Monday, September 29, 2008

New Posts, and a Contest!

Hey all,

I've done some new book reviews on "Tristi's Takes." Come check them out!

"On a Whim" -- Lisa McKendrick

"Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls" -- Lynne Jonell (You can win an advance readers copy by entering my contest -- see review for details)

Always the Elf -- Kimberly Jensen

Kandide and the Secret of the Mists -- Diana S. Zimmerman

Happy Reading!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Making Some Changes

Not a single week goes by that I don't hear this:

"Tristi, how do you do it? You're a wife, a mother, an author, a blogger, you homeschool . . . I'm so amazed at all you're able to accomplish."

It is true that I do a lot of things. In fact, I'm constantly busy dashing from one thing to the next. I go to bed late, trying to get done those last little things while the kids are in bed. The next day, I do it all over again. I thought I was being productive.

Until I found this quote.

"Once the telestial sins are left behind and henceforth avoided, the focus falls ever more on the sins of omission. These omissions signify a lack of qualifying fully for the celestial kingdom. Only greater consecration can correct these omissions, which have consequences just as real as do the sins of commission. Many of us thus have sufficient faith to avoid the major sins of commission, but not enough faith to sacrifice our distracting obsessions or to focus on our omissions." -Neal A. Maxwell


The lens that has been obsuring my vision flicked and I suddenly saw myself in focus. I'm not being productive; I'm being obsessed with distractions.

You see, I don't have just one or two blogs -- I have several, and the other night, I literally could not stop myself from creating another one. The compulsion was there, I tried to talk myself out of it, and ended up doing it anyway.

All these little things I bop around doing are, in the long run, keeping me from doing the things that truly matter the most. I need to spend more of my time focusing on those omissions Elder Maxwell speaks of, and less time being 'busy.'

Consequently, I'm deleting some of my blogs and putting others on hiatus. As of right now, my blogs are this one, "Tristi's Challenges," and "Tristi's Takes." The rest are going on hiatus. I'll be making other changes in my life as well, and it's going to be hard for me. Once I've established a routine, it's difficult for me to carry on in another direction without feeling all edgy and out of sync. But that's what we're going to do. I'll have to get back with you later and let you know how it goes. I'll probably be as twitchy as a lab rat in drug withdrawal for a while.

Friday, September 26, 2008

A Tail of Two Rats

My daughter had a difficult time keeping her room clean while sharing with her brother, so when we rearranged rooms and gave her the dream of her life -- a room of her own -- we asked her to keep it clean. She did so, for two straight months, and I caved in and got her a pet rat, something she's wanted forever.

This is William Charles. We got him last Saturday, along with a purple cage, pink bedding (he's a male rat, but my daughter is very female.) She fell in love with him from the first moment at the pet store.She spent hours this week working on training him. Her ultimate goal was to teach him to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

However, this morning, William passed from this earth. We'd had him less than a week, and my daughter was devastated, thinking she'd done something wrong.

I called a different pet store than the one from whence he came, and learned that most likely, he had pneumonia, and most likely, he had it before he ever left the store. I discussed symptoms with the store employee, and learned that the cute little chirping noise William had been making was actually a rattling in his chest from the disease. Gulp -- I just thought he was trying to communicate. Turns out, rats don't talk.

This employee then told me he had a rat that had just recovered from an illness and had been fully treated with antibiotics. He was in good health now and ready to go back out on the floor, but the staff had fallen in love with him and didn't want to see him get sold to a snake owner. (I don't even want to think about that.) I asked him to hold the rat, and we went down to check him out. My daughter deemed him appropriate, we spent a half hour asking questions, and then we brought William Charles the Second a.k.a. "Billy" home with us. In appearance, he looks quite a bit like William did, but where William was caramel, Billy is gray, almost blue. In fact, he's called blue.

My daughter, meanwhile, was very resistant to the idea of just throwing William's body away. I tried to explain to her that we don't own any land, being in a trailer, and so we couldn't bury him. But she just couldn't handle the thought of the rat going into the Dumpster. Am I a horrible person to say I didn't have a problem with it at all? He was wrapped in a washcloth, laid to rest in a Pop Tart box -- I figured that was good. Apparently not.

So I called my long-suffering father and asked if we could bury a rat in his yard. To his everlasting credit, he only chuckled for a minute before telling us to come on over.

First, he let my daughter choose any spot she wanted, and she chose a place on the north side of the yard, in a flower bed.

Then he took a pick ax to the dirt and made a hole.He then ran into a rock, and patiently went at it with a crow bar.Then he had my daughter place the box in the hole, he set a large rock over it, and filled it in snugly with dirt. For a crowning touch, he put a tomato cage over it, and my daughter put a homemade grave marker into place, reading "R.I.P."
The thing that touched me the most was that my father did everything he could to make this a special time for my daughter. He didn't just make a hole, he dug a grave. He didn't just throw the box in there, he asked her to do it. He didn't just sling the dirt back on top, he carefully packed it. He honored my daughter's grief and didn't make light of it. I felt ashamed for even suggesting we just throw the box away.

When I was ten, I had a pet rabbit that died. I was inconsolable for days. And do you know what -- I remember my father digging a grave for that pet, too.

Dads are just good that way. Thanks, Dad.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

A New Season of Dancing with the Stars

You know how I am ... I like to blog about Dancing with the Stars. I haven't formed a lot of opinions yet, and so I hadn't yet begun to blog on it, but then I found this and had to post it:

I couldn't agree more.

And while I'm here, I'll post some preliminary thoughts.

Cloris is only there for comic relief, and America will keep voting for her until we come down to, say, the top eight. Then they'll get rid of her and get down to a real competition.

My prediction to win: Brooke Burke. We'll see how that plays out, but she's already so far ahead of all the other competitors, it's ridiculous.

The chef -- whose name escapes me -- is the most improved from dance one to dance two.

And Lance Bass's partner sorta bugs me.

And there you have it . . . more later as the competition continues.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Playing Catch-Up

Time to fill you in on the happy endings (or not so happy endings) to some of the stories I've started here recently.

First of all, this is the new couch. The new, non-poisonous couch, that replaced the poisonous couch.



Second, the picture I submitted for TotallyLooksLike.com didn't get enough votes to make it to the final page, but it did have over 200 thumbs-ups and only twenty thumbs-downs, so it's all good. Here you are once again, to marvel at my astute-ness:



Third, after trying everything we could from bribes to trying to teach him how to do it himself, we returned my son's corrective contact lenses. The only other thing I could do was sit on him, pry his eyes open, and force them into his eyes, and I just couldn't do that. We're taking him in to the eye doctor again in six months to chart his progress and try to come up with an estimate on how long we have until the lenses won't work any more, and at that time, we'll try again. My son says he'll be willing to do it when he's a little bit older (I sure hope he's not telling me a whopper.) If worse comes to worse, I'll just drive out to the eye doctor's three times a week and have him insert them. I am going to do what I have to in order to save my son's sight, but if I can find a way to do it without putting him (and me) through a nightmare, that's what we'll do. As it was, I didn't sleep for nearly a week from the stress of trying to make it all work.

Okay, I think you're pretty much caught up now. Back to your regularly scheduled blog reading . . .

Friday, September 19, 2008

Freedom of Speech

One of the blessings of living in this great country of ours is the freedom we have to say whatever we want without government stepping in to limit our expression. Many other countries are still fighting for this freedom and envy what we have.

Unfortunately, as we go about from day to day exercising this freedom of speech, we sometimes forget that having the freedom to say whatever we want does not extend to being rude about it. I enjoy using this blog as a medium to share my thoughts and feelings, and I'm entitled to do so because of the Constitution. However, the Constitution does not defend my right to call people names or blast them for their own beliefs -- that's because I don't have that right.

Freedom of speech does not negate the responsibility we each have as members of the human family to treat each other with respect. I might not agree with my Uncle Herman's politics, and I might tell him so, but that disagreement doesn't give me the right to attack him or his stand. I can tell him how I feel and we can enter into a lively debate about our differing positions, but personal attacks just aren't part of the deal.

Perhaps you know where I'm heading with this, which is to the topic of flaming comments on blogs. I find it interesting that we're all ready to cheer on the cause of freedom of speech until someone disagrees with us. I can't tell you how many times I've visited someone's blog, read an interesting post in which they put forth their thoughts or ideas on a topic, to find a string of commenters saying things like, "You're infringing on our rights by saying this." And when the owner of the blog expresses their belief that they have the right to share their opinions, the commenter replies, "But what about freedom of speech?"

Apparently, it's only freedom of speech if we agree with certain people.

As for myself, I'm a Mormon. I'm a woman. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I homeschool. I'm a Republican. I'm pro-life. I'm in favor of the war on terror. I support the Word of Wisdom, modesty, and driving mini-vans full of children. Yet whenever I speak up in defense of these things, I invariably get comments -- "You're a sheep. You're just following everyone else. You're not capable of independent thought."

On the other hand, when I hear someone talk about their rights to abortion, they are praised for being forward-thinking individuals.

Is it not possible that I decided for myself, as an individual, that I wanted to raise a mini-van full of children and vote Republican? I certainly did -- no one forced me in to that. It wasn't as if there was a flock of sheep running past and I looked out the window and said, "Look! Sheep! Must. Run. With. Them." No, the decisions I've made, I've made with my eyes wide open, my free will intact. And I speak about them. Often.

We're given choices in our lives. We choose, every minute of every day, how to live our lives. Your choices might not be the same as mine. You might choose to say different things than I say. But I hope that one of the choices we can both agree to make is to disagree politely, without attacking each other's intelligence or belitting. We should have more dignity than that.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Hockey Moms of the World . . . Unite!

Matt Damon recently said Governor Palin is simply a hockey mom who plans on using what she learned through that role to be president of the United States. Candace's blog waxed eloquent on what a dumb, uneducated thing that was to say, and you can go check out her thoughts. What I want to address is this . . .

Since when is it a bad thing to be a hockey mom? And since when does being a hockey mom mean that you can't be the president of the United States?

Now, I don't happen to be a hockey mom, or any other sport of mom, for that matter. For a few brief months I was a karate mom, but when my children started using each other for practice instead of controlling their newfound skills, we called an end to that one. What I am is a mom. A full-fledged, T-shirt-wearing, toilet-scrubbing, laundry-washing, diaper-changing mom. I grocery shop. I pay the bills. I wipe snotty noses. In fact, I even scrapbook.

I'm also articulate, well-read, intelligent, and well-respected. And so are the other moms I know.

Being a mother doesn't mean that you can't be smart, savvy, and in the know. Being a mother means that you share what you know with your children, that you stand as an example to them of what it means to be well-rounded and educated. It means that you, by example, show your children how to balance your work, your religion, your household duties, and your hobbies. It means that you show them the meaning of integrity, industry, hard work, dedication, devotion, selflessness.

I fully support the Proclamation on the Family and I believe that women were divinely appointed to nurture their children. I also believe that this in no way diminishes the intelligence of a woman or the potential she has for education and progress.

I don't have political aspirations. I'm happy doing what I do. But I will stand up and raise my voice against individuals who, like Matt Damon, believe that just because a woman is a mother, she can't accomplish some serious good in this world. Some of the most powerful, influential people we've ever had on this planet were mothers. We would not be where we are as an entire civilization if it were not for strong, upstanding mothers.

And why does the media tend to take celebrities' opinions on politics so seriously, anyway? Okay, they've made a bunch of movies. That doesn't make them any more intelligent than you or me. It just makes them famous, not more authoritative.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

September 11th

This blog supports the war on terror.

Free Couches Aren't Free


My husband and I subscribe to the theory, "Why buy something brand new if you don't have to?" Consequently, when it was time to replace our couch about a year and a half ago, we went down to the DI (Deseret Industries, local thrift store) and picked up a new-to-us couch. It was in pretty decent shape and we paid $50 for it.

Well, we have four children, three of whom are frisky boys. After a year and a half, it was time to bid adieu to the couch and get another one. I'd been thinking about it for weeks, and while driving through my neighborhood the other day, I noticed that a neighbor had a couch on their lawn, with the magic word "FREE" posted on it.

I sent my husband down to check it out, he proclaimed it better than ours, and we hauled ours to the giant Dumpster just across from us. Then he brought the new one up. It was a lot more firm and a lot less hole-ridden and life was good.

Until it wasn't so good any more.

We brought it in last Monday. I got a low-level headache that night, which isn't unusual for me, so I didn't think anything of it. But over Tuesday and Wednesday, I noticed that I just didn't feel very comfortable in the living room. Something was wrong.

Finally, Sunday night (yes, I'm a quick study) I realized that I was having an allergic reaction to the couch. I had my husband drag it out of the house, and immediately I started to feel better. My lungs had been closing off, the headache was pretty bad by this point, and I just felt . . . odd, but as soon as the couch was out of the house, those symptoms began to abate.

So I'm feeling a lot better now, but I still need a couch.

We'll be heading to the DI this weekend.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Myth of the Perfect Book


I have decided there's no such thing as writing the perfect book.

We might write books that are funny and uplifting, dramatic and thought-provoking, or spiritual and enlightening. We might write books that take us to the edges of our strength and force us to push a little harder, to transcend everything we thought we were capable of, to create a new limit to break later on. We might cry as we outline. We might tremble as we write. We can sit back at the end and heave a great sigh and feel that we truly have done what we set out to do . . . and yet, the book is still not perfect.

There will always be typos. There will always be places where we could have shown when we told. There will always be times when we confuse a character's name or forget to hide the key under the mat, thereby making the reader wonder how the hero got in. There will always be something to criticize, regardless of how good the book is.

But that doesn't mean we stop writing.

It means we continue to push ourselves. We continue to stretch ourselves, finding our wings, exploring, expanding, striving. We never, ever give up. But we do it with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, is going to find something wrong with our book.

And that's okay.

It means we're human.

And it means we'll take what we learned from the experience and be grateful for it. We'll grow, we'll hone our skills, and we'll progress. A writer who refuses to learn, who refuses to stretch, will never truly reach the heights he otherwise could. It's the bumps we encounter along the way that knock off our rough spots.

I've had a lot of bumps. But I'm grateful for them.

I can fly higher now than I ever could before.
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