Tell You [a] Little Story

This was part of a post on Provo's mayor's blog advertising a community health fair. Can you spot the irony?

Go where you're invited. Steve doesn't believe in this life philosophy, so I've become lax, but I think it's a good rule. This last Saturday I was invited to two events, each of which I did not have much interest in attending, so I didn't go to either. On Sunday I learned that both hosts had had low attendance and felt bad about it and it made me feel horrible. When I was about 8 my mom had a Tupperware party and no one came and she was hurt; even though it was a dumb Tupperware party, she took it personally. So even when I get invited to dumb jewelry parties,  I think it's a good idea to make an effort to show up because people are more important than me not being slightly inconvenienced.  Pay attention to the things you think about while falling asleep/when you wake up for whatever reason/first thing in the morning.  Your (my) brain has usually had a chance to filter out the unimportant stuff and whatever is left often provides clarity and new perspective. T...

I was 21 before I owned a car (although I'd crashed a couple already - sorry, dad). A Chrysler Cirrus and Stephen came as a package deal. One was rather lemony, the other, pure brilliance. He called her Cheryl, she had big child-bearing hips, er, a wide back end, and she broke down on the 14 on our way down to Arizona to get married. We got towed to Cedar City where we stayed with strangers and I sent Steve off to the mechanic's with the admonition to "be assertive," presumably to get them to hurry up on our repairs so we could get to the altar on time. It ticked him off. Though she was our first car and we were grateful to have her, nary a tear was shed when we very cheaply traded her in for bigger and better things, I think 5 years later. Cheryl was red. Steve's grandparents died while we were in Tucson for law school. We inherited their ten year old, massively rusted out Chevy Lumina, Euro edition. Did I mention the rust? It was rusty. It had sat in a snowy C...

We rode a cable car to church. Steve and I are pretty bad at photographing and documenting our collective life. Well, I take that back: he keeps a fairly faithful journal, so I'm pretty bad at it. We're both bad at taking pictures and his stress level rises whenever I suggest he should be good at that, because who has time to take on one more hobby? Point is, though, we have a good life together. We love each other. Our kids are pretty cute and, in spite of all their wild monkeyness, they're good kids and good people. We spent all of last week in San Francisco, which is such a magical city. I mean, it totally looks like a magical, fairy tale city when you come in across the Bay Bridge, with its hilly, tree-y skyline. People there are really good at parallel parking and they have charming neighborhoods, awesome food, and everyone is nice, even though there are cheap souvenirs and double-decker tour buses every which way. I probably wouldn't be very nice if I lived...

My cute sister put this together of all the grandkids wishing Papa a happy birthday. Yup, 64. But our dad is cooler than Paul McCartney. Untitled from Abby Sharp on Vimeo .

My handsome and brilliant husband has started a blog , yo.