Life & Time of C. Malone

Diet and Other Four Letter Words

2012-01-04T19:38:00.000-08:00

Do you know any of these people or programs? Yes? Then you'll experience the confusion right along with me.
Mark Hyman, M.D.
The Bigger Loser Club
Kim Lyons
Isabel De Los Rios
Mike Geary
Jon Dana Benson
Coach Josh
Joel Marion
Jayson Hunter
Coach Jesse Cannone
Rob Poulos
Biggest Loser
Kyle Leon
Dr. Kareem F. Samhouri
Dr. Oz
Dr. Travis Stork
The Pink Solution
Vince Del Monte

Are you as disillusioned as I am and feel that the start of the New Year sucks--I mean as far as making those resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. Year after year I make the same resolution. Get healthy. Lose weight. Look like a normal human. Believe it or not, I actually had a year like that. The only good year--2008. 2008 was great. (You can read about my weight loss journey from my earlier posts.)

What happened to me? I was eating healthy, thanks toWeight Watchers. I exercised for hours a day, thanks to Contours, a women's gym that has since hit the skids and gone away. I was doing everything right. Then I hit the Christmas wall. I hadn't learned how to handle Christmas. The worst thing though, I became the cooking culprit and undermined my own success. By the New Year 2009, I upped twenty pounds.

Then 2009 struck and sucked the life right out of me. I'm not going to elaborate the problems with 2009, there isn't enough space in this post. But 2009 was my cancer year. But the end, I'd gained back another twenty pounds by operation time and after laying in bed for months, I tacked on another twenty, by the end of 2009.

2010 wasn't the greatest year either. I quit Weight Watchers. (I hated watching the scales and my weight go up and up.) I was a weight watcher all right. Up, up and away. I couldn't keep paying to have my weight increase. 2011 wasn't much better. In April my dad passed away. The grief of his passing, my struggles with editing my first novel and my inability to lose weight added to personal financial woes and . . . boom, the scale continued to climb. Explode actually. Not only that, I broke out with a bad case of hives and they and the weight gain continued to plague my year.

Now I face a big empty New Year. What to do? Of course all my doctors are expecting me to shed those unwanted pounds. (Side bar: have you ever, and I mean ever, known anyone who had WANTED pounds? A rhetorical question.)

But my questions is HOW?

And that brings me to my current dilemma. How to choose a good program.

Have you ever had trouble finding the right diet or life style program that doesn't cost as much as a Lear jet or force you into the gym to pump iron for hours or run on a tread mill for mile after monotonous mile? Well if you're one of those people, I sympathize. I've been bombarded with email ads for this diet and that. Boy, you sign up for one to try and every exercise guru from California to New York City jumps on your case, touting that their program is designed to make you into a bikini babe in a couple of weeks.

What's worse is that they have a sharing system where one exercise guru tells another one about you until your email inbox looks like the Who's Who of the diet and exercise industry. I tell you, this is no easy decision deciding who has the best program that can be tailored to me and my physical restraints and needs.

Do I know the answers? Heck no. I want answers like the rest of you. I want a diet/life style change that isn't going to be too hard to follow. I don't want craziness. I don't want to forsake ice cream, candy, bread, crackers, chips, pancakes, potatoes or any other bad carbs. I want sensible. Or am I deluded myself into thinking a life style change can include junk?

Okay. At one time or another I've listened to all of the diet grurus. Somehow I got hooked up with Tony Hortonand his P90X. One look at the program and I shut it back up in the box. I'm fifty six years old, bad knees, way over weight. This thing's for young people.

So I ordered Jon Dana Bensen's Every Other Day Diet. I'm sure it's a wonderful program, but it was just a little too weird for me. Eating nothing but a grass and whey shake for breakfast and an apple and a handful of almonds for lunch. Then the next day, the shake and for lunch--BAM! you can go hog wild. I just didn't have the stamina to stay on the everyday bit. No offense Jon.I'm sure your program has served many well. Those people who are already a size two.

There must be an exercise guru co-op somewhere because each one of these gurus promote the others.With all their enthusiasm it all looks wonderful, exciting and the easiest thing you've ever done. What they say is so attractive I couldn't help but be sucked into their spiel. Right after they wow me with their examples of people who've shed thousands of pounds, you hit me with the bottom line. It's going to cost me and cost me plenty.

Their simple program with their fifteen thousand steps isn't enough. Books on diet, recipes, calculating daily intake, mind transformation, motivation, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah. That's enough reading for about three years.

But wait! There's more!

Their initial offering isn't enough, there's always one more thing to entice me into buying their COMPLETE program and only their program. And you have to have the rest. Training. Recipe specific books. Motivation books. Other manuals. How to train. Videos. Meal plans. Etc. Etc. Etc. By the time your basic $47 to $97 program is finished, you've spent close to $500.00 and the programs are so drastic, there is no way in this world a regular person like me can stay on them.

I can't squat, pushup, jump around or crunch. I'm old. Give me exercises I can do. I have sciatic nerve pain in one foot. I can hardly walk some days. I've got a compressed disk between four and five. Whatever that means. So I'm not doing your extreme workouts.

And when they're finished roping you in, they send you emails introducing yet another guru's program in the hopes that you'll to buy that as well. Each email to you is another offer. Flat abs. Burn belly fat. Washboard abs without crunches, etc. Instead of losing weight safely, with an exercise program I can follow, I'm spending money I can't afford to spend for a program or dozens of programs that aren't geared for me.

I took a test to see if I was sluggish and run down. Hello? You have the metabolism of a 200 year old woman. Mark Hyman, M.D. recommends his program at only $396.00 per month. It's called the UltraSimple Diet Enhanced program. Do I look like I'm made of money? Maybe that's how they get you to lose pounds. They lighten your wallet.

Even the TV Doctors, Stork
and Ozhave their own personal program. Just sign on the old bottom line, or enter your credit card numbers and you're as good as bikini ready. They're ripping my mind apart with their promises, their come-ons and declarations that promise a new you in six weeks.

Who wouldn't like to look like Ashley of the Biggest Loser or have her success?

Weight Watchers is great, but does it really teach me what to eat at any given time, how much and the right combinations? What about The Biggest Loser? Do I look like I could do those exercises in a gym 24/7?

I just don't know anymore. I wish there was a magic diet genie who could outline a modified lifestyle, that doesn't forbid a splurge once in awhile, that has exercises for my physical limitations, that says when to eat and what and how much. Can there be such a person or system or program or suggestions that don't require that I turn over my entire pay check to them every two weeks? Oh, stop the insanity. (Say, isn't that an exercise program?) Well, never mind, I'm not doing it.

Finding the right path for me will required some dedicated research. It may not happen right away. But the one thing I know, is that I don't want to die wearing enough weight to equal another person. My feet are getting really tired of dragging around that extra gal. It's time to let her find someone else to hang off of. So if you have a program you'd like me to evaluate--keep it to yourself.

Hamlet: “Oh, by the way, Ophelia is pregnant!”

2011-07-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

I've taken off a few months to do my own novel editing and indepth education. So here's a sample of one of my latest essays from Critical Thinking-Literature.

Hamlet: “Let [your daughter] not walk i’th’ sun: conception is a blessing but as your daughter may conceive, friend—look to’t” (2.2 181-3).

As I read Hamlet and watched the movie I couldn’t fight the nagging feeling I was missing something; a thought grabbed a hold and wouldn’t go away—what if Ophelia was pregnant. Why else would Hamlet go ballistic when Laertes and Polonius forbid him from seeing her and then used her to plot against him? He had to be furious when denied access to her bed knowing it was too late. It is no secret that they had a physical relationship. “Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed” (4.5, 60-64). Ophelia’s silly song lyrics not only suggest a physical relationship between her and Hamlet, but lead the reader to believe something more that lost virtue resulted from their romantic liaisons’. I heard someone say that Ophelia died an innocent virgin. I disagree. Not only does the possibility of Ophelia’s pregnancy drive the play but it adds to the human complications. Evidence supporting this idea lies in the participants.

Ophelia was young and innocent—at one point. And there is nothing more obnoxious than a young girl in love. Silliness and empty-headed nonsense rule their existence. It’s like they’ve stepped off the planet. A parent and a brother would notice these changes. But if the young lady in question is pregnant, then the incidents of flightiness and mood shifts would have been ten fold. The threat and/or opportunity that Ophelia might become pregnant were ever present in the thoughts of her brother and father. Their suspicion adds dimension and angst to the drama and tragedy of the play. It’s central to the theme of madness. Whether Laertes or Polonius suspected Ophelia of being pregnant, I believe so. No doubt they speculated some hanky-panky was going on between Hamlet and Ophelia. Why else would both of them warn her away from him?“Shakespeare immediately draws the attention to the significance of Ophelia’s chastity (Act 1, Scene 3). In this scene, both her brother and father lecture her on virtues of maidenhood, her virginity, while they tell her to repel Hamlet’s letters and love. Her brother warns her to fear her ‘chaste treasure open’ (1.3, 30) and to ‘unmask her beauty to the moon’ (1.3, 36). Her father continued the same sentiments…” (Sekinger).

Laertes tells his sister that Hamlet might just be going through a phase “and a toy in blood. A violet in the youth of nature that is in its prime…but not lasting” (1.3, 7-9). Ophelia says “really”? Laertes suspects a problem resulting from their physical relations and admonishes her to refuse Hamlet her bed. Imagine the girl’s frantic fears now she suspects she’s with child and father and brother rail on her and she can’t keep company with the baby’s daddy. Laertes continued in that vein telling her that Hamlet couldn’t love so lowly a creature because he has a responsibility to the state. Gosh, why not just push her into the pond and be done with it? Laertes must have been clued in to Ophelia’s pregnancy.

Polonius inadvertently admits to such a claim. Polonius’s knowledge is revealed when Hamlet discloses that he knows Ophelia, his lady love might be pregnant. Check out the words that Hamlet uses when he confronts Polonious. He said, “For a sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion—have you a daughter?” Polonius wonders why Hamlet keeps “harping” on his daughter until Hamlet tells him, “Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.” (2.2, 196). Okay, dad, look, me and your daughter have been fooling around and because I’m a scoundrel, your precious, virtuous daughter is preggers.

It is thought by scholars that the word “sun” in the referenced text may have meant “son” as in the son of Hamlet. But it’s interesting to note how Hamlet uses the simile of breeding of maggots on a dead dog to what he had done in his relationship with Ophelia. He’s not happy with himself, so this can’t be a good thing for him to reproduce. It’s clever the way Hamlet dances around the possibility, yet Polonius has an odd response. “Indeed, that is out of the air. How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.” (II.II, 220). Catch the “allusion to the following word descriptions in the footnote of: breed (198), conception (197), pregnant (220), and delivered of (223)” (Sekinger). The words uttered by Polonius are much too portentous not to have us suspect he knew.
Shakespeare is a master at making us wonder. Was she? Wasn’t she? I wondered what Hamlet meant when he confronted Ophelia in the hall within hearing of Polonius and The King. “Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldn’t thou be a breeder of sinners?” (3.1, 131-132.) I don’t think this was specifically meant to reference her going to a brothel or whorehouse, although that’s a notable explanation. It could have been a place to protect Ophelia and her unborn child, because Hamlet also says, “…I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me” (3.1, 132-134). He doesn’t want his child to suffer the same fate as he will. Because of Hamlet’s anger which is further complicated by the knowledge of her pregnancy, the bitterness of his indecision to kill Claudius and the final betrayal of the woman he loved, Hamlet finally snaps. Love turns to accusation.
“Hamlet: …God has given you one face and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no marriages: those that are married already, all by one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.” (3.1, 154-162.)

No wonder poor Hamlet teetered on the brink of insanity. Everything is starting to add up and the total is freaking him out. 1) The crap with his mother and Claudius, 2) his back-and-forth indecision about revenge, 3) Ophelia’s refusal of his bed and his tenderness, 4) she throws his love back in his face, 5) Ophelia betrays him, and finally 6) he learns she’s carrying his child all the while deceiving him. How sad for Hamlet. How sad for Ophelia.
Perhaps Ophelia didn’t realize she was pregnant right away. Hamlet’s been away at school, the old king died, his mother and Claudius were married. A few months may have passed but now she knows. That knowledge added to the tension and dramatic slip into madness. She’s been commanded to refuse the attentions of her lover and her baby’s father and ordered to refuse his offerings of love and give back his love letters and refuse him her bed. Family loyalty is one thing, but she’s torn. Does she reveal her pregnancy and spoil everything, or go insane?

It is her father who put the final screws to her and fractured her heart. He asked her if Hamlet has given her many offers of love and affection, which angers him. When she answerd in the affirmative, he lost his cool. “Affection, puh! You speak like a green girl unsifted in such perilous circumstance” (1.3, 117). Polonius mocked her relationship with Hamlet by telling her Hamlet only wanted one thing from her and when he’s got it, it’s over. “In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows, for they are brokers” (1.3, 135). Ophelia tried to tell her father that Hamlet’s love for her was genuine. “My Lord, he had importuned me with love in honourable fashion” (1.3, 116-117), “and hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven” (1.3, 119-121). In her mind, she’s already married to Hamlet, so why not conceive and bare his child? But it is really at the end of the play, where Ophelia’s insane raving cements the supposition that she’s is going to have Hamlet’s child. Ophelia sees her brother in the great hall, brings everyone flowers and sings a little ditty, “There’s rue for you, and here’s a rue for me; we may call it herb of grace o’Sundays. You (must) wear your rue with a difference” (4.5, 205-207). Although the herb plant carries one symbolic meaning of grace and regret, it is also carries the power of an abortifacient—abortion. “Herbal abortifacients tend to be mild poisons. The idea is that you poison yourself to the point where your body decides it’s too sick to support the growing embryo or fetus, and rejects it” (Epstein). Ophelia wouldn’t have chosen rue for herself if there wasn’t a reason for its properties to be used in her behalf.Let’s examine again the evidence. Laertes warned off his sister from the pitfalls of loving a person of higher station with the blood of youth running through his veins. Even in jest Polonius confirmed her pregnancy with terms like “pregnancy,” “conception,” and “delivered of” in his statements to/and about Hamlet. Hamlet dropped not-so-subtle hints to Polonius that he knew Polonius’s daughter was pregnant. Hamlet went back and forth, but in the end recoils at her betrayal, thus telling her to leave and get to a “nunnery.” But it is the plaintive, melancholy song which Ophelia sings that gave the final clue. The song acts as a confession to Gertrude and Claudius before Ophelia takes her rue and climbs down the bank of the river:

By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack and fie for shame,
Young men will do ‘t, if they come to ‘t;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quote she “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.”

He answers:

“So would I ‘a done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.”

He bedded me, he rejected me, I’m preggers, I’m history. In my opinion, Ophelia’s pregnancy is pivotal to the story. Hamlet’s confused inaction and impetuousness were a result of wrestling with that knowledge and of course, Ophelia’s madness. We see a woman who lived a fairy tale life then was commanded to reject her lover and the father of her child, and was then brutalized by said lover who just happened to murder her father, and now he’s been packed away on a ship bound for England. In her mind she does the only honorable thing she could think of—death by water. “…many in an Elizabethan audience would take this as a clear suggestion that she [Ophelia] was pregnant, since drowning was the preferred method of suicide for unmarried women who were pregnant” (Lady). Tis sad but true, our lady Ophelia was with child. “And I, of ladies most deject and wretched” (3.1, 169). So, as one person suggested, the next time Hamlet is staged, dress Ophelia in maternity clothes to save time and confusion.

Works Cited

Epstein, Alex. Crafty Screenwriting. Henry Hold and Company, LLC. New York, N.Y. 2002. 19 Feb 2011.

Lady, Lee. Hamlet and Ophelia. Hawaii.edu. 19 Feb. 2011.

Sekinger, Aleksandra. “Ophelia Commits Suicide Because She is Pregnant?” Suite101.com. 14 January 2010.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Hamlet Second Quatro. 1604.

RENT - The Musical - My Take

2010-11-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

Rent: A musical, mystical romp through the mind fields of homelessness,drug addiction, anti-American-establishment,Gay and Lesbian love, and HIV/AIDS

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace. (Pope)

If you parade something in front of people long enough, they will go through Alexander Pope’s famed cycle of acceptance. They will begin to believe the abnormal, socially abhorrent and once thought of abomination as okay. The stages of Broadway have had a long history of being a harbor “for social misfits, a refuge for those who never quite felt accepted by the masses” (broadway & aids). Michael Feingold, who is quoted on this website goes on to say, “it [Broadway] has been a tool to raise awareness about important issues and new ideas. Broadway has long been a place of refuge for the homosexual community, a place that judged people on their talent as performers, not on who they were as people or how they lived their lives” (Osborn, xvii). In this vein, Jonathan Larson wrote his “Rent.” Originally based on Puccini’s La Bohème, Larson kicks his play up a notch by incorporating the social hot buttons of American society in the 1980’s: Drug addictions, homelessness, kicking the establishment, squatter’s rights, homosexuality and HIV/AIDS. All are still sore subjects with the country. Larson used as skillfully as possible lush music, pithy verbal exchanges, highly charged and controversial sexual situations to portray these once unacceptable things as normal. It could be said that Larson’s design was to enlighten the country about the controversial plight of so many on society’s fringe. But I would suggest “Rent” is merely a means used by Larson to entertain with subject matter that titillates and shocks.In my opinion, the more something is sensationalized, taunted as abominable or condemned by some religious group, the more people are going to flock to it. It’s like coming upon a horrific fatal accident on the freeway. Don’t tell me you don’t slow down and look. I know you do. We all hope to see the gruesome gory details. Then speed away. Did “Rent” offer us a car wreck only to have us speed away after viewing the blood? Is it only art, like a painting to move us for a time and walk away from? Baca suggests “Rent” is only art. “’It’s an incredibly special piece of art,’ Pascal [the actor who played Mark] said. ‘Just like any other piece of media that stands the test of time’” (Baca). So “Rent” is art for art sake. Regardless of Larson’s supposed vision for changing the world, “Rent” only played to a specific audience. We can only wonder if Larson meant to reach only a minority of the population. If he was going to bring about social consciousness to mainstream America, maybe his message missed the mark—a bit. “Hair was the first show to really tap into the sensibility and musical tastes of a young generation…Rent, which has grossed more than $280 million on Broadway, helped by a fervent audience of kids, many of whom saw the show multiple times” (Zoglin). Thus the term RENT-heads. “Rent” was seen as poignant, lyrical, sad, and enlightening. But underneath it was entertaining.I’d heard stories about “Rent”, so when Tim and I sent to see the Moorpark College production, I was apprehensive. I didn’t want to like a play about gay and lesbian relationships. That’s all I’d heard about it. Thinking about Larson’s mind set, none of us can really know what his ultimate goal for “Rent” was. His father said of him in the forward of his book Rent that Jonathan “was eager to remake the American Musical and hungry for a career breakthrough” (Larson). He wanted to sing about social ills. He wanted recognition, triumph, . . . glory! “One song/Glory/One song/Before I go/Glory/One song to leave behind/find one song/One last refrain/Glory!” (Larson, One Song Glory scene). He chose to do Puccini’s La Bohème and made a modern remake. It was to be the “shock and awe” for the most heinous of 1990’s societal ills. In my opinion, he meant to entertain and excite. He died before it made its off-Broadway debut. Maybe his death is what sparked the rapt attention it might otherwise have not gotten. No one can tell for sure. One thing Larson knew was that American’s have fear. “From facing your failure, facing your loneliness/facing the fact you live a lie/Yes, you live a lie—tell you why/You’re always preaching not to be numb/when that’s how you thrive/you pretend to create and observe/when you really detach from feeling alive” (Larson, Goodbye Love scene). I have to admit something at this juncture. I was raised in the Mormon culture, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a little town in Northern Utah. I’ll wager good money, (gambling: something Mormon’s are advised not to do), that even a good Catholic school girl was not as naïve as I was. I was sheltered and preserved from perverse American society.So my first introduction to Gay and Lesbian Americans came in 1977 in a poetry class in College. Apropos? Perhaps. Our openly Lesbian teacher had an equally open fondness for a Gay male. I often wondered why they didn’t just get together; his woman to her man. But that’s an issue for another paper. Needless to say, I might have been considered a classic in-the-dark American stuck in the morally conservative dark-ages. I like to think I’ve “come a long way, baby”, but I still don’t “embrace” the lifestyle portrayed in “Rent.” So to say that “Rent” shocked me, I’d have to say yes, a little. Did it make me cry and hurt for the emotion grief? Yes.

If Larson was strictly going for the social awareness and changed attitudes within the entire American society, then he failed. I think he was trying to be like Mark [his fictional character/film maker] when he was filming the homeless woman. Her reply to his camera in her face was this: “Who the f*#@ do you think you are? I don’t need no goddamn help/from some bleeding heart cameraman/My life’s not for you to/Make a name for yourself on/Just trying to use me to kill his guilt” (Larson, “One The Street” scene). Was “Rent” Larson’s ticket or kick in society’s pants? Maybe he just made the ideas of others more palatable. There were so many others in the Broadway community before him who felt the need to sound the alarm without the use of musical theatre.

“The plague [AIDS] broke all the rules. Because it’s first victims in the U.S. were gay men, it immediately assumed Levitical proportions. AIDS raised the specter of sinful sex in a horrifically literal way. . . . But when it comes to addressing the epidemic as a collective trauma, no medium has been more effective than theater. What we remember most, among the scores of works about AIDS, are plays” (Goldstein). Great play writers wrote with stirring eloquence in the hopes that theater would be a source of “information, education, political agitation, mourning, scalding anger, insolent humor, catharsis and healing” (Winn). Some of the most dramatic plays included those that preceded Larson’s “Rent” are the following: William Hoffman’s “As If,” (1985); Terrence McNally’s “Love! Valour! Compassion!” (1994); Paula Vogel’s “The Baltimore Waltz,” (1995); and considered an unrivaled masterpiece of the AIDS era is Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” (1993). Each of these vital plays focused their visual recreations to draw people to the plight of others regardless of the theme. Though not set to music, these plays started the movement to draw attention to AIDS and other social ills and used their highly visible forum to speak out. “The forms and immediacy of the medium; the centuries-old potency of agit-prop; the almost sacramental power of live actors enacting stories of death, defiance and endurance all preordained it. The fact that a great number of people who worked in the theater were gay and at risk themselves only heightened those intrinsic qualities of the theater” (Winn).

So Jonathan Larson was not the first and certainly not the last with the desire to bring offensive and execrable behavior to the forefront of people’s minds. There was some speculation that a new production of Larry Kramer’s “The Normalizing Heart” might re-open because the movement has lost momentum. Winn in his article went on to say that “the epidemic would lose its symbolic power” (Winn). What better way to keep it forefront on people’s minds than shocking and titillating while entertaining with beautiful music, the sorrow and triumph of seemingly abnormal love affairs and the grief of a loved one’s death. Hence the twelve year run of “Rent” because people will “dive into work/drive the other way/that drip of hurt/ that pint of shame/goes away/just play the game/You’re living in America/At the end of the millennium” (Larson, What You Own scene).

“Mourning, privately or collectively, is a beginning of action” (Osborn, xiv). That’s what Broadway is hoping for—action. If we view something long enough our senses will weaken for good or ill, and we’ll eventually be moved to action. Whether the highly entertaining production of Jonathan Larson’s “Rent” hit the mark of raising social consciousness enough to move people to action, we can’t measure. Did he fill his audience’s minds with the plight of homelessness? Did he help people find a way to stop heroin addition? Did he garner more sympathy for the Gay and Lesbian community? Has he aided in the reduction of HIV/AIDS epidemic causes? What I came away with after seeing the production of “Rent” is a profound empathy for sufferers of all kinds of difficulties.Did the play give me the blinding desire to run out and walk in the AIDS marathon or contribute to AIDS research or kowtow to the requested “right” to marry by Gays and Lesbians? No. Did I cry when Angel died and Mimi came back to life? Of course. Who wouldn’t? Have I moved from enduring, to feeling pity for all these social ills to embracing and making them part of my life? Perhaps not. Am I completely closed off to these things because of the shock value of “Rent”? Absolutely not. We can only hope that some of the $280 million dollars that “Rent” earned in its twelve year run was spent on AIDS research, finding homes and jobs for the homeless, and opening drug clinics. Well we can dream, can’t we? And from Mark and Roger the hope for the future is that “for once the shadows gave way to light” (Larson, What You Own, scene). Then of course the last question is: Was I thoroughly and irrevocably entertained? You betcha.

Works Cited

Baca, Ricardo. “Impact of ‘Rent’ roars unchecked by time.” 5 Jun 2009. DenverPost.com. 17 Nov. 2010.

broadway & aids. Project for Gay and Lesbian Performance. 15 Nov. 2010.

Goldstein, Richard. “The Normalizing Heart; How AIDS Plays Have Changed Since Larry Kramer Raged.” The Village Voice. 13 Apr. 2004. 9 Nov. 2010.
Larson, Jonathan. Rent. New York, NY: Harper Entertainment. Harper Collins. 1997.

Osborn, M. Elizabeth. The Way We Live Now: American Plays and the Aids Crisis. 1990. Theatre Communications Group, Inc. New York. NY.

Pope, Alexander. “Essay on Man”. Epistle II: Of the Nature and State of Man, With Respect to Himself as an Individual. Section v. 1732. Transcribed by hand from “The Complete Poetical Words of Alexander Pope.” Student’s Cambridge Edition. 1903. Hougton Mifflin Company. Editor: H.W. Boynton. Theotherpages.org. 17 Nov. 2010.

Winn, Steven. “AIDS AT 25: How to respond to the devastating disease? Live theater—more than any other art—has asked the most profound questions.” 7 June 2006. SFGate.com. 7 Nov. 2010.

Zoglin, Richard. “Life After Rent.” 29 Feb. 2009. Time.com. 17 Nov. 2010.

Getting older--Where everything sorta bags, sags, wags or drags!

2010-08-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

Caution & qualifier: Sorry Fred. This piece is about me feeling sorry for myself. But hey! It's my blog so I can.

Some wise person said there are three stupid stages in our life: Teenage years where we have time and energy but no money; working age: when we have money and energy but no time and finally; old age: where we have time and money but no energy.

If someone would have told me that I could go from middle-aged to decrepit in one lousy year, I'd have bit their head off! But that's exactly what happened.

Before my surgery on August 1, 2009, I was happy, carefree, enjoying life, and exercising with gusto. I was also writing novels with verve and inspiration. I was losing weight and feeling great. When the stainless steel blade of the surgeon's scalpel pierced my soft, unwilling flesh, my life force, energy and commitment came whizzing out in one ominous gush of energy. Not only that, but my body changed in so many horrifying ways that I am loath to describe them.

But I will, of course. (Hence the blog, for goodness sake!)

Long before my medical concerns appeared, the one feature on my body that I could automatically count on being the best was my legs. I took great pride in my legs.
Though they have always been short, they were at times shapely and free from bumps, bruises and blotches. But after the surgery and the dreaded development of debilitating blood clots, all of sudden I have tiny spider-like veins snaking their way across my feet and ankles. Dark red blotches where blood has obviously pooled mar my once perfectly clear skin and knots. I have a larger knot where a large vein now protrudes and any time I'm bumped or bitten by a predatory beast, instead of a cute little red dot, I have an enormous blood pool just below the surface of my skin which lasts for weeks instead of mere days. What's up with that?!

Another thing that really sends my up a wall is my arms.When did all the skin I had around the muscle of my arm decided to head south and now drip off my arms like turkey waddle? And when I get injured, instead of having a discreet cut or blemish, the miserable injury gets this awful blood blister just beneath the top layer of skin and spreads out like a map of Africa--add to that dark purple and black spots and I look like I've been beaten with a baseball bat. I didn't sign up for this.

Lets not forget what a lack of exercise can do to one's body after surgery. The effect is appalling and disgusting. Muscles turn to jelly, strength fails alarmingly and commitment--well my commitment to my weight-loss journey became a thing of the past. Added to that was the swelling of tissues because of the blood clot caused during surgery and you have one big ugly mess. (Are you appalled yet?)

Let us not forget about the joints--not that my joints would let me forget about them. While sleeping six months on my back, (I'll talk about that later, or not), when I was finally able to return to sleeping on my sides, my shoulders rebelled. No longer were they able to hold my body weight and I strained both shoulders which meant months of chiropractic visits. Sometimes at night I would wake up and both arms would be dead wood. How is the possible seeing that I was sleeping on only one arm at a time. There's just something so wrong about that. Luckily, the chiropractic care relieved some of that. But not all.

Let me talk a minute about canes, walkers and wheel chairs. Marvelous inventions until you have to avail yourself of them with limited strength in your legs. Then its rather humiliating to admit your too old and feeble to walk by yourself without assistance. Where are my carefree, effervescent simi-youthful days when I could skip and hop and jump my way through the life? Long gone, all of them. No more buoyant, jaunty steps for me. No sir. Just heavy, plodding, uneven steps that cause pain with every agonizing planting of my feet.And that's another thing. I had been suffering for a while with the usual pains of old age, when another enervating pain assailed me. This paralyzing pain is related to diabetes and sciatic problems. Combined together, the pain was draining. But right after surgery I thought the pain had abated. Unfortunately, when I was taken off my surgery meds of Vicodon and my beloved pain patch of Fentanyl, the miserable, grinding pain came back with a vengeance. Give me back my drugs!

Drugs! There's a paradox for you. Some people take drugs to escape, lose their minds in pleasurable euphoria. I, on the other hand, can't abide the sense of losing control that being on drugs causes me. Try a combination of Fentenyl and Codine and you have a laser light show in your brain. Not my idea of a good time. Before the surgery, I had all but thrown off my dependence on drugs. After, I couldn't control my blood pressure so my life is once again governed by the used of man-made drugs that have tremendous side effects. Not the least of these is weight gain.

Ah, weight gain. Did I mention that having blood clots in both legs caused me to gain 20 pounds in one week! No. I guess not. But there it is. What was a fantastic year of losing weight in 2008 was followed by a year of gaining a lot of it back again. I had no idea that cutting open one's body would cause a loss of motivation and drive. Maybe not for some, but it did for me. You can't lay on your back for several months and deal with the lasting effects of surgery and not lose something of yourself in the process.
It's like having the crank the old handle of a Model T. Unfortunately, the old motor just isn't going to kick over anymore and definitely not in the same way. I'm worn out, my energy reserves are drained, I can't find the motivation, the spark to kick start my life. Where's Nike when you need them? "Just Do It!"There are other complications that no one tells you about that are associated with surgery. Those are financial. But for this discussion, I'm not going to address them. Suffice it to say, the financial worry can be as devastating as the physical worry of getting older. The idea that one must continuing working in the outside world probably until death instead of retirement, does fill one's heart with aching dread. But that's a discussion for another time.

So yes Fred, this had been about me and my suffering. And people would say complaining has no place. But I find it cathartic. Writing out my feelings often facilitates recovery. It helps to unburden the soul and free the mind. Life is not about feeling good all the time. Who wants that *cough* *cough* *Mike*. It's not possible to achieve Nirvana in this life time. Thank God! Who wants Nirvana anyway? Who wants all that "enduring, transcendental happiness" anyway? Yeah! I do!

So to end this lament about old age, I just want to say that it's not for the faint of heart. It's not for cowards. It's not for weaklings. I take a person with strength of character to endure the pains and trials of getting older. My father will be 92 this year and what a strong character he is. Of course, he can't chew or hear and he's losing his memory, but he's got such a great spirit about him. He's always happy and cheerful. And "that's what it's all about Charley Brown." Learning to be happy through the pain, cheerful through the exhaustion and inconvenience of the age. I'm just having a little trouble. It all happened overnight for me. I wasn't prepared to have old age slap me in the face quite so soon. I was waiting for 80 or 90 to feel old. Physically that's how old I feel. Mentally I still feel like I'm eighteen.But take heart, all is not lost. Things are looking up. I'm back in the gym, I'm striving harder to write my feelings and working on book number six. I'm trying really hard to watch my food, not only the quantity but the quality. Improvement may be slower at this age, but not impossible. Today I'm actually going to talk to a therapist about my feelings of being yanked kicking and screaming into old age. Who knows? Maybe it will help. Prayer helps as well. What do you think? Can I pray that being fifty is the new thirty five?

Perfectibility—Possible among the Puritans

2010-05-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

Christ taught: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as you Father which is in heaven is perfect” (The Holy Bible: New Testament, Matthew, 5:45). But Christ knew perfection on earth was not attainable for man without Him. However, the Puritan society dwelt falsely under the experimental premise that societal and spiritual perfectibility was possible. It was even mandated. But they especially misunderstood the Savior’s comment to the hypocritical Pharisees when they brought the woman caught in adultery before him and he told them, “he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (New Testament, John 8:7). In Puritan society, everyone who appeared strange, did strange things or transgressed their godly laws would have found themselves buried beneath a pile of stones. This delusional infatuation with perfection is best illustrated by a statement issued by an early colonist Kenneth Lockridge, in New England, when he decreed that Puritan Societies ought to be perfect. His explanation of the Puritan experiment was found in a book by Francis J Bremer:

Christian Utopian Closed Corporate Communities:
Christian because they saw Christian love as the force which would most completely unite their community. Utopian because theirs was a highly conscious attempt to build the most perfect possible community, as perfectly united, perfectly at peace, and perfectly ordered as man could arrange. Closed because its membership was selected which outsiders were treated with suspicion or rejected altogether and Corporate because the commune demanded the loyalty of its members, offering in exchange privileges which could be obtained only through membership not the least of which was peace and order. (Bremer 103)

Knowing the Puritan obsession with perfection, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrayed the Puritans of The Scarlet Letter in just that way—obsessed. He played up their hypocritical and false premise. Hawthorne emphasized that law and religion were inseparably connected in their community. Fanatically so. The colony worked under regulation, “that the legally mandated penalty for adultery . . . was death. . . . Nevertheless, adulterers were, at the very least, beaten, branded, imprisoned, fined, and banished . . . " (Johnson p. 79). Central to the story of The Scarlet Letter is the sin and crime of adultery. The story follows as one of the offenders was taken, charged and punished while the other hid his sin under the guise of godliness. It is under this assertion that Hawthorne dangles the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale as a clear demonstration that moral and societal perfectibility was not possible.

Hawthorne chose Dimmesdale as a paradox between the perfect saint and the perfect sinner. He, Dimmesdale was seen as attaining some type of saintly godhood by his parishioners. This is a notion the reverend did not discourage, though it was said of him by Hawthorne, “it is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him” (Hawthorne, Chapter II, p 133). He could have confessed. But no. It was much more self-atoning to endure silent suffering. But that didn’t stop the love fest. Referring to the pious young priest, a townsman told Chillingworth at the pillory punishment of Hester Prynne, “‘she hath raised a great scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale’s church’” (56). Single women of his church gang went ga-ga over the seemingly unspotted Dimmesdale. The “virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar” (133). Were they offering their bosoms to him? As if! And the elder members of his congregation not to be out done believed thought Dimmesdale, “would go heavenward before them,” so much so that they wanted their kids to bury them “close to the young pastor’s holy grave” (133). Delusions of perfection! Even the famous godly man himself, the reverend John Wilson refers to Dimmesdale’s perfectibility when he said, “‘I have sought, I say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of heaven . . . ” (60).

What Dimmesdale offered the world was a perfect veneer while underneath he hid a perfect lie—a “black secret.” He tried to go straight. On one or more occasions, the young minister rose to the pulpit with the intent to confess his adulterous sin. Yes, he confessed alright. He confessed—but only to being a “vile sinner, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners” (134)—so generic, so theatric. He didn’t confess to adultery. He would draw in that “tremulous breath,” and end up appearing more sublime, more perfect. Then his beguiled sheep would reverence him even more. “The godly youth!” said they among themselves. “The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!” (134). The Puritans saw points of perfection in others and not in themselves. But Hawthorne stirred the pot with Dimmesdale’s almost confession. “The minister well knew—subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!—the light in which his vague confession would be viewed” (135). Not only did he not confess to his guilt, but he compounded the sin by self-deception. Maybe that was his goal to appear in the eyes of his followers as the perfect confessor! And “they deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness" (133). At the close of Dimmesdale’s life he delivers a stirring speech exhorting the people to live correctly.Afterwards, the combined townspeople actually thought they saw “a halo in the air about his head[.] So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of the earth?” (235). Oh, come on!

There was another who kept the pastor’s guilty secret; a person who hid the seeming sublime person of the clergyman from public view. One may ask why. Love is the answer. Love is the very emotion that elevates the recipient to the lofty level of perfection in the eyes of the one who loves. Hester Prynne loved Arthur Dimmesdale. She loved him so much that she kept his identity and seeming perfection in the eyes of his parishioners hidden. This fact is attested to when she was confronted on the scaffold and asked to reveal her partner in sin. As she replied, she looked deeply into Dimmesdale’s eyes and referred to the reviled symbol she was forced to wear on her bosom, “it is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine!” (63). There is no greater sacrifice for love than what Hester did. She offered to take on his sin knowing that if he were to be punished along with her, he would lose his spotless, godly reputation before his followers. Hester offered a perfect sacrifice to maintain his spiritual purity. This she did because of love. She tells Dimmesdale in the woods, “your sin is left behind you, . . . Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works?” (180). She still sees the good, the embodiment of saintliness in him and he was “still so passionately loved!” (182).

But Dimmesdale wasn’t worthy of the self-sacrificing love of a good woman, or of the child they bore. So many times Dimmesdale had the opportunity to pronounce his fatherhood of Pearl, to admit she was his crime and his sin—his daughter. But he refused. So the saintly, godly minister of the practically perfect Puritans was anything but. Pearl wanted him to be complete, (another meaning of perfection), and to acknowledge her and her mother. “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?” She inquired of her father. But Dimmesdale replies, “nay; not so, my little Pearl, . . .” (142). He didn’t have the courage or the moral fiber to admit his mistake for fear of public outcry and public humility.Dimmesdale wanted to keep up the appearance of holiness solely for the purposes of selfishness. Once again towards the end of the story when Arthur and Hester meet and confess their love and hopes for a bright future together, one mixed with love, Pearl asks again, “‘Doth he love us? Said, Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother’s face. ‘Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?’” (200). Pearl knew instinctively that the clergyman should have demonstrated a singular perfect love for them, but because of the fear of looking less than faultless, he never did where it counted for good.

Into the mix Hawthorne throws Hester’s husband, Roger ChillingworthAs the story progresses and Chillingworth’s obsession to find Hester’s partner in crime consumes him, he sees through the good reverend’s untainted guise. This gives the reader another hint at Hawthorne’s scorn of perfectibility. Chillingworth saw something in the unblemished purity of the clergyman that did not ring true. Hawthorne hit the perfect nail on the head with this quote:

These men deceive themselves, . . . They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's service—these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better—can be more for God's glory, or man's welfare—than God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves! (123-124).

The reverend brushes it away with subtle reasoning. "‘There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed’” (122). The reverend doesn’t believe confession is for him. He would rather wait for the bar of judgment. If perfection was the goal of the Puritans, Hawthorne painted them as having missed the mark. He did this cleverly by categorizing the hypocritical and false perfection of the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale. And in the end, what is left appears like the surface of the perfectly calm sea while underneath it is a seething hot bed of sin and un-repented guilt. Hawthorne revealed Dimmesdale’s preference to suffer when he said: “it avail him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it; between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining a hypocrite. . .” (189).

It should have been so easy to repent. But Dimmesdale deluded himself into thinking he was equal to the Savior. Instead of allowing the Savior’s atoning sacrifice to work in his behalf, Dimmesdale took upon himself the suffering for his own sins—which is not possible. All he had to do was offer a broken heart and a contrite spirit and the Savior’s atonement makes up the difference and takes away the sin. It’s in the Bible. They should have believed--he should have known. There was no need for him to beat himself up—literally and figuratively. His inability to confess was reprehensible. The delusions of grandeur his parishioners held for him was laughable. The cowardice he displayed by not standing with Hester and his child was abominable and even when Chillingworth pegged him for what he was, he did not climb down from the lofty godly tower and admit his guilt. What he did was deny his Savior’s sacrifice all in the name of appearing to be perfect. He could have found peace and freedom. He could have been loved. He could have come home to the arms of his lover and his child. He could have been freed from sin and recrimination by openly confessing. But he let selfishness, pride and hypocrisy rule his existence and finally died, not a perfect man, but a broken man. "Poor, miserable man!" (138).

In J. I. Packer’s book, A Quest for Godliness: The Reverend White said: “come, dear souls, in all your rags; come, thou poor man; come, thou poor distressed woman; you, who think God will never forgive you, and that your sins are too great to be forgiven: come, thou doubting creature, who are afraid thou wilt never get comfort; arise, take comfort, the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . calls for you . . ." (Packer, p. 160). "God will forgive; that's his job. . ." (Packer, p. 206). Dimmesdale should have sought the sublime cleansing that comes from repentance. But he did not—not completely. In the end, Hawthorne confesses through Dimmesdale’s admission that he and his society were anything but perfect. It could be said of any of the Puritans: “I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!” (134). “Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self!" (135).

Works Cited

Bremer, Francis J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society for Bradford to Edwards. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. 1995.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Boston: 1850. Re-published by Barnes & Nobel Books. New York: 2003.

Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding the Scarlet Letter: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1995.

Packer, J. I. A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 1990.

The Holy Bible: New Testament. King James Version. Salt Lake City, Utah: Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1979.

D. U. I.

2010-04-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

Below is a new chapter from my new book. The character Jacob is a lawyer in Utah Valley, Utah and he has just married a wonderful woman, Carly who is an author of Young Adult Romance books. However, Carly comes to the marriage with two sons, the youngest, Dylan is a bit wild and gets into some trouble after moving in with Jacob and Carly. Jacob is forced to deal with Dylan's D.U.I. ***Copyright by Carol Anne Malone***

(This gorgeous hunk on the left is my vision of Jacob who is actually 'Matt Bomer'. Cute isn't he?)

It was the usual disgusting scene in the courthouse drunk tank. Five sullied masses of humanity huddled together amidst the pungent, rank smells of alcohol, urine and vomit. The repulsive, noxious smells were enough to turn Jacob’s stomach. Among the usual drunk and disorderly Jacob saw Dylan. His arms hung loose at his sides, his eyes were closed, and he looked like hell. He was slumped back against the cell wall; his long, shaggy hair was smashed to the side of his face and looked like he hadn’t washed it in a week. He was wearing a death metal shirt that had a brutal image of the dying Christ on it, his head encased with the bloody thorny crown and sculls peaking out from under his long scraggly beard. The image was vulgar and extremely offensive. Dylan’s jeans were caked with something that looked like he hadn’t quite made the toilet to vomit and he was bare footed.Sometimes the jailers often took away inmates shoes when booking them especially those that might be considered suicide risks. Jacob wanted to walk away and keep on walking, but then the image of Carly’s sweet face invaded his thoughts. He couldn’t let see her youngest son like this. He could spare her that image.

The jailer approached. “You find him?”

Jacob took a deep breath between his teeth. “Yeah, he’s that one with the black t-shirt.”

“Sorry,” the officer whispered.

“Yeah, me too.”

After the cell was unlocked and Dylan roused from his drunken, drug induced stupor, Jacob had to fairly drag him out the cell door to the front desk.

“Hey, man,” Dylan slurred. “How’s s'it goin’ Jacob?”

Jacob propped him up against the counter, his hands not wanting to touch the sodden, putrid smelling clothing. “Just be quiet while I get your things and sign you out.”

“You…you can’t talk to me that way.”

“Watch me,” Jacob ordered, those brilliant eyes flashing angrily.

Even stoned, Dylan knew enough not to push Jacob too far.

After Jacob received the arrest papers and Dylan’s trial date, he pulled the kid out the main door.

“Hey, no rough stuff. I’ve had a h-hard night.”

Just as they stepped outside the courthouse, Jacob grabbed Dylan by the shirt collar, dragging him up on his toes and slamming him back against the courthouse wall. Dylan’s breath could have lit the Las Vegas Strip, let alone most breathalyzers. "Look, you worthless, contemptible snot, I'm not here as your parent. I'm an officer of the court and a lawyer who knows what a deep mess you've put yourself in because of your stupid, smart mouth and your addictions and recklessness. Whether you realize it or not, you are in some serious stuff..."

"Don't get all righteous on me," Dylan flashed and swayed a bit his head throbbed off his shoulders.

"Shut up and listen to me or I'll take you back inside and have you placed in custody again."

"You can't do that."

"The hell I can't. My brother is a County Judge and my brother-in-law is a Superior Court Judge. I can do anything I damn well please. It would do you a world of good to leave your butt sitting in jail for a while."

"Yeah, that'd make my mother real happy."

Jacob pulled the kid’s face closer to his and regretted the rank smell. "What would you know about making your mother happy, you selfish punk. You've done nothing but hurt and disappointed your mother for years. I couldn't even bring myself to tell her about your latest fiasco and subsequent arrest because of the physical pain that it will cause her. Luckily for you, you ungrateful, miserable wretch, she doesn't know anything about this--now." Jacob took a breath. It was hard to catch any clean air being this close to Dylan. "Do you know how close you came to being put away permanently?If you would have hit that young family instead of the light standard, you'd be facing a criminal homicide charges right about now and facing hard time at Point of the Mountain instead of standing free. But that's where I think you might just belong."

"Go ahead. Send me there."

Jacob's eyes flashed hot and fiery. "Don't tempt me. And don't try your manipulative crap on me. It won't work. I've seen too many people like you. Sorry messes that creep time and time back into the bottle or to pills to escape reality then let others clean up their mess. Not this time, Dylan. You're on your own."

"Go to hell."

"I just might for what I'm thinking about doing to you. But then your mother would be devasted and I love her enough to spare her that pain."

"My mom’s pretty hot. I know you only married her to get some."

The slap snapped Dylan's head back sharply and the sharp crack reverberated off the building. When he swung his head back to face Jacob, his eyes mirrored the surprise at the jarring shock.

Jacob stepped back, placed his hands at his side and forced his breathing to slow as two uniformed officers approached.

"Any problems, Counselor?" The officer smiled at Jacob, but his fresh-from-the academy partner looked nervous and concerned.

"It’s okay, Matt. I got this."

Officer Matt Davidson had been a long time friend of Jacob's and a member of his stake. Besides that, he'd appeared numerous times as a witness against some of Jacob’s clients. They were familiar with one another and had mutual respect for the law and each other. "Do you need us to help you rough him up some more?"

"No, Matt. My client and I are just having a bit of a disagreement."

"Alright. Carry on."

When the two officers began to walk away, Dylan cried out, "You're not going to leave me out here with him, are you?"

The officers looked over at the obviously drunk or stoned boy, with the unruly, shaggy hair, wearing a disgusting heavy metal t-shirt and mangled jeans and laughed. "Looks like you're in good hands to us, boy." Then they disappeared inside the court house.

"Nobody's coming to your rescue this time Dylan. You're on your own and the way I see it, you have several choices."

Dylan rubbed his sore jaw and raw and aching cheek. Man! That guy could hit. "Yeah. And?"

"Number one: I check you into a rehab, today..."

"Not gonna happen."

"Okay. Option two: you check yourself into a rehab today."

Dylan laughed, but when Jacob's eyes burned into his, he quit.

"I know several programs that teach job skills after you detoxed and get straight. Not doing anything is NOT an option. And, the car is mine."

"The hell it is," Dylan shouted. "You have no right to take my car."

"You didn't pay for it, did you?"

Dylan's defiant eyes jerked to the ground. "No."

"Who did?"

Dylan hesitated.

"Who paid for your car and who buys your insurance and who suffers for your stupidity?"

Jacob grabbed Dylan by the shirt front again and jerked him around to face him. "Who?"

"My mom! Okay. She bought my car after dad...after my old man passed away and she pays my insurance because the car isn't in my name."

"Alight Dylan. This is how this is going to play out. You have the rest of the day to decide. I'm even going to give you one more option. And I'm being very generous with this one. You will go through several days of intense detox and can get yourself clean,” he went on quickly when Dylan started to sputter a refusal. “But you will remain in my custody. After that you will be with me every moment of the day and spend the nights in a program home. You will not go out with friends. You won’t even be allowed to talk to your friends as the cell phone is mine as well. You will not be allowed drugs or alcohol, period. You will work for me in my office so that I can keep an eye on you. Now, you may take option one or two you may do nothing. I'll have my paralegal pick up your car from impound and take it to our house where it will stay until you can earn it back or make enough money to buy your own car."
(Rehab now or this later!)

"Maybe I'll just kill myself and end everyone's problems."

Jacob's eyes flashed hotly, but he controlled his rising temper, barely. "That's your choice, Dylan. But I'm telling you right now, your problems will not end with death. They’ll only escalate. What you screw up here will rise with you in the next life."

"Humph,"

"So testified Sherem and many others. But as God is my witness and I know a thing or two about witnesses and how that whole things works, you will answer for your problems in the next life and believe me when I say that that judge will not be very lenient. If you really are that selfish, that stupid to take the permanent solution to a very temporary problem, then I suggest you make that choice, but remember that it will probably put your mother in the grave as well. You think about that for a moment, you selfish moron. Think about someone besides yourself for once in your pitiful life.

When Dylan opened his mouth, Jacob shocked him to silence him. "Next, you will follow all the rules. I will not use my influence to get you a lighter sentence. I will however, stand as your lawyer and whatever sentence is handed down, you will abide by it."

"But..." Dylan sobbed. "What if I'm sentenced to do time?"

"Then you'll do time. More than likely you'll probably get a suspended sentence with probation and community service because this is your first screw up in the state of Utah and nobody was hurt in the accident. And what will really help is if you’re already enrolled in a qualified detox program and getting job training. That will go a long ways to swaying the judge’s sentencing, but if you screw that up, I can't help you anymore." (Dylan, as a drunk.)

The effects of the fifth of Smirnoff and the multiple valium pills were beginning to wear off and the depth of the consequences of his actions were beginning to slam into Dylan's stupefied brain. "Oh, God what have I done. I'm scum, I'm lower than scum. I don't deserve to live. I'm so damned stupid. I let myself be talked into doing some Valium and some vodka then driving. I can't believe I did that. What's wrong with me?"

Though Dylan might have sounded contrite, Jacob recognized and understood that under those very convincing statements the kid had mastered manipulating strategies. He’d seen them so many times before and he wasn't drawn in by them. Dylan must be a master at pulling Carly's strings. Well no more. "Dylan, I'm not your father, but I know exactly what he'd tell you if he were alive. He'd say it was time for you to 'man up', to face your problems and take the steps to overcome them. You've had too many warnings and this time it must stick or there will be no help in the future."

Dylan jerked away from Jacob. "You don't know anything about my father. He was never...he left...he died...oh, God." Dylan broke down and would have fallen to the sidewalk had Jacob not supported his weight. He managed to drag Dylan to a bench just outside the court house and kept his arm around him until he could push him down on the bench. For some reason, this act didn't seem like an act and perhaps this was the crux of the problem. There had been no man in Carly's life to back her up, no one to stand strong when the boy needed a firm hand. But from what Carly had told him the boy's relationship with his father, there had always been a strain there.

Now it seemed Jacob had slipped from the role of law enforcer to physiological counselor. "What did he not do, Dylan?"

"You w-wouldn't . . . understand," he chocked. "You've got the perfect family."

Jacob chuckled. He'd never thought of his hardheaded brothers and sisters and boisterous, opinionated parents as perfect. He had to smile. Perhaps to the outside world they were exactly that. Perfect. There trials and problems weren't the kind that would cause serious harm or malice to another. They were just stubborn and willful and Jacob loved them all.

"No, they're not perfect, perhaps just different. So tell me."

Dylan rubbed dirty hands across his face, embarrassed as having shown weakness. "Hey, don't sweat it, The old man's gone so no biggy."

"It is a big deal Dylan. He left when you were very young. He left without warning and without coming back for you. He didn't even give you the courtesy of waiting until you could apologize to him, did he? He died when you were eighteen, right?"

"Yeah, right. Don't mean nuthin'."

"Yes, it does. To you it means everything. You were angry at him for leaving and for deserting you and your mother. You saw your brother as not caring one way or another or just couldn't understand why he wasn't more upset like you. Am I right?"

Dylan blinked away tears from his eyes and wiped his nose on his grimy sleeve. "You a psychologist now?"

"When I have to be."

"Yeah, I admit I was pissed when my old man...er...my dad passed away. I wasn't finished being mad at him and then he got so sick and I couldn't do nothin' for him but watch him suffer and then h-he was gone,” he blubbered. “Why would God do that to me?"

"He didn't just do it, as you say, to you. He also took your father from your mother. Did you ever stop to see how that must have affected her? How did she deal with that tragic loss, the separation from the man," Jacob stopped, swallowed hard before continuing, that jealous pain twisting in his gut. "The man your mother loved with her whole heart?"

Dylan looked down at his filthy hands which he twisted in his lap. "No. I never thought...or considered mom. She seemed so strong."

"She was being strong for you and your brother. She had to be. If she let down and let lose, there would be no way she could have held it together. You and your brother are the reasons she went on. Didn't you ever once stop to think about your mother in all of this? Not once?"(What could have happened.)

Shamed to the core, Dylan closed his eyes and took deep breaths. He'd never thought of anyone but himself. Of getting high, loaded, looped and bailing out of society—that was his only goal, to forget it all by escaping into, as Jacob said, a bottle or a mess of pills. It was so easy and so available and his friends, hah, his friends, they had been so willing to give him pills, weed, hash, coke, meth and now where were they? Now that he was taking the wrap for drinking and driving and drugs and his mother would cry. He couldn't stand to see his mother cry. "I guess not."

"Well it's time you did."

"I don't know how to start doing anything good."

"You'll figure it out or you'll spend the rest of your miserable life in jail. It's in your hands now, Dylan. It's your time to become a man. I admit up front that this will not be easy and it may take many years for you to free yourself from this bondage you've put yourself under. But I know it will be worth it. You're mother needs you, Dylan. She needs you sober and she needs you alive. But that choice is up to you."

Dylan shuffled to his feet. He was still wearing the lousy shoes the cops handed him. He didn’t know where his were. They probably took them off his feet so he wouldn’t kill himself with his own shoelaces. "But I don't know how to change."

"You'll figure that out too. Come on. Let's get you cleaned up."

Dylan looked up at Jacob with hope in his eyes. "You're letting me come home?"

"Until you're cleaned up, then you'll have to decide which of the three options you're going to go with. Or you can choose door number four, but that’s up to you. And as of right now, you're mine."

***Copyright - - Property of Carol Anne Malone***

My talk on Valentine's Day

2010-02-18T08:58:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine’s Day my brothers and sisters. There’s still time to go out and find your valentine and give them your heart. I’ve had particularly burdensome week this past week. Wednesday night, Brother Malone and I had to make a presentation to our Early American Lit class at Moorpark. I can’t tell you how nervous I was to stand before a class of confused, wary and extremely cynical young people to talk about one of our country’s founding fathers, the great, Benjamin Franklin.

I have to testify to you that it is a miracle for us as Latter-day Saints to have the light and knowledge of the gospel in our lives. In spite of the fallibilities of these men, God choose them to be on the earth at a critical time in our nation’s history.

It amazes me to watch the progression of history from Columbus to Franklin in regards to the desire and thirst of so many for religious freedom. They wanted to believe in God as they felt in their hearts rather than having an old, flawed religion forced on them. But the youth in our class see this as an opportunity to criticize and vilify the founding fathers and our nation.

Sometimes I just want to stand up in class and scream: get over yourselves already. The Lord directed these men and women to come and settle this country. There had to be a place and a social attitude of religious fervor for the gospel to be re-introduced to a starving world.

It’s hard to watch these bright, intelligent and searching souls in our class struggle with the limited knowledge they have of the Lord’s plan for America. They just don’t have the understanding or spiritual knowledge to recognize the Lord’s tender mercies to the people of early America.

As we look at the nation and the things that are happening all around us today, it’s not hard to become bitter and cynical. It takes a real concerted effort and timely practice to recognize the Lord’s blessings and mercies to us in our own lives.

That’s the thought I’d like you to keep in mind as I tell you how Brother Malone and I met. I want you to look into your own lives and search out those moments when you felt the Lord’s tender mercies and intimate blessings. If you’re like me, you may have to look hard, not because the blessings aren’t there, but because we don’t always recognize them for what they are.

I’d like to say that Brother Malone and I are probably one of the few married couples in the Stake that DIDN’T meet at BYU. Our lives were on very different paths before we met. It always amazes me that some many things had to click into place before Brother Malone, Tim and I found each other. It wasn’t a smooth road to true love. Believe me.

I was born in Logan, Utah in the LDS hospital that once resided across the street from the Logan Temple. I was born into a very, very long line of Mormon ancestors. I have ancestors who helped build up Nauvoo and European folks who walked the plains of this great nation in search of religious freedom to settle in Utah.

A couple of years later, Tim was born in sunny Covina, California to parents of a different faith and ideology.

His father came from humble farmers in Oklahoma who were unassuming and sincere Christians. His mother came from a long line of preachers of a different faith.

While I grew up in North Logan, I did the usual Mormon stuff: mid-week Primary and Junior Sunday School and attended sacrament meeting with my family. But so did everyone else in the entire community. Nobody was different. I lived a simple, uncomplicated and idyllic country life.

As Tim grew up in a big city setting, his family attended various churches with his mother in search of something that would satisfy her intellectual concepts of religion and her spiritual desire for the original gospel of Jesus Christ.

I grew up on a chicken ranch where my father raised and slaughtered chickensfor markets and restaurants all over the Western States. My mother kept my dad’s company’s books and raised me and my four older brothers.

Tim’s father was a former Navy cook and worked as a butcher in grocery stores in the city where they lived and his mother was a school teacher and raised Tim and his older brother and four older sisters.

We were both the babies of the family. Teased to the point of misery but spoiled rotten. Now that might not mean anything to you, but if you study family dynamics, that meant both of us were used to having someone else take care of us. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse in our relationship.

While I was being taught the gospel truths of my ancestors, Tim’s mother was being introduced to the gospel by the principal at her school. When Tim was five, his family joined the church and became members of the Covina First Ward. When he was six, his family went to the temple and was sealed together as an eternal family. This was one of the most magnificent blessings of Tim’s young life.

My joy on the other hand, was having parents who’d been taught as young people the joy of marrying in the temple before having a family. I was born under the covenant my parents made to each other. I reaped those marvelous blessings in my early years.

Through financial disaster and the bottom dropping out of the chicken business in Utah, my family lost everything and we were forced to leave Utah to seek employment in Southern California. At the time, I didn’t consider this much of a blessing. Only later when I could look back on the incident with opened eyes did I see the hand of the Lord directing my parents.

We moved a couple of times and finally settled in Covina and attended the Covina Second ward.
After becoming a member of the church, Tim grew up enjoying the blessing of his family’s new found church. He experienced Primary, Sunday School, scouting and attended sacrament with his family.

It’s always fascinates me that we lived in the same stake, probably attended the same youth activities and never knew each other. I was a good friend of his older sister when we began in the Young Adult program.

At that time, there were no young adult wards only those at BYU and other colleges. I was first introduced to the young adult program on a ward basis as a newly graduated senior. I loved it. My bishop called me to be the ward Rep for the program and I launched a personal campaign to search for the perfect man to marry.

At the same time, Tim finished up high school and headed off to Ricks College. (Now BYU Idaho.)

I have to qualify something about myself. I was a terribly shy, vulnerable young woman who had the unfortunate characteristic of wearing my heart on my sleeve and falling head over heels with any young man that even looked in my direction. And if they spoke to me, well, I was a goner.

Tim dated at Ricks. I only dreamed about dating—everyone I saw.

When Tim came back to Covina to plan for his mission, I was heavily into my education, institute, young adult activities and trapping a man. Partly because of Mormon folk lore, I felt if I reached the ripe old age of twenty one and wasn’t married, something was horribly wrong with me. How ridiculous.

Around this time, the young adults of our stake met as a group every other week for religious instruction. I had the blessing and fortune to be attending the college where Brother Gerald N. Lund, the author of the Work and the Glory series of books was my institute director. He also taught the bi-weekly young adult lessons. His gospel instruction was something I count as one of my greatest blessings from the Lord.

This was the first time I remember seeing and meeting Tim Malone. He came to one of those classes with his older sister. My first thought was, holy cow, how immature. What a nerd. (Sorry dear!)

Just a side comment here sisters. When you look around, take a second look at the younger guys. Don’t discount them because they seem immature and juvenile at the present time. (No offense guys.) They will eventually lose their immaturity and could prove quite fascinating. Don’t over look them as you search for the perfect companion. Besides, like I figured, you’ll need someone younger to take care of you in your old age.

Needless to say, my first impression of Tim wasn’t a good one. Thank the Lord we can change our minds.

Then out of pure luck or the Lord’s inspiration, Tim’s parents bought a home in my ward. Tim went on his mission and I finished college and went to work. Now that I was getting up in years I started to panic thinking I might never meet the man of my dreams.

When Tim returned from his mission to Central America,he started attending the same college I graduated from and began his career as a techno nerd. My best friend was now the Young Adult Ward Rep and Tim’s best friend was male rep.

We were thrown together in the same ward doing the same activities and attending the same meetings—but there was still no attraction, no recognition. Tim was flat out obsessed with my best friend. I thought, “she can have him!”

After I graduated from college and worked for a few years, my astute and wise bishop called all the un-married young women of my ward into his office and challenged us to go on a mission. My first thought was “good grief, I’ve just entered the un-married woman “flux vortex” and now my worst nightmares were confirmed. I would probably never marry. I didn’t have a lot of faith.

However, I was the only one out of ten young ladies that answered the bishop’s call and went and served a mission to Zion—NO, not Utah. I served in the Missouri Independence Mission. I walked on the same sacred ground where Adam walked and talked with Heavenly Father and the Savior. I stood where Joseph Smith had dedicated the temple ground and the holy spot where Christ will return to usher in the millennium.

I also stood in the place of Joseph’s greatest torment, suffering and instruction, the Liberty Jail, where he received revelation and blessings from the Lord and by so doing, blessed the lives of the early saints even though they suffered unspeakable hardships. It’s an experience I shall not ever forget and a blessing of immeasurable greatness.

What I didn’t recognize at that time, was the Lord’s hand in my life—his tender mercies in my behalf. That proved to be a very big mistake on my part.

Because my mission honed and refined my testimony of gospel truths and gave me insights into my character which helped me define what I really wanted out of life.

But being the character that I was, I fell just a little bit in love with every cute little elder I met.

In my last area, I fell a lot in love with a Lieutenant in the Air Force in Omaha and didn’t want to come home when I was released.

Tim moved from job to job while I was gone on my mission and when his parents retired and moved away to Utah, Tim bought their home. For an Elder’s quorum assignment, he had to write a letter of encouragement to me while I was still serving my mission. I still have that letter. Just one of those strange coincidences. Right?

When I returned home, Tim was still actively pursuing my best friend. However, she made the crucial error of inviting me to tag along with her and Tim on their date to Disneyland for Mormon night.

Her mistake.

Do they still have Mormon night at Disneyland? Anyway, Tim and I had a better time together on their date than she did. We had more in common—having both served missions.

What was very good about our budding relationship was the fact that we became the best of friends. There was no pressure to impress him like in a normal dating situation.

Since I wasn’t in a “serious” dating relationship with Tim, I was allowed to be myself and he liked me in spite of all my unhappiness, inadequacies, anxieties and my PMS; that’s Post-Mission Stress disorder. I’ll bet some of you have felt that!

Tim understood the pain of separation I was feeling at having to leave behind the people and companions I had worked so hard to love and serve. He knew what I needed to stay motivated to keep the covenants I’d made in the temple when I was a newly called missionary and then when I was a recently returned missionary I needed to hold strong.

He’d already passed through that rough phase of his life and learned a valuable lesson which he was able to pass on to me. Through his experiences, I was able to be comforted about being home and on the path to restarting my civilian life.

We spent many long hours together talking about the things we had in common, our love of the scriptures and of the gospel and we compared the similarities of our struggles in life. In my mind, we were forming a bond of mutual respect, admiration and…something much, much deeper.

Little by little I began to forget about my lieutenant in Omaha.

In my heart, I wanted to take our relationship further, but I’d had my heart broken in the past, so I didn’t think I could trust it to be honest about my feelings for Tim. Besides, he was still stuck on my best friend and doing his best to maneuver her towards a marriage proposal.

My best friend and I were the ultimate Dodger fans and when the opportunity to go to a Dodger game came up in the form of great seats to a game, for some strange reason I declined to invite her. Instead, I felt inspired to invite Tim.
It wasn’t a real date as I gave him his ticket before hand and he drove to the stadium from his job in North Hollywood and I drove to the stadium from my job in the City of Industry.

We just met there as friends.

But during the course of the game, Tim proudly announced that he finally gotten the nerve up to send my best friend a bouquet of red roses and a note declaring his undying love for her. I felt my heart being squeezed right out of my chest. It was an unexpected and crushing blow. Somewhere in the process of becoming his friend, I’d begun to love him.

As I sat half-hearted watching the Dodger lose, as they are want to do, I scribbled a little broken heart on my program. I didn’t think Tim would notice. Well, maybe I was hoping he would notice, but it’s hard to tell with guys. Sometimes subtle doesn’t always work.

But he did notice. And the following day after he went to a ward softball practice he dropped by to see me. It was one of those days ladies, when you throw on the grubbiest cloths you own to clean around the house. My hair was a mess, I was sweaty and hot and my face was streaked with dirt. After Tim’s declaration of the previous night, I was seriously considering my return to Omaha to pick up my relationship with the Lieutenant when Tim knocked on my door.

As we sat on my couch in my living room, it soon became apparent that the Lord had moved on Tim and he realized the error of his ways. Besides, my best friend turned him down flat.

During the night the Lord touched Tim’s heart and let him see that I was the best person for him and would make his life complete and keep him laughing. I, of course, already knew that.

The next day Tim asked me to marry him and within two months we were married in the Los Angeles Temple. We’re the only couple that can claim we never actually dated each other before getting married. My best friend hasn’t spoken to me since.The Lord has blessed our lives in numerous ways. Our greatest tender mercy from Him was given to us a year after we were married. We were blessed with a son, our only child, Mike. Which by the way, is the name of the Lieutenant in Omaha, but don’t tell Tim.

To say our married life was free of trials and joy all the time would be a lie. We had our share of problems, worries and frustrations. We moved an excessive number of times for employment. Our parenting skills were less than perfect and our son, Mike, who should be sitting here with you today, has chosen a different path in life. But that’s a talk for another time.

The road to true love, happiness and wedded bliss are not easily traveled. You have to trust in the Lord’s goodness and mercy when all seems at a standstill.

To say that there is only one guy or one girl out there that is your perfect “soul” mate is ludicrous.

The one thing that stuck in my mind about Brother Lund’s teachings to the young adults was when he told us there were an infinite number of people you could be content and happy with and with whom you could make a great marriage.But the two of you have to have your hearts centered in the gospel, make and keep the sacred covenants of a temple marriage and commit to and serve one another faithfully. Through my vast experience in life, I’ve learned that couples don’t actually “fall” out of love as many claim; you just stop serving your partner. As I learned on my mission, you will come to love the people you serve.

Take each Sunday and use it as a day of remembrance. Remember how merciful the Lord has been to you. Imagine your life without the blessings of the gospel. Evaluate your qualities as a potential marriage partner. Are there things you need to change? Are you spiritually prepared to take on the role of wife or husband, mother or father?

Remember, the Lord has promised you all that He has. It is my testimony that the Lord will bless you in this life tenfold if you seek His blessings and remember to give thanks for His help already received.

It is my prayer that we’ll all try a little harder to see the Lord’s sustaining hand in our lives and recognize His tender mercies even though they don’t appear as such at the time. This is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Are you Blue over Avatar?

2010-01-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

Experiencing the Avatar Blues? Hah!

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm obsessed with the movie Avatar. We saw the movie three times in one week. I have the sound track and the actual script on my computer. I’ve even watched just about every YouTube video productions having anything to do with the movie. I even joined the Pandoran World Updates. Silly. Right?

Now I read silliness from articles from the likes of this New York Post story and from a (CNN) news story that people are experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the movie because "they long for the beauty of the alien world Pandora." What's up with that? There's even an "Avatar Forums" thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible." They can’t be serious. I hope they can't see me while I'm laughing out loud. IT'S A MOVIE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! People get a grip!

I have to say I was fascinated and mesmerized by the movie. I was completely taken in and I loved it. Tim and I saw it in 3D at the local IMAX. Who wouldn't have been sucked into the flux vortex of the movie? It felt like you were right in the action along with Jake Sully, his Avatar host body and his girl friend Neytiri. But that doesn't mean I want to live there. Come on, blue is my favorite color, but for skin? Yikes!One man wrote: "It's so hard [after seeing Avatar] I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen." Does the term "insanity" mean anything to this person? Does this person like indoor plumbing and the Internet? Fast food and driving a car? Not something the Na'vi have at Hometree on Pandora.

Another fan wrote" Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them....I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and then everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'" Like Selfridge said to Grace, “What the hell have you people been smoking out there?”Come on people! Grow up and smell the bioluminescent plants! THERE'S NO SUCH PLACE AS PANDORA! THERE ARE NO AVATARS! Just as there is no Munchkin Land. No Tatutine. No Klingon Homeworld. No Never-Never Land. And believe it or not, Mr. Obama, No Camelot! These are just the imagings of talented, genius people who offer us a couple of hours escape from our normal, hum-drum lives. These are not real places, not destinations on any map and we can't get there if we die. I can pretty much guarantee that.

I wrote about this phenomenon when Twilight came out and people ranted that teenaged girls were throwing away their lives over loving Edward.Is that even possible? Are there vampires around for girls to throw their lives away on? As I commented then, these stories are fairy tales, phony stories, and imaginations. Something that looks good on paper; sells well and makes a wonderful story for a movie that sells tickets and makes the producers tons of money.

But we as a society put way too much emphasis on what we perceive as the “realities” of the fantasy world of movies. It’s very sad really, to see people take Avatar seriously as if it’s a real place, a real people with a real society. It struck me as particularly funny when I heard someone say they weren't going to watch the apocalyptic "2012" until 2013, because then they would know we survived the end of the world.It might be pretty on the imaginary planet moon Pandora; a beautiful untouched, unspoiled place. But James Cameron described it as a "primeval landscape, vast and forbidding" or "the most hostile environment known to man". It's a place where if you don't wear your "Exopack" to breathe, you're going to be "unconscious in 20 seconds and dead in four minutes". And the animals; I can't say I'd be delighted to run up against the likes of a Thanator or Viperwolves or that flying dragon-bird thingy, the Leonopteryx. Not a place I'd like to visit anytime soon. Of course the glowing phantasmagorical forest is kinda neat. And the Polyphemus-light of the waterfalls is something special. And I wouldn't mind if the Woodsprites (pure spirits) landed on me. But hey folks, let's face it. IT'S NOT REAL! THERE'S NO SUCH PLACE!! The notion that one can kill themselves to obtain said Pandora is as silly as the name of the mineral the earthlings are stripping from the planet--unobtainum. .Does Cameron have an environmental agenda? Maybe. Probably. But who cares? So did the creators of "Fern Gully", "Medicine Man", "Wall-E", "Happy Feet" and "Happy Gilmore" (don't throw your life away on golf **hint, hint** Tiger Woods **hint, hint**). It's the in-thing to do. If you’ve got some cause or other that you worship and have the ability and the money, to offer your cause up in the form of entertainment in the hopes that people will change their wicked and evil ways and do what you want. It's done all the time. Just check out all the latest Disney movies; environmental wacko stuff to the max. But does the world stop turning because someone puts their skewed views of the world on film? No. Or in this case, digital media? We just watch and love the movie. Then maybe for the next few weeks we recycle all our plastic and walk to work. (Not in California though.)When we went the third time to see Avatar, Tim sat next to a gentleman from Israel and his wife. When the movie was over and he was visibly touched, he asked Tim if he thought watching this movie would change the social conscience of the world so we'd quit destroying the planet. I tried really hard not to laugh, but this guy was serious. Does he really think the world is being destroyed like the one Cameron described in 2154? Ridiculous! Not only can't we destroy the world as small, insignificant human beings, but the Lord wouldn't allow it. But then most environmental proponents don't believe in God, just their own puny reckoning, the arm of flesh, so to speak.

Can we ruin parts of the environment? Undeniably. Think do-do birds, whales and dinosaurs. Well maybe the dinosaurs weren’t our fault. But if Al Gore had lived then it would have been our fault that they're not around anymore. Sometimes I wish I could introduce Al Gore to a t-rex. Chomp! Chomp! Just like the lawyer in Jurassic Park. Yum! Yum!

There’s another thing that bothers me. Does James Cameron want you to "loath" the military just like President Clinton does? Isn't that what happened when you watched "Dances With Wolves"? You hated the Calvary, didn't you? I did. I was furious with them for wanting to kill the Indians and take Lt. Dunbar’s journal. But could I do anything about it? Absolutely not. But you have to remember those military types that Cameron portrayed were mercenaries for hire sent out to Pandora for the money. They weren’t in the military any more. They didn't hold with military thinking. If they did, they'd have all been more like Trudy Chacon and Jake and would have their hearts touched with the injustice of the situation.

Which brings us to the environmental issues of today. Are we really killing our "Mother", the planet earth? Some people, some very powerful people suggest that we are killing our planet by driving cars, spraying hair spray, eating at fast food joints and not recycling. Yet somehow the planet manages to go on without interference from us.Just consider volcanoes for a moment. They erupt, spewing ash into the air and poisonous gases such as sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride. That’s a heck of a lot more stuff than you or I or the entire world’s population can produce by living our lives or driving millions of autos around. Yet we’re told that humans are destroying the planet. Just consider the emails from Climategate that suggest Al Gore-type scientists were interfering with legitimate climate research and falsifying research to suggest there is global warming when there isn’t. Interesting stuff.

Another aspect of the movie that I found interesting, however, is if this movie is so accurate to the time and is set in far distant 2154, why are they still using helicopters and machine guns with bullets? Wouldn't we have progressed to Millennium Falcon's or Ti-wing fighters and lasers or something? Then what chance would the flea-bitten savages have against lasers? None! They have elevated trains on earth but no hover crafts in space? That’s just another example of not taking movies at face value.And believe it or not there are still places on "Mother Earth" where you can get bare-butt naked and romp through the verdant green undergrowth of old growth forest and jungle and mingle with flea-bitten savages. You can even hunt down your own food with bows and arrows and use leaves for toilet paper. From Central and South America, the islands of the Pacific, New Zealand to Africa there are still wide open spaces. Heck! Where do you think they filmed some of Pandora? Come on. Guess. You don't have to be blue about not having any green. There are still places on this so-called ravished planet where nature rules and man doesn't set foot often. Haven't you seen "Planet Earth" on the HG Discovery Channel? This wondrous earth still has deep recesses of cyan blue of oceans and rivers, purple majesties of untouched mountains and deep greens of the rain forest. We just have to open our eyes.

Lastly, we should drop all the analysis and the psychological mumbo-jumbo—IT’S JUST A MOVIE PEOPLE! Enjoy Avatar strictly for what it’s supposed to be. An exceptionally fine movie, a sensational discovery into futuristic movie making, a triumph of weak over strong, a change of attitude and purpose and above all else—a tender love story. Don't attach so much psychobabble to what you see in a movie theater. If you do, you probably will turn blue, and then die!

But then if you're as obsessed as I am, enjoy the music video:

Marc and Cass get married.

2009-11-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

(This is a new section from my latest book. I love writing about weddings and marriages. This is where the bride and groom are together one last time before becoming man and wife expressing some of their anxiety and apprehensions about getting married. Marc had been married before and had two children by another woman--a woman who was less than perfect. I hope you enjoy it.)

Today was her wedding day.

A pale pre-dawn glow filtered softly into Cass’s room casting muted golden shafts on the carpeted floor. The light would have most likely awakened Cass, but she was already awake. Sleep had not come easily or often during the few short hours following the activities at the Swane’s home, saying a last romantic good night to Marc at her doorstep and this feathery light of dawn creeping into her bedroom. Her mind had been too full of last minute concerns and her head spun with the frightening realities of marriage. She couldn’t get much rest.

It promised to be a glorious day.

In a few short hours she would be Mrs. Marc Swane; Cassiopeia Swane. The thought brought a smile to her lips as she stretched languidly trying to push the tension out of her body from her toes to the tips of her fingers. There were still a few hours before they had to leave for the temple and Cass thought to use the leisurely quiet and undisturbed calm of pre-dawn to think and to ponder. This was the day she’d looked forward to since she began to realize boys didn’t have cooties anymore. So much of her teen and young adult life had been spent in preparing for this one single day and the days, months and years that would follow this day. Learning how to cook and clean; how to mend jeans, unstop a drain, shop for bargains, and serve a gourmet dinner without spending a fortune. She’d learned the art of rearing children, making a home and serving her family at her mother’s knee without being aware that’s what she was doing.

The lessons she received from her parents came in simple, intimate moments rather than formal classroom type settings. Those wonderful experiences she’d shared in her parent’s home gave her the confidence she needed to follow her dreams in education and now to become a wife. Even though she still felt some apprehension and concern about becoming Marc’s wife, with the confidence she’d gained from her growing up years and her training and education, at least she felt educationally prepared to be the wife Marc would need. She prayed he would be proud of her and that he wouldn’t have to worry about her slipping a gear and morphing into Lilly.

She knew Marc had been spooked by his first marriage and now was extremely hesitant about getting married again. What man wouldn’t be scared to death after having survived an experience like he’d endured? Words of assurance would not be enough to convince Marc she was different. Only time and positive experiences would prove to him he hadn’t made a second mistake. It worried her that he might be watching and waiting for her to snap or freak out or transmutate into his ex. Somehow Cass knew she would feel like she was a lab experiment in the beginning of their relationship. Whether she liked it or not, Lilly would hang over their marriage until she was exorcised out like an evil demon. Cass could only hope and pray that Marc would trust her, love her and give her a chance to demonstrate to him she was a totally different person from Lilly Goodhaven.

That’s why having the gospel at the center of their marriage was so vitally important; knowledge and inspiration were power—her power, his power. The gospel lessons she’d been taught by her parents were no less important than the physical ones. Being worthy to marry Marc in the temple today, made her feel radiant and light, as if she were a receptacle for the spirit. She’d need that light and inspiration to deal with Marc’s demons and phobias. She’d need the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost to aid her in teaching Marc’s innocent but confused children. She’d need the spirit to assure the children that there can be a loving mother figure in their lives.

Those children needed her.

As Cass studied the patterns the expanding light of dawn cast on the floor and walls of her room, she couldn’t help but feel that the whole thing was still a beautiful fantasy and if she made a sudden move, the dream would end. Silly. It just seemed positively unreal that the time had finally come when she was going to be someone’s wife and someone’s mother all in one moment. In a few hours she would give herself to a man and become his wife, his helpmeet, his lover and assist in raising his children. She would need every blessing the Lord had in store for a newly married woman. She knew they needed to start their married life steeped in the traditions of the gospel; family and personal prayer, regular scripture study and faithful church attendance. It would make their life together easier if these simple commandments were followed in the spirit they were intended. It was a promise Cass made to herself in the stillness of the morning and a promise she intended to keep to Marc and his children.

Today she would be sealed to the man she loved.

Unfortunately Phoebe and Adam would not be sealed to her today or any other day. This realization gravely disappointed her. Intellectually she understood that only one sealing was necessary for the children. They just had to be sealed to somebody, as it were, they were born under the covenant which was the most important ordinance. It didn’t matter to which parent. It didn’t even matter if one or neither of the parents remained faithful, it only mattered that the sealing was preformed. Somewhere in the family links, they would be sealed. It shouldn’t have bothered Cass, but that didn’t stop her from feeling bothered by it and feeling some envy. She had to keep reminding herself that only worthiness mattered in this case. So while she lay in her bed welcoming the morning, Cass would put it aside and relish her special day.

It still amazed Cass that the preparations for their sealing and reception had been accomplished so quickly. It had been a frenzy of activity since Marc proposed to her. So much of normal wedding planning usually took weeks if not months to be accomplished and they’d done it in two weeks time. She owed it all to Maggie Swane and would be forever grateful. Having Maggie and Ralph Swane as her in-laws couldn’t have worked out better if she’d created in-laws herself. She loved them as much as her own parents and would be forever grateful they’d raised a son like Marc.

She thought about the tempestuous way she had Marc had come together. There was the incident with Marc’s dog Max and her suit, the sidewalk confrontation after her trip to San Diego to the kissing incident at the end of the street. It seemed as though fate, or the Lord, had steadily been pushing them together. She wondered what it was precisely that drew her to him, besides his obviously rugged good looks. He had been nothing but rude, arrogant and disarming every time they’d had a chance meeting. Only a deep abiding love could have brought them together and kept them together despite the complications. It surely wouldn’t have been a logical match. She had to giggle at that because she thought she and Vern had been a logical match and look how that turned out. She was right sure there was nothing logical about what she felt for Marc. What she felt for him turned her inside out. Passion was strong in their relationship, but there was something much, much more—much, much deeper and longer lasting. There was a fire there, a consuming, radiant blaze that heated the blood and forged the bond strong like tempered steel. She was absolutely sure she’d never find this kind of heat, this kind of union with any other man—ever. She’d proved that when they were separated for a month and a half. She couldn’t imagine living life without Marc. And that’s as it should be.

Marc was just beginning to doze again for about the fiftieth time. Most of the night he’d tossed and turned and slept pitifully. He shouldn’t be having second thoughts about marrying Cassiopeia. He loved her with all his heart. She was perfect for him and his children. She was so far from Lilly by comparison as to not be on the same chart, but that didn’t stop him from wondering what their married life would be like and if Cass would share any of the same characteristics with Lilly. The time they’d spent getting to know one another and dating had been a swirling tornado of highs and lows. He was so sure about Cass until the meeting with Lilly and her parents in the Bishop’s office. Then he wasn’t sure he could ever love a woman again and forced her away. That had been the second biggest mistake of his life—forcing Cass away. He might as well have cut off his right arm as keep her at a distance. Once he’d found her, there was no going back. They were meant to be together just as his father has prophesied. And just as his father had said, he was to accept the responsibility of the Lord’s challenges placed before him with eagerness.

So what kept him from sleeping?

It wasn’t the thought of marrying Cass precisely; it was more about the fact that he hadn’t proven to be a very good husband. At least he thought he hadn’t been a good husband to Lilly. He didn’t exactly have a good track record in the husband department. He hadn’t helped Lilly overcome her problems and he hadn’t given her what she needed to keep her happy. It hurt to think that he’d tried and failed. But maybe now after everything about Lilly had finally come to light, he could see that it probably wasn’t his fault that she’d turned to drugs and worse. He wasn’t responsible for making her happy. No one was. And it wasn’t his fault that she chose to hate him or the children. He’d been powerless to stop her from making horrible decisions and from ruining her own life and for trying to ruin his and the children’s lives as well. All he could do was try harder to help Cassiopeia find happiness by giving her his heart totally and without reservation.

His mind drifted to his charming and sexy Princess. What was she doing in the early morning glow? Was she still asleep, her beautiful, sweet face relaxed in slumber, or was she already up and moving, her active mind going over the organization of the day to the precise minute detail?

He needed to see her, to touch her and make sure she was real and his.

Jumping from the enormous bed they’d chosen together and thinking with a big smile—they would sharing tonight as husband and wife—he shoved his long legs into his favorite pair of worn jeans, zipped and buttoned them quickly and drug on an old worn t-shirt. After a brief unsuccessful search for his work boots, he grabbed up a new pair of tennis shoes and ran from the room.

He crept quietly past the sleeping children’s rooms and hustled downstairs and out the door. Until he stopped on her driveway, he hadn’t stopped to think if she’d be awake or not. So he bent down and picked up some fine pebbles from her flower garden and tossed a couple at her window.

Her mind was still going over the exact procedures and progress of the day when she heard a clack, clack at her window. It sounded like a bird tapping on the glass. Throwing her silky robe around her shoulders and belting it, she walked to the window and pulled open the shutters. Outside in the dim light of dawn, Marc was standing in her driveway throwing little rocks up at her window. Smiling, she threw up the window and leaned out. “I think there’s a law against vandalism this early in the morning. What are you doing up so early?”

“I need to see you, Princess,” he smiled.

“I’ll be right down.” Her heart did a little tap dance in her chest. But whether it was from fear or nerves, she wasn’t sure. What could he possibly want this early in the morning? Had he changed his mind since last night? Oh, dear Father, please don’t let him change his mind.

She moved quietly through her bedroom, tiptoed through the hall and down the stairs to open the door for him. She no sooner opened the door than he scooped her up in his arms and started plying her face with kisses. “Marc,” she sputtered. “What…”

“Shh, let me kiss you.” Greedily he kissed her bringing her tight within the circle of his arms. She was real and warm and his. His worry filled dreams had given him unhappy thoughts that he might have conjured her up from his overactive imagination. “I just wanted to make sure you’re still real and that I didn’t dream you up.”

Cass slipped her hands up his chest and tangled them in his hair bringing his mouth back down to hers in one scorching kiss. “Does this feel real enough for you?”

Smiling, he nodded. He knew he was toast. He dragged her to the sofa and sat pulling her onto his lap. “This is the last morning we’ll wake up alone, Princess. I just needed to see you one last time before we do this.”

She tried to read his thoughts through the serious look on his face and in his enigmatic grey eyes. “Second thoughts? Cold feet? Running scared?” She tried to make it light.

He took both of her hands in his, his eyes fierce and determined. “No. No to all of those questions.” Then he kissed her fingers one at a time until she shuddered. “That’s the one thing I’m positive about Cass, and that’s you. You’ve been in my head since I saw you standing in your driveway muttering to yourself the day after you dumped good old Vern. I wanted to rush across the street and gobble you up and take you away some place quiet and dark and make mad, passionate love to you until we were both too exhausted and spent to breathe. But I think you would have cut me off at the knees if I’d have tried to even talk to you then.” He laughed and looked closely for the first time at what she was wearing, or in this case, not wearing. A smile, broad and wicked erupted across his face. Cass sensing his shift in attitude clutched the thin robe to her breast. He licked his lips and continued. “I’d like to do the same thing right now.”

She squirmed on his lap and tried to break free, but he held her firmly in place. She sensed the predator/prey scenario and her breathing quickened. “I’ve…I have a lot to do before we’re ready to go. Was there something you wanted?” She sensed her mistaken choice of words as his eyes lingered way too long on the bodice of her thin robe.

“Yes,” he grinned. “But that will have to wait for a couple of hours.” Once again he nuzzled her neck and nipped at her chin with his teeth. “I was wondering if you’d join me in a prayer this morning.”

The change in subject was so abrupt that it threw her. Composing herself quickly, she nodded her head. “That would be wonderful, Marc. I’d be more than happy to join you in prayer this morning.”

“I have gained a great appreciation for the power of prayer in the last few months, Princess. My father has given me new insights into prayer. I always figured prayer was for closing and opening the day, praying for safety and for the blessing of restored health. But he helped me understand better the need for constant and specific prayer. I think we should pray for everything that comes into our lives that we have jurisdiction over. We’re entering a new phase of our lives and need the Lord’s help.” He’d never thought to pray with Lilly and that had been a big mistake. Well, he wasn’t making that mistake again. The Lord would be first and foremost in his and Cass’s life. “I want the Lord’s help in our marriage, Cass.”

“Yes. So do I.”

“I feel as the Priesthood holder that I’m entitled to inspiration regarding our home and family and with you as my wife, we’ll be a team and seek that inspiration together. You’re entitled to the inspiration you’ll need to be my companion and I ask for your faith in petitioning the Lord for the blessings we’ll need as a new family.”

She studied him for a moment as if she was looking at him for the first time. She had to laugh to herself again about her first impressions of him. It was anything but spiritual. He’d been both annoying and arrogant and she’d been put off all the while fiercely attracted to him. Then he’d been too ruggedly good looking for his own good and had swept her away with his depthless passion until she knew there was no one in the world that could fire her heart as he could. Now what she saw was the powerful force of the priesthood on him as he looked forward to becoming her husband and felt it a responsibility to ask for help. Her heart warmed and her spirit swelled.

“Will you kneel with me, Cass?” He loosened his grip on her and pushed her to her feet.

“I’d be honored, my love.”

He pushed her coffee table out away from the sofa and they knelt together between the table and the sofa. He took her hands in his, brought them to his lips for a quick kiss then he began to pray.

It wasn’t so much the words he spoke that touched her heart and soul, but the feeling of the prayer. He was taking his responsibilities of husband, father and priesthood holder very seriously and felt to plead with the Lord for a blessing on their union. He spoke to the Lord as opposed to just offering a standard prayer. He asked for guidance as they started their married life together. In closing, Marc pled with the Lord for a blessing on their sacred physical relationship as husband and wife and that they would be blessed with children to join them in their earthly journey. Cass felt her heart bursting at the seams with love for this man who’d humbled himself before the Lord enough that he felt comfortable in asking. She didn’t know if it were possible to love him more than she did at that moment.

When he finished praying he pulled Cass into his arms and for many quiet moments, he just held her tenderly within his embrace, resting his cheek against her head and stroking her hair. She rested her head on his shoulder and felt the power flow from him into her.“Before the Nauvoo temple was completed,” Marc started, “Joseph Smith performed the endowment ceremony in his home. Parley P. Pratt and his wife participated in this ceremony, which I understand took many hours.” Marc sat back down on the sofa and pulled Cass down beside him still clasping her hands tightly. She looked at him in amazement as he continued. “It was there that Parley learned from Joseph Smith, ‘that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity;…the affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love.’” Marc paused, trying to remember the entire quote. “Ah, yes,…Parley said something like: ‘I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling.’” Parley went on to say that he now loved with the spirit and understanding as well. I’m sure that meant an eternal understanding.” Marc turned toward Cass so he could look deeply into her eyes. “That’s how I feel about you, Cassiopeia. I love you with all the intensity of elevated, exalted feelings of eternity and with the spirit of the Lord. Do you understand?”

Cass’s heart rose in her throat as tears welled in her eyes. She’d never heard anything so beautiful. “Yes,” she choked, the tears escaping. “That was a tender, wonderful sentiment. I feel exactly as Parley did. I love you intensely Marc. I’ve never been able to explain how quickly and intensely I was drawn to you and how complete are my feelings. I’ll love you forever.”

He kissed away the tears from her cheeks and as soft as butterfly wings he swept her lips with his as if she was a delicate piece of china that would break if he pressed too hard. She sighed sweetly tugging his heart strings then he wrapped his arms around her to draw her to him. “Well I guess I should leave and let you get ready.”

“Hmm?”

He pushed her away from him and gazed in her eyes. “It won’t be long now, Ms. James. Are you excited?”

She licked her trembling lips and rubbed his arms with her nervous trembling hands. “Nope.”

“Liar,” he grinned and kissed her nose. “I love you Cassiopeia. I’ll love you forever.”

Copyright 2009 CAROL A. MALONE, (except images which were acquired from Google Images)

You've Got Cancer (Part 3)

2009-10-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

You’ve got cancer - The surgery.

I don’t suppose there are many announcements of “You’ve got cancer” that don’t follow with another announcement that they must operate. Now if breaking the news to you that you’ve got cancer isn’t horrific and scary enough, now it’s followed it by the threat of having your body ripped open, your organs disturbed or removed and your health and your life permanently upended. But they—the powers that be—are adamant that surgery is the only correct course of action to follow.

Around the first of July of this year, I was faced with the real possibility of bleeding to death. I was so panicked that I didn’t mind the thought of having my first “procedure” done. But still the fear and trepidation was there in abundance. I’d had a C-Section twenty six years ago and could only remember the misery associated with the procedure and the long uncomfortable recovery. Facing something on that major a scale a second time was something I’d wanted to avoid with every fiber of my being. But my life was in danger. I was, for all intents and purposes, bleeding to death and the myriad of doctors I’d seen thus far didn’t have a complete picture as to why I was bleeding and how to stop it from happening.

On the second go round of severe blood loss, I found my self in the ER again. After receiving another two units I was released by my OB/GYN. But it didn’t take as long to bleed out as it did to pump it in when I returned home. In frantic desperation, I phoned the doctor on call. I finally found a woman OB/GYN that understood what I was going through and she demanded that I return to the ER and await preparations for a D&C, (that’s a dilation and curettage). This is basically procedure that dilates or enlarges the vagina so that the uterus lining can be scraped or suctioned away for a more thorough tissue sample for biopsy. They couldn’t do the D&C right away as I’d lost too much blood, so I had to wait over night while receiving more transfusions. By now I’m feeling like I’ve had a complete lube job. The next day, July 9th, my surgery was scheduled for four p.m.

So how do you prepare for surgery or in this case, a minor procedure? My way is to panic. It’s my nature, thanks to my mom, also to worry about every little thing, real or imagined. Thankfully, I had great friends and family members that prayed for me. I also had a number of Priesthood blessings, so this first operation seemed to flow smoothly. I didn’t even start to panic until they wheeled me downstairs in St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital here in Camarillo to the pre-op room. I still had Tim’s hand in a death grip and the atmosphere was relaxed and casual. There was no rush and urgency like the time I had my C-Section. (At that time I was basically dying and my baby Mike was dying, so they were in a bit of a rush!)

When Tim was asked to wait in the hall and I was wheeled into the operating room, that’s when the unease slithered up my spine. Luckily, I remained calm enough that when they asked me to move my behind onto the operating table I was able to joke about it and move quickly. They were impressed with my ability. I told them I was working out. But the icy chill of the room, the sights and smells and the freezing table brought those anxious memories of my C-Section flooding back into my mind. But before I could full out panic, I was in La-La Land. The next thing I know some nurse is asking me questions and they’re wheeling me back upstairs to my regular bed. I’m thinking—piece of cake!

I rested through the night—as much as one can rest with nurses coming in your room every two hours to check vitals and change blood transfusion bags can be restful. July 10th, (our 27th Wedding Anniversary), I went home. As I’m getting in my VUE, I noticed a vicious pain in the calf of my right leg which continued to get worse prompting more doctors’ visits, an ultra sound and the vein filter which I discussed in an earlier post. A blood clot!

As stated earlier, my biopsy showed uterine cancer and that was a shock in and of itself when followed quickly by the words “you must have a complete hysterectomy”. Due to unusual circumstances, I was directed to a surgeon at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, Dr. Ronald Leuchter, a Gynecological Oncologist specialist that teaches at UCLA. I thought, wow! Holy cow! A world renowned specialist is going to operate on me. Going to Cedars Sinai was like being on a cattle drive for medical treatment. I was shown to one area in the Cancer Care center then upstairs to fill out paper work. After filling out dozens of papers, we were then given an escort to take us back down to the first place we went to be met by a nurse. The nurse took me in a small room for vitals then back to the waiting room for another nurse to take me to the exam rooms. The doctor obviously doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with you, so it was right to the business at hand when he announces what he’s going to do to you.

He told me that he would do a laproscopically assisted hysterectomy. Four tiny holes would be drilled in my belly from which he can see what’s going on and extract the offending organs and tissue. At least that was the plan at the time.

So I’m sent home to worry and fret for two weeks and finish up my pre-op tests. And that’s pretty much what I did. Except at the time, I still had work to occupy my mind. My insurance company sent me a relaxation and visualization CD to assist in calming my mind and spirit before and after surgery. I’d like to say it helped, but that would be lying. There were times when I could go to a happy place, which happened to be my grandma’s farm in Paradise, Utah, but not always.

I had lots of blessings and prayers offered in my behalf. Tim and I left for the hospital the Sunday afternoon before and stayed at a lovely hotel in Beverly Hills. Only I couldn’t really enjoy the room because I had to fast and do other terrible unmentionable things in order to be ready to be cut open in the morning.

I was in the South Tower for the Operation and Recovery

The morning of the operation, I was up very early and got dressed in a minimum of stress. I was probably numb. We had to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. for a 7 a.m. surgery. There was also a line of procedure to follow as we arrived at check in. We were herded upstairs to a waiting room then filled out more paperwork where I received my i.d. bracelet. My spirits were still high as I watched the room fill with other people in similar circumstances, although awaiting different surgeries.

When my name was called along with several others, we were herded back through a door and our loved ones were not allowed to follow us. This is the first time that I thought I couldn’t make it. I thought for sure Tim would be able to stay with me until I went under anesthesia. But this was not the case.

I was lead to a hospital bed, told to dress in a simple hospital gown, given a bag for belongings and then told to relax. Yeah, right! Who are they kidding! You try to relax in that kind of situation. For the next little while I was stuck with lancets, poked with needles, strapped to machines to test my heart and asked interminable questions. Then to complicate matters, my heart specialist hadn’t forwarded the results of my chemical stress test to determine if my heart was up to such an operation. They had to wait until well after 8 a.m. before the heart doctor’s office opened up to get the results.

Finally the anesthesiologist came to assure me my heart was sound enough for the operation. I don’t know. Maybe I was hoping that my heart was in such bad shape I couldn’t endure the operation and would just be sent home to die quietly. A gal can hope, can’t she? Anyway that was when this really cute doctor who was much too young to be an anesthesiologist came and put something really nice in my i.v. and for the first time, I started to relax.

I remember being wheeled into the operating room which looked more like a storage room with supplies behind glass and metal cupboards. There were lights and gadgets and trays of something. The last thing I remember is being asked to move my butt over to the slick, cold operating table, then nothing. Total absence of consciousness. Oblivion. Because the next moment I’m awake and somebody is talking to me and I was asking for Tim. I remember little of the time in recovery. I guess maybe at the point I’m writing this, I didn’t want to remember it. Before long I’m being wheeled down the hall, way down the hall, almost to the end of the third floor hall to a group of four rooms at the end. This time it is an extremely painful proposition to move my butt from the table to my new bed. With a lot of help, I manage it. Then finally I’m allowed to see Tim.

I was in the hospital for six days. I already had problems with my right leg and the blood clot there. It was so swollen and painful; walking merely to the nurse’s station was a feat of monumental proportions. But the second day, I noticed my left leg swelling much the same and tried to bring that to the attention of the nurses and doctors. But no one paid much attention until on the third day when they tried to get me up to walk and I nearly passed out a few steps from my room. Then they finally paid attention to me. Then I was rushed down to the radiation room for an ultrasound on both legs. Yes, indeed. Blood clots in both legs. Now I was faced with a big dilemma. You must walk to recover from the surgery. I couldn’t walk because of the horrific swollen legs. What do you do?

There’s one very minute secret that doctors don’t explain to you after surgery and that’s the gas that results from surgery. Of all the pains of surgery, that was by far the most intense, miserable pain of all. Gas and bloating and not being able to pass it are by far the worst pains you can possibly endure. I’ve never felt such pain in my life all because I couldn’t, to put it bluntly, fart or have a bowel movement. That’s why my hospital stay was longer than usual. Until you pass gas, you don’t leave, even if you can’t walk. That’s not as important.

When I finally passed a little gas, it was like graduation day and the fourth of July all wrapped up. Yippee! The day after I did, I was allowed to leave the hospital. I have to tell you, my leaving the hospital was not how I’d planned it to happen. I was barely able to move without screaming. I felt like I’d been run over by a team of Clydesdale's, the beer wagon and the little Dalmatian dog as well. The car was most uncomfortable and extremely hard to get into. Luckily, at home we rented a hospital bed as our bedroom is upstairs and I never could have made it up the stairs. I couldn’t lift my foot off the ground more than a couple of inches. I felt miserable.

So for two plus months, I attempted to recuperate. But the leg clots have really held me back. At one point I measured my upper thigh while it was swollen. It measured 31 inches. That’s huge! I felt like a baby and was reduced to using a walker to move around the house and a wheel chair if I went out to the doctor’s office. Short trips anywhere, including the grocery stores was out of the question. So many friends came by to wish me well and brought food and flowers. I will always be grateful for their thoughtfulness and concern.

It has been a long, trying road of recovery. At first I could barely move out of my hospital bed and going to the downstairs bathroom was the furtherest I could waddle. I couldn’t even manage more than a bedside bath. I gradually graduated to a sink bath with Tim washing my hair. Even that was a major accomplishment. The next step was me washing my own hair and being able to stand for a significant amount of time without passing out. Six weeks after my surgery, I attempted the stairs and found with a lot of pushing and pulling I could make it to the top. I still had to sit down for a shower and had to rest for a while before attempting to go back down the stairs.

Along the path I developed a rather ugly little growth near my surgery scar. At first I thought my scar had broken open, but that wasn’t the case. My doctor thought it was a seroma, which is a collection of fluid within a dead space in the tissue following a surgery. I had an ultrasound because of the swelling and fever then I was sent to a dermatologist. Neither proved useful, except the dermatologist decided I needed to go back to see my surgeon. But his schedule wouldn’t permit a quick visit. So I was directed to a surgeon in Ventura and he knew right away that the growth was a post-surgical tunnel wound—a deep tunnel seeping fluid and blood from somewhere deep inside my body that hadn’t healed properly. Yikes!!! He stuck one of those long Q-tips down in it and had Tim holding on to his stomach. It went down in about 7.5 centimeters. It was very distressing. Hadn’t I had enough problems resulting from one surgery?

So now I have daily visits from in-home nurses who pack the deep tunnel wound with gaze in an attempt to dry it out and shrink the thing. It’s a miserable process and one that has taken a month and a half already. I don’t know how much longer this process may take. The surgeon here, Dr. Timothy Bryant, thinks I still may need another surgery to repair the wound. Does the nightmare never end?

I went through physical therapy here at home and grew stronger. I was even out on the street walking with a cane. So I am progressing. But I still have to wait and see and keep enduring the daily visits and wound packing and wear those awful compression stockings that squeeze your legs tight. I don't even know if I'll be able to wear normal shoes ever again. I don’t have much hope of that at present.

I was standing at my kitchen window the other day and looking out in the backyard. It was a glorious day in Camarillo. (Most of them are.) And I was wondering how far I’d come. Sometimes the Lord lets the image of tragedy and bad things fade, for which I am very grateful. That’s why it was good to sit down and write about the experiences of my surgeries so I can recall what I went through. MY body may never be the same as before my surgery. That’s life, right? But it was an experience that taught me a great deal and maybe I’ll be able to help someone else facing the same situation.

You've Got Cancer (part 2)

2009-07-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

I faithfully watch "So You Think You Can Dance." It's my favorite summer show. Once in a while they have a performance by the talented young people that touches something so deep within the heart that you wonder if they were dancing specifically for you. The message of this dance by Ade & Melissa was so poignant and so moving I thought I'd share it with you. It is their interpretation of a woman's struggle and battle with breast cancer. Because I'm now face with cancer--not breast cancer--but cancer none-the-less, this particular dance piece sliced me to the core. The feelings and spirit of fear, pain and determination evoked by the dancers for this particular grievous situation in a woman's life is particularly heart grabbing. See if you don't agree. Then read my story which follows in a recent post.

We pray for all those touched by cancer. Men, women, and children. None are immune to it's horrific effects. God grants us the strength and faith to endure and triumph.

Added 7/30/09: I wanted to add the words of the song that Ade & Melissa Danced to. They are awe inspiring and uplifting. There are no possible words to describe the pain and suffering of those who battle cancer. But we respect and applaud those who do. The following words offer encouragement and hope.

THIS WOMAN'S WORK by Maxwell

Pray God You Can Cope
I'll Stand Outside
This Woman's Work
This Woman's Worth
Ooh, It's Hard On A Man
Now His Part Is Over
Now Starts The Craft... Of The Father

[Bridge]
I Know You've Got A Litte Life In You Yet
I Know You've Got A Lot Of Strength Left
I Know You've Got A Little Life In You Yet
I Know You've Got A Lot Of Strength Left

[Course]
I Should Be Crying But I Just Can't Let It Show,
I Should Hoping But I Can't Thinking,
All The Things We Should've Said That I Never Said,
All The Things We Should Have Done That We Never Did,
All The Things We Should've Given But I Didn't,
Oh Darling Make It Go,
Make It Go Away...

Give Me These Moments,
Give Them Back To Me,
Give Me A Little Kiss,
Give Me Your...

(I Know You've Got A Little Life In You Yet)
Give Me Your Hand Baby,
(I Know You've Got A Lot Of Strength Left)
Give Me Your Pretty Hand,
(I Know You've Got A Little Life In You Yet)
Ooh My,
(I Know You've Got Alot Of Strength Left)
Your Love Child,
(I Know You've Got A Little Life In You Yet)
Whatever You Need,
(I Know You've Got A Lot Of Strength Left)
Give Me Your Hand,
(I Know You've Got A Little Life In You Yet)
Give Me Your Hand Babe
(I Know You've Got A Lot Of Strength Left)

I Should Be Crying But I Just Can't Let It Show Baby,
I Should Hoping But I Can't Thinking,
Of All The Things We Should've Said That We Never Said,
All The Things We Should Have Done That We Never Did,
All The Things That You Wanted From Me,
All The Things That You Needed From Me,
All The Things We Should Have Given But I Didn't,
Oh Darling Make It Go Away Now,
Just Make It Go Away..

You've Got Cancer!!!

2009-07-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

I have no idea how many millions of people have heard or will hear that phrase in their lifetime. Those three words can strike terror in the heart of anyone who hears them. Sometimes the doctor who says those words delivers them without passion or preamble. And they say it so casually and without sympathy that at first the words don’t sink in. Then the words “carcinoma” and “cancer” begin to bang around in your brain until they register.

That’s what happened to me when I heard the words: “endometrioid adenocarcinoma”. The doctor that uttered those words did so like she was telling me I had warts. Wham! Bang!

At first you feel disbelief, then shock then denial. “What, me - cancer - no way! There has to be some mistake,” you say to yourself unbelievingly. Everything horrible and awful you’ve ever heard, read, seen or known about people who have had cancer flashes in your mind. Surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and death - oh my! The phrase paints a very bleak picture, doesn’t it?

In the back of your mind, as much as you don’t want to, you witness your own mortality. Even for the most faithful people, even for those who understand the meaning of life, this can be an incomprehensible moment. So we turn to the professional for answers, which means more tests, possible surgeries and months and months of painful therapies in the hope that we will survive—and that’s if your insurance company will pay for it all. Heaven help those who don’t have the right type of cancer and insurance. (But that’s for another piece.)

The one thing we cannot lose is our hope. We hope for the cure and a speedy recovery because without hope, the process would be dismal and disheartening. We have to believe that even cancer is a part of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. Odd, don’t you think, to say that cancer, disease, famine and any horrific human event is part of a loving Heavenly Father’s plan, but it is!

For a cotton-headed ninny-muggins consummate pessimist like me, finding the blessings in a disease like cancer is like Indiana Jones searching for the Ark of the Covenant. There’s a map. It may be a little hard to decipher, but if you find the right people with the right knowledge. Viola! Treasure!

The scriptures tell us that all these things shall be for our experience and if we endure them well we shall have a crown of glory. It’s just hard in our finite minds to translate the pain of suffering into something glorious.

Wise men have said that suffering teaches us compassion for others. When we think of the Savior, do we remember that he bore our sorrows and our infirmities so that he may know how to comfort us? Sometimes we think that he only bore our sins, but wise men have instructed us to cast our burdens upon the Lord. But being a pessimist and a realist, as Tim always reminds me, I can’t help but wonder how this is accomplished.What’s the magic formula for handing off my cancer to Jesus Christ? I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know how to do that, yet many people seem to find strength in doing just that. Do we kneel down in our own Gethsemane and plead with the Lord to let this cup pass from us? But then in humility, do we not say, “not my will but thine be done?”

So where’s the handoff and where’s the comfort? Where’s the relief from pain? Is it only a figure of speech? Is it only in our minds or does it physically happen? We can say that many people are cured of cancer. I don’t particularly know the statistics but I personally have three friends who have survived and gone on to live very happy and normal lives. But I also have friends who have fought diligently only to lose the battle in the end.

Oh, if we could only have a glimpse into the mind of the Lord–why he calls some home and why he lets some linger. So really, the only thing we can do is have hope and faith that whatever happens, we can accept the mind and will of God. If however, you don’t believe in God, that’s very sad, but I’m not talking to those people – those unhappy few who believe that we are just here by chance and when we’re gone—we’re gone! Yikes!

As I sit here in a Catholic hospital looking up at a crucifix of the Savior up on the wall of my room, I wonder who comforted the Savior as he went through that terrible pain and agony upon the cross. How was he able to bear that suffering without murmuring or complaining? Crucifixion is a most terrible form of agony because it is prolonged over a long period of time.

I wish I could say that I’ve found the combination in my life to be able to throw off the anxiety and fear, but even at age 54 I’m still learning what it is to be able to put all my trust in the Savior. I’ve often felt that phrase, “O ye of little faith,” applies directly to me. I also know that faith is an action verb so I’m doing everything I can to put my miniscule faith into action. I believe that in the long run stepping blindly towards my Savior will bring me a reward of peace and comfort to be able to go through this trial even though I still have to suffer.

If I didn’t believe that, I’d run screaming into the night, except I can’t run now because I have a blood clot in my leg. But I have a little vein buddy now. An intervenous umbrella filter to keep the blood clot from my lungs and instant death. Ugly little fellow, isn't he?

So we pray, we fast, we try and do what the Lord asks us to do. We follow the doctor’s recommendations. We put our faith in Christ. We reach out to others who have suffered with similar experiences and we draw on their strength. And we move forward one faltering faithful step at a time and hope for a glorious resurrection free of pain, sorrow and sin.

Tim asked me something while I was sitting in the hospital grimacing in pain. When have I felt the Lord’s love for me? At first I wanted to scream, NEVER! But as I thought and pondered about that, I really was surprised to have things come into my mind. Sometimes the pain in my body is so hard to endure that I toss and turn in bed trying to find a comfortable position for relieve. I offer a tiny prayer in my head for comfort and for sleep. Suddenly I’m sleeping. Coincidence? I don’t think so!

On other simple occasions when I’m rushing here and there and tend to have a lead foot from a stopping position in my car and jump on the gas to race across the intersection only to find myself sitting there, not pushing on the gas pedal when a car runs a red light in front of me and I’m saved from a crushing car crash. Chance? Luck? Hardly!

Sometimes I pray for Tim when he’s face with a particularly difficult problem at work that seems to be going nowhere fast and instantly, the answer appears as if by magic. Magic? Hockus Pokus? Inconceivable!

So do I know the Lord loves me because of marvelous manifestations of Biblical proportions? Absolutely not! Only tiny, tender mercies shown to me day after day after day; so very small I hardly notice them until I sit down and think. Yes. I know the Lord loves me and offers His hand in my life. Will he take away my suffering? Probably not. Will it become easier to bear, a lighter burden? Yes. Do I want these things to pass from me? You better believe I do. But would I learn what I’m supposed to learn because of suffering trials? No. Not really. But I can always ask. Right?

If we don’t gain anything else from a lifetime of suffering, pain, anguish, heartache, loss, grief and torment; at least we can help others face down their demons and have and offer hope. And that’s the way it is–from the view from my hospital bed here in Camarillo on a beautiful summer Sunday morning. See you in the funny papers!

Celebrating the Marriage of Kyle Sawyer and Erin Moffit

2009-06-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

We had the privilege of witnessing the sealing/marriage of Kyle Sawyer (the son of my good friends Greg & Martha Sawyer) and his lovely bride, Erin Moffit on June 6, 2009. Here they are with their parents:

It was a perfectly gorgeous day at the Los Angeles Temple.
The spring/early summer flower were in bloom and we decided it would be a great opportunity to update our photos. Don't you love the red flowers? (What do you think? I cut all my hair off and went darker.)
Tim always looks great in his suit and with the lovely setting with exquisitely crafted gardens in the background, it couldn't have been a lovelier day.

Ah, young love! Can't beat it.

Act Two in the continuing saga of what afflicts Carol

2009-06-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

An update:

Before the end of May, I finished up my college English class and wrote a twenty page essay. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my essay was on the liberal slant in the media. I knew my professor would be ticked—as all professors and educators with the liberal mind set would be. But he begrudgingly gave me an A for the paper and an A in the class. So I figured that was five months well spent.

Also I mentioned before about my womanly disorder and the terrible loss of blood. I had bled out about one half of my body’s blood supply. Since the human body holds approximately six quarts or 5.6 liters of blood, that was astonishing to me.

It must have been astonishing to the doctor, because that's when my doctor insisted on the blood transfusion. I was worried over possible side effects. There’s always the worry when receiving someone else’s blood that I would develop a love of the NY Yankees and want to live in the Bronx or maybe have a crushing desire for gumbo and jambalaya and sing jazz. But the only thing that happened by the end of the evening was a feeling of giddy euphoria. Tim thought I acted like I was drunk. I was wondering, can alcoholics give blood???

Anyway, that took several more hours for me to receive two units, that’s 2 x 0.951019388 U.S. Pints or 2 cups. Not a lot of replacement blood when you consider I’d lost nearly 2 quarts. So over the next few days of feeling of as though I was a flat tire running on the jagged shoulder of the freeway for endless miles, I was fatigued, hapless and generally feeling blah. I missed a lot of work and church and life.

After the transfusion as I mentioned, I saw a GYN doctor who did a biopsy and went to a lab for an ultrasound. The results of these tests took the better part of two weeks. You really start to appreciate the value of time while waiting for results from a lab. Then Tim and I learned I had Complex Endometrial Hyperplasia with Atypia, fibroids and a cyst on one of my ovaries. English translation: an imbalance of hormones, precancerous cellular condition, high risk for cancer, thickened endometrium, heavy and continual bleeding and just a pain in the…neck!

My Gynecologist suggested total and complete clean out, so did my regular doctor. So we scheduled a visit to a genealogical oncology surgeon, someone who specializes in woman’s cancer issues. We saw him Friday, June 19th. I have to tell you, I had pretty much made up my mind to have the complete deal—the total clearing out of all essential woman parts so that further possible problems might be avoided. Who wants to be a seventy year old woman with ovarian cancer? Not me. But what the surgeon told us was bewildering and unexpected. Of course he added that a woman of “my size” would not fare well during a full-blown surgery. I wanted to scream and shout, “Hey, I’ve lost 104 pounds, doesn’t that count for anything?” I guess not. He warned against wound infections, the slow painful healing process, pneumonia, complications and other delightful things a person facing surgery wants to hear. He wondered why I hadn’t had a bi-pass surgery instead of fighting through weight loss on my own. I guess I must have had a look of incredulity on my face because he told me the statistics of people losing weight on their own then regaining it were high, perhaps 50 to 60 percent if not higher. (He’s obviously not seen my before and after pictures.)

He suggested a D&C (no not the Doctrine and Covenants) for additional biopsy results then three months of hormone replacement therapy, that is if the presence of cancer wasn't detected then at the end of the three months, more biopsies. This pattern would be repeated the rest of my life. With that option, there would still be bleeding and no telling how strong. Pleasant, right?

At the end of the discussion, I was stressed to the max, confused as heck and feeling like I could easily kill someone and probably get off because of PMS. He gave me the weekend to think it through.

Below is an ultrasound picture of Endrometrial hyperplasia with atypia
The arrows show the polyps or fibroids that are growing inside the uterus. Cause: Imbalance of hormones, too much estrogen and swelling of uterus which causes excess bleeding.

Now I know millions of women have faced similar situations and some have procrastinated their decisions for treatment with disastrous results. Nobody wants to face the decision of this magnitude. Life should be simple so you slip gracefully and quietly into those happy fulfilling and problem free golden years. Nuts to that! Seems I’m being shoved into those not-so-golden years kicking and screaming and holding on for dear life.

Today I’m researching my condition on the internet, doing an awful lot of thinking, some praying and having serious doubts. Can you say “second opinion”? All the ladies that I’m acquainted with who’ve lived through this suggest that surgery is the option that worked best for them. My surgeon suggests I won’t do well during or after surgery. Where does that leave me? I’ll tell you where. A place of confusion and frustration.

How will this end? Tune in next week for the continuing saga of “Will Carol Have the Hysterectomy or Will She Opt for the D and C With Hormone Replacement Therapy for the Rest of Her Life and Wait for Cancer to Kick In a Year or So?”

Though deepening trials...

2009-05-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written in my blog. I've been through a lot. I experienced a couple of small vacations. One to Provo, Utah another to Palm Springs and then school and work seemed to consume all rest my time. I had to complete a ten page essay on the joys of the liberal media for my on-line English class. It took two weeks of intense research to finish. Now I hope for at least a passing grade.

On Mother's day, I had a situation that presented a bit of a challenge. As a woman, especially one of my age, I had hoped and prayed the days of the month "curse" would pass and pass unceremoniously. However, such was not the case in my life. By the end of the first week I was seriously concerned with light headiness, dizziness and my heart beating out of my chest. So I sought for my doctor's care.

Through blood tests and exams I learned I'd bled out one half of my body's blood supply. Not a good thing if you want to stay alive. On Tuesday evening, May 19, I was admitted to the emergency room at St. Johns/Pleasant Valley Hospital for an emergency blood transfusion. Not an experience I recommend. Just to test and type and cross match took hours. The drip of a unit of blood took even more time and then I got a second unit. That was to bring me up to just over half.

I guess blood is pretty essential to sustaining life. And I never really understood before that the blood in the body is manufactured in the bone marrow. Interesting what you can learn through medical problems. No I face enema and edema and a life time of pill taking.

Wednesday I had an exam by an OB/GYN specialist and a biopsy to rule out certain conditions or to confirm others. Now I wait. Pills were prescribed and actions recommended. New pills cause other problems and in the midst of all these trials--my neck and shoulder decide to slip from their moorings and further add to my discomfort.

So Sunday morning as I was moaning and groaning "poor me", I happened upon the following video from the church about going through hard times. It inspired me, strengthened me and caused me to think about my trials as "being a small moment" and "this too shall pass". That last one was my mother's favorite thing to tell me. She was a wise woman.

Please watch and take comfort.

When upon life billows you are tempest tossed
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost
Count your many blessing name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

May the Lord bless you all in whatever life hands you. Trials prove you're love. Sometimes I wish I wasn't loved quite so much!!

Sometimes I feel all alone!

2009-04-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

Lately as I struggle to lose even so much as a pound of weight, I end up feeling alone in my struggle. I don't know about you, but that's not a feeling I like much. There is a desolation and a despair associated with being all alone in my trials. Not that I don't sometimes like being alone. At the end of a particularly moronic day, or when I read and study. I like being alone then to think, comprehend and just be. But when I'm troubled or frightened or afraid for the future, I don't like the feeling of being alone--abandoned, forsaken.

There was someone else who lived a very long time ago who had to walk a path that lead him to a place of utter aloneness. A place He had to stand alone against the world in order to save us from it. Jesus Christ was that someone who had to be so totally and utterly alone in order to understand our sufferings. Today being Easter I was drawn to my feelings about Him and what was said of him last week in the General Conference of our church--The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lessons about the Savior were taught in the most elegant of manners beginning with the discourse of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland.

When you feel alone, as we all do from time to time, please try to remember that you will never be alone to face your trials such as Jesus Christ faced His. Please watch and listen to the following clip and see if you don't feel to say, I'm not really alone, I have someone who'll stand with me. Enjoy!

My Life as a Song!

2009-03-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

Music has defined my life. Hence the name “Carol.” As a child my basic tenets of life were defined with the words of a little children's song: “I am a Child of God, and He has sent me here. Has given me and earthly home with parents kind and dear. Lead me, guide me, walk beside me help me find the way. Teach me all that I must do, to live with him some day.” These are very simple words but with a supernal view of life and a true path to follow. The best thing my parents did for me was provide a little,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “London Bridge is Falling Down,” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Timeless classics.

Later in my life John Denver became my hero with songs like “Take Me Home Country Roads” and “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.” When I started seeing my husband (although he didn’t realize he was going to be my husband) I used to sing Foreigner’s: “I’ve Been Waiting for a [boy] girl like you,” on my way to his house. At our reception our friends sang to us Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross' version of “Endless Love” and The Carpenter’s song, “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

I surround myself with music. Sometimes when I’m asked a question, I answer with lyrics from a song. I was a whiz at the popular game show, “Name That Tune." My husband’s favorite exasperated statement aimed at me is, “Oh, Carol.” So I naturally start singing Neil Sedaka’s “Oh, Carol,” in response and it lightens the mood. So when I was asked to choose one song that defines who I am or one song that means something special to me, there is no way for me to choose just one.

Religious songs define me spiritually and there are too many to pick just one. Classical and choral songs I’ve enjoyed through all my years in school and college choirs still float around in my head. Classic rock n roll songs delight me and make me happy. I even enjoy some of the newer groups. Bon Jovi, Cold Play, Linkin Park, Nickleback, (I can see you rolling your eyes), and Paramore. Eclectic, right? I’m positively head over heals in love with Michael Buble’ and his song “Home” is my ring tone. So choosing one song has not been easy.However, last year when I decided to change my life, my married life took on a whole new thrill. Suddenly it was like we were newlyweds again and that spark that kindled between us nearly twenty seven years ago was lit anew. Then the words of Bon Jovi’s song, "Thank You For Loving Me" hit me with full force. I find myself singing it to my husband practically every day. See if the words don’t touch you as well.

"It's hard for me to say the things I want to say sometimes.
There's no one here but you and me,
and that broken old street light.
Lock the doors we'll leave the world outside.
All I've got to give to you,
are these five words tonight.

[Chorus:] Thank you for loving me.
For being my eyes when I couldn't see.
For parting my lips when I couldn't breathe.
Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me.

I never knew I had a dream until that dream was you.
When I look into your eyes the sky's a different blue.
Cross my heart I wear no disguise.
If I tried, you'd make believe, that you believed my lies.

You pick me up when I fall down. You ring the bell before they count me out.
If I was drowning you would part the sea and risk your own life to rescue me."

For me, the family is the basic unit of society and thrives when built upon the principles of shared experiences, shared loyalty and shared love and affection. These principles and elements should be revived from time to time to keep a marriage strong and vital. The last year of my life has brought me several new passions: a passion for a healthy life, a passion for writing and a passion for my husband. I hope everyone finds their own passion and keep the fire burning.

Ninner, ninner, ninner. I got mine!

2009-03-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to rub it in. I got my Twilight DVD today at 4 p.m. I beat the midnight rush. So ha, ha ha! I guess you know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Falling off the wagon!

2009-03-08T15:22:00.001-07:00

I haven't written in my blog for a very long time. There are many reasons. I'm enrolled in a college English course and the writing is tough and demanding of my precious time. I've become involved with another company and I'm helping them with their books and the training of their new bookkeeper. (Heaven help them!) I'm still working for the two other business I go to at least four times and week and now I've taken on the books of my boss's son. I have about a years worth of bookkeeping to catch up on. Yikes! And of course, I'm busily working on book number five, then throw in my birthday and Tim's and a quick weekend trip to Southern Utah to visit my dad and his wife, Edna plus Tim's father passed away and we spent a lot of Saturday's visiting him in the hospital--and you've got life at it's finest.

However, those are not the only reasons--which are very good reasons--for not writing in my blog, but the simplest reason and the straight forward one is that I've fallen off the wagon.

We've all seen people who've tried to improve their lives through weight loss, quitting smoking and drinking, stopping drug abuse and so on. And then they've seen them slip off their tenuous program and indulge in he behavior that got them in trouble in the first place. Somewhere in the back of my evil twin sister's mind, we look at them and say, "I knew they couldn't stick with it. They're so weak!" Come on, I know you've all heard that nasty little voice in the back of your head say something vicious like that. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me. It's not that we like to see people fail at something, it's just that we don't want them to best us.

Well...I now know what it's like to slide off the wagon and back into patterns of behavior that are familiar yet destructive. Before Christmas I finally reached the middle pinnacle of my weight loss journey. 104 pounds. Although far from my goal, that seemed like a great milestone. But that's where it ended.

I know first hand what it feels like when a recovering alcoholic hears the call of the bottle which reaches out, enticing them back with the alluring feel of the liquid gold sliding down a parched throat. I know what a heroin addict must feel when they walk the streets and a dealer shoves bag of the white siren's powder under their nose. I know what seduction there is in having another smoker in the same room with you when you're craving a draw on that tobacco stick. I know because I'm also an addict.

I thought I'd concurred my addition, my obsession, my passion for FOOD! But after only eight months of strict obedience, I had not learned the basic lessons of control. I also realize that with an addiction to food, you can't completely shove it out of your life. It's around you everywhere. Your life is constantly bombarded with reasons to eat: Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, anniversaries, travel, funerals--grief. And if you haven't learned what it means to control the situation, then you'll slip off the wagon just as surely as a heroin addict or a recovering alcoholic. There really is no difference.

I then heard the other little voice in my head, the one that tells you that you really can't do it. You have no business trying to quit something or restructuring your life. You're just no good at it. We all have that voice as well. I listened when it told me "just one won't hurt." So I believed and fell. Just one box of Sees, just one pound of fantasy fudge, just one pound of honey baked ham and one pound of scalloped potatoes and one pound of pumpkin pie. Just one drink or two of egg nog and vanilla ice cream, just one more, and one more and...You get the picture.

Then there's another little voice (I'm full of them) that tells you "well now you've fallen off and lost your momentum and slipped up a few pounds, so what?" That's the voice I really hate. Because that's the voice I believe the most. "Yeah, you're right. I've really messed up. I knew I couldn't lose weight all along. You told me I couldn't do it and now you're proven me right." Boy! I hate it when I agree with myself. I sound like I'm slipping into existentialism. You know what that is, right? According to Wikipedia, "a philosophy that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Or in other words--nonsense!

I believed the nonsense that only my mind can produce. I believed a lie.

I believed the lie my existential mind (disoriented, confused, absurd) mind was telling me. So here I am. No longer at 104 pounds down. I won't bore you with the details of exactly how many pounds I added back on my bones, but enough to have me believing the lie--you've failed, you can't go on--you're a loser. (Well technically that would be NON-LOSER!)

What's great about Weight Watchers, (and this isn't a shameless plug) it that they help you see around the lies you tell yourself and help you through the barriers that keep you from taking the first step toward jumping back on the wagon. I'm still racing behind the wagon hoping it will slow down and let me catch up. No more excuses, no more rationalizations, it's my choice whether I eat low calorie filling foods or consume everything that's not nailed down. I'm still getting my feet under me. Still trying to push out the third voice and still trying. Period.

Thank goodness I didn't stop going to the gym. That's the only thing that's saved my bacon (no pork-fat jokes, please). I still go every morning, punish myself for an hour so that I don't climb into a ditch after falling off the wagon. So for the present, I'm still running behind the wagon, praying for the strength to fight another day. That's all we can ask out of life. And oh, one more thing--I need to forgive the little voices in my head and forgive myself for tripping. After all, that's all we want from life is a little forgiveness when we stumble and a hand up. That's what Weight Watchers does for me. They offer a hand and it's my choice to clasp it or not.Anywhoo, I still can see some improvement even though I'm running fast to catch up with myself. (Is that an existential statement?)

My first college essay-A treat for you!

2009-02-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

The following is my first attempt at a Classification Essay for my college class at Moorpark college. I thought I'd run it by my friends to see what you think. So here goes.

Carol Malone
Professor Randy Gifford
English M01
7 February 2009

California People

In 1857 in his maiden speech before the United States Senate, California Senator David C. Broderick stated, "There is no state [speaking of California] in the Union, no place on earth, where labor is so honored and so well rewarded; no time and no place since the Almighty doomed the sons of Adam to toil, where the curse, if it be a curse, rests so lightly as now on the people of California." (1 Lynch, p. 175). In 2009, people still flock to California in search of “The Dream” of making it big. Generally speaking, wages are still higher here than in other state. Opportunities for employment are more plentiful and there are a greater variety of jobs here than any other place in the nation. In spite of recent economic downturns, Californians on the whole, are still better off than most major populous cities in the rest of the world. And though the state’s economy has fluctuated from the sixth largest in the world to the current standing of tenth, people still find labor to be rewarding and lucrative. Many businesses and industries thrive in California. From mom and pop shops to import/export magnets to Fortune 500 companies—all employ vast armies of people. The following three industries consistently hail among the top ten producers of California goods and services: the farmers who toil and sweat to cultivate and grow crops in the fertile fields and valleys of this rich land, the technological geniuses that have sparked the computer information revolution, and the brilliantly talented and creative moguls of the film industry.

The leading economic industry of California has always been farming and agriculture. What is the driving force behind the California farmer who grows food for a nation as well as the entire world? Who are these people? "The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn't still be a farmer." (2 Rogers).These people—these optimistic farmers have to ask themselves—why do I farm and where? There are many reasons. Some people farm on something called a “stewardship” farm because they are the type of people who want to “help conserve and care for the land and other natural resources of the farm”. (3 Ikerd ). And others grow food solely for commercial gain. Still other people farm because they were raised on a farm. It’s in their blood. The live for the feel of the soil, the passion to watch things grow and to enjoy the gamble. They place their bets against the uncontrollable elements, water and irrigation problems, market prices, transportation issues, property taxes, higher production costs and governmental interference. These hardy people farm because it is a family tradition and a heritage from generations past. One such family grower in the local area of Ventura County is Underwood farms in Moorpark, California. Sara Jane and Craig Underwood are the current owners of the farm and oversee the day to day operations as well as the overall care for the soil, the manipulation of crops and care for vital pollinating insects. The farm has been in Craig’s family since 1867. They are especially known for their innovation in baby and specialty vegetables. People can go to their farm and hand pick right from the fields or orchards. They have their own roadside markets that serve the community and participate in thirteen different Farmer’s Markets that bring the fresh product directly into the community and into the hands of the end consumers. Pride in accomplishment, gratitude for the cooperation of Mother Nature and a loyalty to family heritage is what drives the Underwoods and other farmers to maintain excellence in farming.

Another factor in driving the economy of California is the computer information technology industry. The majority, but not all individuals that engineer, build and compute their way into the information industry have keen minds and highly developed intellects. Stanford University is a leading factor in the development and facilitation of information technology and culminating in many opportunities for enterprising young people. One such industry leader is Larry Page who became the innovator and co-creator of the Internet’s most popular search engine—Google. Shakespeare said: "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em". (4 Shakespeare). Larry was a product of all three of those descriptions. Can the home environment and the way one is raised be the catalyst behind the career path a child chooses? Definitely. Larry was raised by a father who was a professor of computer science and a mother who taught computer programming. Engineering and computer magazines littered their home—literally. Larry said he always knew he wanted to invent things even as a young boy. Then at the age of twelve, he decided he would start his own company someday. When he went to Stanford for the PhD program, his research turned into something called a “search engine,” then other people thrust him into the limelight.“We didn't start out to do a search engine at all. In late 1995, I started collecting the links on the Web, because my advisor and I decided that would be a good thing to do. We didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it, but it seemed like no one was really looking at the links on the Web -- which pages link to which pages. In computer science, there's a lot of big graphs. Right now, (the Web) has like five billion edges and two billion nodes. So it is a huge graph. I figured I could get a dissertation and do something fun and perhaps practical at the same time, which is really what motivates me.” (5 Interview: Larry Page). Millions of people have been affected by the efforts, drive and genius of Larry Page. The word “Google” is actually considered a verb now. Who hasn’t “Googled” for a web site, map, directions, on-line images and a view of the earth from a satellite? From home nurturing to desire and drive to creative innovation, Larry Page has put his personal stamp on the economy of California and on the world.

Other major contributors to the economy of California are the people who drive the film industry. These talented and creative people use their genius to entertain and enliven. Who are these people and what are they like? Are they formally educated, have they had years of training in the industry or just have a stupendous amount of luck? For some movie moguls it is a combination of all three factors. One such mogul who has flooded the world with a treasure trove of entertainment, is the talented and creative director and producer, Steven Spielberg. Millions of people have spent billions of dollars to be entertained, scared stiff or to lose themselves in a world of fantasy and adventure all due to the unparalleled contributions of Steven Spielberg. He once reported that film making was in his blood. He made little films of blowing up Lionel trains as a young child, filming them then charging his friends to watch them. He had his little sister selling popcorn. Thus began his journey into film production.Steven made his own inroads into the business. After being denied entrance into prestigious film schools, he attended the University of Long Beach and studied English. On a ride around Universal Studios, he hopped off the tram, found a small janitorial closet and set up business. The studio people just got used to having him around so he stayed. Each step in Steven’s career led him upward. He made his first amateur film; an eight minute Western called The Last Gun, which eventually led him down the path to the ultimate dream fulfillment. From his first full length picture, he has also brought us alien fantasies such as E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial, action horror films such as Jaws, and adventurous romps such as the Raiders of the Lost Ark series. Then he has caused us to think with movies like The Color Purple and Schindler's List. He has captivated the kids with cartoons such as "Tiny Toon Adventures", and "Pinky and the Brain". California and the rest of the world will not soon forget the impact Steven Spielberg has had on the film industry. The State's economy had benefited immensely from the $4,613,000,000.00 his films have grossed. Roger Ebert (Sun-Times film critic) has stated, “If Spielberg never directed another film, his place in movie history would be secure. No other director has been more successful at the box office and few have placed more titles on various lists of great films. No director or producer has ever put together a more popular body of work. That’s why the movies we’re seeing are made in his image.” (6 Wills).

When the rest of the nation and the world—for that matter—look for a model of financial prowess, economic success and people who are willing to lay it all on the line for the industries they represent,California leads the way. From the humble people who bring crops from the ground sometimes with nothing more than their bare hands to the heads of major film studios, people of many unusual backgrounds and upbringing and differing fields of expertise can change the face of business and the economy. These three types of Californians, the farmers like the Underwoods, the technologically gifted entrepreneurs like Larry Page and men with vision and creativity like Steven Spielberg have changed forever the face of California industry and economics. They have influenced all of California—if not the rest of the world—with their hard work and devotion to a dream. Their labors have been richly rewarded and the world honors them.

1 Lynch, Jeremiah, 1849-1917, The Life of David C. Broderick, A Senator of the Fifties,1911); San Francisco, A.M. Robertson publisher, p. 175

2 Rogers, Will, http://www.willrogerstoday.com/will_rogers_quotes/quotes.cfm?qID=5

3 Ikerd, John, Why Do Small Farmers Farm? Published in Small Farm Today Magazine,September-October, 2003

4 Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night (Act II, v, 156-159)

5 Interview: Larry Page, Founding CEO, Google Inc. October 28, 2000; London, England; Academy of Achievement at www.achievement.org. This page last revised on Mar 1, 2007 13:44 PS

6 Wills, Dominic;http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/steven_spielberg_biog/8

Chapter from my book #5

2009-01-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

I finished roughing my fourth book on the 29th of December and immediately plunged into book number five. It's another love story, (what else), taking place in my home town of Camarillo with a young man who's been married, divorced and has custody of his two children. He meets a young woman that he doesn't want to love and then the fun begins. So here is Chapter Two of my fifth book:

He hadn’t intended to stare, but when a man’s been without a woman in his life for as long as he had, well, it was a welcome sight. Marc, or Marcellus Hamlet Swane, as his fanciful flighty mother had named him, was just retrieving the boxes containing the wood laminate for his son Adam’s free-wheeling bedroom. Marc opted for man-made products for the rambunctious and boisterous young five year old boy who moved through a home more like a charging rhino than a normal human being. Durable, sensible and practically indestructible, that’s what the label on the box read and Marc was all for it.

Before grabbing the final box and hefting it into the house, he’d couldn’t help but hear the 306 horses roaring down the block and squealing to a brisk stop in the driveway of the James’s old house across the street. Silvery steel gray, he smiled. His favorite color. The guy had taste. Then the car open and long silky legs slid out half hidden under a butterscotch colored skirt followed up by a jacket in the same color with a blouse the color of melting butter. Some guy was all Marc could manage. That’s when he dropped the last box, leaned back against the tailgate of the truck and crossed his arms and legs to enjoy the view.

The woman stopped for the longest time and just looked at the house then turned to look down the street as if looking for someone. Her lips moved but at this distance, he couldn’t hear what she said. Talking to her self, he mused, wasn’t a very good sign of a stable mind. Anybody that looked like that, drove a hot car like that and lived all alone in a huge English Tudor had to be just a little bit off. But that isn’t why he kept watching.

The Hoffman’s dog was running around in circles in the yard next door, but the women in butterscotch didn’t seem to notice. Loud rap music wafted from Ricky Hernandez’s car as he started it up to go to work at In-N-Out. Then the yard crew down the block at the Rameriz’s place began the loud work of grooming the yard, but she continued to stare off into the west as if saying good bye. And he kept watching her—wondering.

Why hadn’t he noticed her before? Surely he would have noticed a woman who looked like she just stepped from the pages of Glamour before now. Maybe he should have been paying attention to his Aunt and Uncle’s home a long time ago instead of staying away from it like a wounded puppy. But their passing and the subsequent legal battle for their estate had left everyone in the Brightstone/Swane family on edge and bitter. He was no exception.

He glanced again at the blond with the great legs and the great car and wondered if she’d finally come to the conclusion of her daydream. He figured a woman like that was totally self-absorbed just as Lilly had been and accustomed to having the finer things in life.

Caution brother, he warned himself. They’re okay to look at, maybe pine for, but hands off! Let some other sucker grind his teeth on that one.
Just then the woman reached up and pulled something out of her hair releasing almost three feet of the silkiest wheat colored hair he’d ever seen, then shook it out. Then she bent over to pick up the newspaper and his mouth went bone dry. Fighting unchaste thoughts he looked down at his dirty, calloused hands and fidgeted. It wasn’t right for him to be staring at a woman like he’d been doing. He should get back to work. There was so much to do before move-in day. He didn’t have the luxury to stand and watch a beautiful woman that had an invisible sign on her attractive back that read “hands off buster”. And even though he hadn’t been what you would call really active in church of late, he knew it was wrong to crave something akin to the woman who’d broken his heart. Stupid, he chided himself. Absolutely stupid. Get back to work.

Before he could move, the leggy, blond fished something out of her trunk and moved inside the house without a backwards glance in his direction.

After she was safely inside, another car screamed down the street and bumped violently into the drive way next to the Z. He prayed the little Mazda Miata wouldn’t come in contact with the Z. It would devastate him. Another tall leggy brunette half slid, half pulled her yard long legs out of the squatty car and skipped up the sidewalk after the blond. Just before she ducked into the house, she shot him a cool look over Oakley sunglasses and pursed her lips.

What a show! Two gorgeous women for a price of one.

He’d just about decided to turn around and lift the box from the truck bed when another car chugged down the street. A little red Fiat about thirty years old clamored to a stop in front of the same house. Marc watched out of pure curiosity. The door had to be forced open and complained loudly with a metal grind. A woman of medium height with short spiky black hair tumbled out of the car almost meeting up with the ground. Her lips moved in a silent derision, but she dusted off her black slacks and straightened her silky black blouse and shot him what looked like a disgusted look, but he couldn’t tell for sure because as she also wore black sunglasses that kept her eyes hidden from him. He imagined black as well.

She gripped a very large purse, the contents almost spilling to the ground, slammed the complaining door and sauntered—hips swinging to the door and disappeared after giving him a thorough look. Black cat crossed his mind. She resembled a black slinky cat. He imagined she just might purr.

He turned back to the truck bed and picked up the last box of flooring. As he slammed the tailgate, two more cars raced down the street. He laid odds which house they’d stop at. Man, he was glad he hadn’t bet against himself—he’d have lost.

This time a long legged red head and a diminutive blond bounded out of an old Chevy and a Toyota Prius. Gas hog and environmentalist, he smiled and leaned back to enjoy the rest of the show.

The red head looked like an Irish dream dressing to her strengths in emerald green and gold. The little blond wore a simple pair of dark pink slacks and a pink blouse. Some sort of uniform.They met and hugged in the middle of the street. Marc envied their easy camaraderie. Then the red head tilted her sunglasses down a long perfect nose and studied him. Her ruby red lips curled up at the corners and she muttered something to the little blond that had her spinning around to stare in his direction.

Red waved a hand and his went up automatically in response, frustrating the life out of him. Stay cool, brother, he warned himself. No need getting involved with a hen house full of dishing women. Before the blond could reciprocate the wave, he strode off to the house and slammed the door. Women!

I'm back in school again!

2009-01-16T08:13:00.000-08:00

After a year, I started taking another college course at Moorpark Community College. Since I want to write, I thought it might be a good idea to learn the basics. This time around I signed up for an on-line course. I love it. But man, I've never done so much work. I'm on the computer every night so far and have just been in class since last Monday, January 12th. I did some work over the weekend before hand. I just wanted to share one of my first assignments. It is a journal entry in which we were asked to interview a family members about the upcoming change in the presidency. So I chose Tim, my husband. (Now don't get too riled up!)I choose to interview not a blood relative, but my husband about the upcoming change in the presidency. My husband has very strong moral, ethical and political beliefs as do I, but is not one to speak out. To begin with, I asked him how he felt about the upcoming change. He said that a lot of people are happy. (He was trying to be evasive.) After five minutes of trying to get him to spell out how he felt about the change, he told me this, "I believe that Mr. Obama and Hillary will be the force behind a new world order. They will establish a more solid base of socialism than in the days of F.D.R." I concurred on that point. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in his term of office was to create the "New Deal" or in my words, "A Raw Deal", as social security was never meant to be more than a temporary fix. But a lass another socialist president made sure that the "have's" would fund the "have not's" ad infinitum with "The Great Society". Tim concurred.

I asked him if he thought Obama could change the country. Tim said, "I'm not sure that any president, even Mr. Obama, can do what needs to be done to overcome the years and years of bad financial mismanagement by the government." He went on to say, "sometimes presidents are just dangling puppets for the actual law makers in the House and Senate, policy wonks with boat loads of money and those unseen power brokers in smoke filled back rooms."When asked if Bush acted like a puppet. Tim said that "sometimes Bush was a naive puppet by listening and kowtowing to the opposition in many decisions that have affected the country badly. For instance, in 2001, he told congress to watch out for Freddie Mac and Fannie May stating that allowing excessive loans to people who wouldn't normally qualify for them would spell disaster for the mortgage industry. He wanted congress to put tighter restrictions and governmental controls on their loaning practices." Well that didn't happen. And why you might ask? Because Bush went along with the congressman who swore before a session of congress, that every working person in America should own a home. Tim said "that man was Congressman Barney Frankwho said in effect that everybody was entitled to own a home. Now it didn't matter that those same home buyers couldn't pay for those houses after getting a 100% loan, but that's just another in-your-face affirmation that congress cannot be trusted to do what's in the best interest of the country."

Tim had strong sentiments about government spending that will increase under Obama’s promised fixes. He said, "I'm also concerned by Obama's promises to increase the huge amount of governmental bailouts by at least triple. Who is going to be accountable, who's keep track and who's going to enforce the payback and when, or is it a gift from you and me? No doubt the tax payer, or the ‘have's’, will be responsible for bailing out the car companies, the mortgage companies and anybody else with a legitimate complaint about their business going south. Even Larry Flint asked for money to supplement the failing porn industry.” As if?

Another thing that frightens Tim is Obama's promise to close Guantamo the day after he comes into power.“What in the world will he do with those terrorists? Or in his mind are they really terrorists or just misunderstood religious reformers with viable complaints about the American devils who just acted out irrationally and just need to sit down and talk.”

Yes, in the upcoming change of at the top level of our government, Mr. Obama has promised change and Tim fears change. But my friends, as Tim states, "he didn't promise a good change. Is then change for change's sake really a good change? Or is it a lot of political drool." Tim went on to paraphrase Mr. Obama himself when he told the media the other day that he must put aside his campaign promises because the current situation calls for desperate measures. Isn't that convenient? He intimated that we're all going to have to experience a lot of pain before the crisis is over. Where's my Tylenol?

I'm just glad I wasn't asked how I felt about the upcoming presidential shift in power.

Happy New Year???

2009-01-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

I gotta tell you when I woke up on New Year's morning I was not a happy camper. Everything hurt! My back hurt, my feet (which hurt all the time now), hurt. My legs and knees ached and I had a pain in my shoulder from sleeping on it badly and an old volleyball injury and my head throbbed like it had been used for batting practice.

My first thought was how eating a pound of decadent fudge and deliciously crunchy Rice Krispie candy can actually make you gain five pounds--very unfair. So I grieved for being off track in my weight loss expedition. Then that made me feel sorry for myself. I remembered that my neighbors were outside at midnight banging pots and pans, shouting at the top of their lungs, shooting off fireworks and celebrating while I'm trying to fall asleep. And I'm thinking--what's the big deal? It's just another year of bad economic times with trouble ahead, dad-to-day drudgery and monotonous work, bills, debts, aches and pains, possible surgery for my excess tummy and arm baggage and possibly my knees. Worries over kids and parents, and general malaise to come. Happy New Year!

(I have to confess, that by noon New Year's day, I felt a whole lot better because I started a new book and flew through the first three chapters. Then USC beat the crap out of Penn State in the Rose Bowl game all making the world shift right back on it's axis again.)

Then I did some pondering. As I think back over my very long life to date, I recall thinking in my childhood, that the year 2000 seemed as far away as as abstract as outer space. Yet from where we are today--the year 2000 was nine years ago!!

Weren't we supposed to be living at the far reaches of space in manned space stations talking to computers that were smarter than we are and held our lives in the palm of their non-existent hands like 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Weren't we supposed to be having mind controlling "Big Brother" watching us all the time, "feel-a-vision" movie theaters and have the citizenry populated only through the use of test tubes like in Orwell's 1984? How about daddy being thrown out of bed and onto a conveyor belt that moves him through a computerized shower, shaver and dresser, then having daddy leave for work in his flying car? Then mommy cleans up the house with an in-home robot who cooks, cleans and watches our kids for us while our children play with robot puppies and spinning weightless floating tops. Where are those ingenious houses that are solely computer driven and communicate and function by themselves? Or mind-computer connections like in the Matrix?

Do we have people living on the moon is domed weightless communities or people at the bottom of the sea living in sealed glass cities? Where are all the jet propelled cars, alternative fuels, a world without money, or strife and conflict?

I read somewhere some really funny jokes about the future as seen through the eyes of people living in the 50's. You can find these on Aaron's jokes. Enjoy and remember.

"I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, its' going to be impossible to buy a weeks groceries for $20."

"Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long when $5000 will only buy a used one."

"Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?"

"If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store."

"When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 50 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage."

"Also, their music drives me wild. This 'Rock Around The Clock' thing is nothing but racket."

"I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas."

"Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the president."

"Do you suppose television will ever reach our part of the country?""I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

"It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work."

"I'm just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to congress."

"Anymore no one can afford to be sick, $35 a day in the hospital is too rich for my blood."

"If a few idiots want to risk their necks flying across the country that's fine, but nothing will ever replace trains.""Cars which dim their lights by sensors, automatic transmissions, and who knows what else? Pretty soon they will drive themselves."

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the first, the beginning of the new year causes some of us to remember and speculate about the future and ponder where we are and what we want to accomplish. I hope I'm not being too braggadocios to say I've come a long way baby and hope to continue that journey. I kick myself sometimes for waiting until my life is almost at an end, but better late than never.

Life really is a beautiful thing. The sun still comes up in the morning. Rain waters the earth and new life springs up. At the end of the day, sometimes the sun gives a spectacular showing of its grandeur. Heaven is still waiting to receive us if we're prepared. The possibilities for personal, spiritual and technological growth are still before us. So the future that Mr. Disney saw in his Carousel of Progress and the house of the future just might come to pass and soon.

Hope Your Christmas Was Merry!

2008-12-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

I hope you had a great celebration. We enjoyed a very quiet holiday. Christmas Eve I opened up the woman's gym for those of us who wanted to be prepared for our Christmas feasting then I slipped into K-Mart to finish up my shopping and wouldn't you know it, my credit card wouldn't work. Then my check wouldn't take. That was the most embarrassing experience of 2008.

The sales clerk had to void all my purchases as we waited for Tim to come with money from our pay checks yet to be deposited. In the meantime, I called Sears to find out why I wasn't able to use my card and they explained that my previously canceled order had yet to be removed from my balance. So luckily I had some cash and with a combination of cash and Sears I was able to finish the sale. What a mess! Thank goodness I had the Christmas spirit or I would have found the experience very annoying and I could have turned Grinch-like in my embarrassment.

Tim and I spent Christmas Eve alone. We thought about going to friends homes, but we decided against it and thoroughly enjoyed being together. I watched old Christmas movies and Tim worked on the computer. Good times!

Christmas morning we woke up to find our son Mike downstairs in front of a computer I thought for a moment was his. Why did he bring his computer to our home on Christmas morning? But on closer inspection, I realized it wasn't his. He told me he'd built it for me. I could have melted into the floor I was so overcome with joy.My son never does anything unselfish or so utterly surprising. Not ever. I was dumbfounded. After reeling from the shock, I hugged him and expressed my thanks by bawling like a fool. A new computer, monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse and all that wonderful memory. Wow! Absolutely fantastic! I never thought he had it in him.

All the time before Christmas he was complaining about not having enough money for Christmas presents and all the while he was out finding parts for a computer for his mom. I was humbled. God bless him. He even built the thing himself. What a talented boy! Here he in on the floor under the tree searching for gifts.We spent the day after Christmas at Fry's with Mike as he helped his dad pick out his own computer parts then we came home and he built a computer for his dad. (Tax break!) So we have a very technologically gifted Christmas. I gave Mike food and home supplies and a gift certificate for Vons. Things a man on his own could use. He was delighted. I got tons of books besides my delightful computer. (I figured I've probably read about one hundred and five books this past year.)Here I am with my new books and my new computer. Great huh?We received a gift certificate for Red Lobster from my boss so after Fry's we enjoyed crab, shrimp and scallops on the house. Then came home to overdose on eggnog, homemade fudge and Rice Krispie candy, my absolute favorite holiday treats. Not too many people brought me treats and only one box of See's candy. I guess they figure I'm through with all that stuff. Thank the Lord.

I've had big noisy family Christmases where we rush around to each Grandparent's home and consume tons and tons of food and try to out shout one another. And those were fantastic, but it was a very pleasant event just to sit around with the two men who mean the most to me in the world and enjoy the quiet of easy companionship and the love expressed with simple, meaningful gifts.

I hope your Christmas was just as memorable. God bless us everyone!

Merry Christmas from the Malone's

2008-12-20T16:28:00.000-08:00

Tim and I took pictures of each other for our annual Christmas letter. My dear friend Monica gave me the beautiful velvet dress. I purchased four inch heals so I could wear it. I think I look pretty swingin'. We sang at our Stake Christmas concert on Sunday the fourteenth. We just adore Christmas music and don't get to sing a lot of it. Merry Christmas from CarolMerry Christmas from Tim

Carol says "Merry Christmas"

2008-12-13T22:18:00.000-08:00

And I'm not ashamed to say so!

The Grinch said it best when he described Christmas. "Perhaps Christmas doesn't come from a store. Perhaps Christmas means a little bit more." I know I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to running around at Christmas time like a woman possessed and end up missing the real significance of the season--the celebration of the birth of the Savior. We of all people should remember what makes Christians, Christians and pause to recall not only His humble beginnings but his life, ministry and divine atonement for and in behalf of all of us.

I'm thankful at this time of year to stop, pause and remember. Then make a commitment to do better. We could all use a little improvement. I've made some major changes in my life this year, physically. Now if I could say the same about my spirituality I'd really be flying. Everyday is a new day to rededicate ourselves to the things of eternity and see beyond the moment to the far reaching effects our choices will have.God bless us every one!

Men's vs Women's Brains!

2008-12-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

If you've got 10.5 minutes to spare, watch this video. It will give you a clear representation of the differences between men's and women's brains. It was very enlightening and all together true. Plus being funnier than heck!

Christmas--Gotta Love it!

2008-12-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

As far back as I can remember, Christmas has always a very critically important event in my family. It was a special time of family, great food and presents from Santa. Growing up in a small rural community in Northern Utah, I'd have to say my life was sheltered. (That would be an understatement.) Though we weren't what you would call rich, we had enough and to spare. We had the basic needs that every human craves. Love, fidelity, friendship and loyalty. Christmas was just a time to express those emotional traits.

One of the very first Christmas's that I remember was when I was almost five. I got a huge doll with thick curly hair and a rockin' horse. I treasured them both.You could find me practically every weekday riding my horse to the sounds of "Hi Ho, Silver, Away" or "Keep Those Doggies Movin', Rawhide". Man! That brings back blissful memories. The faster the action on the screen moved, the harder I rode the springed beauty. I put a lot of pressure on those coiled springs.

I remember one fateful Christmas when I had the measles. We couldn't have the blinds open in the front room for fear my eye sight would be damaged. That was a miserable year. I had to stay laying on the couch while the boys had their Christmas cheer without me.

Some of family traditions included mom's homemade oat and chocolate chip cookies and homemade fudge. Grandma Oldham's Alper's cookies and homemade pickles. Grandma Olsen's pies and mom's Christmas dinner. We had a living room that could be shut off from the rest of the house and we weren't allowed to enter the room Christmas morning unless all of us were awake. Trust David, my youngest brother, to be the hold up. He could sleep through an atomic blast and not move a muscle. We'd have to wait hours for him to drag his butt out of bed. Then it was bedlam.

We usually spent the day with Grandma Oldham and then ended up at Grandma Olsen's. The family would gather and good times were had by all. I can still here Grandpa Olsen yelling for me to get out of the way of the T.V.The last Christmas we spent in North Logan, Utah, my oldest brother Scott's family joined us. Judy, his wife, and their two oldest children, Fred and Jon helped us welcome in the holiday. I think that was my favorite Christmas. My second oldest brother, Reed, was designated as the gift hander-outer.Mom and Grandma Oldham were always wearing their aprons and usually in the midst of cooking up a Christmas storm.Mom and dad got new clothes and went out on the town. Don't they look great?Christmas time is a fantastic time for family photos. This was no exception. So many changes happened in that following year. My father lost his business, we lost our home and were forced to relocate to California. I'll always remember that very last Christmas in my home town. Pictured in back: Scott, his wife Judy, Dale's first wife Tanya, Dale, mom, David. Front: me, Grandma Oldham and Reed. Those were sweet, peaceful, innocent times. The world was blocked out of our thoughts as we shared happy times, calorie laden food and the spiritual blessings of being wrapped in the love of family. Thank the Lord these memories will always be in our minds and hearts as we look forward then take a step back. My family will always be the most important thing in my life.

Now I have my own family. A husband and a son. Watching Christmas unfold through his eyes will always be a great pleasure to me. His excitement and enthusiastic response to Christmas morning made my heart sigh. One of the best things about Christmas for Mike, was that most every year we spent it was Grandma and Grandpa Olsen. Even up to the a couple of years before mom passed away, they traveled to California to be with us.Their visit turned our tiny family into a big celebration. We miss them so much. Dad has a new wife now and mom is gone. On the 20th it will been three years since she passed away. Now all I have are memories of Christmas's passed and mom always there.

Well enough of the sentimental journey and just for the heck of it, I'm going to go against the P.C. crowd and wish you all a Merry Christmas! Wow! That felt good. I'll say it again. Merry Christmas! Remember those you care about the most this Christmas, even if you're not related to them. Make memories that you can look back on and feel glad.

Jealousy--it's a relationship killer.

2008-12-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

Here's another chapter from my fourth novel. The hero has decided to break it off with his fiance and pursue this other woman. (The women he played tennis with in a previous post.) However, he comes back to his resort and finds the woman in the arms of another man, two men actually:

Anger and betrayal replaced the searing burn of jealousy. What kind of a woman—a newly widowed woman,goes around throwing herself at all kinds of men—any age apparently. He was so angry by the time he reached them he could barely control the urge to pop his brother in the nose.

He stepped closer as they swirled around the floor. Tony stopped dancing for a moment and bowed Claire backwards in a sensuous dip that had her giggling like a school girl. Disgusting, revolting!

Claire saw him for the first time upside down, her hair hanging all the way to the floor. She smiled warmly. "Alex!"

"Is this the best two out of three?" Alex snarled.

"What?" Tony asked, but brought Claire back upright with a snap. "When did you get back?"

Alex ignored his brother.

"Alex.” Her face was flushed with excitement and the heat of the dance. "We didn't know you were back."

"Obviously," he snapped and grabbed her hand off Tony's shoulder. "I'm cutting in."

"Okay." Tony's expression was mutinous but he relinquished Claire and stepped back to his table where Sara was sitting.

Alex wrapped his arm possessively and none to gently around Claire's waist and dragged her hard against him. She let out a little whimper as she contacted with his chest and stared up at him with frightened eyes. He cursed himself but seized her hand in a vice-like grip.

"Didn't you have a good trip?"

"Yes, I had a great trip," he snapped then grimaced when she looked at him like she had to ward off a blow.

"Is something wrong?"

They danced in sharp staccato steps with their bodies fused tightly together. He fought his anger and frustration. "No."

"Then will you tell me why my fingers and the small of my back are going to be black and blue tomorrow morning?"

Her words didn't sink in for a few moments until her smile faded into a scowl.

"Sorry," he sighed but didn't ease his hold. "You've been very busy while I've been away."

She looked up at him, puzzled. "I don't know what you mean."

"I mean you've obviously made up with your boyfriend."

"Excuse me?"

"Boyfriend. And Tony. You seem to be getting along very well with both of them. Can't say as I blame you. They're both very attractive. I guess a merry widow like yourself can't really help it. You’ve obviously been playing the field while I’ve been away. Trying to scope out your next victim…er…husband?"

She looked up at him now those eyes turning to flat smoky blue like the sea before a squall and Alex could feel the controlled rage screaming for release. "How dare you!" she growled in barely tempered fury. "For your information, that attractive young man is my son." Her voice began to inch up in volume. "And you're the one who threw Tony and me together. But he was gentlemen enough to know I wasn't interested in him that way. He’s just a friend. And yes, I am having fun with them. They don't seem to want to accuse me falsely with suppositions that I was sniffing out a new mate like an animal in heat." She stopped dancing forcing him to stop as well. "You can release me now. I don't care to dance with you anymore."

Could there be a big enough rock for him to crawl under or a hole sufficiently large enough to plummet into? If he was going to eat crow he was going to have to do it, and quickly. "Claire...I...I'm so sorry. I'm such an idiot."

"You've got that right. Now let go of me." She twisted in his arms.

"No," he grumbled. "I need to talk to you."

"I said let go of me!" Her eyes were large and no longer blue. Gray, steel gray, hard and enraged.

"Please…please let me explain," he stuttered.

"There's nothing to explain. Your opinion of my character is crystal clear, Alex Cole. I really don't understand how you have the nerve to criticize me for my choice in men in the first place. Who the heck are you to tell me who I can see and who I can’t? You're not my father or my boyfriend or my fián..." she trailed off, grinding her teeth. "And I don't care to stand here anymore and be humiliated further. So take your hands off of me and let me go."

He released her reluctantly, sheepishly and watched her race back to where her son was sitting with his daughter. How could he have made such a stupid mistake? Just to look at the boy now he could see Claire. The golden hair, the ocean blue eyes. Could he be anymore more of a fool? Perhaps if he was lucky a comet would race out of the sky and obliterate him where he stood.

This is turning into a rather long novel. But there's so many twists and turns in the plot of getting these two people who are meant to be together--together. So we'll see. This is the point where I'm at right now.

Thanksgiving, yes even you can be thankful!

2008-11-30T17:45:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to think about what to write today. So many things race through my mind. I wanted to express my thanks for my good fortune, my family and my life. So often we don't give enough appreciation or let others know of our gratitude for the blessings they are in our life. At this special time of the year, we are given a day set aside for just that very thing--thanks!

I'd like to start by expressing thanks for my life. It wasn't anything that I did that allowed me to sojourn on this planet. I had very little to do with it. I think my parents were pretty much done with their little family. They had four boys quite close together and didn't think of having anymore for exactly eight years after the birth of my youngest brother. But then SURPRISE! they got me.I considered myself a bonus baby, as I was referred to casually from time to time. What does that mean? Well a bonus on a job is a lucrative monetary gift for a job well done, or a gesture of good will from your boss. I like to think I was both. A gift and a gesture of good will. After having four boys, mom needed a girl to talk to.

And was I spoiled? Certainly not, you, you bully. Just because I could do whatever I wanted to, or go wherever I wanted to or got whatever I wanted, doesn't mean I was spoiled, but that's beside the point--I was loved. Maybe an object of jealousy, (I won't mention my brother David. He lost his baby status on account of me.) But I was loved and knew it.I was also taught a good many things for which I am doubly grateful. Mom saw to my domestic education, cooking, cleaning, sewing and Grandma Oldham saw that I learned to iron, use a wringer washer and crochet--and oh, yes, dust the bottom legs of her dining room table and chairs.I was taught in the traditions of my forefathers. Many the day I'd get to spend with my mom or grandma listening to family stories of the past. I gained such an appreciation for the ancestors that left home and hearth to journey to America for religious freedom and gospel solidarity. I can't be more grateful to them for that heritage of faith I was left.

I got the best education government money could buy. Elementary school, junior high, high school and junior college. All pretty much for pennies. Does it serve me well now? You betcha! I can read and write and do 'rithmatic--sort of.

I am overwhelmed at the gospel I've been granted to participate in. I'm so grateful to know that God loves me and that he sent His Son to suffer, bleed and die for me. And that all things were created by Him. So I'm thankful for the green grass, the brilliant blue sky, the waving palm trees and the mild temperatures of Camarillo. How blessed am I to live in Paradise. (It comes with a high price, but it's worth it.)

I've often wondered who atheists thank for the world and all the beautiful creations on it. Mother Earth? Luck or the Big Bang Theory? Good luck with that!
I'm thankful to have served a mission for my church and when I came home to a perceived lonely life, was granted the extreme pleasure of meeting one Tim Malone and the rest, as they say, is romantic history. We were blessed with a bonus child of our own. My Mike. Could there have been a sweeter boy? I don't think so! I have gained the blessings of untold joy and unending happiness. And I know exactly who to thank for that.

So when I see earthquakes, poverty, famine, fires, floods, economic crisis, sin, suffering, political unrest, war, you might ask--How the h#@$ can you be thankful to live in a world like that. Well to quote Samwise Gamgee, "There's still some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, something worth fighting for." That's exactly how I feel about being thankful. Thankful people are happy, contented, peaceful, free from panic and fear. Thankful people love and love unconditionally. I'm still working on that. But I'm thankful for that as a challenge. If I can love in spite of the happenings in the world or people who hurt and make afraid, then I'm truly blessed and doubly thankful.

May you find your own thankfulness. Look hard, it's there. You might just be thankful you're not dead. (Or not!) Tomorrow's another day, life is a present. Enjoy the moment, remember the past and look forward to the future.

Yes, I dragged my husband to Twilight!

2008-11-22T23:25:00.001-08:00

And he loved it! I know, I know. I'm floored as well. It was my second time seeing the film and his first and he loved it. I have to admit that seeing it a second time gave me new insight and a greater appreciation for the film. So many people said Kristen was too emotionally stiff or that Robert was too cautious. Well let's see, a teen aged girl falls in love with a vampire. Shouldn't her reaction be one of uncertainty or his one of fear he might kill her?

Even after we got in the theater to wait, my husband Tim was reading the reviews on line. There were mixed. Some Twi-hard fans seemed disappointed, others downright mean. However, during the movie Tim turned to me and said it was wonderful, well done and great. He said it was a feel good movie.

Tim was prepared before hand. On our last trip home from Utah, I read the entire Twilight book to him. Often along our journey I'd ask him if he wanted me to drive. But he refused stating that he'd never get to finish the book if I drove, so I continued to read. It took the entire thirteen hours drive to finish the book.

I was reading on other blog posts about the movie last night and ran across several analytical compositions that disturbed me. I wanted to share a reaction I had to two such posts:

Have you ever read Harry Potter, Sleeping Beauty, or Hansel and Gretel? Come on people, Twilight's a fantasy! Not an existential expose on vampire morals and behavior or a teen aged sex manual and certainly not a treatise on Mormon virtue and morality. If every Mormon who wrote a book with only the Mormon audience in mind, they'd never make a dime and no one would read them.

One girl commented on a one of the many Twilight blogs that I frequent saying that Stephenie Meyer was out to convert people to our church through her books. Bah! I never saw any pass-along cards at the end of the book or the Church's 800 number on the last page and I should know, I've read Twilight nine times, going on ten.

For a book written primarily as a teen aged love story about a young girl that wasn't brought up in a Mormon household, it's very innocent. The fact that Edward insists on abstinence goes to his upbringing. As for Bella not being able to breathe when she's around Edward, obviously they've never been a teen aged girl. I was so stressed when I saw my high school football player crush, I almost passed out from lack of oxygen.

It's not the gospel according to Stephenie Meyer or a book to influence young Mormon girls to abandon their precious virtues in search of the perfect lover. It's just a fantasy, an innocent love story that neither teaches Mormonism nor denies it. It just is.Everybody loves to analysis Stephenie Meyer's books to death. Try analyzing the book "Everybody Poops" or "Curious George". I've always wondered just what he's curious about.

I find it interesting that one man pointed out that Twilight was full of "LDS dog whistles" and yet one woman said, "There is nothing 'lovely or praiseworthy or of good report' to be found in these books or movie". I appreciate your analysis and the moral drawing, however, I'm sorry, I disagree with both hypotheses.

The first thing a writer is counseled to do is write what they know. Stephenie is LDS, she loves fantasy and wrote fantasy according to her background. Nothing more or less. We're counseled to read out of the best books, that doesn't mean they're all going to be full of LDS doctrine, real or implied.

I think we should celebrate and rejoice in Stephenie Meyer's accomplishments and in her good fortune. She's brought a lot of positive attention to the Church, a lot more than Prop 8 has. We could use some favorable recognition right now through the good works of one of our more famous members. Thank you Stephenie Meyer.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to enjoy a great movie (whether it followed the book precisely or not), and feel good after an experience in the theater. Twilight fit both bills. It was a pleasure to watch and left you feeling great. Can't we just enjoy it at it's face value without pulling it to pieces?

Edward
and
my
Tim.
Cute
aren't
they?

My Twilight Review--LOVED IT!!

2008-11-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

I got to see Twilight at 12:01 a.m. this morning. OME! (That's Oh My Edward, for those of you who don't speak Twihardian.) Anyway, I and my friend Dona, drove the the theater in Ventura, California and for a time didn't think anyone was there until we turned in to the parking lot. The girls were lined up around the corner sitting on the cold ground with quilts and blankets and lawn chairs. At first I thought Ugh! But the friend I brought with me is handicapped and she announced that she'd go to the front door and tell the young man that she had to sit in the lobby.

We parked in a handicapped spot, walked boldly to the front door and simply slipped unrestrained into the theater to wait. My friend and I were the first ones through the door and got terrific seats. Awesome!

What bothered me first thing this morning was all the blistering negative reviews of the movie offered dispassionately by professional but irritated and surly critics. Well, I thought, they're not teenaged girls or mothers or grandmothers of teenaged girls, so keep your negativity to yourself! I wanted to see for myself. And what I saw I loved!!!

I can't wait until I can drag my husband or anyone else who'll go with me to see it again. It moved along so quickly it was hard to see everything in one sitting. It may take many, many times to see it all.

One of the problems with reading any book that's turned into a movie, is that you've already seen the movie in your mind. You know the characters intimately because they're creations in your head. That's how it was for me. I had Edward and Bella's faces pictured clearly in my mind. But I believe that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were magnificently cast in those two roles. I was impressed with the other castings as well, except Eric. He didn't have the chess club look about him. But Jacob--well he's just to die for. Can't wait for New Moon for him to shine.

I heard some Twi-Hard fans are not exactly crazy about the film. It bothers me. Could the movie have followed more closely to the book? Could there have been little things that made the book so endearing included in the movie that weren't? And could the sequencing of the movie followed more closely to the time line of the book? Of course. But if they followed the entire book, word by word and page by page, I'm afraid we'd have all fallen asleep before it was over and technically, it could have been made into a mini-series of epic proportions that lasted a week or longer.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Stephenie Meyer and her books. I've read Twilight nine times and her last three books four times apiece. You have to admit that Stephenie is quite verbose and tends to over analysis and describe things in excruciatingly long-winded detail. She uses about 255 pages to develop the relationship between Bella and Edward from first sight to the declaration of their love. Well in a movie--even a two hour movie--that's just not possible. So cut them some slack people!

Some might feel they were left with unfulfilled expectations and desired a longer love story. Others think the bad vampire attacks--which weren't in the book at all--weren't necessary. I've heard it described as you've been offered this culinary master piece of a meal that will follow with a fantastically rich dessert. However, you're not allowed to eat the dessert when you've finished the delectable food. So you go away feeling dissatisfied--even though you were well fed, ate scrumptiously and are full. There's just no way to satisfy everyone.

As it stands, I enjoyed my Twilight meal and thoroughly intend to eat well again. (I'm a dieter, I can use food metaphors.) It's just too bad we're not all screen writers, movie directors and producers. Well there you have it. So much for my professional critic of the movie Twilight. Go see it, judge for yourself.

You have to admit though, Robert Pattinson's a hunk!!!

I'm seeing Twilight at Midnight--Tonight!!!!!

2008-11-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it already here! I'm going to see the very first showing of Twilight in Ventura County at 12:01 a.m. Friday morning. My friend is going to go with me. We're heading out about 2 hours early so we won't have sit on the front row. My husband was going to go with me, but bailed at the last minute. He assured me he'll go when the hype dies down. I told him "good luck with that".

Anyway, there's a song from the movie by Paramore that I'm just in love with. It's hard pounding rhythms, pulse stopping guitar rifts and her vocals are astounding. I've included their video. It has some scenes from the movie. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Let's take a break!

2008-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd like to lighten things up a bit. There just isn't enough frivolity and laughter in the world. So lets take a break from the political unrest, economic crisis, plagues, diseases, famines, earthquakes, floods, pestilence, global warming, wild fires, devastation, and enjoy a comedic moment.

Take a moment to enjoy a group of guys entertaining people with their version of synchronized swimming.

Enjoy, for tomorrow we die!

Another excerpt from my fourth novel-Tennis Anyone

2008-11-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't written anything in my blog for awhile. We did the 90th Birthday trip to Utah and I've working almost everyday. One of my dear friends shared a wonderful, healthy recipe for a Pumpkin Smoothie with me. Enjoy:

Here's the recent recipe I received from my friends. It was cool and refreshing, right in step with the holiday season and charged my batteries:

Healthy Pumpkin Smoothy
½ cup canned or roasted pumpkin
½ cup vanilla soy, rice or almond milk
½ cup water
½ cup crushed ice
2 tablespoons pumpkin butter
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 scoop green drink powder
Dash of Stevia (natural sweetener or honey)
Blend & Enjoy

I'm also working feverishly on my fourth novel. I previously posted my second chapter of the same book. Well I'm on Chapter 38 now and see no end in sight. (Of course the chapters are only 4 pages long telling a segment of the story from the different character's points of view. Should be interesting. Anyway, I thought I'd publish another section of one of my chapters. This book features the woman who lost her husband. She's one of the two main characters. Claire is the hero who's gone to San Diego to be her Best Friend's Matron of Honor. But to complicate things, she falls in love with her friend's fiance, Alex. Trouble! Makes a great story. (At least I hope it makes a great story!) So enjoy the tennis match:

“How about a game of tennis?” She smiled shyly, a little challengingly. “You up for it?" Her lip twitched as she studied him.

“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”

“I can handle myself,” she grinned widely. “Afraid?”

“You’ve seen my trophies, little girl. Get prepared to weep bitter tears.”

He took her elbow, felt her stiffen slightly, and ignored the slamming pulse in his finger tips as he maneuvered her out the door of the club. There was a game of one on one taking place on the basketball court, but otherwise the tennis court was empty, available. Outside the gym there was a side door that held equipment in case people didn’t bring their own. Alex led Claire to the door, held it open for her and followed her inside. They walked around the racks of tennis rackets and choose the racket that felt best. When she was ready, he picked up a bucket of balls and walked through the door behind her.

“Should we flip for sides?”

“No. I’ll let you decide. Either way, you’re going down.” The light of challenge was in her eyes and he liked it. She smiled smugly and sauntered past the net and took up a position in the opposite court. She looked really good in pink bike shorts.

“You can still change your mind.” He laughed.

“Don’t bet on it pal,” she smiled and flicked her finger in a ‘come ahead’ motion.

He’d just played a few days ago. Beat the tennis pro here at the resort by seven games to three. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Bring it.” She called gripping her racket in both hands, her feet wide apart. She moved lithely rocking back and forth, her knees bent in readiness. She looked confident, arrogant. He’d take extra enjoyment in beating her.

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” He arched his back, flung the green fuzzy ball high in the air. Half way back to earth he smacked it with all his might and watched it zip over the net with only inches to spare. What a shot, he admired. What he didn’t see, until it was too late, was the ball zoom back at him, sailing past as it bounced in the back court just inside the line. He turned to stare at her in dazed confusion. Had she really returned his ace serve? She still moved lightly back and forth from foot to foot. She didn’t even look winded. He felt old. “Nice one,” he grudgingly called out.

“Thanks. Try again.”

This time he thought he’d float one over, catch her off guard. Sneaky, he thought smugly. Again he arched his back, swung the racket behind his head, tossed the ball high and barely tapped it. It dunked over the net and shot back at him before he had a chance to duck out of the way. The ball grazed the back of his neck leaving him speechless.

“I didn’t see you move. How’d you do that?”

“Timing, reflexes. It’s all in the moves.”

“Well you’ve got them.” Like a tiger. She moved like a tiger. “Thirty love,” he yelled. Again he tried to zing one past her and had to put up his racket in self defense when it flew like a rocket at his head. Luckily his reflexes were quick, finely honed and the ball bounced back on her side. But before he could gloat, she dunked it back. He ran forward, but was much too late. “How’d you do that?”

She smiled sweetly and he wanted to tackle her--wipe that cocky grin off her face. “Just lucky I guess.”

Luck, schmuck he grimaced. She was a ringer sent to torment him. “That would be,” he cleared his throat choking on the words he rarely said. “Forty love.” This time he aimed for the back corner to her left. Back hands were always trouble to return for a woman. No strength. He let it fly, a bullet over the net and just as stunned, watched it come back just as fast, her racket gripped in both hands.

They went on this way for a few games. She had him four to one. It was humiliating. He was sweating like a cat in a yard full of dogs. She however, looked sweet and deceptively unaffected in the early morning blaze of sunshine.

He managed to salvage a couple of games and tied the score. Then decided a tie was better than defeat and offered to let it stand.

He watched her walk toward the net, suddenly shock registered in his brain as he watched the color drain out of her face, her eyes roll back in her head and her legs melt like butter. He was over the short net in a flash and caught her just before her knees hit the cement. “Claire!” He shouted, sweeping her up in his arms. “Claire can you hear me?”

New Family Blog

2008-10-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

I am the editor and chief of my Olsen family newsletter. I thought I'd get around to doing a newsletter once a month, but getting family information was like pulling teeth and I'm not a dentist.

So I decided to start a family blog and my dad's name wasn't taken. So if you're interested in family junk and my family has a lot of junk, especially me. My junk is by far the worst. Check it out at Paul Olsen Family Blog.

I'm leaving Thursday, October 23, 2008 for Northern Utah. It's my dad's 90th birthday celebration. Although he turned 90 last Sunday, October 19, 2008, the rest of the family is having a get together this Saturday at my brother Scott's chapel in Brigham City. It's the only place big enough for my family.

I'm the only one of my dad's children that lives outside the state of Utah so my husband Tim and I are the only one's who have to travel for two days to get to Brigham City, Utah.

I'm the one trying to look out from behind my brother Scott.

Just to let you know the extent of my family. I have four older brothers. Scott, Reed, Dale and David. Between the four of them there are 34 grandchildren. I only have one son, Mike, (see previous post).

At last count, those grandchildren have had over 75 great-grandchildren and numerous great-greatgrandchildren. My family takes very seriously the commanded to "multiply and replenish the earth". I figured one times one is still one. That's why we only have one child. (Right!)

So hopefully it won't snow and mess up my weekend. I don't do snow!

We make as the usual stops along the road to Brigham--new kind of Mexican restaurant in St. George; the Famous Cheese Factory in Beaver (for curds); The Church's distribution center on 17th South in Salt Lake for church stuff; and great buffet in Salt Lake City, if we're lucky.)

We're going to attempt to go to the Logan Temple. It's for research for my second book as well as wanting to see inside. That's where my parents, my maternal grandparents and my fraternal grandparents were married. Then we slip by another cheese Factory on 10th North in Logan for all kinds of dairy delights. And I can't forget to purchase my year's supply of Brigham City's famous candy on the way out of town. I'm on a diet now and have to ration my chocolate supply until our next trip to Utah. Do you think that just one year, just one trip I could go to Italy or China or someplace equally as thrilling? Probably not! My life and my love and my family are in Utah, so that's where we go. For sympathy, please leave a comment.

Mormon Mommy Blog (my version)

2008-10-15T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm always impressed and a little saddened to view the proud Mormon Mommy blogs that are out there. Impressed, because these wonderful women are raising exceptional children and have the right to boast about their offspring. Saddened, because I missed out on having a Mommy blog. So here’s my attempt.

Tim and I married in July of 1982. (That’s a long time ago for you who are counting.) On our honeymoon, we went back to my mission area in Kansas and Nebraska. We also went on a wild goose chase to Texas pursuing a dream career for Tim, but that’s a subject for another blog post. (A really long and terse blog post!)

In November of 1982, I got pregnant with my only child, a son. I have to tell you that I was never so sick in all my life before or since. I think I used to pray to die it was so bad. I didn’t just have morning sickness, I had morning, mid-morning, mid-day, mid-afternoon, later afternoon, early evening, evening and nighttime sickness. The doctor was afraid I’d dehydrate or blow a gasket or something equally as vile. I managed to break all the blood vessels in my eyes and sprain a few ribs. Fun, don’t you think?

I’m not sure when the sickness ended, but in April of 1983, Tim decided he wanted to work for the church. The church was interested and flew him to Salt Lake for an interview which turned out great. We packed up all our belongings and had my brother Dale haul us to Salt Lake and we found a basement apartment on 6th East and 6th South. We stayed there until the landlady made it impossible for us to live civilly as neighbors. (Tim never got the job with the Church.)

We had to pack up and move in two days. I was eight months pregnant. The forced move caused my blood pressure to soar out of control. Suddenly we were in a new town, (Logan, Utah) I had a new doctor and going to give birth at a new hospital—all in one miserable day. Not the best of welcome's. We arrived in Logan on Friday afternoon, ate a chili dog and drank A&W rootbeer and then shuffled off to the Logan Regional Hospital where the doctor on call, (my doctor went out of town), induced labor.

I labored all Friday night, all day Saturday, (thank goodness for National League Baseball), and into the night on Saturday. The obstetrician on call decided to go horseback riding and forgot all about me. He finally strolled in about ten p.m. and found both me and my baby in distress. Without so much as a sorry excuse, I was hurled into the operating room, freezing cold, hooked up to tubes and wires and scared out of my mind. Because it was an emergency C-Section, Tim couldn’t be with me. There was no time for easing me into sleep, they just poked and prodded and forced that awful mask over my mouth and said “good night Gracie.”

Much later, when someone slapped me and told me to wake up, that I had a beautiful baby boy, I wanted to slap the person back. You see, I was expecting a girl. My doctor in California promised me a girl. I’d prepared sweaters, booties, and baby clothes for a girl. However, when Tim came to see me in recovery, he insisted I had a boy—not a girl. I was still too groggy from the anesthesia to argue with him. I couldn’t verify that interesting little tidbit because they didn’t bring him too me for several hours after delivery.

But when I finally saw my little boy, my heart was lost. I knew immediately the name we had chosen for him was wrong. He wasn’t a James Paul (after both our fathers), he was a Michael and I knew that without question. There was something about that little cherub face that spoke of Arch-angels.

From Logan we moved to Brigham City, Utah and then back to California. My son grew and matured. He was the delight of my life. I wish I could say I was the delight of his. I was tired. I guess that’s the best way to say it. Now that I look back now, I gain an enormous amount of weight after Mike’s birth and that added to the heavy burden that I felt. Thank goodness I had Mike to help me find a great happiness even though I felt like a miserable louse inside.

We moved frequently, but he never complained. I often thought how horrible it was that he would never be able to say that this or that home was his childhood home or the town where he was from. He did well in California. We took him to the beach for the first time. He loved it, especially the taste of sand. I never thought he’d put it in his mouth. But it made a great picture.

He also learned to walk while we lived in Claremont, California. He loved his friends and I babysat a couple of children that he adored.

Mike developed his love of computers at a young age. He was barely eleven months old when his father left out first computer down on the coffee table. Mike knew he wasn’t supposed to touch it, and from the grin on his face, he knew better, but the temptation was too great. From that single finger poke came his unconditional love of computers. Mike still works with computers doing help desk work at a company here in Camarillo.

Though he’s grown now, just turned twenty five years old and finally moved out of the house, he’s still the joy of my life. It’s not always been a smooth path Mike has chosen, and my heart has been dragged through the street a time or two, but he’s grown into a kind and loving individual, one I’m very proud of. So maybe I do have a legitimate right to brag about my baby boy.

Wait, what, I need therapy? What are you nuts!

2008-10-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

This was my very reaction when my acupuncturist, Tim (pictured below to the left) told me he thought I had issues with money. I told him you have to have money to have issues with it. He laughed and said that was his point, I had a bad attitude about money, or the lack thereof, and needed to talk to someone about it. I think the only thing that really bothers me about me is that when I have to pay for something and I know very well that I don’t have the money for it, I come unglued, cry a lot and basically plunge into a serious depression. That’s not crazy, right?

So I thought I’d humor Tim (not my Tim) and take his free counseling session that he offered me. It was an offer from a new counselor in the Camarillo area. It was free (another money issue) so I went.

He has an amazing office. A lavishly tiled floor, expensive elegant furniture, the kind of place to inspire relaxation, I suppose. After waiting for a moment while he conferred with his office person, I was shown back into one of his “therapy” rooms. I fully expected to see a psychiatrists couch, but was disappointed when he took a overstuffed chair in the corner and I sat on what I thought was a velvet sattee.

My emotions were near the surface and threatening to boil over when he began to talk to me. He first asked me while I was seeing Tim, (not my Tim). I told him I was having difficulty with the sciatic region in my back and it was causing me considerable pain in my feet and back. The next thing out of his mouth shouldn’t have surprised me, or come as a shock. See I’ve been a big girl, (if you’ve read any of my posts up to this point you’ll know this), so I shouldn’t have had a melt down when he asked me if I’d ever considered losing weight. Come on. What would you do or say? Suppose you just dropped ninety pounds in a year and were still working like a dog to get the rest of it off? Maybe I have issues with my weight as well.

Anyway, after that comment I had a hard time listening to anymore of his counsel. I was already incensed. However, when I stopped to think about it, I really should have cut the guy some slack; after all he didn’t know me from Eve. He had no idea I’d already dropped ninety pounds. He just saw that I was huge and thought he'd offer constructive criticism. But I was already too irritated to listen.

The man has some great ideas for getting rid of stress through meditation, refocusing our minds and energies and learning techniques for self-affirmation. He’s written ten books and is working on another. He does belief in prayer as a way to overcome depression and stress and works with religious and educational organizations. However, he didn’t give me a cure for my money issues. I have come to the conclusion that we’re all a little crazy. How else do we survive a world full of craziness and insanity?

When I came home and told Tim (my Tim) about my session with the counselor, he was sympathetic to my plight, but had his own spin on my phobia. He told me it’s not so much a matter of money or the lack thereof; it’s a matter of security. I just don’t feel secure. Tell me who feels totally secure in today’s world, well except for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

Anyway, I like to give you just a few examples of my basic insanity:

I’m crazy about the church and my Lord, Jesus Christ (well not so much crazy as zealous!)
I’m crazy about my husband Tim.
I’m crazy about my son Mike.
I’m crazy about my 90 year old dad and my extended family
I’m crazy for the Twilight series of books, thus that makes me crazy for the new Twilight movie to open 11/21/08
You might also add that I’m suffering OCD (That’s Obsessive Cullen Disorder for all you Twilight Fans)
I’m crazy about anything chocolate (a chocolate coated bumper might taste yummy!)
I’m crazy for Dodger Baseball (If they don’t beat the Phillies I’ll really go insane!)
I’m crazy about rock n roll

I also have fears and phobias:
I fear my own death and that of loved ones (it's just scary)
I fear the loss of security or jobs
I fear liberals (only the screaming kind)
I fear having health problems, surgeries
I fear I’m going to miss an episode of “Dancing with the Stars”
I fear I’m going to have to wait in a long line at the opening of “Twilight”

I also have obsessions:
I’m obsessed with perfection, though my home, my clothing or my life would not reflect that perfection
I’m obsessed with Twilight
I’m obsessed with getting my hands on as many books as possible
I'm obsessed with losing weight and feeling better
And I'm obsessed with anything chocolate (a chocolate covered bumper just might be tasty)

Okay, okay, I’ve got problems. So does everyone. Is there really a “normal” standard that people are supposed to measure up to? Well I can’t see it. We all have our fears, phobias, obsessions, craziness and insanities. Isn’t that what we do every day? We do the same thing over and over and over again and expect different results. For example: we get up, get dressed, eat, and go to work (school), come home, eat, sleep and repeat. I personally believe like Bon Jovi did when he sang his song, “Everybody’s Broken. See if you don’t agree.

Step into the deep end
Make yourself at home
When you wonder why you're breathing
Know you're not alone
It's so hard to believe
It's easier to doubt
You're trying to hold in
But you’re dying to scream out.

It's okay to be a little broken
Everybody's broken, in this life
Its okay, to feel a little broken
Everybody's broken, you’re alright
It's alright, it's just life.

Take a look around
Tell me what you see
Is who you think you are
Who you want to be.

So it’s ok to be a little broken

Twilight--The Real Happy Ending

2008-10-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

WARNING: If you have an aversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint theology, please DON'T READ THIS!!!

"Breaking (The Morning of the First Resurrection) Dawn"

I have a totally ingenious (Latter-day Saint version) squeal for "Breaking Dawn". I thought it up all my myself. I should be knighted or something equally as grand, because this idea is so heavenly, so divine. I'll bet no one else could come up with an alternative ending to Twilight that is so perfect.

Anyway, enough self-gratification. Let me set the stage. First of all, Bella and Edward get married, we all know that. They have Reneesme, (silly name), she grows up, (in 7 years), marries Jacob (ew, sick), they start on their happily ever after. Well they can only go so far in their version of "happily ever after', right? Vampire, werewolves--no matter how long their live in "their" version of immortality, even they cannot survive a world that is destroyed in some cataclysmic explosion of Biblical proportions, right?

Well that's where my next best seller comes in. You see Forks, WA sits inside the boundaries of the Washington Tacoma Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I could see the missionaries assigned to Port Angeles becoming very curious about the folks in the small town of Forks. I could almost picture their mission president sending his most tenacious missionaries to the area. You know the type, the Elder Kessler and his companion, (I can't remember his name from the Mormon show "Saturday's Warrior"), a real set of bulldog missionaries. These are the never-say-die kind of missionaries that won't take no or a door slamming on their double souled Bone Sierra Lace-up shoes for an answer. Like I said, bulldogs!

I can picture them now, trudging down that long road out of town toward the Cullen's cut off, eager, anticipating finding that "Golden" family. (Because they haven't had one baptism in eighteen months of hard labor.)

They aren't detoured by the long, three mile winding, fern over grown lane that is obviously impossible to find unless you were a vampire and this was home. But our senior Elder, let's call him Elder Moss. (That seemed appropriate for the location.) And his companion is Elder Green, (funny, right?).

Anyway, they're trudging through the squishy emerald green vegetation, being led by the spirit. They haven't seen another house for a very long time and Elder Green starts to get cranky. Well more like--scared to death. The dark grey clouds are low, threatening like giant bloated water balloons, so not only will they be stuck out in the un-godly green hell, they'll be drench as well. But Elder Moss is undaunted. He can smell the prize. Well he can smell something--and it's sweet!

After a long deathly quiet trip, they break through the ferns and into the meadow, or the large lawn in front of the Cullen's mansion. Stunned into silence, Elder Green can only gawk, his face pale, his lips red from biting them. But Elder Moss moves forward to the porch. There are lights on in the home and he knows people (funny again) are inside, so he's going to knock until someone opens the door. Elder Green is really that, by now he's physically green. He has a bad feeling, a terrible deep down, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck, fear. He winces and trails reluctantly after his companion. What the heck, you only live once.

Anyway, just as Elder Moss prepares to knock, the door bursts open and Emmett Cullen fills the doorway looking like he just found lunch, a delicious beef steak and a juicy pork chop. He licks his lips and Elder Moss nearly swallows his tongue. However Elder Moss finds his voice and prepares to give his door approach. At the same time, Emmett is ready to roll on the ground with laughter from the look on the Elder's faces.

"Hi, sir. My name is Elder Moss and this is my companion..." Elder Green is inching his way nervously off the porch and has one foot on the top stair. "Elder?" Elder Moss's eyes are wide with fright.

Elder Green freezes. Elder Moss turns apologetically around to face Emmett. "Sorry, he's a bit shy." He smiles as Emmett who looks back over his shoulder and laughs. "Anyway sir, my companion and I are missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we've come to your home to deliver a vital message for your salvation."

Now Emmett roars with laughter, almost doubles over with glee. You know what he's thinking. Remember the whole "lost" soul thing that freaked Edward out. Well Emmett's not buying it. And by the time he's through laughing, he's not alone at the door. Jasper has come to stand behind him and Rosalie at his side, Alice under his arm. Elder Moss sees Rosalie and forgets his name, where he came from and why he's standing at the door.

"Elder?" Emmett grins. By now Elder Green has returned to Elder Moss's side and their eyes are glued to Rosalie's face. Emmett's booming laughter rings through the rafters, but he grabs their arms and jerks them inside. "Welcome, boys. Won't you join us for dinner?"

Well I won't bother you with the "gory" details, but suffice it to say, the Elders are very persuasive. The entire family listens to their lesson including Edward and the new and improved Bella. Jacob and Nessie are there, so are Leah and Seth and Charley and Sue. The spirit of the Lord permeates the home filling them the answers they've been seeking their very, very, very long lives.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, they all get baptized, even the Indians at La Push who are delighted to read the Book of Mormon that tells about their "real" ancestors and everyone's happy.

They explain to Edward that it's not the heart that gives the body animation, it's the spirit. And the spirit and the body are the soul of a person. Edward is convinced that his soul is saved and he believes the Lord will forgive him for his indiscretions while he fought his nature. (Of course, we can't know that, but it makes a great story, right?)

Epolog: A general authority visits a stake conference in Tacoma and learns of the major baptism of Elder Moss and Green and he wants to meet the La Push families and the Cullen families. During their interview, this man gives them a blessing and they're freed from their dark night of torture. They all become human. Rosalie is ecstatic, Bella's mad and Jacob and Nessy are thrilled.

So here's the deal. It's the last scene in the Seattle temple. Everyone, well almost everyone from Forks is there. Carlisle and Esme are sealed, Emmett and Rosalie are sealed, Alice and Jasper, Edward and Bella, Jacob and Reneesme and Charlie and Sue are sealed. Then Reneesme is sealed to Edward and Bella, and Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper and Alice are sealed to Carlisle and Esme. Now there's not a dry eye in the temple--now that they can cry again. Elders Moss and Green are feeling like heroes of a Biblical epic.

Can't you just see that happening. Wow! What would be better than real immortality and Eternal Life. Could there be a better ending than that? I don't think so.

(Leave your kudos for my brilliant new novel in the comment area. Thanks.)

Weight -- Update!

2008-09-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

As of September 26, 2008 - total weight loss = 101 pounds.

My Weight Watchers leader asked me what was the best part about losing 101 pounds. I told her it was "losing 101 pounds". What's sweeter than that? It took me a year to lose 31 pounds at the gym alone and seven months to lose 70 pounds with diet and exercise.

I don't know.
Can you tell a
difference?

I spent the following Saturday morning remodeling some of my clothes. My good friend Monika gave me some fabulous blouses and dresses. One was a size 14/16. IT FIT!!! I also found a skirt that my tiny mother wore, and IT FIT!!! But all in all, having clothes that are much, much smaller and fit is only a side benefit of losing weight. My doctor just dropped my high blood pressure and my cholesterol and heart medications. I'm only on 1/2 of a blood sugar pills. (Refer back to one of my previous posts about the benefits of losing weight.)

People ask me all the time, where did you get your motivation. Like I've written before, there wasn't one single situation, event or idea that sparked my motivation. It was many things. It was mostly a matter of control. For the majority of my life, food was in control of me. It was my Lord and master. Now I'm the master, and I can eat what I want, when I want and stop when I'm satisfied. And that--is something I never thought I'd be able to do.

An excerpt from my one of my novels--

2008-09-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

I have been asked by a couple of people to post a chapter from one of my books. This is the section of my fourth novel that really makes me cry. Just remember that this is the original, non-edited version so forgive the typos and grammatical errors. Also keep in mind that this is only my fourth attempt at writing a novel.

Enjoy the read.
Carol Malone

Running through the emergency doors that gaped wide open for her, she found the receptionist desk. By now her tears had streaked her face, her hair was tousled and her clothes looked like she had just awakened in them. “Where’s my husband?” She shouted, her face red with grief.

A sweet faced desk clerk smiled up at her running through her mind how many distraught women had come screaming in the hospital, full of anxiety and dread and demanding the same information. She put on a peaceful, empathetic smile and spoke slowly. “Calm down, ma’am. Just tell me who your husband is and we'll find out which room he's in.”

But Claire was not in a mood for pleasantries.

“Just tell me where Ty…Tyson Monroe was taken.”

The women checked her computer screen. “Right down the hall in intensive care unit. I believe the doctor is waiting to see you.”

“Thank you.” Claire muttered.

Walking through the inner swinging doors she saw a long faced man with grey sad eyes dressed in a doctor's white coat. He smiled tentatively as he watched her approach.

“Mrs. Monroe?”

“Yes.” Claire stammered. “Where’s my husband?”

“He’s resting right now.”

“What’s happened, doctor? What happened to my husband?”

“Let’s walk this way.” The doctor turned and bade her follow him. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Monroe that your husband has suffered a massive heart attack and the prognosis is not good.”

“No. No. No.” She shook her head. “This is not supposed to happen. He’s just so young. I’m the one who should be having the heart attack.” She turned to the doctor and gripped his arm. “Please tell me this is a mistake, a joke?”

He stopped at the door of a dimly lit room that smelled of antiseptic. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Monroe. Your husband is very ill.” He pointed inside a room. "Please."

Walking into the gloom she struggled to acclimate her eyes. Then she saw Ty. He was lying propped against soft pillows, with tubes, monitors and wires covering his body. He was hooked up to a machine that had a little green line that pumped up and down with each labored beat of his heart. He looked pale and drawn and so lifeless that her heart dropped to her feet. She moved to his side and started to stroke his arm that was covered with wires. The doctor brought a chair to the side of the bed and placed his hands on her shoulders urging her to sit down. She obliged, never taking her hand from her husband’s.

“Can he hear me?” She whispered.

“I believe so.” The Doctor replied.

“Will he regain consciousness?”

“I don’t know.”

Looking up at the doctor again she sighed. “Can anything be done?”

“His heart has suffered tremendous damage. I don’t believe that he could survive an operation. It’s just a matter of wait and see. He needs time and he needs to know you’re here for him.” He turned from her. “I’ll be back in a minute. Is there anyone else you’d like us to call for you?”

“Yes, my son. I need to get in contact with my son. I didn't have time to do it before I left home.” She gave Nick's cell number to the doctor.

“I’ll have my nurse call him immediately. Is there anybody else?”

“Yes, our bishop…our congregation leader, Bishop Matt Hemsley. He’s in the book. I don’t know his phone number.”

“I’ll see to it right away.”

Claire continued to stroke Ty’s arm. He made no movement. He looked as though his spirit had already left him and that only the shell of the man was left. “No you don’t, Ty Monroe. You’re not going to leave me here. I can’t make it on my own. I need you. You come back here. Don’t leave me.” She started to weep as she laid her forehead against his arm drenching him with salted tears.

Hour after painful hour she waited by Ty's bedside. Her son Nick came and didn’t know what to do or say. She knew in his own way, Nick was suffering as well. Though Nick was not particularly close to his father as she would have liked, she realized it was because they were much too similar in character and temperament to be close. They seemed to challenge each other like two great stags with large antlers locked together in an eternal struggle for domination. She knew in her heart that Nick loved his father, even though he never said so. And that hurt. Somehow her son would have to deal with this tragedy on his own terms and in his own way, just as she was going to have to deal with it. But not yet!

The Bishop came with his first counselor and administered to Ty. But there was no promise of a recovery, no relief from Claire’s pain only a promise of peace. Claire’s harried mind couldn’t grasp the concept of peace. Was it for Ty? Was it for her? Would she have peace if Ty left her alone? Her mind raced over all the memories they shared together. The early years of their struggle and the labor of love it was to raise Nick, to this new passion that stirred both of their desires to write. She had to admit that through all the hard work, stress and strain, they had formed an attachment that was undeniably strong. That made it all the more hard to think about letting him go.

“Mom.” Nick stood beside her in the open doorway. “You need to get some fresh air. I’ll sit here with dad. Come on, you need to walk around.” He tried to help her up from the chair, but she was reluctant to move.

“What if he wakes up while I’m gone? I’d never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t get to talk to him one…last time.” A silent tear trailed down her cheek which she swiped at absently with the back of her hand.

“I’m come and find you immediately. The hospital’s not that big. They have a snack bar around the corner. I think it’s still open. Here.” He handed her some money. “Go buy yourself a candy bar and a soda.”

“You know I don’t eat that stuff.”

“You need your strength. The dining hall is closed.”
He tugged again on her arm raising her to her feet. Her knees didn’t want to straighten. “Oh,” she complained. “My knees are stiff.”

“All the more reason to walk around. Just walk up and down past the door way. I’ll come to the door if he wakes up.”

Moving gingerly to the door, she paused for a moment and watched Ty’s face. Nothing changed. Still the grey look of death hung on his face. “Where is he?” She sighed and walked from the room.

As she plodded heavily down the corridor of the intensive care unit, she thought of all the stories Ty loved to read about near death experiences. Was he having one of those experiences now? Where did his spirit go while his body lay in that awful gloomy room? Was he visiting with his mother who passed away two years ago? Was he meeting his maternal grandfather for the first time? Aunts, uncles, grandparents, all those people to meet and give his love to? His mother had been a family history fanatic. Was Ty with these people greeting them, being thanked by them for doing their temple ordinances? “Please send him back to me.” She cried. “I need him more than you do.”

Stopping at the vending machines, she chose orange juice and a granola bar. “Well at least these things are fairly healthy.”

“I don’t think anything you eat in this place is healthy.”
Claire jerked around at the sound of a familiar voice to see Brian Workman standing behind her. “Brian!” She stammered, feeling uneasy and just a bit angry that he wasn’t there sooner for Ty.

“I’m sorry Claire. They won’t let me come into the ICU, so I’ve been sitting out here waiting.”

“I’m glad you came.” She made her self say though there was no feeling in her voice.

“Would you like to sit for a minute?” Brian pointed to a couch in the waiting room and moved to sit down indicating the spot next to him.

She cook a chair opposite to him. “I don’t want to be too far from Ty’s room. He might wake up at any moment.”

“I understand.” He smiled faintly. “We’ll just talk right here for a few minutes.” He stood and walked to the vending machine, pushed the button and drew out a candy bar. Unwrapping the bar, he smiled up at Claire with a cautiously and returned to the couch. “I’m really sorry for what happened to Ty. It was all so sudden and unexpected. Had he complained of feeling poorly?”

“No. He seemed to be in perfect health.” Her mind ran over the last time he saw the doctor. “Well, he had a bout with high blood pressure, but he was on medication. We thought everything was alright.”

“You just don’t know how well the body is doing unless something major happens to cause you to stop and rethink the life you’re living. High blood pressure can be very tricky and very hard to detect and treat. I know I suffer from it myself. Having two small children at my age doesn’t help it either.”

Claire smiled but even his attempt at humor didn’t faze her. “How are your children?” She asked, absentmindedly look back down the hallway to the ICU doors. No movement, she sighed.

“They’re getting bigger and causing their father grey hairs.”

“That’s nice.” Claire nibbled on her granola bar. “And your wife?”

“She’s good. She works in the Primary as a den leader. My son is part of the den and just loves having his mother as the leader. She tries hard to make their activities fun and educational. She has a way of making the boys believe their having fun while still learning and accomplishing good things.”

“That’s nice.” Disinterested. She took another bite and shrugged her shoulders. "They wanted me to be the den mother when Nick was that age but I refused. I’m sorry now, though. He had a horrible scouting experience and I regret my decision terribly.”

“It’s hard work.” Brian laughed. “I usually come home to a major mess after each meeting.”

“Yes, boys are messy.” Looking again down the hall, Claire started to get an unsettling feeling and rose from her chair. “Brian if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to Ty’s room.”

“Of course. How is he doing?” Brian asked timidly.

“No change. The doctor is not hopeful.” Despair seized her heart as the tears sprang to her eyes. “What will I do if he dies?”

Not knowing exactly what to do, Brian moved off his couch and reached out to put his arm around her shoulder. She turned to him and let the tears fall on his shirt. He just held her and let her cry. After a couple of minutes passed, she gained a measure of composure and struggled to move away from him. “I’m sorry. I…I just…I better go. Thank you for your support.” Smiling weakly at Brian, she turned and walked back through the ICU double doors.

The ICU was quiet for the most part. The doors to the individual rooms stood half open allowing only the tiniest glimpse in the rooms. Just like Ty, other patients were hooked to monitors and tubes, all looking the same way. Colorless, lifeless, tired. Most were very old and looked frail as well. Claire remembered the last time they went to see Ty’s mother before they took her off life support. She had much the same look as her son. Tired, worn out and already gone. It had been a blessing to let her go. She would never have wanted to remain on earth in a state of diminished capacity. She was too full of life and nervous energy to sit idly by. So Ty and his father gave her a blessing and released her from his mortal life. She slipped peacefully away and left them here without her.

Claire stopped at the door of the room. There was little change on Ty’s face. He looked like a statue of some fallen war hero, just as hallow and just as empty as a statue. Nick saw her come back in the room and stood up quickly. Had he been holding Ty’s hand? Claire was sure of it. Somehow that simple act of a son holding the hand of his father gave her a moment’s comfort that nothing else could. She walked to Nick and took his hand in hers and pressed it against her cheek. “He loves you, you know. More than he would ever admit. He’s always loved you. He just didn’t know how to show that love. I’m sorry if you felt he wasn’t the kind of father you needed.”

Nick stared at her with those deep grayish blue eyes. Calm like the ocean just before a storm. “Mom, I never said dad wasn’t the kind of father I needed. We just never agreed on anything and I know I made him mad. My life hasn’t always been exemplary and my actions drove him up a wall. I hope he can forgive me for my sins. I don’t think he liked me very much. ”

“That’s not true, son. He loved you so much it just hurt him so bad to watch you make mistakes. He wanted to give you his testimony of the gospel, but he didn’t know how. He loved you in his way, just the way his own father had loved him. Love was implied, not so much spoken. Don’t ever think he didn’t love you with all his heart.”

“I won’t think that, mom. I do love him.” He turned to his father. “What are we going to do without him?” The sincerity in his voice made her touch his cheek.

“He’s not gone yet, dear. We need to have faith that he’ll get better.”

“Mom.” He wanted to disagree with her. To tell her she was delusional. That her religion was a load of BS, but he wouldn’t spoil her moment with his father. It may their last.

So he merely shrugged and agreed on principle. “Right.” Then he turned for the door. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

“Okay. I’ll stay with dad.” Claire sat down by the bed again and took Ty’s hand in hers. “I’m back darling. You can wake up and talk to me now.”

When Nick returned to the room, he sat in a lounge chair opposite to Claire and ate a candy bar, chips and drank a Coke. They both waited and worried and she prayed. Claire laid her head down on the bed next to Ty’s hand and sleep over came her. She was disturbed with dreams of being alone and unable to climb out of a deep canyon. She’d scratch at the slick muddy walls and fought for a foot or hand hold to be able to pull her self out of the blackness of the hole. The sky was clear above her. The sun was shining brightly sending down a shaft of light just out of reach of her hand. The pit was dark and ominously gloomy. Through her despair, she attempted to call out for Ty to come and save her, but no one came to the mouth of the large hole. Alone, frightened and cold, she shook. Suddenly someone stroked her hair and told her it would be okay. She felt a surge of peace even though she was still in the dark hole. Some one was there to bring her peace.

Slowly her eyes fluttered open and she looked up into Ty’s ghastly pale face. His meadow green eyes were open, but held no light; his hand was in her hair. Reality hit her hard as she tried to clear away the muddy gloom and look at her husband.

“Ty.” She smiled and whispered squeezing his hand.

His free hand came up and fought with the tube in his nose. Nick heard the noise and woke up. He stood up and helplessly watched his parents.

“No Ty, you must leave it in. It’s to help give you oxygen.” She rose from the chair and grabbed for his hand that was fighting with the tube. “Please Ty. Calm down.”

He was struggling to find his voice. “Claire,” it came out in a gargle of sound.

“Yes, darling. I’m right here.”

“Claire.” Now more clearly.

She fought desperately to hold the tears at bay. He was awake and alive and calling for her.

“I’m here Ty. Everything’s going to be okay.” She bent forward to kiss his ghastly pale cheek.

His other hand gripped her hair. “Claire.” His voice was almost normal. “I love you, Claire.” She watched his face as a single tear escaped his eye and ran slowly down his cheek. She wiped it away with her thumb.

“I love you too, Ty. Don’t talk now it’s going to be okay.”

“I have to talk now, sweetheart.” He chocked on his words. Coughing lightly the monitor began to beep wildly.

“Calm down.” She soothed. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
The night nurse came running into the room and adjusted the light. She ran and checked the machines. “How are we feeling, Mr. Monroe?” She asked with a kind voice.

“He doesn’t like the oxygen in his nose.”

“No, but it makes it easier for him to breath.” She turned to Ty. “You must leave your tubes in your nose so you can breath. Do you understand me, Mr. Monroe?”

Ty nodded his head slowly. “Claire.”

“Yes darling. Don’t try to speak.”

“I have to speak. Where’s Nick?”

“I’m here dad.” Nick rose from the chair took his father’s other hand in his.

“Nick.” He coughed slightly making the monitor buzz. “I love you son.”

“I know dad.” Nick tried to act dispassionately and tried to fight back his own tears. “I love you too.”

Claire stared at her son. She couldn’t remember the last time Nick told his father that he loved him. It was breaking her heart to watch them. Years and years they spent disagreeing with each other, arguing for dominance. But in the hours of dying, Nick learned something so basic and so beautiful. Maybe his heart would be changed by this experience.

“Take care of your mother, son. She’s going to need your strength now more than ever.”

“Don’t talk like that dad. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Nick. Promise me you’ll look after your mother.” His voice was earnest, deathly calm.

“I will dad.” Tears raced down Nick’s face. “I’m going to miss you.” Nick bent over and placed his head on his father’s shoulder and wept uncontrollably.

“Claire.” He slowly turned to his wife. “I love you, Claire. You need to let me go now.”

“No Ty. No. I’ll never let you go. I need you. Don’t you leave me. I’ll never forgive you if you leave me.”

“They need me, Claire.”

“I need you, Ty.”

“Mother’s come to get me, Claire. You must let me go.” Ty looked beyond his wife at a blank wall as if someone stood there, waiting. Claire felt the need to curse.

“No I’ll never let you go. Please, please don’t leave me. Why can’t your mother wait for you?”

“She needs me Claire. My family needs me. You must continue to do family history and help my family.” Tears fell from his eyes onto his ashen cheeks. “I’m sorry I can’t stay with you any longer. I need to go Claire. Don’t ever stop writing. It will save you…” Coughing lightly, he eyes flickered. “Claire, I love you.”

“Oh, Ty. I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.”

“Claire. I can’t stay, I have to go. Tell my family I love them and tell them mother sends her love, and your mom says not to worry.” He smiled and coughed. “I…I love you Claire.” With her name on his lips, he closed his eyes and the machines started beeping wildly while the green line on the monitor went flat.

This essay is an excerpt from a novel by Carol A. Malone of Camarillo, California and it copyrighted. Do not publish this piece or copy it for personal gain.

I Support Stephenie Meyer--(selfish reasons)!

2008-09-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

Before I leave the Twilight saga obsession and return to more mundane topics like my own life, I thought I'd voice my own version of support for Stephenie Meyer. I only discovered the Twilight series during my summer vacation to Utah. I heard about them from a woman I visit teach here in Camarillo. She said she was reading a series of teenaged books about vampires and thoroughly enjoyed them. I only listened half heartedly wondering if she'd slipped a gear.

When I went to Utah, my nieces sang the praises of the Twilight books. Drooling in fact! I was curious, even went so far as to check them out at the Deseret Book clearance store on 109th south in Salt Lake City. But I'm on a strict budget and when I saw the books were not discounted even at the clearance center, I decided to wait.

Upon returning to Camarillo, I went about my business and then noticed all three books on sale at Target. Oh, joy, rapture! I work full time so it took me a week to read the first 3 books. And wouldn't you know, the very next day was the Saturday of the release of "Breaking Dawn". Could I have been more lucky than that? (Don't answer that.)

I fell in love with every character in the books from Bella and Edward to his brothers and sisters, parental figures, Jacob and Charley. I couldn't get down with Renee. She seemed flighty and more of child figure than a parent.

I wasn't too crazy about James, Victoria and the Volturi. But what would a good love story be without conflict, rejection, broken hearts and the anti-heroes. Good stuff! An emotion roller coaster. Magic!

Me--Similar to Stephenie?

My life is very similar to Stephenie's. I am and L.D.S. mom, however a little older than Stephenie. My 25 year old baby just moved out of the house a few weeks ago. I almost attended BYU. I opted for a local college. I adored English and American lit and love to write. In my youth, I wrote short stories and poems. And just like Stephenie I had a dream about a story I needed to write. It was about a young woman driving on the 15 freeway to Utah to marry a man she's never met in order to free her mother from a jam.

This year I completed that book and have written 3 others with starts of 4 more. It's unbelievable the freedom, the rush and the ecstasy of soaring in the clouds that comes from being able to put pen to paper, or in my case, fingers to keys. It's become my obsession, (next to Twilight), my passion and my release. I can't find enough time in my already overly booked day to write, but when I do, I'm totally blissed out, (as Bella would say).

Praise, adulation, jealousy?

Anyway, back to Stephenie and my original premise. What a marvelous talent this woman has! Don't you agree? A true proclivity to express in the written word awe-inspiring, magical stories that lead the reader on a journey of resplendent youthful romance, tragedy and ultimate triumph and unconditional love. Bravo, Stephenie Meyer! Bravo!

There are few books in the world that have inspired a greater love for the characters than what Stephenie has written for us. She truly has been endowed with creativity, ingenuity, a rare charisma and genius that few people have.

Stephenie has weaved a mesmerizing spell that has bewitched, charmed and captivated millions. God bless you Stephenie. Long may you live! I'm one of the enchanted Twi-Hards.

Midnight Sun - will it see the light of day?

I, like millions of her fans, was waiting with bated breath for the next installment of the Twilight series, Midnight Sun, which tells the Twilight story from the perspective of Edward. Though patience isn't one of my virtues, I was horribly stricken to learn that someone near and dear and trusted as a friend, illegally and unethically stole one of her copies of her manuscript and greedily posted it on the internet. What was the purpose of that? Do it bring this person fame and fortune or condemnation and disparaging remarks from Stephenie's legitimate and fiercely loyal fans?

Given the duress of betrayal that Stephenie was put under because of the actions of one close and trusted, Stephenie has decided to put the project on hold---indefinitely! Could this be a bigger tragedy to Twilight fans? Absolutely not! A million times no! It's like denying her fans the ability to breathe or function as normal human beings. Her fans are walking around zombie-like until we have the final installment of Edward's. I personally felt like I'd been sucker punched in the stomach. Unimaginable! Criminal! Without honor!

Gentle persuasion!

I would like to tell Stephenie, if she would ever feel to change her mind, don't stop writing in behalf of Edward. I'd like to remind her about a story of a young man that we both know intimately.

This young man had a "trusted" friend, one who worked with him, loved him and gave him money for a book project. When the manuscript was partially completed, this "trusted" friend begged the young man to show it to his doubting, jealous and skeptical wife. The friend begged, cajoled, and pleaded for a chance to show his wife the manuscript to prove to her he wasn't wasting his time or money.

Against his better judgment, the young man allowed his "trusted" friend to borrow the manuscript. He even went so far as to have him make a covenant with him and sign a promissory note for the return of it. He also made his friend promise to show it only to his caterwauling wife. However, to make a long, miserable story short, the "trusted" friend's wife misappropriated the manuscript, change the text and then lost it all together.

Can you image how the young man felt--Betrayed, desolate, deceived, and hurt? He was left with the feeling that he couldn't trust any one, not even his closest friends. His work, his time, and a promise to God to complete something that would rock the world, all stood at a crossroad.

But this young man persevered. He never went back, never started over but continued on from the point of the missing and stolen pages, realizing that they would be lost to the world forever. However, this same book that was completed has been read by tens of millions of people.

Please, Please, Please--I'm not too proud to beg!!!

Just like the young man in the story, please don't give up, Stephenie. Don't lose heart regarding Midnight Sun. Please don't disappoint your fans. Thousands, if not millions of people wish with all their hearts and offer a constant prayer that you will finish Edward's tale.

We know you have other projects and we look forward to them as well with great anticipation. But somewhere, somehow we hope you will find the time and the desire to complete Midnight Sun. Your fans will be eternally grateful if you do.

And I'm not so unselfish and self-sacrificing to admit that I'm among the most avid of people waiting on pins and needles for the completed work. Please finish Edward's tale in spite of the criminal and imbecilic acts of others. You deserve to triumph over adversity. And by golly, I just can't wait to read it!

Twilight (As a comedy)?!

2008-09-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

I got to tell you I found the funniest Twilight Trailer Spoof ever. This group called Evil Iguana put this together and I acknowledge their amusing production and inventive creativity. Bravo! Even my husband thinks this is well done and extremely funny and entertaining. I laughed so hard one night, I had a hard time going to sleep.

It's not an insulting spoof or done in poor taste, it just out and out hilarious.

See if you don't agree.

Life and times of C Malone

2008-09-04T22:51:00.001-07:00

Weight -- Update!

2008-09-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

I'm down 90 pounds on 8/28/08!!!--that's right--read em and weep--90 big ones. That's 1,440 ounces. 315,000 Calories, and 40.8233133 Kilos. But I like it better in pounds. Sounds more dramatic and I like drama!

Here's my progress chart:

Began an exercise regiment at Contours Women gym - February 2007

February 2007 to May 2007 gained 15 pounds

May 2007 to September 2007 lost 13.8 pounds

From September 2007 to January 2008 lost 6.2 pounds

From January 2008 to March 8, 2008 lost 8 pounds

From March 8, 2008 when I joined Weight Watchers to August 28, 2008 I lost another 62 pounds

Total weight loss 8/28/08 = 90 pounds

I decided not to include a photo on this post. Losing another 10 pounds doesn't really that much difference from the 80 pounds lost. So maybe when I hit 100 pound weight loss, I'll include another picture. It's just too bad I don't get younger with every pound I lose. That would be worth a few bucks wouldn't it?

Weight -- Update!

2008-08-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

On Friday, August 1, 2008, I achieved an 80 pound weight loss. (In a year’s time frame.) That’s E I G H T Y — 80 pounds of weight gone from off my body!!! That’s about the weight of a ten year old child. I’ve lost a ten year old!!! I should be ecstatic, elated, overjoyed, delighted, happy, thrilled, jumping for joy. So why, you might ask, am I crying?? Why do I shed bitter tears? Why am I depressed and despondent over losing E I G H T Y pounds?

Why---because I don’t yet look like Kate Moss or Lara Flynn Boyle?

Well I’ll tell you why I started to cry and get depressed. I was feeling light and fluffy with my new 1X shirt and shorts and asked my husband Tim to take some photos of me in the new slimmer version of my body. However, when I downloaded the pictures and looked at them—reality hit me like a ton of bricks or a ton of In-N-Out Burgers, (which I’ve probably consumed over my life time). I didn’t look like Kate Moss or Lara Flynn Boyle. No indeed. I still looked more like Kristie Alley or Momma Cass. I really took a hit to my self image.

See there is this person inside me that dictates how I view myself. You know that nagging little voice that tells you to mind your own business when you want to step in and correct your friend. Well that little girl inside my fat “suit” is still seventeen years old, weighs about 105 pounds and is the epitome of beauty and grace. It always amazed me when I passed a mirror and saw the image that was reflected back to me, I didn’t recognize that fat person. See in my mind, I wasn’t fat. I would stare in horror and disgust at the rotund woman in the mirror. Could that overly round, morbidly obese, dumpy looking person really be me? My inner slender teenager said no!

So now I’m asking myself what difference did an eighty pound weight loss make? Why do I feel like a failure even after so many people have congratulated me on my success? Why, why, why? Well because I have sooooo much more weight to lose. Probably another one hundred pounds or so before I can honestly say I’ve arrived, I actually like the person staring back at me from the mirror. The reality of those photos brought me up short and broke my (much skinner) heart.

Monika, my exercises buddy, told me to stop and think about what I’ve actually accomplished in the last year and take specific notice of the changes I’ve made. So I thought I’d make a list. Now this is not a bragging session. So I don’t want you to think I’m boosting. I just wanted to make myself feel better. So let’s see.

1. I can see my toes. This may not be a big deal for you, but for me it was monumental.
2. I had to buy smaller shoes. Who’d a thought that! I went from a man’s size nine extra wide to a women’s eight.
3. I have lost eight inches off my stomach, six inches off my bust, seven inches off my butt, similar amounts off of my arms, legs and so forth.
4. I can get on the floor at the gym and bring my leg to my chest. (No obstructions.)
5. I can bend over and touch my toes and put my hand flat on the ground, no bent knees.
6. I don’t get out of breath when I walk.
7. I can exercise for two hours and not fell overly tired.
8. I can run up stadium stairs without much effort. (I did this while on vacation at Utah State University. Never in my wildest dreams could I see me doing something like that.)
9. I went from a size 4X to a size 1X and sometimes wear an XL t-shirt.
10. My face is thinner and I’ve lost a chin.
11. I went from a size 50DD bra to a 42D.
12. I don’t get respiratory illnesses as frequently as I once did. I actually haven't had bronchitis for two years.
13. My doctor lowered my prescriptions pills from three each for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol to one pill for each.
14. I get by on about six hours of sleep.
15. I no longer watch endless hours of TV and fall asleep in the reclining chair.
Finally,
16. You’ll have to ask my husband about the best change of all. (I’m not spilling the beans on that change. Do you see my red face? No. Good!)

Well I don’t leap tall buildings with a single bound or stop bullets with my teeth, but I’m changing. Whether my photos show that in any great detail, or not, I feel a change. And that’s motivation in itself. Yes, I still have a lot of weight to lose, but then don’t we all have something we need to overcome. It’s just making the decision to eat right, exercise all over again every single day from now until eternity. I’ll always be a weight watcher, always be a food addict and always have to be careful not to lose control. But in the end it’s just like Lorel says, “I’m worth it!”

A vampire in love with a human--Okay I'll Bite!

2008-07-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

I know I'm coming a little bit late to the blood bath that is known as the Twilight Novel Series, three books written by Stephenie Meyer. I finally found them. It only took me three years to discover them. I finally saw the three books on sale at Target and snuck in behind three twittering teen-aged girls who were ogling over them and snagged the last copy of Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse. I admit that at first the thought of reading a book about vampires put me off. Secondly, I didn't think I'd enjoy a book written for the teen-aged set.

But, then I read it. I was sucked in, bitten by a splendid tale of teen-aged angst, first love and blood sucking vampires. What fun!
The story is told from the perspective of a tormented yet quirky, accident prone, unsophisticated and guileless seventeen year old girl, Bella, who moves from Phoenix to live with her divorced father in Forks, Washington. Watching the story unfold through her eyes, I was drawn back to my own teenage years. I remembered vividly what it was like to be the new girl in a strange high school. I remember those pressures of trying to fit in, to be acceptable to the populous and to find that first blood-boiling heart-stopping love. It brought back memories of humiliation and apprehension as well as my own thirst for acceptance and romance. I could almost imagine myself as Bella.

Bella discovers a group of teenagers that are unlike any of the other "normal" crowd of teenagers at her high school and a fascination begins with one angelic-like figure named Edward. Her fascination turns to obsession and when a friend from the Indian reservation intimates that Edward is part of a group called the "Cold Ones", Bella soon discovers for herself that Edward and his family are--bloodthirsty vampires!

But does this information scare Bella? Certainly not! When she should have run screaming for her life, she falls in love with this enigmatic, perfect, devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful boy-man-old guy. Really, really old guy. She asks him how old he is and he responds by telling her he's seventeen. Then she has the courage to ask him how long he's been seventeen. And he replies, a very long time.

I am so thankful that I came to the blood lust obsession late. Now I can read all the books at one time instead of waiting breathless, dripping in gory anxious agony waiting for the next installment to be written and printed. I raced through Twilight and New Moon faster than Edward can race through the forest with Bella on his back. Now I'm starting Eclipse. On Saturday, August 2, the last book in the series hits the stores, Breaking Dawn. How will it end? Boy I'm so thirsty to find out, I may just have to go on a hunt! At least to Costco to pick up the next book.

I remember my first love in high school. I can picture him now. Not unlike the unflinching stunning beauty of Edward, this young man may not have had pale cold skin, or amber eyes, or run like a gazelle, but the shock to my system whenever he was near was like having my life sustaining blood drained out of me and my heart removed from my chest. I felt like an undead creature when I was around him. Gorgeous, athletic, divertingly handsome, this young man held such a fascination for me that I followed him around like a love sick puppy dog for four years.

When he graduated from the junior college we attended together and disappeared, I felt the exact same empty hole in the chest pain that Bella experienced. Even now, some thirty three years later, I can picture this young man in my mind, tall, handsome, with exquisitely bright blue eyes and tussled reddish brown hair smiling at me with straight white teeth amidst the glow of his scarlet cheeks that flamed when he was engaged in activities. I even dream of him still. Always running toward him, wanting him to stay with me. Wanting him to love me with an eternal never-ending love. But that's a story for another time and has nothing to do with reality.

I digress. Back to Edward and Bella. My only heart stopping blood curdling fear is that when the Twilight movie opens on 12-12-08, that the Edward and Bella characters I have already seen clearly in my mind, won't be portrayed on the screen sufficiently for my taste. From the movie trailer, I don't get a really good image of either of them. See if you agree.

I also hope that the producers of the movie will stick to the essence of the book and not take too much creative license with the story line. For those of us who read the books, we've already seen the movie in our minds and know Edward and Bella intimately.

If you haven't read the Twilight series, you should, even if nothing more than for the entertainment value. You may find the idea of a human girl in love with a vampire boy that thirsts for her blood repugnant. I did. But after reading the first two books, what stood out the most was the relationship between the two main characters. The taste of love budding for the first time for both of them and the excruciating and intense love story that grips your heart and doesn't let up through dangers and threats of blood shedding and death are extremely exciting.

But if you don't lose your soul to Edward and Bella after reading the books, then you really aren't an imaginative fanciful romantic who believes in the whimsical and mythical spell of love that can transcend boundaries of unthinkable differences. Like the trailer says, "Forbidden fruit if the most sweet." Go on, try it, taste it, thirst for it.