Windmill Watching

Some Excellent Insight into Children's Literature from Maurice Sendak... And Stephen Colbert.

2012-02-16T12:46:00.004-07:00

The Colbert Report
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(If you're reading on an RSS feed, you'll have to click to "view original post" to see the video. But it's worth it, I promise!)

The Mormon Lit Blitz Has Begun!

2012-02-15T23:51:00.002-07:00

That's the poster. Looks like you'll have to click on it to see the whole thing. I can't get it to shrink. [Oh, geez. I will not make a "she said" joke... I will not make a "she said" joke...]

My (super-short, super-creepy) essay, "The Gloaming," will be posted February 25. Which is also my brother's birthday, so happy thirties, buddy.

Not sure when the voting will be, but have no fear, I will tell you. Over and over and over and over.

There are two things particularly fascinating about this quote my Mom sent me:

2012-02-13T18:14:00.003-07:00

I was called to act in the office of a Teacher and with my companion had a district assigned us, and Brother Heber C. Kimball and Joseph Smith were in our district. We hesitated to visit such prominent men, as we well knew we were not capable of teaching them, yet we could not find any excuse to pass by their houses, so we ventured. The Presiding Bishop, Newel K. Whitney, gave us a routine of questions to ask everyone in our district. Among the questions was, "do you keep the word of wisdom?" We found that Brother Joseph Smith was the most submissive of any in our district. After he had answered our questions, he called his wife Emma to answer also. I then asked him the meaning and purport of the word of wisdom, as at that time there was a great diversity of opinion concerning it. He answered and said, "I understand the Word of Wisdom to mean that we must get in wisdom all things. If I think a glass of Brandy will do one good or a cup of Coffee or to smoke a cigar I will use these things." Thus in short he gave us the meaning of the Word of Wisdom.

Fascinating thing one: Brother Joseph (the prophet) gives his wife equal time! (Can you imagine the drama at General Conference if Tommy called up Sister Monson to finish his talk?)

Fascinating thing two: A cigar? really? I mean, coffee and brandy I can see... :)

(Argh! I published this without a source citation first time and for an English Professor that is just NOT OKAY! It's from a book called “Remembering Joseph” by Mark L. McConkie. Dunno the page number, Mom didn't send it. Not to throw Mom under the bus. But she doesn't have to care as much as I do, so it's OK.)

Also, I see that y'all want to talk about audience resonance. Which is also fascinating. Because didn't I just spend however many kilobytes saying that the research shows it doesn't even matter?

(But tomorrow I'll try to tackle it anyway. Cuz I'm nice like that.)

It's a POLL!

2012-02-07T22:25:00.002-07:00

Dissertation part three: On Marketing

2012-02-07T22:06:00.013-07:00

When it comes to books and how they sell, writers tend to think there are two main categories that influence the sales. FIRST: there is what the author has control over, the quality of the book itself. SECOND: there is what the author does NOT have control over, i.e., marketing budgets, reviews, media presence, cover art, etc. For practical purposes, let's call this category "Marketing."

So. What do you think? If you want to sell your book to the masses, is it more important to have a quality book? Or is it more important to have a lot of marketing?

I'm going to hold off answering for a minute, because you probably already know and you don't want it confirmed yet because it's depressing.

See, the writing world is full of optimists. (Otherwise, why would we write? Or, more specifically, why would we try to publish?) We all believe that we will be the rare exception to every rule! Yes, marketing would be nice, we tell ourselves. But if we can just get our books out there, i.e. PUBLISHED, then people will catch on! They'll see our brilliance! We'll be the next Stephanie Meyer!**

This belief is perpetuated in books-on-writing, talks, conferences, everywhere. You never know, people say. It could happen. No one wants to be the killer of dreams.

So let me kill your dreams: Books sell when they are well-marketed. Period.

Are there exceptions? Maybe one in 100. (Actual odds coming in a few paragraphs.) That's one percent, people.

Here's my research (with numbers! and graphs! and equations!):

FIRST, though, I want to make a caveat. Statistics like this can be tricky because of one fact: they can show correlation but they can't PROVE causation. They can certainly imply causation, but all they prove is correlation. What does that mean, practically speaking? It means that, yes, marketed books are the ones that sell. But what if ONLY really quality books get that kind of marketing? In that case, it might be quality that's the cause, though marketing is correlated. As to whether or not this is true? Well, just think about the last few super-hits you've read. Are they quality? That question is up to you. I will say, though, that one aspect of my study was to compare what audiences value versus what publishers value (i.e. what they market). There are some pretty big disconnects, though there is a LOT of variability among houses.

So, back to the question of MARKETING. As the abstract outlined yesterday, in my study we gave each of 200 books two scores: a marketing score and a sales score. (Actually, we looked at 210 books, but had to throw some out for various statistical reasons, coming to 197; let's just round and say 200 cuz it's easier to remember, k?) And when I say "we" I mostly mean "I," but, not only did I have wonderful volunteers from this very blog who helped read books, I also obtained the help of a very gracious statistics professor (Dr. Natalie) to make sure my calculations weren't full of crap. So I feel better when I say "we."

The statistics professor is important because I want you to know: you can have some reasonable trust in the way we scored marketing and sales. It wasn't just an English major playing with math, it was an English major playing with math who had a professional statistician to call her on her crazies and steer her toward the solid stuff.

Anyway, the way we scored marketing ended up being a semi-complicated algorithm (utilizing various data sources gleaned from many different places)and we came up with it together, though, yeah, Dr. Natalie helped a LOT. Is the algorithm perfect? Well, you know what would have been perfect? If publishers would have given me their marketing budgets directly. But when I asked them? They laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

So, like I said, Dr. Natalie and I had to come up with our own way. The resulting algorithm provided us with a way to compare marketing among the books and then to rank them. Books with the least amount of marketing in our sample were scored with a "1." Books with the highest amount of marketing were scored "11." Books in between had scores between 1 and 11. This way, even though we couldn't know the exact amount of marketing behind a book, we could know how its marketing ranked in comparison to all the other books in the sample.

(The cool thing? When I showed editors my results, they were freaked out by the accuracy. Let's give a WOOT to statistics!)

Okay, now that you know that, let's consider some disturbing stuff. Like, the very first calculation I did: The Pearson's Correlations which ultimately gave us the ability to perform a Linear Regression. Sounds scary, but all it is is a way to measure the tendency for one variable to increase linearly as the other variable increases, giving us the ability to quantify the actual relationship. In this case, we looked at how much sales increased with increased marketing.

This is the initial bar graph:

Further calculations showed that this was a strong linear progression. It had a simply calculated formula with a relatively small margin of error:

S = 0.63M + 2.58 (S = Sales; M = Marketing)

(I'd tell you the R-squared so you could judge the error margin yourself, but I think that would just make us all blind or migrainey.)

So what does that formula mean? It means that Sales increase in direct proportion to Marketing. Any other stuff? Like book quality? Simply do not seem to factor in.

It gets more disturbing.

In the sample of 200 books, there were about 10 "breakouts." That is, books that sold MUCH better than their marketing predicted they would. OK, you might think, I have a 5% chance of getting a breakout! All I have to do is get published...

Wrong again.

Consider this graph:
(are y'all OK with the graphs? would you rather I chat instead?)

Now, for some reason when I converted the graph into a picture, only one of the stars showed up. Can you do a little imagining for me? Do you see how the star marks a profound "jump" in the data? That's a sales spike. There are 9 other sales spikes, if I counted right (all used to have a star on them, I dunno what happened). Can you see them?

So, let's consider. The graph shows sales scores as marketing increases. The vertical lines in the graph (pink/red ones) represent the delineation between each "level" of marketing. Everything before the first line got a marketing score of one. Before the second? Two. And so on up till eleven.

Notice anything yucky?

First: the biggest category of books BY FAR is that made up of books with a marketing score of ONE. If you are a new author? This is where you will most likely find yourself.

Did ANY books "breakout" in that category?

No.

None.

Zero.

Zilch.

For a marketing score of two? There was ONE breakout. Sounds good until you realize the sheer number of books it took to get to that one breakout: more than 100.

Out of the first 100 books, there was ONE breakout. A success rate of one percent.

What does this mean? It means that not only will the vast majority of books fail to breakout, but that a full half of them never had a chance in hell of breaking out.

But what about the other breakouts? There were ten after all, right? Well, look closely at the chart. Almost all of them are in the top 20% by marketing score.

Meaning?

Books don't break out. Well-marketed books break out. And how often does that happen for those lucky well-marketed books? 20% of the time. A one in five chance.

To sum up:

80% of books don't get the kind of marketing that frequently leads to high sales. In fact, odds are that only about 2 out of every 150 books in this category might break out. Thems not good odds.

On the other hand, for the 20% of books that do get good marketing? One out of every five of those will be "breakouts."

To sum up even more:

In general, books will sell exactly in proportion to how much marketing they have. i.e. Strong linear relationship = Books are ONLY AS GOOD as their marketing. (Monetarily speaking, obviously. "Good" is a far more visceral, far less determinate value.)

And when it comes to the mysterious feat of writing the "breakout" novel? Well, you have to be in the top 20th percentile of marketing before that's even a remote possibility.

I've never met Dear Mr. Maas who wrote, Writing the Breakout Novel, and I truly mean him no offense when I say the stuff I'm going to say in the next paragraph. The only reason I'm picking on him, actually, is because he had the (mis?)fortune of having such a popular book on writing that his book ended up being one of the books we analyzed for "plot" advice. (Among other things, we looked for successful plot structures. Mr. Maas was in the company of people like Joseph Campbell!) And as you'll see if you ever want me to talk about the kinds of plots that sell, the stuff he said about writing was not bad. Some pretty good advice, actually.

But he also said a lot of stuff about marketing. Maybe to give authors the illusion they had some control over sales? I dunno. Anyway, one thing he emphatically emphasized is that it's a "myth" that a high advances mean higher sales. That promotion doesn't sell books, that the real culprit is bad writing(20-25). In fact, he goes as far as to say that "Ads in the New York Times Book Review are placed there mostly to make the author feel good"(23).

He's not the only person to tell writers this. He's one of many. But he's wrong. Indeed, I think he is doing a great disservice to writers. (It almost seems like, at some level, he knows that it's his industry's fault that certain books don't sell, and he wants to eschew the blame outside, to assuage his guilt, maybe? Am I off base do you think? Anyone know Dear Donald Maass?") Telling authors that their lack of sales is "their fault," is not only false, it makes authors feel like garbage when, all along, the real "fault" might not have had anything to do with their writing.

Is there is any lesson here? Any hope? Anything that an author can take away and actually apply to their own publication endeavors?

Yes, actually. I think there is. (Don't want to kill dreams entirely, I guess. What a softie I am.)

1. You need to leverage your publisher for as much marketing as possible. Since you are a mere author, this means...

2. You absolutely, positively, 100% MUST have an agent. Publishers don't want to spend money on you. They want as little output as possible on their part. "Save costs and it's easier to glean a predictable small profit," is their thinking. (Emphasis on the "small.") Unless you are Stephen King, you will not be able to leverage publishers into giving you the promotion and marketing you need. You MUST have an agent. The best damn agent you can get, preferably. (Think shark!)

3. If you get an offer for a book, you might be SO EXCITED just to know that your words will be in PRINT! It won't even seem to matter that the marketing will be a pittance. Here's the thing, though. There's something called "Bookscan." I know I didn't talk about it here, but this is what it means: bookstores keep track of how well your books sell. If you write a second book, they will look at how well your first book sold. And if you were so eager to sell your book at any price, most likely you did NOT get good marketing. Which means it's almost a guarantee that your book did NOT sell very well. So it becomes a cycle. For your second book, the stores only buy as many books as you sold last time. If that was 12? They'll order 12. This will go on and on until finally your publisher will give up. Maybe they'll try to blame it on you. "Your writing just isn't fresh anymore!" they might say. But it had nothing to do with the writing. It was all about the marketing. (Or the lack of it.) THE LESSON: Don't settle! If you can't get a good deal for your first book, there's nothing wrong with making NO deal and writing another book! Don't let your excitement get in the way of making a good business decision. That's what publishing is, after all. A Business.

4. Learn a little about marketing. Find yourself a marketing friend so you can get in their head. (I married a marketing guy, but you don't have to go that far for the sake of your career. I mean, not everyone is as cut-throat ambitious as I am. :) Figure out the types of subjects/genres/themes/etc. that appeal to marketers. i.e. Ask yourself: What would an MBA do with this? (Not a writer. Not a writing professor, even. An MBA. Someone concerned with sales alone. Repeat the mantra: publishing is a BUSINESS.) So package your writing in a frame that is easy to market. (This doesn't mean dumbing it down, or being any less lyrical in your writing. It means asking yourself, "In two words, why would someone buy this?" And then making sure that you frame the book according to the answer. Because that's all marketers can really work with: two words. And not cuz they're dumb, don't blame them. It's a psychology thing about advertising.) If you can get the MBA's in the publishing house excited? You have a much better shot to sell.

Now, to conclude, does all this mean that you don't have to write a GOOD book? That you can forget about quality? I wouldn't say that.

What I would say is this: you can't count on good writing to translate into good sales.

But you still need good writing. For one thing, getting a kickass agent is REALLY hard if you write like crap. For another thing, good writing still might help you get more marketing--especially if you do #4 and combine your good writing with a frame that's easy to market.

Good writing + Kickass Agent + Thinking like a Marketer = your best chance to sell a book.

**(Incidentally, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight would have scored about a 10 on our marketing scale. Meaning, the book's breakout was mathematically predictable. It had a 1 in 5 chance. Nothing magical about it.)

**(Also note: Stephanie had a kickass agent. Get yurself one, too!)

More to come. In fact, I'll post a vote to see what we talk about next!

Today was RUFF

2012-02-07T20:17:00.001-07:00

por ejemplo:

[Actual Conversation]

interviewer: You have no experience with software.

me: I wouldn't say that. I designed and coded proprietary software for one of the biggest engineering firms in California. I may be an English major, but I can program in three different computer languages.

interviewer: What's a computer language?

[intense concentration needed in order to not bang my head against desk. cuz, dude. I'd like a full time job. interviews like this? not helping.]

I'm going to look over my marketing stuff. See if I can't pull a post off in spite of my ruffed up brain. If I can't? Come back in a day or two. Hugs.

This is the "SHORT" description of what I did in my dissertation. (Reminder: diss was, like, 600 pages long. I'm competing with the fantasty people here!)

2012-02-06T19:26:00.004-07:00

Before you start, let me apologize for the academic death prose. I don't always use it, but sometimes they make you. I don't like it any more than y'all. Here's the thing to remember: I'm studying the crucial question: Why do books sell? If we can answer that, it's worth a little death prose wading, don't you think?
____________________________________
Abstract
In order to determine the extent of book marketing on book sales and the principles of resonance that may be linked to sales beyond that predicted by marketing, a demonstrably random sample of 192 books from the population of Young Adult (YA) books available from 2003-2008 in the national U.S. market were scored with estimations of marketing influence and total sales.

Three data analysis methods were used: first, a consideration of simple linear regression and variable correlation, termed the ‘linear’ method; second and third, the ‘difference’ and ‘quadrant’ methods, in which books with sales beyond what was predicted by their marketing scores were compared against books with sales below what was predicted by their marketing scores. In the ‘difference’ and ‘quadrant’ methods (the differentiation between the two methods will be discussed in detail later), statistically significant differences between the ‘beyond’ and ‘below’ sets of books were established as possible points of resonance or dissonance—i.e., key aspects of audience appeal or distaste. These aspects were then compared to the initial results from the ‘linear’ method and probable patterns of resonance were established. These patterns had important implications pertaining to issues of race, gender, and the belief-systems particular to teenagers. The nine main patterns established were: patterns of meaning/sophistication, patterns of emotion, patterns of estrangement, self-importance, gender, race, socioeconomic status, divine potential and moral identity.

Three auxiliary studies were conducted first to identify the extent of cover-likeability as it pertained to sales, next to establish that young adults (and not their parents or other adults) accounted for the majority of resonance points observed, and finally to estimate the overall effectiveness of self-promotion among authors. Results indicated that cover likeability may increase sales by up to 14.5%, that young adults can reasonably be assumed to be the primary readers of texts, and that author self-promotion is not significantly connected to increased sales.

As a final exercise, the list of possible principles of resonance was used to evaluate the publishing industry’s effectiveness at assigning marketing/promotion. Numbers indicate that publisher book marketing is disconnected with principles connected to sales somewhere between 3% and 55% of the time and a more accurate estimate may not be possible without another study.

Outcome Variables: Marketing and Sales Scores
In order to be able to factor out the effect of marketing/promotion on a book’s sales, each book was given a marketing score and a sales score. The marketing score was calculated based upon the following criteria: 1) the actual price paid to the author for initial rights; 2) how many additional books the publisher committed to publish in the initial deal; 3) whether or not there was a bidding war among publishers that either ended in an auction or was circumvented through a pre-empt; 4) the relative fame and/or reputation of the author; 5) whether or not School Library Journal or Booklist (two of the most influential reviewers of YA fiction) gave a starred review; 6) Whether or not one of 50 major review sources gave the book a full-length positive review; and 7) whether or not there was potential for ‘carryover,’ e.g. books about vampires published shortly after the success of Twilight.

In order to make an estimate of sales, the following three variables were considered: 1) The book’s Amazon ranking compared to how many standard deviations from the mean for the book’s year of publication ; 2) The book’s BN.com rankings ; 3) The number of weeks the book spent on each of thirteen bestseller lists tracked by the PM database.

When each book had a marketing and a sales score, the Pearson’s Relationship Coefficient of the marketing-sales relationship was calculated to be 0.6, indicating a moderately strong linear relationship between marketing and sales. Linear regression provides the formula:

S = 0.63M +2.58

By comparing residuals, assembling quadrants of sales vs. marketing, and considering differences between sales and marketing scores, the data were assembled into three basic categories: books that sold better than their marketing predicted, books that sold worse than their marketing predicted, and books that sold as their marketing predicted.

Independent Variables
Each of the 192 books was analyzed based on 150+ questions pertaining to plot, literary merit, morality, race, gender, and other categories of interest to YA authors. The aim was to identify book traits that may result in greater audience resonance/dissonance—specifically looking for important patterns of appeal and distaste.

Auxiliary Study One: Cover Likeability
149 students from a California high school (chosen because its demographics were analogous to the U.S. population at large) were shown pictures of each of the book covers from the sample. They were asked to quickly score each picture on a scale of 1-5, with lower scores corresponding to distaste. The average cover-likeability scores of books that performed better than their marketing predicted were compared to books that performed worse than their marketing predicted. Books that sold better than their marketing predicted had a cover-likeability score 11% (+/- 5%) higher than books that sold worse than their marketing predicted. This difference seems to be largely driven by the opinions of girls. When split into gender groups, the girls’ cover-likeability scores for books that sold better than predicted were 14.5% (+/- 6.5%) higher than books that sold worse than predicted. The boys’ responses showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups of books. The data indicates that a likeable book cover seems to help sales, but only if it appeals to girls. Considering that the vast majority of the YA fiction audience is female, this is expected.

Auxiliary Study Two: Library Data
In order to confirm that young adults were the ones primarily responsible for the purchase of YA books and, thus, that any data about trait resonance corresponded with young adult (as opposed to adult/parental) taste, 37 libraries from around the country were sampled. From each library the following was recorded: the number of each of the 192 books that the library stocked and the number of copies of those books checked out. The reasoning was that librarians (adults) were responsible for the stocking of books, and that books checked out were more likely to be checked out by young adults, themselves, than by their parents or other adults. The results showed a close correlation between all relevant groups. The number of books stocked mirrored the number of books checked out and both of these mirrored the number of books sold, indicating that divergent audiences of YA lit (teens, parents, librarians) either do not appear to have fundamentally different tastes or that all groups defer to the taste of the young adult reader.
____________________________________
Overwhelmed much?

Tomorrow: I will talk like a NORMAL PERSON again. What should we talk about? I think marketing. Why? Because it is more important than anyone will ever tell you. For all practical purposes, it's the ONLY thing between your book and a bestselling book, accounting for as much as 80% of a book's success or failure.

To put it another way: you know how Donald Maas, in his book, Writing the Breakout Novel, says that there is a disconnect between marketing and sales? That the real reason books don't sell is their quality?

He is wrong.

I have equations to prove it. This one is my favorite:

Dissertation, part one! My Narrative Dedication to Dr. Tyler J. Jarvis: My Old Calculus Professor

2012-02-02T21:22:00.004-07:00

[Exactly as appeared at the beginning of the dissertation.]

[But don't worry, I promise I'm not going to post the whole dissertation here. Just some interesting bits.]

[Also, watch for the super fun British spelling! Got my PhD in Wales, remember?]

Early on in my PhD programme, all of the Creative Writing students were gathered into an ancient-seeming room. We sat at a very long table in chairs with very high backs. The air was musty--both too hot and too cold all at once. Faculty members sat calmly at one end of the table, while Graeme--my soon-to-be-adviser--paced up and down the room in his normal frantic way.

‘Tell me...’ He spoke in an Australian accent, but being utterly unfamiliar with accents and utterly unfamiliar with Wales, I thought that maybe he was English. ‘What makes for a successful book?’

After a few moments of silence in which it became abundantly clear that Graeme wanted us to... answer... people began offering ideas.

‘One that leaves you feeling fulfilled,’ said a blonde woman from London. (She was, incidentally, married to a rock star.)

‘One that’s raucous and fun,’ said a man from Scotland who looked equally as raucous and fun until he sighed and slumped in an obviously put-on despair as he said, ‘Though I suppose you want me to say something about how it’s lit’ary.’

There were a few more answers, and I could tell that there was one, possibly obvious, answer that no one seemed to be saying. I raised my hand, feeling tentative as I did because I half knew what would happen when I said it. Graeme called on me.

‘Well...’ My speech was halted as I began. ‘I write young adult fiction... and YA is completely defined by rhetorical context... And if we look at it from a purely rhetorical stance... where you have the interactive relationship between the author/audience/text... and you judge the value of the text based upon the success of the author/audience interaction...’

I closed my eyes.

‘Then a successful book would be a book that... sells.’

One beat of silence.

And then least seven people erupted in protest.

One said something under her breath about ‘American capitalists.’

Graeme got a wicked smile.

And I wondered: if authors want their books to sell (and most of us do), why do we all protest so loudly against the idea that the success or failure of a book has to do with the book, itself?

Simple answer, really: no one wants to be told they’re rubbish.

Mix into that the fact that the sales of a book are ever so much more complicated than the quality of a book alone. We’ve all seen trash that hits the top of the charts. We’ve all read undiscovered gems.

What accounts for the difference?

Internalizing the protests of the room, my lingering questions about whether or not sales could be used as a measure of audience-resonance, and the wickedness of Graeme’s smile, I decided that it might not be a bad thing to figure out.

The question: how?!

All of the theorists that I’d read up to that point seemed to approach the question deductively. There are certain rules of fiction: plot, characterization, action, pacing, etc. If you can quantify the rules, you can evaluate books based upon their adherence or departure from said rules. The problem with deductive thinking, of course, is that your ability to be right or wrong utterly depends upon how correct your axioms and assumptions (i.e. rules) were in the first place. It’s the problem noted by Stephen King when he proclaims that ‘most books about writing are filled with bullshit’ (King xvii). We might think we know why something is, but when we have to measure it against something as solidly quantitative as the marketplace, if we limit our theoretical frameworks to those that are largely deductive, we can’t always make accurate predictions.

(Un?)Fortunately, however, before I began writing young adult (YA) fiction, I spent three years as an undergraduate engineering major--complete with hours upon hours spent in smelly laboratories wearing a stained lab coat with banana-shaped buttons. (The buttons seemed cool at the time.) My latent science instincts said that there might be a chance to make accurate predictions by utilizing something other than deduction. In other words, I’d have to look at books. I’d need a theoretical framework that allowed an inductive approach. Perhaps even one with a statistically-gathered sample, a blind process, a research procedure--i.e., one completely exhausting just to think about.

We creative writers aren’t known for our affinity to the inductively procedural, but the idea that an inductive approach might be the one way to say something new, immediately applicable, and relatively conclusive on the subject of sales versus resonance, was something that I couldn’t let go of. If I really wanted to know what makes a book sell, I was going to have to work within a theoretical framework that allowed a methodised observation of the book market. And that meant I was going to have to embrace the very thing I once rejected in favour of art: the scientific method.

[Go ahead and pause while we all shudder.]

The brilliance of the scientific method is the methodisation, itself. There is no making of pure guesses, no reliance upon emotion. And, ultimately, with the appropriate methodisation, you can study even emotion without becoming... well... emotional.

“Aw, crap.” I thought to myself. “I might actually have to use that calculus I learned after all.”

So that is why, Tyler, this dissertation is dedicated to you.

People! Did I forget to tell you about what I learned from my finished dissertation?

2012-02-02T21:05:00.001-07:00

That isn't right, you know?

Because:

1. I never could have done it without all of your help and you deserve to celebrate the end! (even if the "end" was two years ago.)

2. Some of the conclusions were super intriguing! If you're a writer, you might actually want to know them!

3. It feels incomplete, somehow, right? I mean, you guys got the saga while it was happening, but you never heard the end!

So, why, oh why, did I not post this before?

It's obvious if you know me in person.

But it might not be obvious to people who only know me through the blog, and for that, I'm sorry. Shame is my only explanation. Misplaced shame, probably. But isn't most shame like that?

See, I sort of disappeared two years ago, maybe you noticed? My posts were shorter, when they appeared at all. Maybe you thought I'd stopped blogging, or stopped caring. But it wasn't that.

What happened was that I stopped being.

Here's how it went: I defended my dissertation exactly* two days before I had my ill-fated cancer surgery. I didn't tell y'all much about the whole cancer thing because, I thought, blah. Who wants to hear me whine?

And it wasn't going to be a big deal, I was sure of it. So why inflict it on you? It would bore you to death. I mean, skin grafts? No biggie. A little time off and then we can talk again. It'd make more sense to talk about the dissertation off drugs, anyway. And it can't take THAT long to recover, right? Six weeks? Maybe seven?

heh.

the universe loves to mess with me.

It's been almost two years since then. And you know when I first felt like myself again? The first time I was able to pick up my computer and really write? To feel my own thoughts connecting with words? The first time I could write like I used to?

It was three weeks ago.

I'm reminded of that "plans" thing they say. You know? You make plans and God laughs? I didn't plan on having to deal with a freaky-rare-cancery-lesion-thingy. And once I did have to deal, I didn't plan on having a bad surgery. I mean, I've run marathons, had two babies, I hiked 200 miles over 7 mountains while on IVF hormones! I gave birth to a baby 15 minutes after going into labor! And I'd had surgery before, no problem. I am tuff.

Turns out: none of us are tuff.

See,"tuff"is a delusion we cling to--one that completely ignores the fact that there are things in the universe (almost everything in the universe) we can't control. We're "tuff" because we don't want to acknowledge: all of us can be broken. And the things that break us? Never things our "tuffness" can prevent. No matter how "tuff" we think we are.

I didn't plan on a lot of things that happened these last two years, and I certainly couldn't control them. The grafts didn't take, there were gaping, oozing, open wounds for half a year, infections in places there should never be infections, ripping and tearing in places there should never be ripping or tearing, drugs causing language aphasia, legs that didn't work properly, a once awesome brain turned to mush. I didn't plan on any of that.

And the pain.

Well, you can't plan for something you didn't know existed. And pain like that? It's not even pain anymore. It's something ten exponents bigger than pain, something they haven't even named. I don't even know how to describe it. But here's a little of what I know: One part? Dissociation. (Who is the girl in that bed? Why is she screaming?) Another part? Your heart stops. Literally. The pain is so bad that your heart plunges into arrhythmia, unable to handle the bombardment of stress hormones erupting from the brain. They say pain can't kill you? They're wrong. Pain nearly killed me. Twice.

But that's not even the worst of it. Because it doesn't stop with death. It keeps going. Months and months and months and years it keeps going. And somewhere, in that mess of dissociation and hovering between life and death, and the years-long bombardment of hormones and pain signals, and death signals all rushing through your blood... Somewhere in all of that you realize:

you are gone.

The person you were? Not coming back. Everything you thought you were capable of? You're not. Everything you hoped for? Laughable. That's the worst part, really. When you lose the ability to hope.

We need hope.

We need to look at our babies and hope that we *will* survive to make sure they're okay. We need to look at the future and hope that we'll be able to smile again, if not walk normally. We need to look at our husband and hope that, someday, we'll be able to hold him again. Not as an invalid desperately clinging: as a partner showing love. And most of all, we need to be able to pray. To pray and really hope that someone hears us.

When you lose hope? You lose everything.

This post has officially digressed FAR beyond my original intentions, so I'll get on with it.

My point is, I meant to share some stuff, but life got in the way.

But my brain is better now, I'm better now. I didn't know I was going to come back, but I did. I'm not all the way back to the way I was, but I'm me again. I'm more surprised than anyone.

And that dissertation y'all helped me with? It was kickass. So maybe we can pick up where we left off. Maybe we can go back to the place we were. Back in time. And you know where we were? We were at the end of a kickass dissertation.

So in the next few days, I'll share some of it with you.

Assuming, of course, that life keeps it's distance for a bit.

*(okay, approximately two days; I'm too lazy to check, but it was superquick. didn't even have time to mention to y'all that I'd passed my defense. I think. I'm too lazy to check that, too.)

Vertigo Explained: The Earth Spins Fast!

2012-01-22T15:32:00.001-07:00

This is the sun setting into the Caribbean ocean. My parents filmed it from their front porch in Aruba.

If you see it in your RSS feed

2012-01-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

Ignore that last post. It was supposed to go on the course blog I keep for my writing students.

And just in case that blog sounds super interesting (hahaha), it's not. Unless you're a student. It's full of "don't come to class today"s, "the bookstore is out of our book"s, various student analysis papers, and very little about, like, writing. We do the writing parts in class.

But if you are just interested in seeing my students in embarrassing activities/costumes/situations? Particularly when they're trying to glean extensions/extra credit/various other favors? Well, then Windmill Watching is all the blog you'll need.

Evening Conversation: In Which Lily Makes Us Feel Stupid AND Manages to Induce an Existential Crisis At the Same Time

2012-01-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

[we're driving]

Lily: "One."

me: "Huh?"

Lily: "What's it all about?"

me: "One?"

Lily: "Yeah."

me: "I don't get it."

Steve: "Maybe she means 'won' like winning or losing?"

Lily: "That's not what I mean."

me: "So what do you mean? Are we talking existential? Numerical? Numerological? Philosophical?"

Lily: [Looks at me like I'm very stupid indeed.] "I'm talking about the number." [pauses and speaks very slowly.] "One... what that about?"

Steve and I: [fumbling a lot] "Um... it's about present versus absent... totality versus partiality... it exists... but it's alone..."

Lily: [Another condescending stare.] "Yeah, but what really bugs me is the name. I mean... ONE. Who got to name it? It shouldn't even HAVE a name. It's a NUMBER."

Steve and I: [give up and look out the window.]

Some Students From Last Semester Are Still Doing Extension Stuff!

2012-01-17T19:56:00.001-07:00

Here are some seriously impressive un-shaved legs! (I forget how long I made her go without shaving... Hopefully she'll be done before summer!)

Morning Brush with Fame

2012-01-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

So, I was walking in this mall, heading up the escalator, when I saw Tim Gunn heading down the escalator.

Cool, I thought. It's Tim Gunn.

I don't get super excited around celebrities, but I like Tim Gunn, so I said, "Hey! Tim Gunn!" And I waved as our escalator paths crossed.

He looked at me and said, "Oh, hey, Kerry, how are you?"

And I went, "OMG Tim Gunn knows my name!" I was super excited considering I don't get that excited around celebrities. I mean, I knew we'd hung out before,* but I didn't think he'd remember me. I then decided that I should get home as soon as possible so I could write about it on my blog.

Just as I sat down to blog, though, filled with the thrill of being known... (By Tim Gunn!)

Steve started shaking me, plucking my night-time ear plug out of my ear. "Wake up," he says. "It's morning."

And I sat up and looked around and went D#*&IT!

It felt so real.

Groggy as I was, I thought... it did feel real. So it was only logical that this must be the dream. Steve wasn't really shaking me, that was just my neurons firing random images around. Which is why I turned over and left the conscious world for the "real" one.

A few minutes later, Michelle Obama was there, telling me how excited Barrack was that I was in the audience for his speech, but why didn't I ask any questions? He could have used a few questions from someone he actually liked.

I shrugged and went to drive home with my parents who were navigating a borrowed house down the road toward Napa. The couch was super comfortable.

Sometimes, the "real" world is pretty nice.

*I have never actually hung out with Tim Gunn. In the not-real "conscious" world at least.

Afternoon Conversation: Touché Dude

2012-01-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

Sam (7yo): "I've changed my mind about marriage. I think I might actually do it one day."

me: "Oh? What changed your mind?"

Sam: [squints] "Well, it may or may not have something to do with, yanno," [voice gets really quiet] "an 'M' crush."

me: "An 'M' crush? That sounds very interesting. What is this 'M' crush?"

Sam: "Don't talk so loud. And I'm sorry, but I can't tell you any more about it."

me: [ignoring the "don't talk so loud" edict] "Why? You should tell me everything! I'm your Mommy!"

Sam: [shakes his head] "No. I had a dream about this. I told you everything and you know what you did? You went and you wrote all about it on the internet and told the WHOLE WORLD."

I got 42 miles per gallon!

2012-01-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

I thought mileage was supposed to get worse in the winter? I've never gotten more than 32mpg before.

OMG the fact that this made me so excited really makes me a dork, doesn't it.

things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-12-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

make up rap/songs about the class

play the "Zelda" theme song on a violin that hadn't been tuned since last December. (he tuned it right before he played, but warned us that it doesn't hold its tune very well after such a long hiatus. whatevs, kid.)

eat a twinkie in one bite

dress like Jimmer but with two ties.

crochet scarfs for roommates

stuff their mouths (and ear!) with as many gummy worms as possible.

go a few days without a shower

chug a disgusting mix of milk, soda, juice and every other liquid in the Canon Center. (also, there was a gummy worm at the bottom of the bottle.)

eat as many Oreos in a minute as possible

I guess the question is, what won't students do for an extension? (especially superuptight honors students.)

Question: What would you have done?

things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-12-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

about three of them went various number of months without shaving their legs. here's an illustration.

things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-12-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

dress awkwardly. but not quite so awkwardly that people can be sure it's a costume.

things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-12-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

Bucket list: see a monk do a belly dance to Shakira.

Check.

things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-12-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

share with us one of their most embarrassing "slip ups."

Student Poem of the Day

2011-12-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Procrastination:

a seven haiku series

(I'll write the rest soon.)

(by Zach Yancey: one of my procrastinating Honors students.)

Am I just punch drunk from grading? Or does this make you laugh out loud?

2011-12-13T00:49:00.000-07:00

extension: totally granted.

Intra-Class-Romance: An Awkward Love Story

2011-12-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

photo love story provided by two (really dating!) students who needed extensions and know how amusing SWILUA finds intra-class romances.

Only at BYU

2011-12-09T14:36:00.003-07:00

do you read a paper with sentences like:

"Every student here on campus deserves the right to eat without the distractions of short skirts and unkempt hair."

This place is hilarious.

Back to grading.

In Which I am Very Disappointed in my Offspring

2011-12-09T11:11:00.002-07:00

We found this note (scribbled in kid's Crest toothpaste and reading "Your dead Dad") on our bathroom mirror:

Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

I mean, how can I call myself an English professor when my very own children don't know the difference between "your" and "you're?"

Dear Miss Provo: I accidentally got your child

2011-11-21T13:09:00.003-07:00

Lily has been begging me to enter her into a pageant. I am an English professor and didn't want to do it. I think there is some sort of law about that kind of thing.

But law or no law, I could not escape the simple fact: Lily's will is stronger than mine.

Lily's will is stronger than titanium. Stronger than reinforced concrete or even any exaggerated idea of the word "stubborn." Postmodernism, Feminism, cultural hierarchies of value: Lily's will surpasses them all. In a way, it's one of the things I admire about her. So much self possession in such a little body.

The pageant was this Saturday.

She won first place. And a bunch of other stuff. Three trophies, two sashes, a cover-shot, a bag of toys, and a queen's crown.

It was amazing, actually. She walked across the stage as if she'd been doing it for years. She waved and blew kisses and held her arms in a perfect oval the way they do on TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras." She looked right at the judges and smiled, winking like a 25 year old Miss America contestant.

Lily is five and has never even been on stage before. Except maybe in a previous life. Which would explain a lot, actually.

The thing about giving in and the cognitive dissonance caused by my visceral sense of pride--I was so proud of her! and so amazed that such a thing came from me. But how?--well, the thing about it all is that you give in once and you think you're done with it.

And then your baby wins first place and is supposed to go on to finals.

Cognitive dissonance: a permanent condition tied to being Lily's mother? Probably.

Here she is on the program cover:
(Thanks to Barb for the award winning picture!)

Afternoon conversation: In which Sam considers his options

2011-11-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

Sam: "omigosh, Mom, I fell down and scraped my knees!"

me: "You scraped your knee?"

Sam: [showing me] "I scraped BOTH knees!"

me: "Do you want me to kiss it or something?"

Sam: "No."

me: "What do you want to do?"

Sam: "Well, I've heard of this thing called 'walking it off.' I think I'd like to try that."

things students will do for paper extensions

2011-11-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Remember what I said about the blinking?

2011-11-06T19:49:00.000-07:00

(Steve says: "that was one psychic tree!")

Don't Blink

2011-11-02T21:20:00.000-06:00

This morning when I left for work, this tree had all its leaves.

Four hours later:

Funny thing I saw on the Internets Today

2011-10-16T21:37:00.000-06:00

Afternoon conversation: In which I am put in my place

2011-09-14T10:26:00.000-06:00

me: [at grocery store] "I think we should get some grapes."

Sam: "I love grapes."

me: "I know."

Sam: "How do you know?"

me: "Mommies know everything."

Sam: "That's not true."

me: "Of course it is."

Sam: "Well, maybe you know everything about your kids, but you don't know *everything.*"

me: "Oh?"

Sam: "I mean, look at you. You only teach college. It's not like you teach grad school or anything."

Surreal Morning Conversation

2011-07-30T22:33:00.000-06:00

Lily: "Omigosh I really love this lint brush! It's so fun to clean the house!"

Sam: "I know, right?! I keep folding these towels and it's SO FUN. I just want to do more and more of it."

Lily: "I got to fold two baskets of towels."

Sam: "Lucky. But I am luckier because I scrubbed the bathtub."

Lily: "No fair!"

Sam: "Tomorrow, I am going to start doing ten chores EVERY DAY."

Lily: "I'm going to do TWELVE!"

Miss Provo Wrote an Article about herself.

2011-07-19T20:05:00.001-06:00

And also about herself.

Lily: On Cleaning the Bathroom

2011-07-08T14:40:00.000-06:00

Lily: "When you clean the toilet, you've got to really scrub, you know? You've got to get in there. Get it so clean that it looks like a GIRL's bathroom."

Last night this not-so-little fellow ran across Steve's chest

2011-07-08T14:30:00.000-06:00

There was only a little screaming.

Copious Google searching leads us to believe that he's a "Wolf Spider." He certainly is wolfish.

Turns out he was living in the window air conditioning unit we just brought in from the garage. Note to self: next time, do not ignore the spider webs you saw on the filter. Where there are webs, there might be wolves.

It figures.

2011-06-30T13:13:00.000-06:00

Sam and Lily made "found items" sculptures for their art class. (Sculptures out of trash.)

Sam made a gun. Lily made something to wear.

You know you've been watching too many 80's movies when...

2011-06-30T13:11:00.000-06:00

[we're swimming]

Lily: "Let's play Marco Polo!"

Sam: "Naw. I don't want to play that. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War."

me: "How on earth do you play *that* in a pool?"

Sam: "Well, you find the Russians and you SPLASH them."

me: "Okay, you find the Russians and splash them. But how do you *win*?

Sam: "Mommy, nobody wins a nuclear war."

Pool Entry: $10; Mommy's time: priceless

2011-06-28T02:21:00.000-06:00

[We're swimming. Lily gets herself in just a little too deep and starts to struggle, panicking as she sucks in a little water before I can snatch her up.]

"Oh, Lily!" I say, balancing her on my hip. "Was that scary? Are you OK?"

Lily: [coughs up some air and water as she nods her head yes.]

me: "Are you sure? That was quite a dunk."

Lily: [looks at me incredulously] "Of *course* I'm OK. I am spending time with my Mommy."

Afternoon conversation: Sam on Self Esteem

2011-06-22T10:09:00.001-06:00

Sam: [Artfully wrapping a towel around himself after swimming.]

Lily: "Sam. What are you doing. You totally look like a girl."

Sam: "No, Lily." [Pause so he can look at himself in the mirror.] "What I look like is a GOD."

Freud: 1, Margaret Mead: 0

2011-06-12T18:41:00.000-06:00

Hey look! My chair!

2011-06-09T12:08:00.000-06:00

I had some slipcovers made. You can see one of them here.

I heart slipcovers. And also, I heart the girl who makes them for me.

Lily: On the Royal Wedding

2011-05-25T12:14:00.000-06:00

me: [pausing the reaaaaaallly old DVR tape of the Royal Wedding I finally decided to watch] "Lily! Do you want to come watch a prince marry a princess?"

Lily: "You mean that bald guy? No thanks."

People! End of the World Party at my house on May 21st! (if we survive...)

2011-05-16T22:27:00.002-06:00

I saw a big RV drive by today with lots of pronouncements about the end of the world and how it's in a few days.

Awesome.

this was the best picture I could get (I was at a stoplight):

That about sums up the experience of my class I think.

2011-04-28T00:50:00.000-06:00

One of my students just sent me this little poem. I'm a fan.

No words can describe
How much I have learned to plan
From so few deadlines

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2011-04-22T12:20:00.000-06:00

just watch this one.

isn't the library scene the BEST?

In which we discover that Lily really does care about the emotional life... of her food

2011-04-22T12:17:00.001-06:00

Lily: are you having dinner without me?

Dad: I thought you already had a peanut butter sandwich.

Kristin: yeah it's all over her face.

Dad: where's the rest of it? On what part of the floor?

Lily: no!

Dad: you finished it? And you're still hungry? You're never hungry!

Lily: yeah, but I just have the one sandwich in my belly, so I need to have another one. otherwise it'll be so lonely in there!

Dad: [pause] Okay then. I'll make one.

This is a video based on part of my friend Rick Walton's book. It sort of rocks.

2011-04-22T12:02:00.000-06:00

Anyone who reads this a writer?

2011-03-28T00:25:00.001-06:00

I need someone out there to bug me so I'll work on my manuscript. My self-discipline has been sucked away in equal proportion to the volume of beta blockers I suck in.

Here's what I want:

I'm making a writing goal. If you want to make a goal too, leave a comment and let us all know what it is. And then use the comment section to report yourself every time you *miss* your goal.

See, I've done the positive reinforcement thing where you celebrate every day that you do your goal. And that way is nice and makes you happy and not filled with self-loathing (the natural state of writers). But that way doesn't work for me at the moment. Hence the new method:

Shame.

So. My goal: Every day (except Sunday) I'm going to write at least two words in my WIP. (This goal gets more done than you'd think. Also, it's about all I can handle with my heart acting like a teenager and throwing fits unpredictably.) Every time I fail to write two words, I will tell you in the comment thread here. And when my WIP is finished, I'll announce it and THEN we can all brag about how awesome we did with our goals. k?

so leave your goals below. and you know what? you don't even have to be a writer. just make a goal and then leave a comment back here every day you fail. the challenge will last from now until my manuscript is finished. (I only have about 60 pages to go; before the skin-graft turned heart-problem, I could do that in a week.)

Best of luck people.

That's right, Buddy.

2011-02-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sam's friend: "I have so many girlfriends. I have, like, twelve girlfriends."

Sam: "But, dude. That is just... wrong."

Sam's friend: "You're right. Maybe it was thirteen girlfriends..."

Sam: "No, no. You're not supposed to have twelve OR thirteen girlfriends. It's just wrong. It's mean. And bad. You're only supposed to have ON... [furtive glance at me as he realizes I'm listening] I mean, ZERO. ZERO girlfriends. None at all. We are WAY too young to even be thinking about having girlfriends."

In which we discover that I am imaginary

2011-02-23T13:23:00.001-07:00

Steve: "Your Mommy is a doctor, Lily. Did you know that?"

Lily: "Huh? But Mommy, [turns to me] you don't see any patients."

me: "Well, no. I see students."

Lily: "So you're not a real doctor."

me: "No, I am. I'm just a doctor of philosophy, not of medicine."

Lily: "Like I said. You're not a real doctor."

Steve: "Aw. She sounds like a surgeon alREAdy!"

For an adorable iPad storybook

2011-02-15T14:03:00.002-07:00

click here.

OMG, people. This is PROGRESS.

2011-02-08T14:52:00.002-07:00

I just wrote a full scene.

I haven't done that since before my surgery.

The surgery that made me stupid. And also not able to do anything.

It's been almost seven months since that *&^%$ surgery. They say the pain from the damaged nerves might go away in one to two years. Maybe never.

Have you tried to be creative when you're in pain?

And not just normal pain. Not even "OMG I broke my back!" pain.

Pain like fingers on a chalkboard times a million. Pain so intense that you didn't know there was pain like that. Pain that tears away your anchor. Rips that sacral foundation out from under you and takes away who you were. Pain that over-stresses your heart and literally almost kills you. My mom knows that kind of pain. So do I now.

But today I wrote a scene. Just a half a page. But a whole scene.

It makes me think that maybe I'll come back out of this. Maybe I won't be gone anymore. Maybe there's a teenie tiny light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't want to get my hopes up or anything.

But, people.

I wrote a scene.

And also she says that I'll miss her little hands when she's a teenager and does crazy things like ride her bike in the snow.

2011-02-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

me: "What's this on the wall?" [point to Lily's latest artwork.]

Lily: [Shrugs.] "It's signed 'Sam.'"

me: "I know. But it's in your handwriting."

Lily: [Stares at me in a loaded silence.]

me: "Do you have anything to say?"

Lily: "My handwriting is on the fridge, too." [Pause.] "I could take you to see it." [Pause.] "It's there in the note I wrote you so you could remember what I was like when I was little. Where I put a picture of my hands." [Pause and plaintive look.] "My little, little, hands."

Sam and I, talking over the weather

2011-02-01T17:15:00.001-07:00

[wind blows as Sam and I run (well, as well as I can run with my cane) to the car]

me: "OMG, OMG it is so cold!"

Sam: "It's, like, freezing cold."

me: "Like water-turning to ice cold."

Sam: "Like Arctic cold."

me: "Like Penguin cold."

Sam: "Mommy, it is so cold it's almost like we live in Canada."

me: "I know, right?"

Sam: "What do you think it's all [not even a dramatic pause!] aboot?"

Here's my creepy little doll being fashionable. Such a cutie.

2011-01-08T14:19:00.001-07:00

Sometimes Having Psychic Children is Super Creepy.

2011-01-07T12:16:00.003-07:00

Last night my kids were feeling pretty morbid.

We were driving home from Auntie Barb's house and they kept obsessing about death and car accidents. Then Lily told me:

"You know what, Mommy?"

"What?" I said.

"I think you're going to get into a car accident tomorrow."

"Honey. That is highly unlikely. And not something you should worry about."

Lily's eyes filled with tears. "But Mommy. You've been in too many car accidents." (True enough.) "When you get in the car accident tomorrow, I think you'll die!"

"Lily. Really. I have no plans on dying. And I'm not getting in a car accident tomorrow."

Then Sam chimed in. "Yeah, Lily. Don't worry. When she gets in the car accident tomorrow, she won't die. She'll just mess up her pretty new car."

Lily started wailing. "But it's a brand new car! It's so pretty!"

Having an un-pretty car is apparently worse than death to Lily. But, yanno. She cares about fashion and stuff.

Well.

I guess you know how this story ends because my children already told you.

I got rear-ended on my way to school this morning. I didn't die (or even get hurt at all I think; I'll wait till tomorrow to tell you for sure).

But my pretty new car is not so pretty any more.

So I guess we should all mourn or something.

When it comes to expressing his anger, Sam really thinks inside the box.

2011-01-03T22:14:00.000-07:00

A new semester is about to start! Which means I've got to post my backlog

2011-01-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

of things students will do for paper extensions!

Decorate the classroom.

Paint their faces with chocolate.

Wear indecipherable costumes.

Give a hand massage lecture that was not awkward at all.

Have rainbow hair and bag outfit and also dress like Pregnant Harry Potter.

Yes, those are robot pants.

That's me! Made out of Starburst candy! I even have my surgery chair and multimedia remote!

See how lifelike?

Her nails say "SWILUA"

This student gave herself a "tantoo" of SWILUA's name. She used that tanning lotion. She says she thinks it'll come off in about three days, but I am worried for her.

And a classic. Kissing the wall. Aw! So Romantic.

Alright Winter Semester. Bring it on.

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

make me keychains out of their own hair.

I don't even know what to say.

When I was little, we just played with legos.

2010-12-17T12:43:00.002-07:00

(the last video gets cut off right as Sam asks, "Are you going to put this on youtube, Mom?" And then a minute later, "Omigosh, Lily. You really hurt me.")

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

they write kind notes in SWILUA's name.

and they do kind deeds in her name, too.

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-14T21:11:00.001-07:00

paint me super stunning works of art such as this one entitled, "Abstract Christmas."

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Hug 11 trees.

this one is my favorite:

a strange thing has been happening to me ever since my second night in the hospital right after my skin graft

2010-12-13T00:53:00.001-07:00

The first time it happened I didn't even know what it was. It was like... a vibration. In my throat? Where the air was coming from. It was soft, but it woke me up. Immediately, I freaked out and buzzed the nurse. "I think there's something wrong with my airway. What if I stop breathing--I've done that in the hospital before--what if..." When you're in the hospital and code blues are ringing all the time, you can get a little hysterical sometimes.

The nurse calmed me down by putting an oxygen monitor on my finger.

It happened again in the hospital, but I brushed it aside. If I was in danger of death, I was hooked up to the machines that would tell someone. This is a very comforting thing when you're in the hospital and it's all dark and you're all drugged and hysterical.

But then I went home. And... well... it kept happening. Sometimes the vibration would be really strong and sometimes it would even make a sound. Sometimes it would wake me up. Sometimes it wouldn't.

After about two weeks home I started to realize what it probably was. (In my defense, it took me that long because the sensation feels NOTHING like the sensation you get when you pretend to do it. And also, I was really out of it for a really long time.) I didn't tell anyone, though. It was something I had never, ever done in my entire life. I didn't want people to think I might keep doing it. Because I might not! It was probably just a temporary thing caused by the sedative effects of all the post-surgery drugs. Right?! It had to be that. Because I wasn't someone who did something like this.

But people. Oh, people. I took a nap again today. And three times--count them!--three times I was semi-awakened by "it."

So I can't pretend anymore. I have to confess. To come out publicly with an announcement:

I snore now.

I don't do it every time I sleep. But sometimes I do. I don't know if I'll ever stop. Or if when I finally finish healing from the super-annoying-skin-graft-from-hell (did you know it messed up my heart?! they just put me on beta blockers so I don't keel from a heart attack. I'm friggin 31!) I will magically stop.

But for now. In this place. At this point in my life.

I snore.

And it sux.

And I'm sorry.

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

(yes, that's a tree on his head)(and Santa boxers)

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-08T19:01:00.001-07:00

Lily, in a normal evening outfit

2010-12-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

(Kick took the picture with her phone. She said it was stuck in a "Retro Picture" form and she didn't know how to make it normal. I kinda like it, though.)

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-12-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

I think that the videos they make me are my favorite

2010-11-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

Things people will do to switch around the genres of their Great Works papers:

(I think the kid in the blond wig with the cane is supposed to be me. My cane is way hawter than that one, though.)

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-11-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Eat a raw potato. In front of us.

And also, did you know that Hagrid's long-lost son is living at our house?

2010-11-18T14:01:00.002-07:00

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-11-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

play connect-the-dots with their freckles in class.

ps: this game would be really, really hard if *I* were doing it. :)

Newsflash: BYU Students are a Little Sheltered

2010-11-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

[it's classtime. one of my students is reading his paper on why we should buy his maraca-made-of-a-sprite-can on ebay.]

boy's paper: "if you buy this maraca, you won't even need heroin to be a rockstar! you'll just need to shake your can a bit."

girl in class: "wait. I don't understand. why do you need girls to be rockstars?"

[if this doesn't make sense to you yet, consider: heroin vs. heroine. yeah.]

Morning Discovery: The Power of Johnny Test (and also, a little burgeoning chauvinism)

2010-11-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

me: [stumble into the living room after waking up bleary eyed. try to sit down on the couch. step in something. something wet. look down. see this:]

me: "OMG, did I just step in pee?"

Sam: "Yup."

me: "OMG, WHY DID I JUST STEP IN PEE?"

Sam: [shrugs] "Lily."

me: "OMG, why is Lily peeing on the carpet."

Sam: "Well, we were watching Johnny Test and Lily didn't want to leave to go to the bathroom. So she got out her little toilet. But there was a problem."

me: "And the pee spilled all over the carpet?!"

Sam: "Yup."

me: "OMG, gross, gross, gross, gross!" [get up and go get the stuff to clean it up. start cleaning.]

Sam: [watching me scrub the carpet] "You know what, Mom? This. Right now. You are doing the hardest job a woman could ever do."

me: "What about a man?"

Sam: "Naw. A man could take it."

What Sam said to his Auntie Barb about being old:

2010-11-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

"I have this one cousin who's REALLY old. You know how old she is? She's so old that she was born in the NINETEENS!"

Happy birthday to both Barb and "old" cousin Katelyn. We like you even though you were both born in the nineteens.

For the pee cream enthusiasts:

2010-11-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'm out of pee cream. But here's a place that sells it for less than Amazon does. And also, they confirmed that product number 7567 *is* the same as 7566. So you can buy a big tube if you want. Hugs.

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-11-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

pretend to be superman's girlfriend for a day.

complete with stolen cape:

Penicillin: Even More of a Miracle-Drug Than You Thought

2010-11-04T15:28:00.001-06:00

Lily has been sick. Not in the good 'sic!' kind of way, even. In the strep-throat kind of way. She would wake up screaming seventeen times a night and when we took her to the doctor, she fell asleep on the floor and didn't even wake up when I transferred her to the doctor's table to be examined. I'm sure we would have heard all about how sick she was (she does not believe in suffering in silence) but her throat hurt so bad that, after a few final screams, she stopped making any sound at all.

It got really quiet here.

Fastforward to the Penicillin. We gave it to her right when we got home from the doctor, she took it and went to bed. In the morning, she woke up. I gave her a dose. She watched mindless TV. She was still not talking.

But then about an hour after the dose, a very strange thing happened.

Lily got up, out of bed. She walked straight into the living room.

And she started cleaning.

I asked her, "What are you doing?"

She didn't answer. Just pointed to her throat.

She picked up the toys. She put laundry in the laundry basket. She gathered all of the trash together and threw it away. She organized the Halloween candy and crawled around looking for stray wrappers and candy corn. She took dishes to the sink. Did a little dusting.

I stood there. So. Confused.

And then she walked back toward her room and I thought she was done, but she wasn't. A few seconds later, she came back--dragging the big, fat, taller-than-she-is vacuum. She unwound the cord. She plugged it in. She turned it on.

And vacuumed the whole room.

I totally want to give her penicillin every day now.

Am I going crazy?

2010-11-02T09:39:00.003-06:00

or has blogger done something very weird with all my images?

I'm coming off a lot of meds, so I could be wrong.

ps: I'm starting to feel better. Knock on wood and stuff.

pps: Okay, just to weird me out as SOON as I posted this, they were FIXED. But I swear they were weird and messed up. I haven't even taken my morning medicine yet.

I dreamed that I accidentally slept through Halloween

2010-10-21T22:55:00.000-06:00

which sounds about right. this week at least.

ps: Sam lost his SECOND tooth today. I was sleeping and he woke me up and handed it to me. It was covered with sandwich.

Tooth Fairy! Take Note!

2010-10-13T22:37:00.002-06:00

I know the recession has you understaffed. And the fact that Utah has a birth rate on par with third world countries doesn't help, either.

But we have another house to add to your list.

Certain Offspring here have begun shedding their incisors.

Look for this box:

Inside it, you will find a tooth that looks like this:

If you wouldn't mind exchanging this piece of human history for whatever coinage is the current going rate, there'll be a very exuberant little six year old living here.

give my regards to the Easter Bunny.

hugs and kisses.

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-10-13T15:44:00.000-06:00

create super awesome sculptures of SWILUA out of Starbust candy!

You know that book Frog and Toad?

2010-10-08T10:18:00.001-06:00

The sweet one with the two amphibian BFF's?

This picture sort of reminds me of it.

(that's Sam and his cousin Charlie. in our misty cool backyard.)

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-10-07T14:22:00.001-06:00

dress like a gangsta tigger:

bake and bring us all shortbread:

and bring me something called "poop soap on a rope." which left me speechless. truly.

I broke the "no online shopping on Ambien" rule and officially ordered the pee cream.

2010-10-04T01:16:00.000-06:00

exciting, right?!

if you want a bottle, the cost came out to be $5.67/bottle plus however much it costs to ship it to you.

kisses.

It's PEE CREAM TIME!

2010-10-04T00:26:00.000-06:00

So many of y'all were interested in the pee cream. And I feel really bad that the only link was to a 12 pack. They do have some other single products, but none had the exact product number. Which is important, because I did a test with the "active" ingredient--which is petroleum; aka Vaseline--and I put Vaseline on my heels for a week to see if it did the same thing. And it didn't. Not even close. So that means that it's the *inactive* ingredients that are making the magic--maybe in combo with the petroleum? But in any event you don't want to risk getting the wrong "inactive" ingredients by ordering something with a different product number. Because they may think it's the same thing, and it may work great for, yanno, incontinence, since it's the "active" ingredient that takes care of that. But we're prescribing off label here, people.

To sum up: I'll take the hit and order the 12 pack myself. If you're interested in one of the bottles, I'll give it to you at cost. Just email me. kerryspencer [at] byu [dot] edu.

Okay, people. Whose God WAS that? Seriously!

2010-10-03T00:49:00.000-06:00

Y'all remember how ON FRIDAY (it was Saturday when I meant to start this post, due to the fact that it's 12:30AMish on Sunday right now, that WOULD have been only YESTERDAY if I'd done my blogging on time. but I digress) on just this FRIDAY I posted a call for people to pray to whatever kind of God they wanted (I was desperate; desperation leads to open-mindedness) for my open wounds to friggin start to close and not be open anymore already.

Here's the thing.

Overnight, they shrunk more than HALF. In HALF, people! OVERNIGHT. (in HALF!)

And these are wounds that had not shrunk at ALL for more than THREE WEEKS. And this happened OVERNIGHT. Within ONE DAY of asking y'all to pray.

So I want to know: Whose God was it?

So far our only confessors are my SIL, Barb (most of us know her religion) and my blog pal Majato whose body is his temple and whose religion is his beer.

Fess up. Conversion is on the table.

And also, thanks for praying. To all your Gods.

See, I'm just too lazy to be a billionaire.

2010-10-01T16:57:00.006-06:00

They gave me this one ointment for my graft--they said that it might help any irritation. And it wasn't so bad. Not great. But not bad.

But it turns out that there was something better that it did.

I don't know what made me try it. Genius, maybe. But I put it on my *heels.* And something amazing happened. My heels went from looking like this:

to looking like this:

Seriously, people. My heels look good.

OMG, I thought. I could sell this stuff and be a BILLIONAIRE. Because nothing has ever, not even once, made my heels look this good. And I've tried *everything.* Because who wants to be the lady with the bad looking heels? I used to judge those ladies in my head all the time. And then I was one. And there was nothing I could do about it. Until the magic cream came along.

One problem:

The cream is actually *incontinence* cream. i.e., it's meant to help protect your skin from your *pee.*

That's right. IT'S PEE CREAM.

Which means that to be a billionaire, I'd have to either convince people that it's not gross to buy and use buckets full of pee cream, or I'd have to, like, do a massive re-branding thing. Or something. I actually have no idea. Which is probably why I am most definitely NOT a billionaire.

So, lazy girl that I am, I'll just give you the Amazon link. And since I get like 1% of whatever anyone spends when they buy something (anything!) after clicking a link from my blog, you could help me make $0.50. And, also, you'll have really amazing looking heels. Which is almost as good as being a billionaire, right?

ps: Just so you know, in two years I have made $2.35 from Amazon links! Oh, yeah, baby.

pps: sorry that the link is to a 12-pack. That was the only link that had the exact product number that I have on my bottle. but the cream is totally worth it and you'll use the 12-pack, I promise.

[post edit ppps: after I bought the cream they changed the price to $140! it probably is *that* magical, but WTF? good thing I ordered early.][but bad thing that I was going to buy another box for christmas presents. $50ish I can do. Not $140, though.]

I *think* this may be the same product, just a bigger size:

Steve says I should blog because I haven't blogged since, like, Monday.

2010-10-01T00:37:00.003-06:00

There's a simple reason: I'm stoopid now. The first time I wrote blogged up in the title, for example, I spelled it bloggled. And it looked right.

The nice thing about being stoopid is that it means I'm not in pain.

The bad thing is, I'm not cranky enough to post rants. Which is kind of a bummer because I've got a modesty rant brewing.

I guess we'll have to wait until I'm less stoopid.

If you desire, send up a prayer to your own preferred divine being (depending, of course, on your personal faith traditions). Tell them that Dr. S is tired of having big fat open wounds. She is tired of looking at her skin graft and wondering when it will stop buzzing. (Yes, it buzzes. A nerve thing, I think. Or they implanted an alien device on me. Also a possibility.) And so Dr. S humbly requests that the skin graft close up, the buzzing stop, the stoopidness be tapered down, and life be calm and happy and full of blog posts and stuff.

Here's a funny thing: I think I might try to do yoga next week. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Things students will do for paper extensions:

2010-09-27T17:50:00.002-06:00

make me supercute jewelry out of trash.

In my continuing effort to keep posting while simultaneously avoiding anything with, like, sentences, (I'm talented that way) here are a bunch of supercute pictures of Lily

2010-09-27T00:23:00.000-06:00

From Sam's Door

2010-09-26T01:11:00.001-06:00

(thanks for the picture, Barb.)

This picture (of Sam's first day of first grade) prettymuch sums up Sam and Lily's relationship:

2010-09-24T14:49:00.002-06:00

Lily: Adoration
Sam: (Reluctant) Toleration

ps: Sam is literally twice as big as Lily. (80 pounds versus 40 pounds.) But they're only two years apart. Crazy, right?

We told her that in order to have hair like this in real life, she'd have to stop giving herself so many do-it-yourself-cuts.

2010-09-23T16:48:00.001-06:00

Lily and her new wig:

It's not unusual for Lily to lock herself in the bathroom.

2010-09-23T00:05:00.000-06:00

But when she'd been there for forty five minutes, we were concerned. So Steve knocked.

"Go away!" she said.

Steve knocked again. "Are you OK?" he asked.

No response.

So Steve found the special screwdriver to unlock the door. When he opened it, he found this:

poor kid. we think it was something she ate.

The thing about being stupid

2010-09-21T13:06:00.000-06:00

is that it's really nice.

I've been telling my students this, when I apologize for how stupid I've been lately, and they sort of laugh uncomfortably. That's OK. Students laugh uncomfortably around me all of the time.

But it is really nice to be stupid.

See, I've been on and off pain killers, waiting for my open wounds to close up. Sometimes my wounds are on the edge of getting infected and they hurt a lot so I have to take a lot of pain meds. But sometimes they don't hurt all that bad and I don't have to take a lot of pain meds. I get a lot more done when I'm pain-med free. Because the drugs really do make me stoopid.

But here's what's so nice about being stupid: you never get bored. You stare at the wall (sometimes literally) for an hour or more and you don't really care. You don't think about how you're trapped in bed or of what you should be doing. There's no room in your head for thoughts or anxiety. You're not really happy, but you don't really care because caring requires *thought* and having thoughts requires you not to be stupid. All of the voices in your head--the lines of books you just read that keep spinning around nonstop, the ideas for the story you're working on, the line from your last academic article that needs revision, the mental reminders that your house is a mess and that your children have not done their homework in weeks--all of those voices are gone.

It's quiet in your head.

Just quiet.

I think I read somewhere that there is, like, a linear connection between intelligence and general unhappiness. Having been smart and having been stupid, I think there might be some truth to this.

So the next time you run into someone that's really stupid, instead of getting angry at how stupid they are, or appalled, or determined never to be.like.them, the next time that happens just remember:

they're probably happier than you'll ever be.

Shameless Promotion of the Literary Ambitions of my Progeny

2010-09-17T22:26:00.001-06:00

Sam has written a new Fastboy Story. Fastboy is a character he created to battle all the evils in the alphabet. Today's story is about Mr. T. (We've been on Mr. T for awhile, but he's a particularly evil letter. I mean, you thought *Mr. M* was bad...) Check it out.

What my surgeon said after our planning meeting today:

2010-09-14T22:43:00.002-06:00

"Think of it this way. Your forties are going to rock."