One of my favorite summertime treats is generically subtitled "Naturally Flavored Sparkling Water Beverage." I used to feel virtuous about drinking this in preference to soda, until it became quite evident that what it really is, basically, is sugar-free soda without the dye. No matter. I still like it, I still drink it, and I rationalize that at least it's better for me than caffeine. Plus, I'm avoiding all that artifical dye.

Anyway, the peculiar tendency of this product is that it always, always spurts out the top when you open it. I don't know if it's the size of the bottle or the level of the carbonation or what, but at our house we always open these drinks over the sink because you can just count on them spraying. But I was at work with this particular bottle, and I didn't have a sink handy. So, thank goodness the stuff comes in a plastic bottle with a screw-on lid. I loosened the lid ever so gently, let a few bubbles out, then screwed it back on quickly as the stuff surged to the top. I had to do this several times, until finally it got to a point where I could leave the lid slightly loosened and the speed of the bubbles rushing to the top was balanced sufficiently that they didn't overflow.

It just got me thinking. Seems like sometimes the pressure builds up in my heart and mind until I just explode. I fall apart. All my energy spurts out and dissipates into the atmosphere, and I'm helpless to accomplish anything. Wonder what would happen if I tried letting just a few bubbles out at a time?

Here's what that might look like, in terms of self-talk: "Yes, I know the laundry is waiting and the bills have to be paid and this and this and this project all need attention at work, but AT THIS MOMENT I'm just going to deal with the 'get the overdue car registration turned in' bubbles."

Then, an hour later, it might be the "throw in a load of towels so the kids won't have to roll around on the carpet to dry themselves" bubbles. Soon the "what shall I fix for dinner" bubbles will rise to the top, but they can wait their turn. I really think this might work. All it is, really, is a tacit agreement not to worry about everything all at once.

On the other hand, I don't want underestimate the potential benefits of a good explosion once in a while. Sometimes you just have to let it all go and start over!

As an editor, some of my happiest days are the ones when I send a book off to press. I did so on Friday (Leven Thumps and the Wrath of Ezra, in case you were curious), and it felt GREAT. Seeing how far we had come from the original manuscript, how fabulous it looked all typeset and neatly laid out, with the illustrations in place, was a pretty rewarding experience. And even though I know as soon as the book comes out we'll start getting the emails pointing out the mistakes I missed, I feel like there's one little corner of my life where I have "arrived." That book is done--and even more glorious, it's going to STAY done. (Unlike my laundry, which will never be done, let alone stay done. But you've undoubtedly heard my philosophy on that, which is that the only people whose laundry is truly done are the naked and the dead.)

Anyway, it got me thinking about the whole process of eternal progression and trying to be perfect, and it occurred to me that there are actually some areas in which I am pretty close. I'm not dead yet, of course, so I guess I shouldn't just make assumptions, but I can say that so far I am perfect in never having smoked a cigarette (or anything like unto one). I have never knowingly consumed an alcoholic beverage. I graduated from college. I live with my family in a house that will be ours free and clear in 7.5 more years. I have accepted and tried to magnify church callings for the past 36 years.

Sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed by my own weaknesses and the thought of how much I have yet to conquer in the challenge of governing myself, it helps to remember these things. It's like looking at the shelf full of books that I've sent to press in the past. Even if there's a whole library ahead of me still to work on, I can say that these are finished.

Last week I drove myself to Vernal, a trip of three hours one way, to tend my grandbabies for a couple of days so their parents could attend a seminar. On the way home on Saturday afternoon, I found myself singing. It was amazing to me how one song led to another, and they really ran the gamut, from "Lead, Kindly Light" to old Beatles ballads like "I Will" and "In My Life." What really surprised me, though, was when the chain of songs led me clear back to high school, to the music we had performed in concert choir in 1973. It has been years, maybe decades, since I sang those songs. And yet I found I could remember them with almost astonishing clarity.

What's more, every song connected to some other kind of memory. Sometimes I could envision a particular setting in which I had sung the song. Sometimes it was just a more abstract feeling. Either way, those memory links took me back into different eras in my life and recovered events I hadn't thought about for a long, long time.

I can't tell you how encouraging that was to me. I have read that our memories really are all stored in our brains somewhere, even when it seems we have no access to them. The books I've read, the people I've known, the experiences I've treasured - they're all still in there somewhere. It may be the next life before I can recall them all, but in the meantime I love the feeling that it's WORTH "inputting" good things into my brain, things the Spirit can bring to my remembrance when I need them the most.

Today is my birthday, and that generally brings forth a spate of thoughts and feelings, mostly unrelated. And now that I have someplace to put them, maybe you can help me figure some things out:

1. Is it weird that I can never remember how old I'm turning anymore unless I go back and calculate it from the year I was born?

2. Do you think young couples in my ward really think of me the way I thought of people in their fifties when I was a young bride?

3. Which birthday has been hardest for you so far?

For me, it was forty. Not because I felt so old, particularly, but because that was the birthday when I realized that there were people who had gone out of my life who weren't ever coming back. I think when I was in my twenties I naively believed we would just be able to keep track of everyone who had ever been important to us. Sure, people moved away, and their circumstances changed, but I think deep down I felt we'd always be friends. And maybe, deep down, we are. But at forty I recognized that I was never going to see some of those people again, at least, not in this life. It was sort of depressing.

Now, in my early fifties, I'm happier to take each year as it comes, to love the people it brings, even if I know they may stay only for a short time, and to recognize what a great gift it is to be alive!

Do you ever have a moment when a scripture or a hymn that is just so familiar to you strikes you in a new way?

This happened to me recently. I was stressing out about a whole bunch of things, a list too long and gruesome to remember now, and in sacrament meeting that week we sang "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet." If EVER there were a hymn that I could sing in my sleep, it would be that one. I still get a little shiver when we sing it in the presence of the living prophet, but it doesn't do all that much for me in other contexts anymore.

Except that day, when one line just LEAPT out at me:

"We doubt not the Lord nor His goodness; we've proved Him in days that are past."

What a powerful reminder that was to me that I had been so blessed, in the very areas about which I was worrying, for so many years - why would the Lord abandon me now? The simple answer was that He wouldn't. He didn't.

Is that why the prophets all through the scriptures are always reminding people of the events of their history, like Moses parting the Red Sea or Lehi being led out of Jerusalem? Maybe that's just another way of saying, "Why are you doubting the Lord or His goodness; haven't you already proved Him?"

Anyway, it's enough to keep me going to church and singing all those familiar hymns and listening to familiar lessons on familiar topics. I never know when the Spirit might have a particular message for me!

My husband signed us up for an interesting assignment last night - we went at 9:30 at night to help clean the Conference Center. We thought it might be a fascinating opportunity to see the building "behind the scenes," and we did get to go down a couple of back hallways and up a freight elevator, but by and large, we spent most of the three hours in the main open area, in the balcony. Vacuuming.

Two and one-half hours of vacuuming. With a vacuum that mounted on one's back, like a Ghostbuster pack.

My husband did most of the work, and I was the "cord girl," following him down one aisle and unraveling the cord as he went, then gathering it back up as he came the other way. And in those two-plus hours, we vacuumed ONE SECTION of that huge, cavernous auditorium.

When we dragged ourselves back out to the car, I pointed out to Larry the irony of spending that amount of time cleaning something that on its worst day was already cleaner than my house is on its best day. I wondered aloud how they kept up with it. And he said, "One section at a time."

It keeps ringing in my mind, and I realize I have fallen prey to the notion that if I can't get it all done in one swoop, I don't even want to start. So I'm going to try to have a "one section at a time" month. I'm going to start in one spot, give it a concerted effort for a solid block of time, and then MOVE ON.

Maybe that's why we have daytime and nighttime - to give us the chance to work out our lives "in sections."

I'll let you know if it works!

I'm confessing here to a little addiction I have developed. There's this game called "Book Worm" that I can play on my Palm Pilot. I fell in love with it mostly because no one in my family will play word games with me. So when I found a good one I could play "solitaire," I was quickly hooked!

The game is simple. It's sort of like "Boggle"; there's a screen full of letter tiles, and you connect adjoining letters to make words. Periodically a "burning tile" drops down from the top of the screen. If you don't use that letter in a word before it reaches the bottom, the library "burns down" and your game is over.

Here's the thing about "Book Worm": There's no such thing as winning. Ultimately, enough burning tiles fill up the screen that you can't use them all. The library burns down EVERY SINGLE TIME!

That being the case, why do I continue to play (and love) this game? The answer is simple, of course: to see if I can beat my previous high score. (I almost never do.) To stay in it for as long as I can. To savor the fun of building an especially long word or an extra clever one. And playing it is fun!

I find it interesting that there are so many aspects of my life that operate on this same principle, but at which I feel I am failing because I can't seem to "win." No matter how clean I get my house, I can always see more that needs to be cleaned. And then it just gets dirty again! No matter how great a dinner I fix for my family tonight, they're going to want to eat again tomorrow. (I know - selfish, huh?) The lawn doesn't stay mowed, the laundry doesn't stay folded, the groceries don't magically reproduce and replace themselves in the refrigerator as we deplete them. IT NEVER ENDS!

So I have to see it as a game. Maybe this is the week I'll get extra points for saving money on the food budget. Maybe I'll get "good mom" points for helping with the history project. Maybe I'll find some extra time to get deeper into the scriptures or write a meaningful letter or bake someone some cookies.

I won't do them all. I can't. But the cool thing is, after every "Game Over" I get an invitation to "Start a New Game." So I'm just here to see if I can beat my own score every once in a while, to stay in it for as long as I can, and to remember that the fun is in the playing.

I've had further evidence this weekend that meaningful change might actually be possible. My husband and I took a turn spending the weekend with his extremely disabled Down syndrome sister, who has been alone since his mother died in February. Her siblings are working toward finding a suitable group home for her, but many things have to be accomplished first, so in the meantime we've been trading off caring for her.

A couple of important things I discovered:

1. My life is EASY.

2. A good night's sleep takes care of a whole lot of pain. Conversely, running on too little sleep makes every tiny annoyance seem so much worse.

3. Six straight hours of "So You Think You Can Dance," as interested as you may be in the outcome, is too many.

But the idea related to change was perhaps the simplest, yet biggest, ephiphany. I learned it because I had to fix dinner in a strange kitchen. Then, because it wasn't my kitchen and I wasn't go to be staying there, I had to be sure everything was cleaned up and put away. There's no dishwasher in that house, no hiding away of the mess, but even if there had been, I would have felt responsible to be sure no one else had to work harder because of my having been there.

So, I fixed the dinner. Then, when we were finished eating, we cleaned it up. Right then. Washed the dishes, dried and put away the big ones, wiped everything down, brought the kitchen basically back to square one.

Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this, but this is not something I've ever been good at. We get our dishes into the dishwasher at my house right after dinner about half the time (if we haven't had to gulp and go, which is often the case). Pots, pans, and other non-dishwasher-worthy items tend to pile up - along with the mail, the items everyone deems "current" (books, homework, magazines), and certain nonperishable food items like bananas that just have no other home. Before I know it, my kitchen is a disaster, and the thought of cooking in that mess goes out the door and so do we, to eat out AGAIN.

My plan is to see if Meaningful Change is likelier to happen if I commit myself to it in a public forum like this. So I'm setting a goal to get that kitchen back to square one this week and keep it there through the whole month of June. Cross your fingers for me, because I've got lots more meaningful changes waiting in the wings!

I'm at a point in my life where I don't seem to be very good at changing. I recognize myself falling into the same bad habits over and over, despite the "wisdom" I have accumulated that tells me the habits are bad. Sometimes I play the "if I could be 20 again but know what I know now . . ." game, but then I think it wouldn't matter. I'd make all the same mistakes.

That was my thinking. Then I had a little experience that kind of taught me otherwise. I have lived on the same street for going-on-30 years now. Last year, I got a speeding ticket on my street for going 36 mph in a posted 25 mph zone. Grumble, grumble. Then, two weeks later, I got another speeding ticket on my street. Guess how fast I was going? You got it - 36 mph.

Clearly, after nearly 30 years, I had developed a specific habit. And clearly, if I didn't figure out how to break that habit, I was going to lose a lot more money and possibly my driver's license.

Guess how fast I drive on my street now? If you said 25 mph, you would be right. I'm almost obsessive about it - and it has been over a year since I got those tickets. I had a compelling reason to change that habit, and it overrode my years of conditioning.

Maybe I'm just naive, but I take heart from that. It makes me think that I might not be hopelessly consigned to ineffective practices that have plagued me all my life, like eating too much junk food, procrastinating unpleasant tasks, and avoiding exercise.

Springtime is a great time to make a change! What's yours?

I've decided I cry at weird times. When all around me at high school graduation were dissolved in tears, I stood by dry-eyed. I'm not sure I've ever cried at a funeral, or at my kids' graduations. Most notably, when I dropped two children off at the MTC on two consecutive weeks, I shed not a single tear. Either time.

But I remember when I was trying to prepare my children to attend the short opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" one Christmastime. Do you know the story? A young crippled boy and his impoverished mother give the three Wise Men a bed for the night, and when the boy offers to give his crutch as a gift for the Christ child, he miraculously walks. When I got to that part in my explanation, I just started to weep copiously. I think the children were a bit alarmed - but they sure paid attention when we got to the opera.

I had a similar experience when I was asked to read a Christmas story for a Relief Society lesson one year. It was about some children who weren't expecting any gifts, and I just started to bawl inexplicably and could not calm myself. I don't know why - I certainly wasn't remembering some poverty-stricken experience from my own life. I do remember this as being pretty embarrassing.

To go back the MTC experience, though, I have wondered if there is just something in me that doesn't like to cry "on cue." There were sniffles all over the room, sometimes downright sobs. I couldn't summon even a teardrop. But the next day, at the grocery store, when I walked past my son's favorite cereal, I fell apart. I knew I wouldn't be buying those Marshmallow Mateys for him for the next two years. My husband practically had to put me in the cart and haul me out.

So, yes, I'm an emotional person. I just never know when it's going to hit!

I am back in the office after a weekend at BYU Women's Conference that could only be described as transcendent. I had a glorious time, truly. And I know it was largely because I was sustained by the prayers of others--my friends, my family, and people I had not even met. I know this because my cold miraculously departed Tuesday night and never reared its head again. I know it because even though I had inadvertently (and in yet another stroke of incredible stupidity) scheduled myself for a colonoscopy on Wednesday (the day before I was supposed to speak to 5,000 women in the Smith Fieldhouse), I felt perfectly strong and well in time to give my talk. I know it because I felt power way beyond my own sustaining me.

So don't ever think that there's "nothing you can do" for someone who might be having a hard time. Your prayers matter. I know it. Thank you for the goodness of your lives, and please accept this post as a thank you not just from me but from everyone for whom you pray.

So here I am, ready to launch myself off the cliff into the world of modern communication. This is a big leap for me. I don't even own a cell phone. (I just can't stand the thought of being that accessible.) I listen to books on CASSETTE in my car. I expect to be the last woman standing who will still be writing paper checks.

But I love to make new friends, and it seems as if the primary vehicle for such a venture in our age is the blog. And since others were kind enough to set it up for me and show me how to use it, so that all I need to do is the "talking" part, I'm up for the challenge.

I'm actually really excited about this. I've noticed that my children all keep track of their old high school friends via their blogs, and it seems like such an easy way to stay connected. I have all kinds of plans. I want to just visit, for one thing. And I want to tell you about my favorite books and movies and quotations, and brag about my grandkids, and have an avenue for sorting out my feelings about things, and take a few minutes on a regular basis to find something to laugh about.

If you're reading this, I want to thank you for finding me. I hope we'll be good friends!