I'm Done! I'm Done!

I'm done I'm done I'm done!

I just send in my final edit to Parables. Woo hoo! There will still be some ticky tacky editing to do, of course, but the big job is done now.

Hooray hooray hooray.

Now, to celebrate, I will share with you the writing talents of my progeny. These are the entries they wrote this week for the Reflections Contest at their elementary school (literature category). The theme is "I Can Make a Difference By":

Jonas (the ruminator)--For first graders, they can dictate to a parent who types it up.

I Can Make a Difference By
Learning How to Eat Healthy

A long time ago, there was a boy named Jack that eated a lot of junk food in his life. He started eating junk food when he was four years old. He got really sick. He loved to eat gummy bears, and suckers and candy bars and chocolate, and he especially loved brownies, cookies, and ice cream.

But, when he turned thirteen, he was driving in a car and he saw the fire department take this really really sick kid in an ambulance. This kid eated a lot of candy, just like Jack. The guy that got sick, his parents talked to Jack and said that he was eating too much junk food. And Jack thought, “Just like me!”

So Jack started to eat good food. He eated broccoli, carrots, meat, and a lot more good food. Now he was just like a plain kid. He felt really good, so he kept doing it for the rest of his life. He was a really good person.

**Any of you who know Jonas understand how hilarious this story is. This is the child who will stuff a single pea inside a roll so he doesn't have to feel the texture of it on his tongue, and if he eats it that way, we're all glad. Do you think this has been affecting him psychologically at all?? :-)**

Elise (the poet)--

Our Earth

I can make a difference by
helping everyone worldwide.
Keeping our world nice and clean,
and never being rude and mean.

Everyone should help out
And when we’re done we’ll scream and shout,
“Keep our world a tidy place!”
And we’ll have a smile on our face.

So when you think about this rhyme
don’t commit any crime
against the Earth or its land
and all the Earth will be hand in hand.

**She wrote it all by herself, except for one instance where she was stuck on the line "So when you think about this poem" and couldn't find a good rhyme. So I suggested changing "poem" to "rhyme". Hopefully that's not against reflections contest rules. If so, it's here on the blog and I'll be busted. Good poem, though, don't you think?**

Ethan (the fiction writer). This piece is a little longer but it's worth it:

I Can Make a Difference by Helping Animals


Kevin needed some time alone. The day had been stressful. He forgot his homework and had to face the seemingly always agitated Mr. Benson. He got an F and two D’s in Math and History. Sometimes being a 13 year old can be difficult. That’s why Kevin had his haven, the forest behind his woody Minnesota home. Nobody else lived in that area except his best friend, Chris, and his family. And Kevin preferred it that way. That’s what made his forest hideout so peaceful.

Our main character forged his way to the familiar secluded area by the creek. As he lay there, half conscious of the woods around him, that is where it all changed. Kevin heard a rustling noise in the bushes somewhere. Trying not to think of wolves or bears he made his way toward the shrubs to his right. Kevin cautiously parted the bushes and found not a deadly carnivore but a small rabbit.

The small creature was brown and looked young. It was laying on its side and kicking its leg somewhat sadly, rustling the bush. And to Kevin’s surprise, there was a small pool of blood under it. Kevin slowly turned the injured animal over to discover a deep gash on the poor rabbit’s left leg!

“Oh, what happened to you little rabbit?” Kevin asked the small animal in his arms, not expecting an answer but soon discovering one. To Kevin’s left, large doglike prints trailed away from the bush.

“A wolf!” muttered Kevin under his breath. Being very careful not to hurt the wounded rabbit cradled in his hands, Kevin raced towards home. His parents weren’t there at the moment, which made this all the easier. Kevin snatched a shoebox from the closet and covered the bottom of the inside. He then set the rabbit on its right side and filled two bowls with food. One had water and the other chopped carrots and cabbage.

“Now to name you,” Kevin told the rabbit. “I know! I’ll call you Lucky!”

And from then on, Kevin cared for Lucky. He fed him and cleaned his cage. The day after he found Lucky he took him to the vet to have the recovering rabbit’s leg cleaned and healed. As Lucky became more and more active, Kevin allowed him to explore more and more of his house. Lucky especially enjoyed Kevin’s room. After 6 months, Lucky’s leg had recovered completely and it was time to let him go.
So Kevin sadly carried his rabbit friend back to the spot by the creek. Kevin slowly walked towards the bush where he had met Lucky and set him down.

“Goodbye Lucky,” said Kevin miserably. “Try not to run into any more wolves ok?” Deciding not to talk in fear of accidentally crying, Kevin turned and ran home.

The next day, Kevin walked back to his forest area with his mind on Lucky. He lay down and sighed. Just then, he felt a soft, warm weight on his stomach. Kevin sat up. There was a rabbit sitting happily on his stomach with a scar on its left leg.

“LUCKY!” cried Kevin in delight.

From that day on, for the next two years, Kevin visited Lucky every day. After Lucky had passed away, Kevin schooled for 3 years and went to college. When Kevin turned 28, he started the Lucky Animal Shelter for injured or abandoned animals. After 2 years, the LAS had over 4,000 different animals all inhabiting 42 different shelters in the U.S! Ranging from Armadillos to Yaks, this company was truly exotic. And what about Lucky? Well, he had 7 offspring with a rabbit named Lucy and was buried outside of the first ever built LAS building.

Moral: Helping another creature, whether human or animal, can pay off.


THE END

**I know I'm prejudiced, but Ethan has a more inherent understanding of how to write fiction than almost any high schooler I ever taught. He's got the dialogue down, the use of "significant detail," how to move the story forward using action instead of summary. He wrote this completely all on his own in about an hour--even typed it. I didn't see it until we sent it to the printer. And what kind of eleven year old uses words like "haven"?**

Check out my new website

I've been thinking about putting up an author website before the book comes out, primarily for advertising purposes (in case anybody googles me) and to allow for book clubs to contact me (I'm hoping to use book clubs as a way to spread word of mouth) or any other opportunities that might arise. I made it myself using Yahoo. It's not very fancy . . . but it looks pretty good to me. And, of course, there's not much on it yet because there's not much to PUT on it yet. But it's a beginning. What do you think?? Check it out at angelahallstrom.com.

Quickies!

So, I just finished the chat for my class and have a ton of papers to grade before tomorrow and have to get my final edits in to Parables by the end of the week and have been staying up at night waaaaaay too late writing and thinking about how I'm going to get people to buy my book once it comes out and what the cover should look like and what the font should look like and how I'm going to ever answer the question "What is your book about?" and tomorrow I have an Enrichment committee meeting to plan the Christmas party and Presidency visits and ahhhh . . . so I don't have a lot of time. But I do want to post (quickly!) about our fun last weekend, just so I don't leave you all hanging while I am in extremis.

1. Went to Darlene's condo on Friday night to work on my book. Darlene is awesome and just wrote the first draft of a novel in a month. Hooorraaay Darlene! I stayed up way late working and had so much fun chatting w/ a good friend in a super duper clean condo and eating yummy Mexican food. Thanks, again, Darlene!

2. Went to kids' piano recital on Saturday. So cute. Here are pictures documenting the cuteness, as well as video of my talented and beautiful progeny:










3. Took the kids to Regional Conference on Sunday at the Conference Center in SLC. (My sainted mother stayed home with Wyatt and CLEANED THE BASEMENT while he slept. Did I say she was sainted?) What a great experience. Not only did the kids get the chance to experience the gorgeous new conf center, built while we were in MN, but we got to hear the prophet speak live and in person. It was a long talk, too. Longer than I've heard him speak in quite some time. Lots of good advice about marriage and loving each other.

So that's my weekend nutshell. More, soon, when I have a minute . . . or a half a minute . . .

My Name is Wyatt and I . . .

. . . love a nice tasty meal of floor food

. . . automatically reject anything I would have eaten off of the floor if it's given to me in my high chair

. . . have seven teeth

. . . bonk my head at least three times a day

. . . like to take all of the books out of my Mom's shelves

. . . have a love affair with shoes. Dad's are the tastiest

. . . still wake up at least twice a night and regularly rise for the day at 5:45 a.m. My parents are easy targets and just give me a bottle in bed. Victory!

. . . am the loudest baby in the Country Crossing 1st Ward. And there are LOTS of babies in the Country Crossing 1st ward.

. . . get this big, goofy, happy grin whenever I see my mom or my dad.

. . . have discovered toilet water. Almost as tasty as floor food!

. . . have also discovered toilet paper. So many fun things in the bathroom.

. . . but nothing's as fun as the kitty's room. Kitty food to eat, PLUS, kitty water to knock over, plus Kitty herself to chase and grab. I dare her to retaliate!

. . . am almost too big for my car seat, and I AM too big for my Baby Bjorn. I'm so big, in fact, that I'm almost not a baby anymore!

Isn't he cute??

You know how I said I wasn't going to stress out about losing 20 pounds?

Not working.

So tell me if this is irritating, or if I'm just in denial.

Yesterday I went to my SIXTY MINUTE LONG BUTT KICKING, DRENCHED IN SWEAT, PUSH MYSELF SO HARD THAT I THOUGHT I MIGHT PUKE cycling class. Taught, by the way, by my lovely and very sweet neighbor Stephenie. Who has very nice legs.

Afterward, I went to the dreaded locker room scale (meaning: accurate) and weighed myself. I'd been feeling a bit cheerful since when I weighed myself the week before, I'd lost two pounds. I was daring to tell myself, okay, get your butt kicked three times a week, watch what you eat, try not to eat after 7:30 p.m., seriously cut back on the Diet Coke and drink more water . . . maybe, just maybe, you can lost 1 or 2 pounds a week. Maybe. And wouldn't that be great.

And then I saw the scale.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, not only had I gained back the two pounds I'd lost the week before, but I'd PUT ON TWO MORE. So now I officially weigh 2 pounds more than I did at my 6 week postpartum checkup. My pants do fit better and I know all about muscle weighing more than fat and all that BALONEY, but seriously, I should be seeing some kind of progress. Give me SOMETHING. Five pounds, even.

So now I'm done ranting. See how well I take my own advice???

And I think I'm going to have to start keeping a food journal or go back on stupid Weight Watchers and force myself to be the party pooper lady who won't eat the cake at the party. Wah, wah, poor poor me and my poor poor metabolism.

I guess I wasn't done ranting. Now I am.

Changing It

Okay, so I spent last night thinking about my little story intro an I've decided to change it. The main reason for this is I have too much gratitude in my heart for Hamline to disparage them publicly. Even though it was just one teacher who made some thoughtless comments, Hamline works so hard to be inclusive that I just don't feel it's fair to paint them with that kind of a brush. (Even though it is a good story, no?) So here's the new version:

==
Throughout my life, I’ve had a number of small crushes on favorite teachers. Although I never resorted to stalking any of them, like Beth does in this story, a word of praise or encouragement from a teacher (particularly a teacher of the intense and intellectually passionate sort) could keep me buoyed up for days. When I eventually became a high school English teacher, I never forgot the kind of power an educator can have in shaping the way a student sees herself. Because of these personal experiences, the idea of writing about a girl who moves from admiring and respecting a teacher to obsessing over him had been rolling around in my head for years. I’d just never found the right combination of story and thematic juice to make it work.

After teaching high school for five years (and no, no one ever stalked me . . . that I know of), I quit my job and moved with my husband and two small kids from Utah to Minnesota. I was lucky enough to find a fabulous MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul. I loved everything about the school: the students were smart and creative; the faculty was stellar. I wanted more than anything to impress all of them—to feel as if I belonged. But as Mormon from Utah who lived in a split-level in the suburbs, drove a minivan, and spent most of her day sweeping up goldfish crackers and rewinding Blue’s Clues videos, I wasn’t Hamline’s typical student. I imagined my classmates and professors heading home to artistically decrepit Minneapolis lofts, gazing out the window at the snowdrifts and contemplating the great philosophical ideas of our time while I fit writing into the nooks and crannies of my day—during naptime, late at night. Although the vast majority of people in my MFA program were unfailingly kind and generous to me, I often struggled with feeling like a bit of an imposter. Could a person with my biography ever be taken seriously?

“Who Do You Think You Are?” was written during this time in my life. It arose out of my desire to explore our need for validation from people we respect, but who we fear secretly dismiss us because of who we are. Or who they think we are. Then, of course, there’s the ultimate loneliness that comes when a person discovers how difficult it is to really know anyone—even someone you think you love. Even yourself. It’s a hard lesson, but I hope it makes a good story.
==

Plus, the other version was waaay too long. I do tend to go on.

Who Do You Think You Are?

WARNING: This post is long and full of psychological rumination. Avoid if you are not in the mood. Or simply skim, if you feel like humoring me. Also, no pictures. Sorry.

So the title for this blog post is interesting because it describes my psychological state over the past few days, and it's also the actual title of a story I wrote about a high school girl who stalks her English teacher (it's not as creepy as it sounds). I found out yesterday that the story just won first place--and 500 smackeroonies!--in a fiction contest sponsored by a SLC Lit Mag called Salt Flats Annual. Because I'm not too hip to the Salt Lake writing scene, I wasn't familiar with the magazine before I submitted, but I noticed an item about the contest in the SL Trib right next to the Irreantum Fiction contest call for submissions waaaaaay back in May and thought I'd give it a shot.

And I won! I couldn't (and still can't, quite) believe it.

This will be my first official publication in a non-Mormon magazine. I've sent out a few stories to other mainstream lit mags here and there, but no luck until yesterday. And now the editor has asked me to send in a few paragraphs detailing the writing process--basically the genesis of the story--and this story has a much more interesting, and potentially volatile, genesis than a lot of my other work. Here's my rough attempt so far at describing the experience (I'm still not quite ready to send it off, because I need to mull and fiddle a bit more):

===

Throughout my life, I’ve had a number of small crushes on favorite teachers. Although I never resorted to stalking any of them, like Beth does in this story, a word of praise or encouragement from a teacher (particularly a teacher of the intense and intellectually passionate sort) could keep me buoyed up for days. When I eventually became a high school English teacher, I never forgot the kind of power a teacher can have in shaping the way a student sees herself.

After teaching high school for five years (and no, no one ever stalked me), I quit my job and moved with my husband and two small kids from Utah to Minnesota. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have school to look forward to in September. I started to feel a bit frantic. Who was I without school? So I decided to take a community ed creative writing class. Although I’d puttered around writing fiction here and there, I’d never considered myself a serious writer. But my creative writing teacher felt I had potential (see what teachers can do?) and referred me to an MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul.

I loved everything about Hamline. The students were smart and creative. The faculty was stellar. I wanted more than anything to impress all of them—to feel as if I belonged. But the truth of it was that I was a Mormon from Utah who lived in a split-level in the suburbs, drove a minivan, and spent most of her day sweeping up goldfish crackers and rewinding Blue’s Clues videos. I imagined my classmates and professors heading home to artistically decrepit Minneapolis lofts, gazing out the window at the snowdrifts and contemplating the great philosophical conundrums of our time while I boiled macaroni noodles. Although almost all of the people in my MFA program were unfailingly kind and generous to me, I often struggled with feeling like a bit of an impostor. Could a person with my biography ever be taken seriously?

“Who Do You Think You Are?” was inspired by a day when my perceived otherness became starkly real to me. I was sitting in class listening to a lecture by a professor I didn’t know well, but I liked her and admired her. The topic somehow turned to Mormonism. She related a story about a negative encounter with Mormonism that some of her Native American friends had experienced and said, “I just don’t see how anyone can be involved with that church.” Although this professor had no idea I was LDS, many of the students in class did, and it seemed like every gaze in the room turned toward me. My heart pounding, I raised my hand and told the professor that I was in fact a Mormon and proceeded to stumble all over myself explaining why the experience she recounted wasn’t indicative of the way most Mormons behaved, and certainly didn’t represent my own beliefs. Of course, the professor apologized profusely (with so few Mormons in Minnesota, who would think that one would wind up in an MFA program??), but I spent the rest of the day with feelings of embarrassment, guilt, indignation and sorrow roiling around in my gut.

“Who Do You Think You Are?” arose out of my desire to explore this experience. The year before, I’d started a story about a high school girl who stalks her teacher, but it didn’t take off until I coupled it with the idea of being rejected by someone you respect because of who you are. Or who he thinks you are. Then, of course, there’s the ultimate loneliness that comes when a person discovers how hard it is to really know anyone—even someone you think you love. Even yourself. It’s a sad lesson, but I hope it makes a good story.

===

So that's my rundown. Reading it again I realize it needs a little work--first drafts and all.

At any rate, I said at the beginning of this post that I've been struggling with the whole idea of who I am--or who I think I am--all weekend. Julie Beck's talk in Sunday conference gave me a lot to think about. So I went to bed Sunday night, my mind spinning about how I spend too much time writing and reading and teaching and not enough time preparing healthy meals and cleaning the house and reading my scriptures. (Yeah, yeah, I know my house is in fine shape and I try and make sure that my kids at least get some canned peaches with their potato chips and hot dogs at lunch and even though I haven't quite made it through the Gospels yet--and I started in January--at least I'm trying, yada yada yada). But the truth of it is, I was telling Forrest just last week how I think we women in the church need a good butt kickin' every once in a while--that maybe folks should stop being so scared of hurting our feelings. So I felt like a bit of a hypocrite when the butt-kicking started and my initial reaction to Beck's talk was, "True, yes . . . but that doesn't apply to me, really, because I'm trying and I'm doing my best and I'm not a natural homemaker," and on and on with the same little januty tune I hum to myself when I start feeling guilty.

I have an amazing ability to do a little mental jig and dance my way straight through guilt to justification. It's true!

So I decided Sunday night that a little priority rearranging might be in order. The problem was, the idea of the priority rearranging made me sad. But I wasn't sure if I was feeling sad because I truly didn't want to give up what I was doing because it was important to me, or because I was simply being rebellious and didn't want to change.

Then . . . I open up my email inbox Monday morning and there's the email from Salt Flat's editor and a nice note from the contest judge and the scaffolding of reason I'd so carefully constructed the night before came down and landed with a poof at my feet.

Sigh.

Here's what I really believe. I think. We juggle a lot of balls as moms and every once in a while we drop one. It's important not to drop the children (ouch!), or the husband, or the gospel, or the little fragile ball made of glass that contains our own spirit. Sometimes we bobble these balls, but dropping them is very messy and involves a lot of time and energy in clean-up. Some of the balls I'm juggling are extraneous balls and can make it even more complicated to keep the important ones safely off the ground. (These balls could be called, say, "Oprah," or "Spending lots of time reading the blogs of people I've never met and never will," or "Wasting precious psychological energy worrying about the twenty pounds I want to lose.") But here's the rub! What if I decide to do a switcheroo add a "dusting the baseboards" ball and delete the "working on my writing" ball? My writing ball is very pretty and light and relatively easy to catch. The baseboards ball is very heavy and liable to crash into other balls. It might even fall to the ground and stub my toe. Therefore, perhaps it's wise--for me--if the baseboards ball only come out very rarely. If at all. :-). For some people, the baseboards ball is very important because if they're not juggling it, they feel icky and dirty and unworthy and can't live with themselves. But then there are other people (like me) who didn't even KNOW there was a ball dedicated solely to baseboard dusting until a year or so ago. (Yes, this means I never dusted a single baseboard in my life until 2006.)

So enough with the metaphor. The point is, even though I think I'm a mature 35 year old woman with a mind of her own and a little bit of confidence and experience in her pocket, sometimes I feel just like I did in high school, where I spent part of my day with the drama crowd, part of my day with the Seminary/Madrigal kids, and part of my day with the cheerleaders. (I'll never forget the dirty looks some of those drama kids game me on the first day of acting class when I showed up in my cheerleading skirt. They came to put up with me eventually, though). I still don't know who I am sometimes, or who I want to be, or how I want other people to see me. Today I worked on the piece about my story (the drama kid part of me), went to a Relief Society Presidency meeting and helped put up the chairs in our new building (Madrigal/Seminary part of me . . . you see where this is going), and dropped Wyatt of in the childcare at Lifetime Fitness so I could lift weights in the barbell strength class with a bunch of smooth skinned chicky babes (cheerleader).

But we're all complicated. We all are. Just not everybody blogs about it. :-) I was hoping to tie this rambling post up with a nice little bow, or at least with a final thought about identity and purpose and choices and obedience . . . but I've written so much that it's now 11:30. I will sign off with this:

The t.v. is on and Jennifer Lopez is a guest on David Letterman. I think she's pregnant. She's trying to hide it, but her dress is waaaaay to billowy. Good for J-Lo! Now she can start juggling, too.

School Pics

The kids came home with their school pictures today, and they're so cute I thought I'd share:





I went against my innate desire for control and let them pick their own background colors. I think the pictures turned out well, though. Ethan looks so studious and mature, Elise looks loverly with her looooong pretty hair, and Jonas is the picture of first grade with that missing front tooth.

So, two other short items. First, if you haven't read it already, the cover story for this week's Newsweek is "A Mormon Journey: The Making of Mitt Romney." Give it a read--it's interesting. There's a practicing Mormon on the Newsweek staff--Elise Soukup--and she's noted as one of the contributors to the story. As a result, they get most of the facts straight, imo. Don't know about the interpretation of the facts, but that's an individual thing.

Also, as some of you know I'm no longer working with Irreantum, primarily because I've been soooo busy lately and needed to let something go. I've loved my time with the magazine, but after about three years it seemed a good time for me to move on. But, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've joined the editorial board of another LDS magazine called Segullah. You can take a look at the Segullah website and link to the blog here. I won't have nearly the workload I did with Irreatum, and the three women in my writers' group, Darlene, Sharlee, and Kathy, are already involved--so I'll be able to associate with some really cool chickies. It should be fun.

And now it's conference weekend. Hooray! I'm even kind of glad that it's rainy and cold. I'm looking forward to holing up in my house and listening to the talks and eating soup. Mmmmmm . . . Fall.

Jonas Leo

Jonas Leo Hallstrom, 4 months old, Topsail Island, North Carolina


Today Jonas was the V.I.P. in his 1st grade classroom, and his dad and I got to come to class for 30 minutes and tell everybody what's so cool about him. And there's plenty cool about him! It was fun to spend some time with him at school and listen to him talk about what he likes, what he thinks, what he's good at, and what makes him happy.

Here's a shot of Jonas waxing philosophical about karate (or how one of his favorite animals is the Phoenix--didn't know that; or how his best friend is his brother, his sister, and his cat; or how his favorite fruit is the grape):



Notice how he's holding his hand and there's a band aid on his finger? This was the best story of the day: Forrest and I pull up in front of the school and start walking toward the front door when who comes screaming around the corner, crying, holding his hand, and missing one shoe, but Jonas! It was almost surreal. We were 10 minutes early for the VIP presentation, and apparently Jonas was playing at recess and got stung on the finger by a bee. (One of his biggest fears has now come true!) He was so freaked out that he just started running for the front doors of the school (and ran right out of one shoe) and ran straight into us. Pretty amazing timing, I'd say. So we took him into the office and they put a paste of baking soda and water on the sting--I cure I hadn't heard about, but that seemed to work great. Then he calmed down and was able to use the story as an excellent opener for his VIP presentation. (I think the kids liked the closer better, though, because he passed around one of his favorite candy bars--Kit Kats.)

One of the other highlights of the presentation was during the Q & A period, when one of the kids asked Jonas, "Do you like Jesus?"

Another kid in the class: "He does like Jesus! Everybody likes Jesus!"

Jonas's friend Kyle: "I don't. I HATE Jesus!"

Entire class: Collective gasp.

I do think that Jonas likes Jesus, but he never officially answered the question . . . :-)

Jonas is such a good kid--smart, confident, great at math and making stuff with legos and snow skiing and Nintendo. Most of all, he's kind. He cares about his family and his friends, and even though he can be silly at home--and still won't eat more than his repertoire of 12 things, no matter how hard we try to break him--he's been such a joy to parent and it's been so fun to watch him grow up. We were proud last week that he got the "Student of the Month" award in his class for the month of September. They give out Student of the Month awards according to a theme, and the theme that month was "Respect." Jonas's teacher wrote on his award that Jonas is thoughtful and kind and treats his teacher and all his classmates very well. We're proud of you, Joe!