Happy Anniversary to us

Bruce and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary yesterday.

I didn't even think about it to be truthful. Yesterday morning when I got up, I didn't think to myself, "Today is our anniversary." When Bruce got home from work just minutes before I was leaving for work, neither of us said a thing about it, we just said the usual "I love you, have a good day."

It wasn't until I had to write the date on something at work, and glanced at the time and date in the bottom right corner of the computer, that I realized it was the 27th of March, which is our anniversary.  My first thought was "Where did the month go?" and then "Oh...it's our anniversary."

So when Bruce called me a bit later, I said, "Happy Anniversary" and he said, "Oh, is it our anniversary today? Yup, you're right...it is the 27th. Well then, happy anniversary to you, too." He told me he was going out to a car dealership to see what prize he had won on some advertisement thing that came in the mail.  The last time he bit their bait, he had won a $5.00 bill. So he figured he would go and get his little prize and treat himself to a milkshake or something.

But he called back later to say that he had won movie tickets to the new megaplex in Vineyard. That's right...for those of you familiar with the area, there is now a megaplex theatre sitting in the middle of nowhere just south of the old Geneva Steel. Only, it is fast turning into somewhere, with all sorts of new construction going up.  It is a bit bewildering, finding the theatre complex. You can see it because it is huge, but from Geneva Road, no road seems to lead there. Heads up: you need to head west on Center Street, Orem, or turn that direction from Geneva Road, and then you will be on a road that will wind its way to the megaplex.

When I got home from gamelan rehearsal, we headed to the theatre first, both to find our way there and to get our tickets.  The theatre is very neat and clean, being brand new, but also very industrial, heavy-duty in feel--concrete floors, not carpet, that kind of thing. Much easier to clean, in my opinion.  The lady at the ticket counter was new, and didn't know how to redeem the free tickets, so she asked another clerk for help. She knew how to redeem tickets, but told us "That will be $5.50."  That is not a bad price for two tickets, so I told Bruce to tame his demons and fork over the money, but then a manager came by, and said, "They are going to Cinderella? Their free tickets cover the whole price." And he taught them how to do it, so now both those clerks are in the know. And our free tickets were free after all! (If we had gone to a show that is less than ten days old, then our free tickets would not have been actually free.)

Then we had about an hour to fill, and so we left in search of dinner.  I suggested going to Savory and Sweet, which is easy to get to from the megaplex, just on Center Street in Orem. And we hadn't been there for a long time. Savory and Sweet is a strange restaurant.  It is owned and operated by a Chinese lady who serves crepes (both savory and sweet) and pasta.  So that's a little unusual! Bruce had not been a big fan of the restaurant in the past, but their menu has really grown.  So now he likes it. Also, they are very fast. You get your food really soon, and since we had somewhere to be by about 6:30, that was a plus. (This is where Shallee would go and write when she was working on her Genesis Lee novel, by the way.)

We got to the theatre and were among the first to find our seats. Everything was so pristine and clean!  Our seats were on the far side, away from the only door leading into auditorium #4. As we sat down, Bruce commented that nobody would come and climb over us, since the door was on the other side, and our row was empty--with us on the far end.  We settled down to watch the trivia questions, and I kicked off my flip-flops and curled up in my comfortable seat with my knees up, the way I like to sit.  And wouldn't you know it, along came another couple, a bit older than us, her carrying drinks and him with a big tub of popcorn, and they came up the stairs and asked to climb past us to get to their seats--when our row was still fully open from the other side.  So, I shoved my sandals further under my seat so they wouldn't trip on them, and Bruce half stood to let them past.

The lady got past just fine, but wouldn't you know it--the man tripped on the little bit of a rise, like a quarter inch, from the stairs to the seats, and he almost took a tumble if Bruce hadn't caught him. And popcorn everywhere! So much for the pristine theatre! And instead of clean floor, we got to have popcorn to step on, and my flip-flops were flip-pops, for which he did apologize. But all was well, he got to his seat without falling, and I just tamped down my sadness that the nice clean theatre was now good and dirty. (I do so much hate the spilled popcorn, and worse, spilled pop, in theatres).

But the movie was lovely. Several of my students had talked about Cinderella, with many good things to say about it. Being music people, they of course commented on the beauty of the score, and it was just that. Beautiful.  I especially liked the way the composer wove "Lavendar Blue" which Cinderella's mother had sung to her, into the music in all the right places. So lovely.  And I didn't even mind the mice, because they were sort of real, but also sort of fake, and so they were not too gross.  The costumes were lovely, although the fabric of the ball gowns definitely crossed centuries, but still--lovely.  The whole production was wonderful, and then in the credit I saw Kenneth Branagh. No wonder. I have loved everything he does (that I have seen).

And then we got home before our carriage turned into a pumpkin. So it was a really nice anniversary evening.

A Visit with Baby Elaina

I went to visit Doug and Geneen and see new baby Elaina tonight.  She is so cute and so tiny.  At least, a seven pound baby seems very small when you have not held a newborn for a long time! I thought I had better take the baby gift I have for Elaina over before she outgrows it--but then, when I got there, it was clear that the 3-6 month outfit I brought is WAY too big for her. Phew. She will have it in time for it to fit!

I took crayons, stickers and coloring books for the older kids, and they were so happy about that. But so amazing--they decided who got what by themselves with absolutely no fighting and no disagreements. Michael chose first (this was not a formal order, he just was quick on the draw) and then Evelynn. Asher and Eloise each took a crayon/sticker pack and then Geneen just showed Eloise the remaining two coloring books and said, "Which one do you want?" and gave Asher the one that was left over. He happily took it, even though it was pink. (And there is nothing wrong with that! Just some children would be opinionated about the color, and these children weren't.) They all found a place at the table and began creating while we all chatted amiably. And I got to hold the baby (after first washing my hands, which is a household rule.)

Such a cute, fun and well-behaved family! I told Geneen that, after her mom goes home, if she needs me to come and hold the baby, I am very happy to do so! (Or play with the kids. They are a good bunch of kids.)

Gender Rant

Gender has been on my mind for quite a few years now. During that time I have read a great deal about it. I have read articles and blogs on the internet; I have read scholarly articles in the library databases. I confess to not reading as many books on the topic as I should, but I do have a reading list developing.

It is hard to put what I have been thinking into words, and above all I do not want to offend anyone, especially not anyone I love. But from what I read, gender or sex or whatever you want to call it is a part of your DNA. It is encoded in you before your mother even realizes there is a you. It is not necessarily a straight forward XX or XY, because genetics can be more complicated than that, but whatever it is that your DNA instructs you to be, that is what you are.

It doesn’t matter what you wear or how long your hair is or what your hobbies are, what makes you male or female is your DNA. If your DNA tells your cells to code for male, you will develop the characteristics of a male in your body, which is more than just genitalia, but also your skeleton, the shape or your head, your pelvic bones, your nose, your adam’s apple. Ditto for if your DNA tells your cells to code you for female.

Now, I grew up on a farm, and every year my dad and my uncle, with the assistance of children of any gender who wished to help, rounded up the male calves and messed with the physical representation of their DNA.  Those calves had sex reassignment surgery right there on our farm.  Was the result of that surgery that we enlarged our herd of heifers? No. After their gonads were removed, they were steers. They could no longer be bulls. They were not heifers. They were another gender entirely, literally neuters. 

Likewise with the baby horses on neighboring farms—baby stallions who were not selected to become fathers someday were operated on, and they became geldings.  They were not, and never would be, mares. Three genders, just like in German and other languages: male, female or neuter.

Now, I am very, very sad for people who are not happy with the gender that their DNA is telling their body to be, and I wish only happiness for them. But, that being said, sex reassignment surgery does not and cannot change their DNA. If they were born male, their DNA is still screaming MALE. If they were born female, their DNA screams FEMALE. 

This is so hard to put into words! What makes me a female? Is it that I like pale pink and light blue? Is it that I like to read? That I don’t like to wear shoes? No. It is my biology. I could hate pink and love competitive sports and like to wear hiking boots, but if my DNA said I was a female, that would be what made me a female.

So I just don’t understand how a mother of a child can think that it is okay to not tell her child that he or she is the gender that he or she is…I don’t care if the child likes to play with dolls or trucks, to dress up in princess clothes or always wear shorts, to be quiet and introspective or loud and rambunctious—I have known children of either gender to like any of these things. But if you have a penis and testicles, your DNA is telling you that you are a boy, so I think that parents need to back up that reality with their words.

I do not think gender is something that children really understand. For example, when Patrick was a small boy, he was lying in bed between his dad and I prattling on about things—he has always been a talker—and he said in a sing-songy voice “I’m a boy and daddy’s a boy and David’s a boy and you’re a boy and” but I interrupted him and said, “No, I’m a girl.” He looked at me all annoyed and said, “You’re a boy.” “I’m a girl” I insisted. After a few back and forth retorts, he finally said, “Fine! Be a girl!” I do not really think that he understood why there was a difference at that point in time. I do not think that any small child really gets that.

My mother’s two oldest brothers were born at the turn of the century—about 1904 and 1906 or something like that. I have seen a picture of them both wearing long white lacy gowns, both with long hair curled in ringlets.  Today, we might look at that picture and think, “Oh, what cute little girls!” But people in that decade would look at that picture and think, “Oh, what cute little children!” Because they were dressed NORMALLY for children of that decade.  CHILDREN wore long hair and dresses.  When they got old enough for school, then boys wore pants and girls wore dresses. Because that was what their society and culture called for. I don’t know why, but that was the way it was.

The only grandmother that I knew ALWAYS wore dresses. I never saw her in pants. My mother almost always wore dresses. My oldest sister, born in 1952, HAD to wear dresses to school unless it was at least 20 degrees below zero. I am awfully glad that changed in time for me to never HAVE to wear a dress in the cold unless I wanted to. But seriously, that was not so long ago.  

So how did our society move from a place where all children wore dresses to a place where girl children HAD to wear dresses but boys didn’t to a place where girls can dress like boys (habitually in pants) and that is okay, but boys CAN’T wear dresses? It makes no sense. It is all culturally driven, and how anyone dresses doesn’t really matter, but the organs UNDER those clothes that make up the results of DNA acting on the cells, those matter.

I know men who routinely wear lavalavas or kilts even though they don’t live in the islands of the South Pacific or the Isles of Scotland, and that is totally fine with me. Those are actually skirts, right? Just skirts called by different words. They still are men. Wearing the skirts does not change their DNA. 

But some young parents think that if their boys want to wear dresses then they must be confused about their gender, so maybe we should change their names to a girl name, and they should be allowed to go to the girls’ restroom and they should be called a girl and the pronoun used for them should be she.And I am just like—what is this insanity?  The child is not a boy because of the dress or a name or a toy preference. The child is a boy because his DNA told him to be a boy.

There are things about me that I would like to have fixed. Like, I am getting old. So I dye my hair, and I can fool people that it is brown when really it is getting gray, but I know and most people know that I am fooling them. Fortunately, I am not too wrinkly, but if I was, I could get a facelift, but seriously people, would that look real? No! It would look fake! Who cannot spot a facelift? They are so obvious. We know they are fooling us. Or trying to. 

Michael Jackson was a little boy of much darker color than me, about a year younger than me. I watched him grow up from a cute little brown boy to a whitish, weirdish person who looked nothing like what his DNA told him to be. And he looked fake to me. I knew that whatever look he was going for, it was not the look that his DNA had in mind for him. Because I remember what he looked like at 8 and 12 and 14, and what he ended up looking like was not where he was naturally headed.

So, if that child who was probably not so much confused about gender as innocent of understanding about gender because CHILD is told by the parents that it is okay to act like a girl when he is really a boy or vice versa then that child is very likely to become confused about gender, right? And if the parent then says, “Oh, don’t worry, you can have sex reassignment surgery and then you will be a girl!” as some parents do…the child is being told a LIE. Because sex reassignment surgery does NOT make a girl into a boy or a boy into a girl. What it does is take someone with male DNA or female DNA and remove that individual’s ability to reproduce, which is actually what the difference in gender is all about, isn’t it?  

So just like the bovines of my childhood, it takes a human bull and turns it into a human steer. It does not turn it into a heifer. It can never be a heifer, because the DNA that made it a bull is still there, acting on cells all over the body. (In the cattle world, they left all the heifers alone, so there is not a word for heifers who have been de-heiferfied.) So the human answer to that is hormone therapy, but that is only changing what happens at some receptor cells. It is not fundamentally changing the gender of the individual, because we actually can’t do that. Maybe someday humans will be able to do that, but I sincerely hope that I am not on the planet anymore at that point because I just think: stop the insanity already!

And so, as I see it, just like I can be a fake younger than I am with hair dye, Michael Jackson could be a fake color and have a fake nose and whatever else he had that was fake. But it is all still fake. Michael and I, we are/were just living a fantasy. And that’s okay to a point. But if I was to insist that I only look 40 and therefore I AM 40? That, my friends, would be a lie. I am almost 60 and trying to pass for 40, is the truth. Maybe I should be able to have my birth certificate changed, so that on paper I can be the age I think I look, what do you think?

But this is what we do with gender. We allow, even encourage people to change their gender (even though really they are not changed, they are neutered) and to change the paper trail so that the papers “match” the gender they “really” are, except it doesn’t because we really don’t have the science down that actually changes the DNA. So just like I am really old, the person is really the gender they were born to be, regardless of what hormones they take or what surgeries they have had. 

So a woman who changes herself into a “man” is a fake man, and a man who becomes a human steer is a fake woman. I am sorry. They just are. Because their SRS really did not change their gender, it neutered the gender they had, or at least its display. And hormone therapy can help to a point, but only to a point. And we can call them the pronoun they want to be called, and we can love them genuinely with all our hearts. But they are still someone with male or female DNA trying to pass as the other; they are not really the other gender, any more than a steer is a heifer. It is not. They look different. Any farm kid can tell a bull from a steer from a heifer. Same here with people. I can tell a man from a woman from a person who is neuter. 

And I worry about these people, of which I have both friends and family in their ranks.  I worry because they have made choices that require them to always have to make sure they have their act together to pass as the gender that they are not. And they have to rely on always taking hormones. And this is the volatile United States, where insurance companies rule in the medical field instead of doctors ruling, so if their insurance decides not to cover the prescription they use, or decides to jump the price or whatever—problem. Or if the pharmaceutical company decides to stop making something, so they have to find a different one—problem.

Plus there is regret.  This is not well publicized because we are living in a world where it is politically correct to shout about the rights of people to be the gender they want to be (even though, as I have already said, that is a lie, because they really are still the same gender at the DNA level which is really where it is at) but it is NOT politically correct to bring up the other side of the argument, like I am doing here. And it is hard and embarrassing for people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars to solve their problems through surgery to admit that not only are they just as angst-ridden as they were before, but that they wish they could go back to what they had been before. Yet these people DO exist, and some of them are trying to get the word out that the Emerald City is not all they thought it would be and they want to go back to Kansas.  Except they really can’t go back, because their natural organs have been removed. However, there ARE clinics popping up in the world that try to put gender changed people back together again, so clearly there is beginning to be a market for their work.

Does this remind you of anything? Sneetches, perhaps:

All the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches,
The Fix-It-Up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches.
Off again! On again! In again! Out again!
Through the machines they raced round and about again,

Changing their stars every minute or two. They kept paying money.
They kept running through until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
Whether this one was that one or that one was this one. Or which one
Was what one or what one was who.

And I feel like that is what is happening with gender! The Fix-It-Up Chappies are happy to take money to fix people; put a star on their tummy and make them think they are now a girl when really they are a boy or vice versa, and they will also happily take your money to do the opposite. And it is all very confusing.

 But at the base of all of it is biology and the DNA spirals upon which biology is based. And the Fix-It-Up Chappies do not know how to fix that. Yet. My personal hope is that they never will. 

Now, I do not agree with SRS. I think I have made that clear.  Just like I was never the kid to volunteer to help castrate the little bull calves because even as a child it seemed ethically wrong to deny that poor little animal the privilege of being who nature intended him to be just so that his meat would be more tender since testosterone toughens the meat—I just think it is ethically wrong to surgically “fix” people and let them think that the surgery actually changes them when clearly at the cellular level it does not. 

However, if adult people make this choice, while it will sadden me because of all of the above, I recognize their right to choose and I will still love them and I will still be their friend. This does not, however, mean that I will not miss WHO THEY WERE with an aching sadness, because I will.  I liked my female friend who is now a man. I liked her a lot. I like him, too, but I MISS her. Because he is not exactly like her. He isn’t. They are different from each other.  Same with my male relative who is now a female. I miss him A TON. I really, really liked the person he was, the way he was. I love her, too, but I MISS him. I do. 

But what gets me so worked up, and what is causing me to write this long post that may get me some hate comments is when parents of small children are messing with their children’s minds! AARGHHH!! I get that our society is messed up about gender, and clothes and fashion and hair and jewelry and all that. And about careers and sports and all these other things that really are about PEOPLE and not about gender at all.  But to tell a small child that they can self-identify, that they can BE the gender they are not. That is just a lie. They can only pretend. The best they can ever be is a fake girl or a fake boy, because even SRS will only turn them from a genetic male or female into a neutered male or female. 

Instead, why can’t these open-minded, trying to be politically correct parents say, “I get that you want to be a girl. But at the cellular level, at the building blocks of life, you are a boy. That is what you are.  You can wear dresses, you can wear make-up, you can do any hobby you enjoy, but biologically you are male.  And it is wonderful to be male. It is wonderful to be female. Both are wonderful. So how can we make the FACT that you are a boy work for you?” And if that child, as a grown up, still wants to have SRS, so be it. Love them through it, but don’t lie to them. SRS does NOT change gender. It only changes physical appearance. Truth, people. On paper, you can be any gender you want to be, if you can afford to pay for the surgeries and if you can afford to pay for the hormones. But biologically? Nothing changes. Your DNA stays the same.

And...apparently science backs me up...

YA Days

Josie had a four concert run last week, which left her tired, but it went well. It happened that the shows I went to were the ones she was less happy about, but still..they were good. Too bad I did not go to all of them, so I would understand the difference!

It was the 45th anniversary of the Young Ambassadors.  Here is this year's group with some of the alumni from the past 45 years. Good thing they all didn't come or it would have been pandemonium!

David and Vanja

Oh my goodness, I am so bad!  Yesterday I was telling my son David the story of Marv and Vanja bouncing the credit for their artistic success back and forth to each other, and he told me I should write it down. And so I did...but I forgot to give him the credit! Because my working relationship with Marv and Vanja would never have happened if David had not been assigned to interview Vanja for Mormon Artist.

He interviewed her entirely via email so they never physically met, but they enjoyed a lengthy communication with each other.

In the interview, they talked about the annual Christmas song that Vanja and Marv have been writing and giving to their friends since 1987.  That tweaked my interest, and so David asked Vanja if I could contact her about it, and I did, and we brought Marv into the picture, and now we are working toward both some online and physical copies of books. There will be a series of three books: Christmas Songs, Songs of Christ, and Book of Mormon Songs.

So, both of them --Vanja and Marv--were looking forward to having the opportunity to meet David at the fireside tonight--and it was a really fun, really interesting fireside, by the way.

So: here it is, the evidence that David and Vanja eventually did meet each other in the flesh!

It's you--no, it's you--no, it's you

For the past (almost) year, I have been collaborating with some people to produce a book of their original Christmas songs.

The composer is Vanja Watkins. She is a sweet lady in her seventies who has composed many songs which appear in the LDS Children's Songbook and in the LDS Hymnal.

The lyricist is Marv Gardner, longtime editor of LDS Church Magazines, now a professor in E-Lang (Editing) at BYU.

My student John Leavitt has also been a part of the team, working to get the music all typeset in Finale, ready for publishing.

We just had a meeting on Thursday, and it was the first time that John and Vanja have met in person,though they have been communicating via phone and email for a good long while.

John said, "You may not know this, Vanja, but I was at the MTC when you came and spoke there."

"You were?" she smiled. "Oh that was so difficult! That Mike Oman--I am glad he included me, but putting me between two such composers as Robert Manookin and Crawford Gates? I felt like, what am I doing here?"

John assured her that it was wonderful, and he was thrilled to hear her speak because so many of his favorite primary songs were her compositions.

I asked about Crawford Gates, because I used to know him very well, but his memory has been failing--he is in his nineties now--and recently when I have seen him, he did not remember that he ever knew me. Vanja, after answering my question, said, "Did you know my husband was Crawford's best man when he married Georgia?--well, it was news to me too! My husband never told me that!" (Dr. Watkins was about 25 years older than his wife--so most of his childhood friends married well before he did! And he had died before Vanja knew about the whole best man business.)

John talked about the beautiful music that Vanja writes, and she said, "Oh it is all the lyrics!  The beautiful lyrics that Marv writes just inspire me!"

Marv: Oh no, it is the music that inspires the lyrics!

Vanja: Oh, no it is the other way around! I went to the ACDA conference this weekend, and oh, the glorious lyrics I heard. There was this beautiful setting by Benjamin Britten of the Sally Gardens, and the way those lyrics came across in the music--it was so beautiful.  Marv, I don't know how you put up with me! You need Benjamin Britten to do your lyrics justice!

Marv: Why would I want Benjamin Britten when I have Vanja Watkins?

They were so fun!  They, with Michael Moody and Bonnie Goodliffe (who is Georgia Gates' sister, just to show the interconnectedness of all things music in the Mormon world), are giving a fireside about the 1985 hymnal tomorrow.

Falling

When I was growing up, our family fell into the routine of going to Waterton Lakes National Park for summer vacation just about every year.  It was perhaps not much closer than Banff, but had the advantage of being closer to my Uncle Roy's house. Uncle Roy was one of my mom's five older brothers, and I would call him her favorite brother. They were both quiet people in an otherwise kind of rowdy family, and they were both good musicians, so they liked to do things together. Uncle Roy would play the organ, and Mom the piano or accordion, and they would jam. My dad liked Uncle Roy because they both had green thumbs. Dad put his to use as a farmer and as a grafter of fruit trees, and in the creation of a beautiful yard that won the best of the province on one occasion. Uncle Roy had a greenhouse and sold starter plants, and also kept a lovely yard. And they both also enjoyed outdoor adventure. So we would stop at his home in Mountain View on our way to Waterton and he would join us on our hikes. Sometimes his daughter Penny (Pamela) would join us, too. Sometimes, she was WORKING in WATERTON. (I thought that was the COOLEST!)

Mom, Bruce, Penny, Colleen. In front Dad, me, Arlene, Uncle Roy

The particular year I am thinking of, though, we did not take Uncle Roy with us, because I remember there was just Mom, Dad, and the three of us girls. So I think it would have been about 1970, with my brother freshly on a mission. I would have been 12 and a half that summer. Which is also the summer when I learned to ride a bike, late bloomer that I was.

We drove up to Red Rock Canyon. The year before (ish) we had hiked up the trail to the right (if you are facing into the Red Rock area from the road) with Mom and Dad on the trail, and the four of us kids in the water.  That was an adventure, let me tell you! Slipping and sliding and wading and practically swimming. But it was fun, especially because we all survived!

This year, we decided to take the Blakiston Falls (pronounced Blackiston) hike, the trail of which is on the opposite side. Blakiston is a lovely falls, as you can see for yourselves:

Notice the railing on the right.  That railing was not there in 1970, and neither were the stairs or the landing. It was all just rock, and then the falls. The rock is kind of shale, I think, so can be a bit on the slippery side.  We were walking around and looking down and around when I lost my footing and began to fall.  I was so scared, because I could see deep into the pool at the bottom of the falls, and that is where I was headed, to certain death, when at the very edge, the very edge, I sat down HARD on the edge. Like someone gave me a heavy handed thrust downward.

Only my sister Colleen saw this happen. Arlene and Mom and Dad entirely missed this moment in time.  Colleen and I both were so shaken that we could not move or talk. We just sat there completely aghast at the near miss, and astounded at the close call I had just had.  Finally, when the rest of the family, oblivious to our little drama, called us to come because they were going to continue hiking, I got up, and that was when I noticed how terribly, terribly sore my derriere was. Super sore.

It was sore for weeks.  My parents were less sympathetic than I would have hoped, but then, they did not see what happened. We told them, but I don't think they ever really realized what a close call it had been.  It was something you had to see.  BUT...I did not mind that sore bottom, because I was so grateful that I did not die by drowning, or by the shock of my body hitting that cold mountain water, or by breaking all my bones on impact with the water from that height. So many dumb ways to die that I avoided through the hand of providence.

Why am I thinking about this experience now, 45 years later?  Well, on Monday I got home from the MLA conference in Denver, and I had a lot of laundry to do.  As I was going downstairs that evening, I somehow lost my footing on the stairs and took a tumble.  I am not sure how it happened, because I was actually, and unusually, holding the railing as I walked down. But at a moment when I momentarily let go...I fell. And lo and behold, I landed smack-dab on my bottom. But, I was wearing my silky-satiny blue PJ bottoms with the white clouds on them, and that fabric is slippery. So instead of stopping when I hit bottom, I started bumping down the stairs on my bottom, bump, bump, bump. I was laughing so hard by then I could hardly stop.

Can you imagine if Josie or Patrick had friends over right then, and here comes their mother, bumping down the stairs. Rapidly bouncing. I remember my kids enjoying sliding down the stairs like that, and I remember my dad being super annoyed with them if he saw them do it.  Well, I just did it last night, and it was kind of fun, even though it began with a bit of terror.

I am awfully glad that both of those falling incidences landed me on my bottom safely, though painfully. Because, boy, am I feeling it today. Like Blakiston falls all over again. I can hardly stand to sit!