talking gratitude here

so there's this oddly famous lady in salt lake who has the world's longest fingernails. literally. she's in the guinness book of world records and everything, which why? what would take you to that place where you wanted to make that your life's goal? at least when i was in mutual they forced you to make practical goals involving exercising and scripture reading and NOT growing your nails out two feet so you could scare the holy crap out of kids who came to your house for trick-or-treating purposes.

anyway. i was talking to a man the other day who used to work at a store where this nail lady shopped. she would try on rings sometimes and the process took a lot of time and a LOT of assistance from store employees who had to slide and loop those rings up the nail until they hit her ring finger. and every time this guy would go home and say WTH. how does she do anything, ANYTHING. AND I MEAN ANYTHING with those things.

i, on the other hand, have one extremely excellent good hand which can do many many many things.

and i am grateful.

and now i and my excellent hand are off to tooele again to speak again. this time to a women's conference. tooele has become my home away from home this month.

This I admire

I had such a fabulous experience yesterday speaking to a group of 7th and 8th graders who attend Cosgriff, a Catholic school here in Salt Lake City. Anyway, they'd all read LOSER'S GUIDE and were full of great questions about the book. (Side note here--author visits are just so much more effective when students have been prepped beforehand. This isn't just ego-driven-by-a-desire-to-sell-books talking here, but teachers shouldn't invite authors to speak to a class cold. It's so much more beneficial for the students if they've actually read something by said writer beforehand.)

Anyway. One of the kids asked which authors I admire most. Normally I would have rattled off names like M. E. Kerr and Madeleine L'Engle, who were important influences on me. But instead I said "Anybody who can finish writing a book, whether they publish it or not."

Writing a novel is hard. And if you've done it, you should congratulate yourself. My hat's off to you.