Do you remember that song from My Fair Lady?  Thanks to my dad, I will forever have all the lyrics of all the songs from that show in my perma-memory.

Anyway.

I need to take a word vacation.

I think my brain is a little bit overloaded, and the more I blabber on about stuff, the less it makes sense.  At the advice of several people whom I respect, I registered for a writing conference in May, where I will actually be pitching my book idea to an editor.  And just so you know, as soon as I made that appointment, I kind of had a panic attack because . . . seriously,  I don’t even have a book yet.  It’s mostly still in the ideas and research stage, with a sketchy outline.  So the little devil in my head gave me a big long lecture about what a poser I am and boy, oh boy, how I’m going to make a fool of myself.  And even though the little devil in my head is usually wrong, I thought it would at least be a good idea to dedicate myself to some serious preparation.  In short, I need to work on my book project.

So, I’m going to step back a little bit from the blogging world and focus my scattered word-spilling into something a little more cohesive.  I’ll still do my regular features (General Conference Book Club and Find-A-Friend Friday), but my posting will be much less frequent, and I need to take a break from visiting and reading blogs too.  I just need to harness my time and energy so that I can be ready for this next adventure . . . and frankly to protect myself from public humiliation.

If I were going to write a bunch of posts this week, they would be about this:

• My house looks like a disaster every night.  Food and dishes still on the table and in the sink.  Unfinished laundry spread around the family room.  Folded clothes moved from my bed to the floor.  (And, yes, I will try to avoid sentence fragments like this in my book.) Some people can’t go to bed when that kind of mess is looming around them, but not me.  Boy, I love to bid it farewell and go to sleep.  I function so much better in the morning, so I just get up and face it while the kids are eating breakfast and getting ready for school.  My renewed energy allows me to clean, sweep, wipe, fold, put away, etc. without feeling like I’d rather run away to a deserted island.  Which I’d still like to do, by the way, but not out of desperation.  Moral of the story:  You’re allowed to visit me between the hours of 10 am and 2 pm.
• I took Natalie to a specialist yesterday and found out that a recently-discovered condition that I’ve been really worried about is probably not as bad as it seemed.  A few more tests will be done to make sure, but mostly I feel reassured, and that’s such a relief.
• I’m reading a book called The Infinite Atonement, and so far it’s really good.  Not the easiest reading, but some really cool insights.  Here’s a little sentence that totally jumped out at me yesterday:  “What is the Atonement of Jesus Christ?  It is, in short, that suffering endured, that power displayed, and that love manifested by the Savior . . . ,” and then this: “The ability of man to be at one with God in both location and in likeness is possible only because the Savior first became at one with man in location, thorough his mortal birth, and at one with man in likeness, through his assumption of man’s frailties– without ever abandoning his godlike character.”  Such a cool, simple way to explain the purpose and function of the Atonement.
• Last week on our date night, we went to a bookstore and Matt bought himself three or four new books (He’s kind of excited about his new post-Bar free time), and he bought me one too.  Right up my alley.
• Since I’ve been thinking about this for my own book, I just wanted to say that being a mother is really, really cool.  It is the one role on earth that most closely mimics the ministry of Jesus Christ.  It’s a privilege to be in that crash-course adventure of becoming like Him.

Just so you know, this less-words business is going to be tricky for me, but I think it will be good for me too.  And hopefully it will get the devil in my head to shut up a little.