Can you believe it's the last day of April? Yesterday I went running and it seemed like everything possible was blooming all at once...it was the most deliciously fragrant five miles I've ever done! I'd like these perfect spring days to last a little bit longer; I wish there were about two more weeks of April weather left. Kaleb and I have celebrated spring by practicing handstands in the front yard. It's a story I want to scrapbook soon, because even when it's been cold and rainy outside, he's asked if we could go out and practice anyway.

He's getting pretty good at handstands!

What spring stories do you have to tell? Though it's not focused only on spring, but on storytelling in general, Everyday Storyteller 2 will help you get your stories down on layouts. And today you can win it before you can buy it!

Everyday Storyteller 2 is a brand new idea book offering more than 100 tips, tricks and techniques for scrapbooking. Go behind the scenes with 33 of your favorite memory keepers to see how they capture moments, tell stories and document their best memories. Sign up for the VIP list to be the first to know when the book is released and receive an exclusive discount.

For my part of the book, I wrote about a storytelling possibility that's easy to overlook. If you've read my blog or taken one of my classes, you know that stories and writing and sharing with words is the most important part of scrapbooking to me. And this little extra story spot I use makes me happy because it's a way to add just a tiny bit more narrative. There are 30+ other contributors who will share other amazing ways to get your stories onto your layouts.

If you want a chance to win the book, each book contributor participating in the blog hop is giving away an eBook copy of Everyday Storyteller 2. Use this entry link  to enter. You must enter by 11:59pm PDT on April 30, 2013 to be eligible. You may enter from each stop. Winners will be contacted directly as well as posted at everydaystoryteller.com on May 1, 2013

Here are all the other contributors; visit their blogs for more chances to enter!

Tangie Baxter Kerri Bradford Joscelyne Cutchens Catherine Davis Patty Debowski Lisa Dickinson Karla Dudley Leah Farquharson Karen Grunberg Jenni Hufford Donna Jannuzzi Amanda Jones Mandy Koeppen Riikka Kovasin Kami Leonard Amy Mallory Amy Martin Ann-Marie Morris Celine Navarro Lynnette Penacho Kelly Purkey Krista Sahlin Linda Sattgast Cindy Schneider Wendy Smedley Elisha Snow Neisha Sykes Jill Sprott Laura Vegas Allison Waken Crystal Wilkerson Jennifer Wilson

Happy scrapping!

This weekend

• We had leftover chicken curry for dinner on Friday. My boys love my chicken curry. I like it but I feel like I'm missing a secret ingredient...it seems a little bit flat to me. I've started joking about getting a job at our favorite Indian restaurant just so I can learn what the secret ingredient is.
• On Friday night, all of my kids were gone. Haley was with her boyfriend, Jake was hanging out with his friends, Nathan was at a scout camp out, and Kaleb was having a sleep over at his cousin's house (in preparation for an exciting Saturday at the dinosaur exhibition). It was the strangest feeling!
• I finished cutting out all the squares for the quilt I'm working on, and got things pinned together. And I started piecing squares together. It will go quickly now. I'm trying to decide if I have the patience to quilt this or if I should have it quilted. (I will need patience because it will be a thick quilt.) Thoughts?
• We started getting caught up on The Game of Thrones. I've read the first book in this series and we watched the first two seasons, but I've forgotten who's who. I might need a GoT Cliff Notes summary.
• Sunday night's dinner left me all kinds of discouraged. I made brown rice and chicken, which is, true, one of my go-to meals. But when Someone complained about "can't we have something else?" and Someone else said "This rice is not soft enough" and No One said "Thanks for dinner Mom"...I don't know. I know I sound whiny. I'm just tired of Dinner Drama.
• I was late to church because I totally forgot I was in charge of primary sharing time. Cue guilt.
• I resumed reading Sweet Tooth, which I'd put away because it just wasn't grabbing me. On page 82 or so it says "This is where the story really starts" and I thought...OK, why didn't you just start here then, Ian McEwan? I am hoping it all comes together and I feel satisfied at the end.
• I stayed up late on Saturday night and finished Finding Francesca.
• I was up late because I wanted to finish my book and because I was waiting for Haley, who was at prom:
  
  

Doesn't she look pretty? She designed her outfit around the cameos she's wearing. They belonged to my mother-in-law. I LOVE that she wanted to do this! She had two white lace dresses she couldn't choose between and only decided on this one about two hours before the dance. (I'll just return the other one.)

How was your weekend?

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: 
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world,
derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
      ~Elizabeth Bishop

Right now my back hurts because I sat on the floor almost all day yesterday, cutting out 10x10, 5x5, and 8x5 (roughly!) squares from old jeans.

All of Haley's old jeans.

Today I will square them up to their exact proportions and start sewing a project I've been working on for 18 years now. I can't remember who gave me the idea, but I have saved almost every single pair of jeans she wore, since she was a baby, with the goal of working on this project: a blue jeans quilt as her graduation gift.

It's a strange thing to get a little bit teary eyed over a Rubbermaid box full of jeans, but I have. They tell a story, her pants. There's a dearth of tiny jeans, except for the size-6-month pair from Old Navy which were literally the first pair of little  jeans I ever bought. This is because she hated wearing jeans for a long, long time. We never could find any that really fit her body shape and besides: she liked spinny dresses. From the time she could make her opinion known until kindergarten, she wore dresses almost exclusively. I stopped buying pants and shorts and just indulged her love of spinny, pretty, girly dresses. (This is one of the best choices I made as her mom. It made her happy and it was my one chance to overdose in Girly.)

When she went to kindergarten, she saw that girls wore jeans, so she wanted some too. But she didn't like just any jeans. She still wanted pretty ones. So I watched for jeans with embellishment, embroidery, and bedazzlement.

She's had some cute, cute pants.

There's a clean line in time: pre-skinny jeans and post. In sixth grade she discovered skinnies and I didn't buy her a pair of wide-legged jeans again until last summer. There was the Aeropostale phase and the True Religion phase and the black jeans from Nordstrom she loved so much we bought another identical pair when she wore the first one out.

They're not just pants. They capture a little bit of who she is. And they're stories: of shopping trips, of school experiences, of fun (and sadness) with friends. When they are sewn together they will make a sort of retelling, a comfortable scrapbook. I can't tell all the stories, nor can she, but it's sort of a metaphor, the blue jeans quilt, a history made tangible. It represents how she's grown and changed, how she puts her personality into everything she does. It's a compilation of wants, identity, individuality, and history.

It is my way of saying, as she starts to fly, "these years happened too. Don't forget."

I didn't know how hard these last few months would be. The last days of my daughter's childhood. "Bittersweet" is almost the right word, except it isn't really bitter. It's sweet to see her becoming a woman with dreams, ambitions, and opinions, to see the person I only wondered at when I bought those tiny jeans at Old Navy so many years ago. It is a sort of salt, though, too, knowing things will change. Knowing that a phase of her life is passing. A door is closing. I still remember, I have the memories, I will have new memories, but those experiences, all of them with the pants: they won't come again.

But for now, working with the medium of her old clothes, I am remembering anew, and that is something I didn't expect, back in the spring of 1996 when I put her too-small jeans into a box to keep for now, that the blue jeans quilt would also be a gift to myself.

A few months ago I was asked to contribute an article and some layouts to the newest edition of Everyday Storyteller, which is an e-book that focuses on real life scrapbooking—on doing it because you want to get your stories and photos put down together somewhere permanent, with something pretty to go along with them. I was thrilled, of course, as that is exactly my own scrapbooking philosophy.

While I was in the thick of preparing for my Textuality class, Kendell was grumbling about an entry for the scrapbooking store in the checkbook. "You're doing all this stuff just for the class and it kind of seems like a waste of money," he said.

I didn't launch into my schpiel because his eyes would've glazed over. (Honestly, what husband would want to listen to a scrapbooking schpiel?) But I thought it.

I've been doing some sort of work in the scrapbooking world since 2002, when I started writing for the (sadly, now-defunct-because-of-the-stupid-economy) magazine Simple Scrapbooks. And one goal I have always set for myself is this one: do what I do.

This means that whether I'm writing an article, working on a class, or putting together a submission for an e-book, I make the same kind of layouts that I would make if I weren't doing them for an assignment. Sometimes—quite often, in fact, and honestly it's one of the things I love about having a scrapbooking assignment—the topic will stretch me. Assignments have pushed me to create layouts about experiences or stories I probably never would have arrived at on my own. But I make the topic fit within the reality of my life; I still tell a true story.

But the design approach, the use of products, the aesthetics: I do what I do. I use supplies I love even if they're not the trendiest or the newest. I arrange things so that the layout "feels" like one of mine—even though sometimes I feel like my "look" doesn't quite fit with what everyone else is doing. I refuse to replace story with product—I write a lot of journaling on almost every layout because that is what I do.

So to answer Kendell's complaint: I don't ever do any layout just for an assignment. I do them to teach and to illustrate something, but also because I'd be making them anyway. For an assignment or just for myself, I make layouts that are little pieces of my personality and aesthetics, no matter what.

This is true for the layouts I made for Everyday Storyteller. They are actually some of my favorites I've made in awhile. If you are of the scrapbook sort, the book is released on May 3, and there will be tons of give aways on the launch day.

Happy scrapping!

This happened:

I became Haley's mom. I was so wildly in love with her! With all of what I was experiencing, the utterly, entirely unbelievable gobsmacking amazingness of an entirely new person just arriving. A new person. How could I grasp what that means, when they handed me the slippery body and at last I got to see her face? Not just someone I met somewhere. But a new human being who never existed before, and whose care was entrusted to me. Me!

I flipped through her baby album last night, after her birthday dinner party, trying to remember exactly how that felt. The exhilarating terror of being a first-time parent. How filled up with certainty I was that I would do everything right. How much I loved every bit of her tiny little self. How filled with anticipation to see what kind of person she was, and also how hesitation grabbed me as well: already I knew she wouldn't be small for long.

I keep looking at my face in that photo—the happy exhaustion, yes, but right in the eyes. At the pure, sweet surety I felt then. I was so much younger and had so many things to learn. I was certain I would make none of my mother’s mistakes, but I would learn that I would still go on to make my own. I imagined that we would always agree, me and this beautiful, perfect creature, because how could we not? My heart was full of adoration. I had to learn that she is a strong individual and sometimes we would clash, and that would hurt but eventually we’d figure it out. I thought motherhood would be, if not exactly easy, something I could absolutely and completely do correctly, simply because I wanted to. The sheer strength of my wanting to be a good mother would be enough to make me a good mother. I had to learn that wanting is one thing, but succeeding is something entirely different, and that the very sharpness and strength of loving her would make the mistakes hurt even more.

But I didn’t know any of that yet, just like I didn’t know yet how to nurse or to change a diaper in the dark or to comfort the inconsolable. This was my first step in being a mother, and I thought I knew what my next ones would be. I had my future mapped out. I’d have two boys and another girl sometime within the next seven or eight years or so, close enough that they’d all grow up together, spread out enough that I could savor each of their babyhoods. I’d eventually be a stay-at-home mom, and parenting would sweeten and strengthen my marriage. Somewhere in all of that I would write novels, of course, but my main focus would be taking care of my kids. I had the vision of blissfulness that I was certain would be given to me because all of these were good things. (It didn’t quite turn out like that.)

Life has taught me quite a bit in the 18 years of Haley’s life.

I’m not quite sure why I feel so blue right now. She turned out to be entirely herself: funny, smart, sarcastic, creative. Who knew she would have such a beautiful voice, such a quick wit, such determined independence? We have had 18 years of laughing, talking, reading, and living together. She’s healed old wounds in me just by living a normal life. Despite my many mistakes, she is going to be fine. She is strong, which is what I always hoped for. I love her so much and am more proud of her than I can say.

But there’s still that tug: the mistakes. The arguments, the times I disappointed her or the things I regret saying. The alienation that adolescence inevitably brings. There’ve been times when I have felt absolutely wrong for her, as if she picked the wrong mother, as if she would be happier with someone far more fabulous than I. Looking back, it is easy to see what my mistakes were, and the ones I regret the most are the things I didn’t savor enough, the time I didn’t take, the kindness I didn’t share. In motherhood as in life, sometimes there is no way to know what you need to know at the beginning other than going through the process of learning it, by which time it is too late.

I thought that my goal to be a great mom would make me be a great mom. Would make it easy. I thought that because I loved her with that fierce, enduring emotion that it would never be really hard. And it wasn’t, of course—wasn't hard to continue loving her like that. But getting it right? That was never easy. Perhaps if there were only the two of you in the world. But there is also always life to live. Life that is messy and full of unexpected detours, life that rarely takes you where you think you’re going. Loving her, and wanting to be the kind of mom she needed, wasn’t always enough to make me able to actually be what she needed. And if I didn’t love her, I guess that wouldn’t matter so much to me.

But I can’t change the yesterdays. I can’t tell the Amy in that old photograph that she should savor more, and be more brave and less selfish, and share more of herself. I know now what I needed to know then, but I can’t toss the knowledge back through time because I could only learn it by living. So all I can do is look forward, and take what I know with me, and hope it will be enough that she and I can continue on, building a relationship. Because that hasn’t changed, from the person I was to the person I am now. I still love her, I still want to be a great mom, and while our relationship will continue to change as she strides out into the world, I still want to be close to her.

Today is her birthday (yes, we are almost birthday twins!) and I just wanted to throw this out into the universe: even though we don't see each other as often as we like, she is one of my life's great blessings and I know I can still find my path with her light. I would be much less of a person without her.

A few days ago, someone forwarded me a text with an image that read "Twenty years ago, we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Steve Jobs. Now we have no cash, no hope, and no jobs. PLEASE don't let Kevin Bacon die."

Teeeeeee. Obviously, my family's penchant for bacon is well known to my texting friends!

I'm actually sort of neutral on bacon. I like it, but not enough to make it very often. My affection for bacon is outweighed by my dislike of cleaning up bacon grease. My kids, however, LOVE BACON. Especially Jake. And Nathan, Haley, and Kaleb, but especially Jake. And probably they have no problem making bacon because I still have to clean up the grease.

And while I do put bacon in my potato salad, I've never fully realized the impact that it can have on a dish until I made this cheddar corn chowder last night. Oh, my. The bacon added just the right richness and flavor and slip. To fully explain how delicious a soup recipe this is, I shall say this: it is worth the mess of bacon grease!

Cheddar Corn Chowder
(adapted fromThe Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten)

5 slices bacon, chopped
1 swirl EVOO
1 sweet onion, chopped fine
1 T butter
1/3 cup flour
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
3 14-ounce cans chicken broth
1 cup water (ish)
1 tsp chicken base
4 cups diced potatoes (about 2)
3 cups frozen corn
shredded chicken
1 cup milk
1 cup half & half
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Pour the milk and half & half into a measuring cup and let come to room temperature while you cook. In a large stockpot, heat the olive oil. Cut up the bacon (for speed, use scissors!) and drop into the oil. While it crisps (stir occasionally), dice the onion. Remove bacon. Add butter to the olive oil/bacon grease mixture, toss in the onions, and cook on medium low for about ten minutes, or until onions are soft. While they saute, peel and dice the potatoes. Stir in the flour, salt, petter, and turmeric. (The seasonings are to taste. I added about 1/2 tsp of salt—add more if you like things REALLY salty—and as much black pepper as you like. We like a lot.) Stir and cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken stock, water, and chicken base and stir, then toss in the diced potatoes. Simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft-ish. Add extra water if necessary. Toss in the frozen corn (or, if you're fancy like Ina, cut it from the cob, parboil for 3 minutes, drain, and then toss in the corn) and the shredded chicken (I had two breasts' worth, minus what Kaleb snatched while helping me shred). Bring back to a simmer, then pour in the room-temperature milk/half & half mixture and re-simmer again. Stir in cheese to melt. Serve topped with the diced bacon and a little bit of extra cheese on top.

And have your own bacon epiphany!

Over the past week, I've had three startlingly personal comments said to me at work. The first was from a man who looks like a cross between Merida's father Angus from the movie Brave and Lisbeth's social worker from Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Maybe because I have helped him before (by recommending some lesser-read but still good fantasy and science fiction titles), he felt totally comfortable commenting on my new black-and-grey floral-print pants. "If you were trying to draw attention to your legs," he said, "you're doing a great job." 

Yes, a little more Dragon Tattoo-ish than I'd like.

Another patron admired my boots. Like...gushed for a couple of minutes. And then she said "My husband thinks that girls in Dr. Martens are hot."

Ummmm. I'm not sure I qualify for the "girl" department anymore, and I, well, I just don't know what to say to that.

Then there was the patron who approached me while I was putting out some books on the New Book display. "I think you should know that I think you are really pretty," she said, "but you also look sad." I wanted to think that was something nice and thoughtful—but it still felt awkward. Maybe because "pretty/sad" is totally not how I dressed that day. Or maybe because I was crouched down to access the very bottom shelf and I was worrying that my shirt might've slid up over the top of my jeans and I was possibly exposing that lovely stretch of back fat that's right over one's butt? I don't know.

Overly personal comments: not my favorite part of working with the public.

One thing I do love about my job, though, is stocking the display shelves. Display shelves (or sometimes tables) hold books that librarians have picked out, the ones we think you'll really like. Usually there is a theme to the display shelves. In my library, for example, we have displays for historical fiction, speculative fiction, gentle reads, science, history, art, and the ever-popular "You Wrote a Book About What?" shelf. There are display shelves for new fiction and non fiction, and each of the librarians has his or her own display shelf.

Filling up the display shelves is one of my favorite parts of my job. Partly it's sort of an ego rush: I still, nearly five years later, get a little happy shiver when I see someone pick up a book from my display. It's an act of faith in a person, when you stop to think about it, trusting them enough to spend all that time with a book they recommend. I only put out books that I really, really liked on my display, and I try to remember the more obscure or slightly odd things I've loved. Like The Changeling of Finnistuath, a book I read when I was teaching—back when my awesome boots were brand new!—and have been haunted by ever since. (Kate Horsley, why haven't you written a new novel in so long? I'd read it, especially if it were set in ancient Celtic times.) Collections of essays. Strong, accessible poetry books. Even a few graphic novels. Of course, lots of Atwood and Hoffman and Kingsolver and LeGuin.

But I also like stocking the other shelves (except for the Gentle Reads one...as I'm not generally a reader of cozy novels nor highly concerned that my books be squeaky-clean, I have a persistent worry, finding Gentle books, that I'm unwittingly corrupting some poor old woman with swear words and naughty bits). Not all the books I put on these shelves are books I've read. Most often, they're books I want to read. (As my current "want to read" list is hovering at about 87 titles, this is a deep resource.) Spreading the books I want to read throughout the library is curiously pleasant. It stills that very old and persistent need to take home every book I find and love. I might not be able to read the books I put on the Social Sciences display shelf today, including The Ragged Edge of the World (about how society encroaches on wilderness), The Winter of our Disconnect (about a family who disconnected from almost everything requiring electricity for a year), The Good Daughter (about the writer Jasmin Darznik, who uncovers her mother's secrets after finding a wedding photograph of her—with a man not Jasmin's father), or The Other Wes Moore (about two men who are named Wes Moore and how different their lives are), but I want to, and it makes me feel like an itch has been scratched, knowing that at least someone else will read them.

"People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading." Someone named Logan Pearsall Smith said that, and sometimes I completely agree with him. I'm not always immersed in a book as in—I'm sitting down and reading something. But I'm always reading something, immersed in the story which I've paused by putting down the book while I live my life. And I do have other interests as well; as much as I love books, I think my life would be less rich without things like, you know, the people I love, and running and hiking and taking pictures and thinking and writing. Then again, that desire to be reading something is always there—and it's more bearable if I know that someone, somewhere in my town, is reading something I recommended. 

What have you read lately that I should recommend to someone else?