I am not a wildlife photographer

This time last year, a single mom moved in near our house, reared a lovely family, then moved out. This year, she's back, fixing up the house, and preparing to raise another family. If I were a wildlife photographer, and if my windows were cleaner, I'd show you the tiny nest made mostly of dead crabapple blossoms, on the remains of last year's nest. Instead, here's a picture (by RBerteig) that looks exactly like "my" nest. For a lot more fabulous hummer photos, go here.

I am not a re-reader

I think I was the last science fiction reader on the planet to discover Connie Willis. In some ways, that's nice, because I'm just now discovering the huge backlog of books she's been writing for the past 20 years. If you haven't read it yet, go NOW and find To Say Nothing of the Dog.

OK, you're back now. Let's talk about Passage. Except we can't, much. The huge, overarching, deep and beautiful metaphor that encompasses the entire book is revealed slowly, and it would ruin the book to reveal it. What's left, after leaving out that most important part, is a story about two doctors battling time, administrative craziness, a life-after-death loony author, an unbelievably complex maze of a hospital, and a whole cast of supporting crazy people, to discover the nature of near-death experiences (NDEs). They're pursuing the theory that the brain can use the NDE as a protective mechanism to bring itself back from the dead.

On the one hand, this book drove me nuts, as the cast of supporting crazy people and other obstacles were constantly, noisily interfering with the main characters' progress. That seems to be Connie Willis, and as in Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, all the disparate threads eventually, improbably weave in with that central, towering metaphor we can't talk about. After taking its sweet time for the entire first half, the book suddenly turned up the pace and the tension to Extra High, culminating in a climax and resolution that were sweet, moving, and thought-provoking all at the same time. What is death? What is real? This book doesn't try to tell you, but it shakes up your tidy notions, no matter what opinions you came in with.

I don't re-read. Drives everyone who tries to talk books with me crazy, because I'll remember enjoying a book, but I can't remember characters, major events, author...nothing. I finished Passage, turned to the middle, and re-read the whole second half. For days, I sat around thinking about the resolution. One morning I woke up and just lay there, happily thinking about this book. Six months later, it's still with me.

I am not a horror reader

I am not a horror reader, but at BYU's science fiction symposium, I heard Dan Wells read from his new book, I Am Not a Serial Killer. The main character charmed me in disturbing ways: John Wayne Cleaver is a 15-year-old mortician, and a diagnosed sociopath...but he's trying very hard NOT to become a serial killer. It's kind of the ultimate application of all those rules about YA fiction: main character has to be a teenager, has to be relatable, has to be somehow different, all at the same time. In the part Dan read, John's getting bullied at the school dance. Relatable, right? He scares the bullies away by describing just how indifferent he feels to them as living human beings, and just how interesting he thinks it would be to take them apart and see what they look like inside. But he also manages to creep out the cute girl who almost asked him to dance. See? Charming. Creepy. Disturbing.

Then a real, live serial killer comes to the kid's town, and it's up to John to outwit the killer while holding onto his own sanity.

You don't want to give this book to your precocious preteen reader. My kids—even the full-on teenager—were intrigued by the title while seeming to know they needed to leave this one alone. But even if you don't usually like to read about murder, guts, autopsies, and seriously sick individuals, you might be disturbed to find that you really enjoy this book.

Go to Zion

We almost never go on non-Grandma's-house vacations, for outdated reasons: once there was a diaper of legendary proportions in a restaurant, once we got yelled at by the management for being too loud in a hotel...stuff that made a big impression, but isn't currently applicable.

So, we took the family for an overnighter to Zion National Park and the St. George LDS temple. It takes a lot to make my kids stop and say, "Whoa!" But the park and the temple both did it. Here's our top ten (in no particular order):

1. Little kid in a video at the temple visitors' center: "Jesus helped sick people, and he made the leopards feel better."

2. Giant mule deer head in a Subway restaurant somewhere between Nephi and Fillmore, UT. The kids took pictures.

3. JC Mikkelson's. We hadn't been to this Nephi restaurant in ages. When we went this evening, they'd just finished remodeling and putting in a huge G-SCALE TRAIN! It goes all over the ceiling on tracks, and there are two big central things made of trees, with no less than 6 different trains running.

4. JC Mikkelson's. The food is good, too. I like my BBQ sandwich, but my husband's Italian chicken on foccacia with a huge dollop of pesto was to die for. Please go eat there, so they'll stay open for another 100 years.

5. Zion Park tour guide: Most of them were content to run the pre-recorded tour tape, but this one guy was an original: "That tall mountain with the red splotch on it is called the 'Sacrificial Altar.' If you bring food on this tour bus, the ranger will give you a guided trip up to the Sacrificial Altar. One-way."

6. Cloud pictures in the sky. Buffy saw about 47 different staple removers. Hammer saw a rabbit dressed like Ironman flying and carrying a chainsaw. Best I saw was a flying ostrich, but I'm way out of practice.

7. Zion park: Different people named different landmarks. The "Three Patriarchs"--Abraham, Issac, and Jacob were named by a Protestant minister. They stand peacefully together with a mountain named Moroni. There's also the Temple of Sinawava. Tour guide: "That was named by the Union Pacific, trying to get people to come and visit. There ain't no temple there. Never has been."

8. Zion park: You have to love a park with a landmark named "Menu Falls," so named because the waterfall's picture was on the menu at the restaurant.

9. Weather: It was snowing, lightly and a little weirdly, at the park. On the way home, we were heading north as a huge storm front was heading south. We could see squall after squall coming as we drove into it (see cloud shapes, above).

10. National Parks Service: Usually it costs $25 to get in for a week at Zion. But my mom was with us. For $10 they sold her a lifetime national parks senior pass. Good business. The kids are already plotting how to haul Grandma out to more national parks.

Just call me Tom Sawyer

Did you know that you have to cut back elderberry bushes to the ground every spring? I have three, and I'd managed to cut down one so far. Buffy and her friend Rosmerta found the long, straight sticks and immediately started building a teepee (the Great Idea of the previous post). But they didn't have enough sticks. Would I cut some more for them? No, I was busy, but I allowed them to cut down the bush themselves. They were so pleased with the results that they ran back in to ask if they could cut down the other one. Heh, heh, heh.

I can relate

My daughter Buffy started typing up her novel today. But the weather's nice, and her friend Rosmerta called up with a Great Idea, so off she went. Here's her manuscript so far:

Chapter 1
The

Twins

Outlines are my hardest thing--I can do characters, I can write scenes. It's the figuring out What Happens, and What Happens Next that drive me crazy. So a week in which I manage to write down two complete outlines is an amazing week.

Of course, announcing the arrival of twin outlines is like announcing the conception of twins. Might not be quite time to for an announcement...