Holmes

So I posted this already on facebook but maybe not here? We have a new dog! A two year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel who's already housebroken and knows which fork to use at fancy dinners. He came with the name Roland, which we changed to Holmes.

Here's the thing. He may be the most genuinely sweet-natured dog I've ever met. Example. Ken always gives Zora a bowl of milk after he eats his cereal, but since Holmes needs to drop an lb. or two, Ken's decided not to share the milk love with him just yet.

Anyhoo. When Holmes sees the milk, he wags his tail and goes, "Yay! Milk!" And then when he realizes he's not getting any, he wags his tail and goes, "Yay! Not milk!"

See what I mean about sweet?

Memorial Day

This is a holiday I really love, but I will say that the rain and the cold kind of did me in this year. Thankfully we stopped in Provo on the way home from St. George yesterday to lay flowers on our family graves. Usually I make traditional arrangements of cut irises, peonies and snowball blossoms and stuff them in mason jars, but this year I went to the grocery store and bought some mums.

I apologized profusely about the mums to Becky when I put them on her grave.

Hope your day was a good one.

(Wind) breaking news!

So I'm here at a convention with Ken where a) there's wi-fi! yay! and b) the average attendee's age is older. I'm not being age-ist here. This bit of information is important for the story I'm about to tell.

There's a woman sitting in front of me with her husband who just bent over to pick up her purse. When she did, the people, she broke wind. MASSIVE, wall-shaking, earth-rumbling, legendary, homerically epic wind. Which okay. That right there was noticeable and also amazing.

But here's the most amazing thing. She appeared not to notice. At all! Neither did her husband. They just . . . carried on, leaving me and my nephew Chris (he's sitting next to me) in awe. Also, slightly in fear because we are directly downwind.

Thank you for listening.

Help me, Obi wan Kenobe

Okay. First. Let me just say this is the second time today that I have hightailed it to a Starbucks for the wifi connection. I am . . . so addicted to the internet.

But I have a legitimate reason to post right now! I'm preparing for the upcoming WIFYR conference, and I would like you as fabulous readers to tell me what specifically makes you a) stick with and/or b) abandon a book after 50 pages. I want to develop a rubric (is that the fancy teacher word I want?) for responding to manuscripts.

Thank you, Obi wan Kenobe. I love you so.

Down south

I'm down south for a few days and may I say it feels JUST GREAT to step outside, even at night, and feel warm air on my skin?

Anyway, as I left town I made it a point to drive past the hawthorne trees in bloom around Reservoir Park right now. The blossoms are scarlet--my favorite. I have such a fondness for hawthornes. We had a huge tree in our side yard when I was growing up. Oh, people, it was just a gorgeous blowsy bloomy girl when she was in all a flower. And then! Tragedy! My dad hired a yard crew to take out some old shrubs. But they got mixed up and took out the hawthorne, too.

We were in such shock that we sat shiva. I still mourn that tree every May.

I just . . .

re-read that U2 post and WOW! I'm so just sad now that I had temporary hardening of the let's-get-out-and-party! arteries. Here's my new vow. I WILL see U2 some time before I die. (But maybe indoors. When it's warm. So I won't have to take my little lap afghan with me.)

U2

I have a long tradition of barely missing epic concerts--Led Zeppelin here in SLC in 1973 and U2 here shortly after 9/11. I swore then that before I died I'd make it to a U2 concert.

And I could have. They were here at Rice-Eccles last night. Ken even asked if I wanted to go and I said . . . no. Because I didn't care that much anymore. I figured they'd just play a bunch of new crap anyway, and who's interested in that?

As it turned out, they played a lot of their classic stuff. I know this because I could stand out on my front porch in the Aves and listen, which I did for awhile. But then I went inside because I got bored. And then I went to bed wishing the concert was over already because it was just so loud.

Did you hear that? I was whining about how the loudness of a concert would affect my sleep. Oh, people. When did I get to be such a freaking old lady?