the good fight, but unfortunately James just went down with the fever his little brother and sister have been trading back and forth all week. I threatened him with grounding if the fever didn't break, but it didn't work. In fact, it went up. Which is a darn shame because this is a kid that misses very little school primarily because it's so hard for him to dig out on missing assignments when he does. 

 *Loooooooonnnnnnnng sigh* 

 James probably really wishes he'd gotten a fever last night BEFORE he did all his homework, but it waited until this morning to pounce. Therefore, his homework is done. This leads me to a few questions: 

 1. Could I stop by the office today and turn his homework in for them to sort into your teacher boxes? Or do you prefer that he waits to turn it in when he gets back to school? 

 2. Please read this as me speaking with a totally non-critical tone: only one of you has current classwork/homework assignments posted on his/her website (you go, Mrs. Mathews!) (the rest of you: seriously, no judgment, I swear!), so is there any way to get today's classwork/homework assignments back as a quick email? I'll have him work on it today on the theory that some people say starve a fever, feed a cold and some people say feed a fever, starve a cold and I say just drown it with homework so it will decide to abandon its host on account of who wants to do homework? 

I taught 8th grade language arts for five years, and I realize I'm being THAT parent right now, but here's the thing: if his grade drops, I have to ground him from media. And he's already grounded from media because he has C's in PE and Consumer Science (yeah, he's that kid. If there's not a space for him to write it in his planner, it doesn't exist. Also, the mile=not his favorite). And grounding a kid from media is hard. Their entire conversation becomes negotiations about how to get the media back. "I'll plant a garden! I'll clean the baseboards with a toothbrush! I'll give you the key to unchain small brother from the backyard sapling if I can have twenty minutes with Minecraft!" 

 So really, helping James stay caught up is kind of a mental health thing for me, see? 

 Happy teaching today, guys.

 ~Melanie Jacobson 

Mother Under Siege

Cover Reveal!

I got a belated Christmas gift in the form of my new cover for my upcoming March book release, Second Chances. And guys: I LOVE IT. I especially love the writing at the very top. (Click to embiggen.) Coolest thing I've ever seen. (Except for a bunch of other cool stuff I've actually seen like a giant redwood, the Hope diamond, etc. but still: PRETTY COOL.)

(Note: the smart people at Covenant will have done a much better job of explaining this story than I'm about to, but for right now, this is what I've got. Will post their professionally blurbed awesomeness later).

The story follows Louisa Gibson, a Huntington Beach girl with grand plans to launch her own new media marketing agency. Lou comes up with a brilliant idea to do a web version of The Bachelor, only it's for Mormons. Introducing The Mormon Bachelor. It's on the verge of launching when her bachelor drops out at the last minute. In desperation, she taps her old boyfriend, a Hollywood actor, to fill in, but she is totally unprepared for her feelings when he develops real relationships with his dates. She's determined to protect her heart, but at what price?

UPDATE:

Annnnnnnnd here's what my publisher sent me:

After walking out of a thankless job at a prestigious marketing firm, feisty California entrepreneur Louisa Gibson is going into business for herself. Her pioneering venture, The Mormon Bachelor, is a reality dating web series sure to be fabulous advertising for her new marketing firm. And as a bonus, Lou can solve a problem close to home: Huntington Beach is crawling with eligible, sun-bronzed Saints, but they lack one vital skill—they’ve forgotten how to date. Lou hopes the reality show will finally inspire this group of hangout enthusiasts to pair off. But shortly before filming begins, the unthinkable happens, and Trentyn, a.k.a. the Mormon bachelor, gets a girlfriend. And Lou needs a new leading man—fast. 

Enter Nick, Lou’s devastatingly handsome ex-boyfriend. He’s the stereotypical actor: shallow, self-serving . . . and perfect for the job. A whirlwind of dating ensues, with Nick at the center of it all. Things are going according to plan—that is, until Lou is forced to step in as a substitute bachelorette, becoming an unwitting cast member on her own show. Despite Nick’s attempts to reestablish their friendship and the growing spark between them, Lou is determined to keep her distance. The show must go on—but what’s a girl to do when the Mr. Wrong of the past just may be the Mr. Right of the future?

Giveaway!

Uh, so you can win my new book SMART MOVE maybe if you go here:

Page of Awesomeness.

Merry Christmas!

Pants to church?

I'm bringing pants to church. I have no idea if I'm putting them on or not, but I'm bringing them.

Here's why, not that you asked.

Traditionally, culturally, women have worn dresses to LDS church services. As Mormons, we believe in wearing our Sunday best to worship God, and dressing up on Sundays is a way to show we care and to mark the day as different from the rest of the week. It's the same reason the men wear suits and not jeans and polos. It's not a rule. It's just the shape our Sunday worship has taken in the years since our church was established.

Recently, a group of LDS feminists announced an event to encourage women to wear pants to church today, Sunday, in the hopes of making a quiet statement that some women in the church don't feel they're well represented in leadership and decision-making processes.

My first thought was, "Absolutely not. I refuse to wear pants." This is because for one thing--and it's the far lesser reason--I don't feel--and never have felt--unequal in this church or in my home. I feel respected and valued. I feel like my opinions are often requested and have been given due weight when I've offered them. I feel free to offer opinions whether they're requested or not. I'm granted, or often just take, opportunities to serve and lead others as much and often far more than the men around me.

There are little things that bother me sometimes, yes. I do think our young women should have a female leader present with them in interviews with their bishops (for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with a bishop's integrity). I find it odd that some stakes cling to the cultural practice that women don't give the opening prayers, only the closing one. Or give the concluding talk in sacrament meeting, our weekly worship service.  My ward isn't like that. But some wards are.

But like I said, these are little things that do nothing to interfere with my ability to be spiritually filled and renewed each Sunday. I have never walked the halls of any of the many chapels I've attended and felt second-rate to the men in any way. If anything, I think the men in our church are keenly aware that the whole thing would fall apart without the women doing the heavy lifting. 

So I'm not putting on pants for church today because I don't feel a need to protest, however quietly. 

There's a far more important reason I'm not doing it, though. I refuse to participate in a symbolic protest that interrupts the much greater symbol at the heart of our Sabbath worship. Sundays are ALWAYS about participating in the ordinance of the sacrament and renewing our covenants with our God, not making political statements to each other. I  cannot bring myself to disrupt that by being more focused on something else, like which women are wearing pants, or why they are. In the end, those things don't matter. Being there, wearing my best to show my Heavenly Father that I respect the Sabbath and the sacrament as a day apart, matters. That's it.

But.

I've been reading up on this quite a bit. This interview with the founder's of this event really gave me some insight into their motives. The more I've read, the more compassion I feel toward women who sometimes don't feel their place in our halls, who are hungry and searching for something. Whether I agree or not, their hurt is real. I have been so disappointed in their treatment by others in comment trails and on Facebook. I think there are a lot of people who need to feel ashamed of themselves and it's not the protestors. I understand the discomfort and the anger engendered by some people's fear of this, but I don't think the ugliness, which I won't repeat here, is helping anything. In fact, I actually think it underscores what the pants-wearing women today are trying to express.

But.

I won't do anything that detracts from the worship of my Heavenly Father for that precious hour at the start of our Sabbath services. 

I do, however, feel a tenderness for those sisters who do struggle to understand their role in this church. And I speak of the church and it's culture and programs as separate from the GOSPEL here. The gospel is perfect. The institutions we've engineered to help us in the practice of it are not always perfect. And I don't want these sisters to feel any more disenfranchised than they already do. So along side my big old binder full of agendas and activity ideas, and my old-school actual scriptures (I still navigate those faster than the digital ones), and my tissues for the kids, and my scratch paper for them to draw on, I will pack a pair of pants. Very nice pants, but pants. And if any one of my sisters is wearing pants in an effort to say, "Sometimes I come here and don't feel like I fit," I will slip into the restroom after sacrament meeting and put my pants on for the rest of church so they will know that I want them to feel connected. Because I love them. And I will feel like an idiot, but if they need me to, I'm putting on my pants.

Beauty tip

Can I drop in here sometimes with no explanation of where I've been? Here's the short answer: busy.

And I'm dropping in today because I want to share this beauty tip with you: baby wipes. 

See, I kind of gave up manis and pedis because there's just no time any more. But I like sparkly colorful nails so every now and then I muster the energy to paint them myself. I used to be opposed to this because it was such a pain to take off the old polish. Cotton balls = boo. Toilet paper = boo. Paper towels = boo.

And then I randomly used a baby wipe (specifically the Kirkland/Costco brand) that Eden had pulled out with a handful of other wipes and just left on the floor. It had dried out. I decided to give it a shot. Verdict=WIN! They don't tear or leave little fuzz on your nails.

Now let's talk about how I tried painting my own nails with a light blue matte polish and that takes a lot of coats and I wasn't very good at it and I went to my biannual (you read that right--I told you, I don't have TIME) hair appointment, and this Chinese lady nail tech got one look at my attempt and tsk-ed me right into a chair and cleaned them up for free because it offended her professional sensibilities that a grown woman should walk around with nails looking like that.

Really, it should have offended her sensibilities that a grown woman was running around in light blue nail polish, but I make no apologies. Then after cleaning up my  nails, she sent me off with a glare and a refusal to accept a tip.

But that's not really the point here. The point is, dried out Costco baby wipes are seriously excellent for removing nail polish.

Huh.

That was kind of fun. Blogging, I mean. Maybe later this week I will tell you a really good recipe to make for Christmas.

Okay. Bye.

Make a Smart Move, okay?

I got a review that made me laugh today and also sigh in relief because Susan at Bloggin' Bout Books is known to be brutally honest, so I was glad Smart Move passed muster with her. Whew. I'd been sweating this review a little, to tell you the truth. She was still honest enough to make me uncomfortable, but overall I was happy with it. Anyway, she's hosting a giveaway of the book, but since there are a few giveaways of Smart Move going on, I thought I'd make it easy on everyone and put them all in one place. I know, I know: stick your thank you card in the mail.

Here we go with the list of giveaways for Smart Move:

Susan at Bloggin' Bout Books
Rachael Renee Anderson
I Am a Reader, Not a Writer
Why Not? Because I Said So


You can drop in on any of them and enter. Hooray! Also, for those writerly-minded types among you, I concluded my "how-I-wrote-my-book-so-fast" post here where I blog under my semi-secret identity.