Just Finished

I just finished reading this book. The premise is that you can use writing and creativity to lose weight. I think this only works if you don't keep M&Ms next to your laptop. Or chocolate stashed in your writing room. Or in drawers all over the house.

In Stephen King's book "On Writing," he talks about how scared he was that he'd lose the ability to write if he got sober. For him, the writing and the getting wasted went together. He didn't think he could do one without the other. But he could. He did.

On Saturday, I went to a local coffee shop and wrote. And drank a huge mug of hot chocolate. There were no M&Ms involved.

Baby steps. Baby steps.

We Must Have Heroes

When I lived in Utah I did some freelancing for a local magazine. I was assigned to write a piece about the President of the University of Utah's wife, Suzan Young. I interviewed her at the President's house just off campus on The Avenues. Her life was fascinating and there was a lot of information that didn't make the article.

For one, her daughter has a pilot's license. This intrigued me.

"What made her want to do that?" I asked.

Turns out, that her grandmother had been a pilot. During the second world war she'd ferried bomber planes from where they were manufactured (in Texas) to the San Francisco Bay area where they were handed over to the military.

I thought about this for a long time. Growing up, in my small town, I saw women who were secretaries, teachers, nurses, dental assistants, and little else. I knew no women doctors, lawyers, writers, poets, or pilots. To become such a thing never occurred to me. I don't blame the women in my life. My mother and grandmothers were all smart, capable women who told me I could be and do anything I wanted to do. I never wanted to be a pilot, anyway.

But oh, how I long to fly.

Baby or Toddler?

At what moment precisely does a baby become a toddler? Is it when he takes his first step? Or when he climbs up and then falls off the kitchen table? Maybe it's when he no longer wants to snuggle into your chest when he's tired.

My son is becoming lots more work. As a baby, he slept and ate and smiled and laughed. Now he climbs and sometimes falls. He empties out drawers. He makes messes. He makes funny noises and tries to mimic his Dad. Yesterday, after I got him dressed he went to the front door thinking that we were going somewhere. We weren't.

He can climb up the bunk bed ladder. He stands on his tiptoes and plays the piano. He tries to feed himself. He plays with his Dad's cell phone. He likes to poke his head into the washing machine.

Two days ago I found his Dad's cell phone in our front-loading washer after I'd just washed a load of towels. It was soaking wet and totally ruined.

I think we have a toddler.

Pie for One

Next week is Thanksgiving. I won't be making pie, but some of you might. While you're at it, you might as well make some of these:

Pies in a Jar.

Aren't they adorable? And you can freeze them and give them as gifts. I think they look scrumptious. If you like pie. Plus, did you notice the free labels? There. The work is already done. Oh, except MAKING the pie. Yeah, that's a biggie.

Small Town Traditions

Small towns have traditions. In Mapleton, Utah where we moved from, the fire trucks would circle around town at 6:30 a.m on July 24th with their sirens screeching. It was to wake everybody up for the Pioneer Day celebrations.

Here in Lander, Wyoming, they set off cannons at 6:00 AM! to commemorate Veterans Day.

Oh, how I love small towns.

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I grew up in a small town: Preston, Idaho to be exact. Yes, home of Napoleon Dynamite. Only I lived outside of town. I was a country kid. See, in our small town there were city kids and country kids. You were a city kid if you lived in town. Our town had fewer than 5000 people. Hardly a city, but still we made that distinction.

We probably made it because we felt different. Our families were mostly farmers. We got up early, had chores, and listened to the commodities report on the radio. We went to church and high school basketball games. We never ate out. The most we could hope for was a stop at the gas station--the Will-0-way--where my Dad would buy a Mars bar and cut into seven equal pieces when we got home. About once a year, we'd get shakes at the Arctic Circle.

The city kids were different. Their Dads were bankers or salesmen or supervisors at factories. The city kids slept in on Saturdays, played golf, and shopped for school clothes in Salt Lake City. Their families owned their own VCRs. They ate chinese food and seafood and knew what they were going to be when they grew up.

We, too, had a small town tradition: Rodeo weekend. Rodeo weekend was big. A parade every night on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday followed by the rodeo. There was a carnival, too. You could see into the rodeo arena from the ferris wheel and you could hear the carnival noise from the rodeo stands. The rodeo grounds smelled like hamburgers, cigarette smoke, and cotton candy. I was a country kid, not a cowboy, so the rodeo was thrilling to me. I loved rodeo weekend. Even now, the thought of it fills me with memories and nostalgia.

Lying in bed, at 6 a.m. with cannons going off every 20 seconds, I thought how a rodeo and a parade and a carnival are really the perfect small-town tradition.

Mostly because nobody wakes you up.

Party Line

My daughter, age 9, warned me that she might want a cell phone. Not yet, but sometime. Perhaps in a year or two. She just wanted me to be forewarned.

How nice.

I did what any reasonable parent would do. I told her about the “olden days.” I’m 35 and yes, according to a 9 year old, even I lived in the olden days. Here’s proof:

Up until I was five years old, I lived in town. Town was laid out in blocks. It had neighbors and modern conveniences. When I was five we moved to the farm. The farm was exactly 8 miles from the only stoplight in town. The closest neighbors were a mile away. We had a party line.

A party line, I explained to my daughter, was when the whole rural road we lived along all shared the same phone line. We all had our own phones in our houses, but they were all connected to one, singular line. Only one of us could be on the phone at once. Someone miles down the road might be using the phone when you picked it up and you’d have to wait until they were done talking. And yes, you could listen in on other people’s conversations.

My mother taught us that this was very, very rude. She never did it. If someone was on the line, she’d hang up so quick it was like she’d dropped the phone. My mother was patient and polite. But there were occasions when she’d need to actually use our party line.

Every party line had one: an Odessa. Odessa was a neighbor who lived 3 or 4 miles closer to town than we did. She probably wasn’t that old at the time, but as a child, I thought she was old. She was a heavy woman and she was LOUD. So loud, that all you had to do was lift the phone from its cradle at arm’s length. If she was on the phone, you knew it.

Odessa was ALWAYS on the phone.

She also always knew everybody else’s business. (There was speculation in our house that she “listened in” on the party line).

I remember only three occasions when my polite, patient mother quietly asked Odessa if she could get off the phone because my mother desperately needed to make a call. Most of the time, my mother just waited, checking the line every hour or so until she heard a dial tone instead of one of the neighbor’s voices.

It’s hard to believe that it was well into the 1980’s before we got our own phone line. Now, that . . . that day was a party.

Let it WHAT?

Isn't he cute?

Yep. That's the white stuff. And it's a flying.

My kids got to use their snowman kit (I'll have to post about these later). They were so excited. I think it will melt. I don't think winter is here yet. But then again, I've been wrong before.