I'll Tell You What . . .

. . . is something the Coach always said.  It's something Johnny Cash always said in his live recordings, too, but that's not the point.

The point is that TKE has published a collection of my Tribune columns and the book is called I'll Tell You What . . . in honor of my dad.  We're doing a launch tonight at the bookstore, and I am looking forward to it because you never know.  This might be the last time I'll publish a book.  So I plan to put on my party hat and enjoy every last minute of the evening.

(The party hat, of course, is figurative.  But if it weren't, I'd go with that yellow headgear Amal Clooney wore to the Royal Wedding.)

That's the thing about being this age.  I don't take much for granted now.  My mobility.  A gorgeous morning.  Birds gossiping in the alley trees behind our house.  That watermelon-colored poppy that blooms spring after spring in my neighbor's yard.  A good night's sleep.

Friends.

Family.

I'll tell you what.  I'm lucky.

From D.C. to S.L.C, yo

So Son #4 and I just drove ourselves and a lot of boxes (also, plenty of random clothing tossed in the backseat in a last minute act of moving desperation) across the country.  By the time we hit Wyoming, I was exhausted and also tired of eating lots of potato chips, which may explain the bittersweet melancholy that settled on me as we drove that long last stretch of I-80.

My mom grew up in Wyoming, and when we were young, we went there and hung out in my grandpa's garage where the locals gathered to gossip and buy me and my younger brother bottles of Squirt.  So I thought about my grandparents and the people they knew who all fished those glittering rivers together, and then I started thinking about my life and how many things have changed--how many things will still change.  Which caused me to shed a tear or two when Son #4 wasn't looking.

Would I like for Time to stop?  No.  Because then I would never have had the pleasure of knowing family and friends and even myself in different stages of our (New Age Word Alert!) journeys.

Still.  I wouldn't mind sitting one more time on the edge of the conversations I used to hear my grandparents and parents having when we visited them in the summer as the long green grasses grew.

Memorial Day

I don't know exactly when Memorial Day became a holiday I own for myself, but it did.  I'm sure the fact that I watched my parents and grandparents decorate family graves with coffee cans (wrapped in tin foil) (also, where did all those coffee cans come from) full of snowball blossoms, peonies, and irises trained me up in the way I should go.

Anyway.  I spent time in Provo today, visiting East Lawn Memorial Cemetery where some of the people I loved best in this life are buried.  Dad.  Skinny and Louise.  Kenneth.  Becky.  While I was there I remembered something my granddaughter said when she was about four after her parents took her to the cemetery on Memorial Day.

"Hey!  Remember that garden we went to with the dead people?"

Yup.  Her parents are training her up in the way she should go, too.

Tink and Zora: a Tale (Tail?) of Two Newfs

So we've had two Newfs now.  There've certainly been similarities--lolling tongues, splendid natures, drool.  SO. MUCH. DROOL.

But in many ways they're very different dogs.  Zora was all "please just let me lie in the middle of this floor and pass myself off as a rug all day long."  Tink, on the other hand, is Tigger.  Which, when you think about it, a dog that weighs 130 pounds going all Tigger on you is pretty scary.

Anyway, the only way we could get Zora to move at times was to show her the vacuum cleaner.  She was terrified of it.  We didn't even have to turn it on.  As soon as I'd drag it into view, she'd shimmy her way up onto her thick brown legs and scram.  If you can call "lumbering," which is what she did, "scramming."  Tink, who fears nothing, has always had the opposite reaction.  Vacuum cleaner?  Whatever.  I could eat that old thing for a snack if I felt like it!

But then one day when I was vacuuming I got just a little too close to Tink and accidentally sucked her tail up.  SAD!  Ever since then she's kept a respectful distance between me and the sucking machine.

So there it is.  Another similarity after all.

The Coach's Creed

First thing this morning my brother Jimmy sent me and my other brother (not Darryl) John a paragraph from a talk our father gave at a BYU Devotional the year after he retired.  It moved me because I saw him in these words.  I share it with you here.

"A friend shared with me this anonymous but profound creed that says it well.  I quote:

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others.  We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.  Care for those around you.  Look past your differences.  Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.  And give.  Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess.  To give is to love.  To withhold is to wither.  Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared, and your life will having meaning and your heart will have peace."

Yanny vs. Laurel

Like Americans everywhere my family did the Yanny/Laurel thing today.  Some of us heard Yanny (including me).  Some of us heard Laurel (including not me).  So then some of us got scientific and explained via a family text thread that people who hear at a high frequency hear "Yanny."

"Oh," I said.  "I'm glad I hear at a higher frequency.  You know.  Like a dog."

Which got me thinking about all the ways that I'm like a dog.  To wit:

1.  I'm not picky when it comes to food choices.

2.  "Smell" is my most highly developed sense.

3.  I like to hang my head out the window when I drive a car.

4.  Sometimes I sit on Ken Cannon's lap.

I rest my case.

Big Life Questions I Am Having at 10:00 P.M.

1.  If somebody would deliver a hamburger to me right now--like, literally bring it to me in my bed--where would I want it to be from?  Crown Burger or In-N-Out?

2.  Why don't I care about this Royal Wedding AT ALL when I certainly cared about Charles and Diana and sort of cared about Kate and Wills?

3.  Why is NCIS Los Angeles still on TV?

4.  Why does L.L. Cool J look exactly the same after all these years?

5.  Also, is L.L. Cool J still a Republican?  Because I think he used to be.

6.  Why did I decide having three dogs was a good idea?

7.  If my Marco Polo app says someone is talking to me, does that mean they're really talking to me?  Or is someone just making a video and Marco Polo wants to trick me into thinking real people are talking to me?

8.  Why isn't there any Dr Pepper in the Smith's Express down the street from me?  I've been there three days in a row now and no one has restocked the cooler OR the shelves.

9.  When did I decide to start buying gnomes and putting them on my front porch like a crazy old cat lady?  Am I actually a crazy old cat lady?

10.  Why are there so many steamy TV shows set in hospitals?  Seriously, the LAST PLACE on earth I'd want to start full-on kissing a guy would be in a hospital.

And then I hear . . .

I woke up to the news that my editor Anna Cekola at the Salt Lake Tribune has been laid off, along with over thirty other staffers.  I've felt heartsick for everyone involved, as well as worried, frankly, about the future of responsible, carefully curated journalism.  Where is this all going?

(For the record, I do want to add that the remaining staff at the paper are true professionals who will give it their all to keep the Trib viable.)

So.  Anyway.  I've been sitting on my back porch, thinking about how completely crappy the world is and then just now I hear my neighbor Kathy in the next yard over playing with her three year-old grandson.  He laughs.  She laughs.  She laughs some more.  Delighted.

Thank you, Kathy.

Wow! I Just Walked Through My Childhood!

I'm sitting here at the airport in Raleigh, N.C., waiting to fly home after spending the past week helping Son #3 relocate to Greensboro where he'll be working in the school's athletic department.  We met his boss, Jody, who walked us through through the field house there and HOLY COW!  Suddenly I was little Ann Edwards, looking over the railing of the second floor Smith field house on BYU's campus.  It was all so familiar.  The photos!  The trophies!  The office spaces!  The views of a practice field!  The gyms and the weight rooms!

AND THE AROMA!

Oh, yes.  The aroma.  A heady mix of equipment and the scent of recent workouts.

Thanks for the memories, NCG!

Adult Parents + Adult Children + Technology = Tense Moments

I've been spending some time with Son #3 who went into cardiac arrest when he looked at my iPhone.

"Mom," he said, "you have 6470 unread emails."

"I do?"

"Yes.  See?"

"Oh."

"Doesn't that drive you crazy?"

"Not that I've noticed."

Anyway.  Later that day, this son spirited my phone away and started messing around with it.

"What are you doing?"  I asked.

"Simplifying your life."

I felt a distinct sinking feeling in my gut.  Whenever my kids try to "simplify" my life on the technological front, things always go south.  My Tech Life may be a hot mess, but at least I know how to navigate it.

Anyway.  He eventually handed back my phone and SURE ENOUGH it was useless unto me.  So I made him change everything back.  Which means I have 6470 unread emails.

Oh.  Excuse me.  6471 unread emails.

Hair Stuff

I had a surprising conversation with TRQ over lunch the other day.  She looked at me and said, "I like your hair."

Basically, TRQ, who is the Queen of Hair and used to give home perms to the entire neighborhood when I was growing up, has often not been onboard with my personal hair choices.  And she has especially been displeased with my decision to go gray because the women in our family do not go gray.  Going gray means you have given up on life.  Going gray means you might as well put on a housecoat and some slippers and sit in front of a TV with a bunch of cats in your lap for the rest of your life.

But wow.  She looked at me and said, "I like your hair."

Then she took a  dainty bite of her fried calamari as if nothing earth-shattering had just happened.

Because Lilacs!

As some of you know, I struggle during the winter months.  But I'll tell what makes those months totally, totally worth it.

Lilacs.

Frothy, frilly, fragrant lilacs that are gone before you know it, so it is imperative that you STOP YOUR LIFE and stand by a bush and inhale everything about them while they last.

Lilacs need cold weather to grow.  And when I learned this, I vowed to always live where the lilacs bloom.  You know.  In the dooryard.  Or whatever.

Lilacs.

Old Movies

Last night at work, one of the teenagers who helps us set up for events said that When Harry Met Sally is her favorite movie.  Then she sighed happily and said, "I just LOVE old movies."  And I was all, "Wait.  When Harry Met Sally is an old movie?!"  I feel like I just saw it in the theater with Ken Cannon and a big old tub of buttered popcorn for company.

Meanwhile, this young woman went on to talk about Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal the way I used to talk about Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  And suddenly I had that moment (again) where I realized how relative time and age are.

Life.

And We Called Him Mary Alice

I walked past the Lion House yesterday and remembered the birthday party I threw there for myself three years ago.  You know.  The one for little girls where they teach you how to play "Button, Button" and pull taffy while wearing a pioneer bonnet.  I never got that party when I was a kid, so I called and asked if I could have it as an adult.

LION HOUSE HOSTESS:  The one where you pull taffy while wearing a pioneer bonnet?

ME:  Yes.  That's the one.

So although the people at the Lion House thought I was super weird, etc. they said okay and I invited my daughters-in-law and the friends I walk with in the morning and TRQ, who asked if she could bring her friend Mary Alice to the party.  Of course, I said!  The more Mary Alice the merrier!

But Mary Alice decided not to go at the last minute, so TRQ brought up my dad instead.

"This is a girl party," I told him.

So he put on a bonnet and we called him Mary Alice all night long. Also, he pulled taffy.

What a guy!

Daunting Dining and an Anniversary

I am not a food and/or restaurant snob.  I want to establish this fact right upfront.

Is this fact established?

It is?  Good!  Then I'll proceed.

A few weeks ago I was given a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory for a presentation I did, so Ken Cannon and I decided to meet for lunch at the City Creek location on our anniversary last week.  Which we did.  We stole away in the middle of the day to the Cheesecake Factory like a couple of crazy teenagers in love.  Except with really bad knees.  You know.  Like the knees old people who've been married for over 40 years have.

Anyway.  I've eaten at TCF before, but not when I've been borderline depressed like I am right now.  When we arrived I was suddenly overwhelmed by the HUGENESS of it all.  The Cheesecake Factory is like the Caesar Palace of chain restaurants (I may have stolen this comparison from Lisa B, so if I did, thanks for that, Lisa B!).  High ceilings!  Columns!  Crowds of people ready to cheer on their favorite gladiator while eating some Roadside Sliders!  Also, the menu is longer than my graduate thesis on the short stories of Katherine Anne Porter was--I have spent a lifetime underwriting everything, yo--so it takes a lot of determination to plow through your dining options at TCF.

In the end Ken Cannon ordered a hamburger and I ate half of it because I couldn't decide what to get for myself, which is also a function of being borderline depressed (don't worry--I always get better).  I did enjoy the red velvet cheesecake A LOT, however, although red velvet anything is often disappointing.

So there it is.  What we did for our anniversary.  Meanwhile, I think I'll check out restaurants that cater to borderline depressed people for now.  Suggestions appreciated!