On Moving Forward

My friend Darla shared her favorite quote with me. I thought I'd post it here.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. --Einstein, in a letter to his son.

Make it great day!

What were they thinking? (Patriots)

Okay, so I turned off the game and sent the boys to bed, so that I could watch my movie (Nights in Rodanthe--yes, it was good) before it got too far past my bedtime. After all, with 2:38 minutes left and a 13-point lead, and Tom Brady handling things, while Peyton and crew seemed to mangle key plays, I thought all would be well. And so did my boys. They marched off to bed in good faith.

However, I lost all credibility on the football front when my youngest brought in the morning paper and asked through a veil of confusion, "Who lost by one point last night? Was it the Colts?"

He was trying to sound hopeful.

I spun from my desk.

"One point! Did you say, one point! They had been leading by 13! With two minutes left to play!"

But I knew before I even snatched up the paper, deciphered the meaning behind the amazing photograph of Reggie Wayne's catch, that I should not have doubted Peyton. I knew he was capable of amazing come-backs such as this. After all, the announcer had reminded me so on their last failed drive before I clicked off the TV with confidence.

I won't doubt him again. Watching those two drives would have been fun. (Don't tell my sister. She's a true Patriot fan.) Me? I just hate missing out a good game. What was I thinking?

Sights are on the playoffs for sure.

Another blog, and interview

Okay, so life has been a bit crazy the past few months, and while surfing the web this morning, catching up on what my writer friends have been doing, I realized I forgot to share an interview that I did with Lori Nawyn in August. August.


The calendar tells me that was 2 months ago.... To me, it seems like that was merely days ago, or at least a handful of them. But, if you're interested, you can check out the interview here, as well as the other useful and insightful posts and interviews she has. Hopefully, I'll soon have good news to share on some of the projects I talked about. (Fingers crossed!)


Lori has her own good news. The book she illustrated, What Are You Thinking?, written by Valerie Ackley, is a 2009 National Best Books Awards finalist. What a wonderful accomplishment! Congratulations to Lori and Valerie!


Make it a great day, everyone.

The Proposal, a great movie

My new favorite movie is The Proposal, and I owe all thanks to my daughter who said we absolutely had to watch it (She'd already seen it with a friend, and wanted to see it again--and a third time, as it turned out, by the time she watched it with me.) Anyway, I loved it. I had no idea I would be laughing so much, until the end, when I cried, but only because the ending was a happy one. Even my boys liked it, which was surprising, since they are boys, and The Proposal is a romantic comedy, which is all good, because it means they have soft spots in their hearts and are willing to sit down and enjoy a movie that a mom, or a sister, or a girl would like to watch.

As for the rest of the week, it's work, work, work, a bit of rewriting on a manuscript, and then the SCBWI conference in Salt Lake on Friday and Saturday. I'm looking foward to hanging out with fellow friends and writers Judy Torres, Laura Madsen, Sydney Salter (My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters), Bree Despain (The Dark Devine), Karen Nelson, and many others, and meeting editor Elizabeth Law from Egmont and agent Kendra Marcus, if I'm lucky.

Survivor!

Yes, I survived. Or, rather, we. My daughter and I, when we rode the Big Shot on top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas last weekend.

We were there for the Las Vegas Mayor's Cup soccer tournament that her team was playing in, and a friend had suggested we take that ride on the Big Shot, or at least get to the top of the Strat for the view. Lucky for us, these plans became part of the team's agenda for Saturday night, since they didn't have an early game scheduled for Sunday morning.


But as the captured Kodak-moment shows, even 4Gs of being shot 160 feet upward at 45 miles an hour isn't quite enough to zap my brain into motion. It took more than a few moments for me to realize, that yes, we were indeed moving, possibly and quite quickly, toward death. And by the time I was in full comprehension of my experience--that I may not survive--the zero-G's bestowed on us as we plummeted back downward kept me from vocalizing any of the sheer terror I felt in comprehending that there really was NO WAY off until it was over.

But of course, once it was done, I kind of wished I could do it a second time. And maybe a third.... What's up with that?

All in all, getting away to Las Vegas was great. The sun was warm enough to kiss my skin, the soccer games well-played and enjoyable to watch, the watershow at the Bellagio perfectly timed to impress upon my teenage daughter that I really might have clue as to what we were doing as we toured the strip, and the singing bus driver on route to the terminal was fabulous enough to end the weekend with a smile. Although the singing vacuum cleaner--i.e., the fellow who was riding a motorized vacuum cleaner at the SLC airport while singing Kumbaya upon our return--left me a bit perplexed over the intricacies of human nature.


As for daily life, the sun and warm weather have returned for at least a few more days in northern Utah before the snow truly starts to fly for good. Although I like to ski, here's hoping the sun will stick around for a little while longer.

Finding Inspiration in Kokanee Salmon

A couple weeks ago I took my kids to see the bright red kokanee salmon making their way upstream in the Little Bear River above Porcupine Reservoir. As I watched these beautiful fish swimming among the rocks in the shallow water, I struggled with wondering what sort of inspiration could be drawn for both life and writing from a journey in which a fish returns to its hatching grounds after a few short years of life solely to spawn and die. What drives that undeniable urge? And why?

Although as humans, we're nothing like fish, I've come to realize that in some ways we may mirror this behavior when we allow ourselves to give in to that gut-wrenching pull toward something or someone we like in hopes that the journey forward will lead us to a place that resembles our roots, shapes the foundation of our soul, and sharpens our senses to the point of knowing what it means to truly be alive. So that at the end of it all, we can say, yes, life's ultimate journey was worth it, even if we did get battered among the rocks along the way. Because feeling something is the first step toward believing, and believing in something provides the purpose for moving forward, even if we're swimming against the current and dodging all sorts of debris coming our way.

For me, I want to believe that the ultimate journey will have been about love. I want to be able to say that I held on to it when it was found. That I did everything I could to make it grow, and that in doing so, in sharing it with those around me, made my corner of the world a better place.

Last week, I came across a quote I liked from Souza. Here's part of it:

Love as though you've never been hurt before....Live as though heaven were on earth.

Out of the Dust ...

and chaos and complete utter mess that a remodel can bring.

I had no idea what I was in for when the remodel on our house started, and now that the largest part of it is done, and we are back to living on the first floor, it almost seems like the summer has been a surreal existance, at least as far as trying to stay connected with the writing and publishing world. I learned that I can not necessarily write "anywhere," at least as far as keeping up with office to-do lists. Being limited to 2-square-feet of floor space at an itty bit desk-that-is-not-a-desk in my daughter's room underneath the watchful starry eyes of Ashley Tisdale and Taylor Lautner (who is now wallpapered on my screen, thanks to youthful daughter) did not do a lot for inspiring the muse to keep the blog updated. (Or the photos downloaded--sorry, Mom! Those will follow.) But thankfully, the embers that feed the creative side--at least as far as making fiction--kept burning and I managed to wrap up my middle grade and get a picture book hammered out by writing in quiet pockets outside.

It's hard to believe summer has passed by and fall is well upon me. The first big rain of the season lured me from bed early this morning, and already I'm looking forward to drier and warmer weather to return. There are too many things left to be done in the garden. Green beans and corn plants are ready to be ripped out, and limas, carrots and beets are standing tall for harvest. Thank the Lord for a friend like Kristen, who does not have a garden and who has found a new passion for helping in gardens that are not her own. We have a date to do all good things with beets, carrots, and a bottle of wine on Tuesday. Yesterday, we tackled the beans, tomatillos, zuchinis-that-are-now-listed-as-deadly-weapons, cucumbers, and tomatos. Good times, good times.

I'll leave you with a few photos of summer journeys 2009.....