Pray for me.

Do you think it’s possible for your personality to change over time? I’ve been mulling it over lately as I’ve been working on a new manuscript. The main character is a lot me now. She’s also a lot like I was as a teenager. Which makes sense–I feel like I’m exactly the same now as I was ten or even twenty years ago.

I’m just happier. Healthier. And I have more friends. But does that change a personality? Would my friends now even recognize the me of days gone by?

When I was taking a psychology class in high school, we took a field trip to a nearby university and each filled out a questionnaire determining where we fell on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI determines where you fall on  four spectrums:

This means there are sixteen personality types, depending on which four traits you prefer (this is a super-shortened, not-that-great summary).

I was an INFJ.   A quick look on Wikipedia shows that only 1-3% of the U.S Population is INFJ, making it the rarest personality type.  Which figures.  INFJ is often called “The Sage,” personality type, which is kind of cool, but not really.  It’s especially heavy on the “not really” when you’re seventeen years old and your personality type is represented by this:

I memorized my friends’ personality types (because I had so few friends, this was easy).  For a time, I took to referring to them as, “My favorite ENFJ,” or “My favorite ESTP.”

A week or so ago, I was reading the Shrinking Violets website and found that in this day and age, you can actually find the Myers-Briggs Type for your blog!  Of course, I immediately typed in my url and got this:  ESTP.

My blog’s personality is the opposite of mine!  On each one of the  four spectrums!  Crazy, no?   The best part is that ESTP is often called “The Doer” as is represented by:

Doesn’t she look kick-a?  And unlike me  in every way?

I would love to be this girl.  But I am not.  I don’t try to hide that on my blog, do I?  I keep it real, don’t I?  Or has my personality changed?  Will I soon wake to find myself wearing knee-socks and casually holding a ball of some sort?

So the next day I was sending a message to a friend via facebook when I saw that she’d taken a facebook-app version of the MBTI.  So of course, I had to take it, too.

I know there’s been much controversy surrounding facebook of late.  I haven’t shown much interest because facebook doesn’t really do that much for me (or I for it).  But seriously, love orr hate it, the MyType app is awesome.  It gave me a quick but comprehensive eval which determined I was…yep.  An INFJ.

Can I represent myself with this, instead?

Last I updated, I was on my way to St. George to participate in a conference for the Utah Library Association.  I also participated in eating these cupcakes:

…I also talked, along with my buds Bree Despain, Sydney Salter, and Bobbie Pyron.  They were great, of course, but let’s give top billing where top billing is due.

Next stop?  Wilmington, North Carolina to do research for my latest book.

The book is entitled:  How to Find and Eat Wilmington’s Most Glorious Chocolate Desserts.   This is only a working title, since I haven’t actually run the idea past my agent yet.

June brought with it the much-anticipated (by me) Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference!  And what a success it was.   Besides the phenomenal writing-related stuff, I got to eat sandwiches handmade by the extremely humble chef/writer extraordinaire, Sydney Salter.

Then I lingered over dessert (Deanna, that line was for you) with brand-new bff Brandon Mull, medium- long bff Lisa Mangum, and bffs-for-way-too-long The Six.  Conspicuously absent was Brodi. For whatever reason, she  thought traveling to Washington with her biological family trumped traveling to Sandy with her adopted family, aka The Six.   While we question her priorities, she remains in good standing with the rest of us.

The best dessert of the conference was the night the organizers (thanks, Lisa and Carol!) took the faculty to trendy downtown eatery the Copper Onion.

Some of us overindulged…

But despite the temptation to ask for seconds, I remained calm, cool,  and ready to hang with my workshop group one last time.

There’s one other rad chocolate dessert I had this summer.  I even took a picture of it on my brand-new phone, which belongs solely to me, not shared-with-my-husband or formerly-my-brother’s.    It’s pretty swank, if I say so myself, and takes excellent photos (especially of one chocolate raspberry milkshake after a late-night showing of Eclipse).  Alas, I cannot retrieve the photo.  On a related note, if anyone has an LG Rumor 2 Touch and knows how to get the photos from it onto a computer, I’d love a heads-up.

So that more or less brings us to right now.  I have lots of exciting forthcoming-book-news to share, but I’ll save that for next post.

Happy Summer!

In other news, I am leaving for St. George basically as soon as I finish typing this (in other words, next year) (no, really, I have to be there tonight).  Why?  Because I’ll be on a panel for the Utah Library Association Conference tomorrow, and I’m speaking bright and early with  YA writer friends Bree Despain, Sydney Salter, and Bobbie Pyron.  If you’re a librarian and will be there, come say hey!  If you’ll be in St. George because, for example, you live there, let me know and we can figure out a way to still say hey.  Because I don’t discriminate.  Although I do love librarians…

Then, on Saturday, I’ll be speaking on another panel.  This time the venue will be the historic Provo Library, for the Provo Children’s Book Festival.   We’ll have Utah authors and illustrators galore, plus Jenni and Matthew Holms of BabyMouse  fame, and the event is FREE.  So there’s really no excuse not to be there.

Most importantly, one of my girls will be in her school’s  Broadway-style musical revue Friday night, and there’s no way I’m missing it.  Break a leg, Mariah!

What are your weekend plans?  If you don’t have any as of yet, I’d love to see you.  And if you’re some crazy-A stalker-type…I’d probably still love to see you.

This was supposed to be a picture of a decoy chocolate dessert I had on a cruise with my grandmother, but instead it is a picture of us with the Neil Diamond impersonator onboard.  I am not going to find the replacement photo because I’ve wasted too much time already.  Also, I’m not sure how to delete this one.  And why would I want to, anyway?

But back to Nancy Bo Flood  and her book, Warriors in the Crossfire. Just so you know, I’ve always used all three names when addressing Nancy Bo Flood, and it’s a habit I can’t seem to shake.

Even if Nancy Bo Flood  wasn’t my friend, I would still think this was a great idea for a novel.  The story takes place during the final months of World War II, in the tiny South Pacific Island of Saipan.  I know I was fascinated with WWII when I was younger, and most of the ten-through-thirteen-year-olds I know have been at some point, too.  But I think most of them are as clueless as I was about Saipan’s role in the war:  it acted as a buffer between Japan and the American troops.  Saipan was caught in the crossfire, as is Joseph, the main character in this book.

Add to that the beautiful, poetic language I’ve long admired in Nancy Bo Flood’s work, and you have a story with everything–adventure to keep you on the edge of your seat, and good writing to make it a read to remember.  Here’s one of my favorite reviews:

“Nancy Bo Flood’s novel casts a bright light on one of the forgotten shadows of World War II, the near total devastation of Saipan and the native people who lived there. Joseph’s story forces us to pay attention, to see war itself as an event that affects more than the opposing forces and illuminates its darkest corners.”

–Kathi Appelt, author of  The Underneath, finalist, the National Book Award, Newbery Honor Book

That’s high praise, friends, especially considering the source (oh, mighty Kathi).

Want a copy of this book?  Go buy one!  Just kidding.  I mean, you should buy one, but if you can’t swing it right now, never fear!  Leave a comment on this blog and enter to win Warriors In The Crossfire.  Twitter/ facebook/blog about it and get an additional entry for each!  Don’t wait–do it now.

And have a top day!

Now Nancy has written a YA novel, Warriors In The Crossfire, just out from Front Street Books.  And I promised to do an in-depth, cool profile of her/ her piece de resistance.  Then I forgot to blog.  So this post is a pre-post to Thursday’s blog, a professional, awesome post (unlike…well…the posts up to now).  This way I’ll have time to spread the word about Nancy, and the post won’t have only one reader.

Also on Thursday:  there will be prizes!  So tell everyone you know.

To prep myself for writing an actual blog with, you know, information, I decided to start with something easy:

Don’t you hate it when something that is supposed to be easy is actually NOT easy?  That’s how it was with this picture.  But it was worth it, wasn’t it?  I mean, check out that Chocolate Cheese Pie.  It, along with its cousin, the Heath Mud Pie, were two of my favorite things about our Disneyland vacation.

This was the other one:

Yep.  Disney-wrapped chocolates at turn-down every night!

There was more, much more,  to the trip than chocolate.  But really, how can anything  follow that?

See you Thursday.

Truly, he is my kin.  I’m all over emergency preparedness kits.  For the house.  Because, well, I’m not in my car that often.  And I tend to forget that other people are.   So the other day, Dan came home from work with this:

This was once part of our car emergency kit.  By once, I mean however long ago it was I assembled these kits.  I’m guessing it was a long, long, time ago, back when the purple thing was still a candle, the pack of Big Red was still chewable and the change…well, I don’t really know what that’s all about.

I’m thinking that with these kits, we’d survive all of 7 seconds in a disaster.

Now, for the good news!

1) I’ve since updated the kits.  In case an emergency strikes and we happen to be in the car, I’ve upped our survival time to 3 1/2 hours.

2)  Physical Therapist Amanda retested me and yes!  When I walk, I am no longer in the “fall risk” zone.   So in an emergency, if I am required to walk, don’t worry about me falling.  I can go all night, baby.  Oh yeah.

3) Lately I’ve been working on a set of goals with the young women who I will, in only a few months, be taking on yet another camping adventure. One of these goals is to learn a new skill.  As my new skill I decided to learn to  refinish our bedroom dressers.  These dressers, while super-functional, are really, really ugly.  And I have a pretty high tolerance for ugly.

Oh vanity, thy name is Em Dawg.   I get out of the “fall risk” zone and think I can do anything.  Including refinish a dresser.  All I can say is that my accomplishment today was changing the sheet of paper in the power sander.

Okay, this is not the power sander.  I’m still not sure why.  I took another picture, one of me next to the power sander, but taking photos of myself is another New Skill I Must Learn because it was so bad I stuck with a power sander still-life.  Only now, instead of the still life, I have a Mac battery.  Why is there even a picture of a Mac battery on my camera?

If we had our Mac with us in case of an emergency, our odds of surviving unscathed would be through the roof.  As long as the battery was charged.

My Flex Spending Year was winding down, yet money remained.  A lot of money.  Which begged the question, which part of me to fix?  I made a list of what was wrong with me and then played MASH until one thing remained.  Which is how I ended up in physical therapy.

My first day of PT I filled out a  questionnaire and I swear, it’s like they were reading my mind:

Do everyday activities make you dizzy?

Do you find yourself walking into walls, furniture, and and other large objects?

Have  others mistakenly thought you to be inebriated?

Amanda, my physical therapist, rocks.  Her assistant, Adam, not so much (ha!  That’s just a joke in case any of the fine people at Performance West read this).  After a few visits, I realized I was bringing down the house with my mad skillz, yo.  Never before had I felt so coordinated.  Then I spied this brochure in the office:

If you’ll note the couple in the above picture , then multiply it by 10, you’ll get an idea of Amanda’s clientele.

And me.  So the rock star.

In other rock-star-but-not-really news, I am featured in the latest issue of the ALAN Review, a journal for the Assembly on Adolescent Literature of the National Council for Teachers of English.  The article, titled “An Intersection of Meaning:  A Conversation with Emily Wing Smith,” is by the lovely and talented April Brannon.  April is an English  professor at Cal State Fullerton who chilled with me at my first ALAN conference two years ago.  Thanks, April.  Enjoy your month.

And you enjoy it, too.

In case you wondered how the winners were “generated” it was by a complex algorithm in which I wrote down everyone’s name as many times as they entered and then played MASH until only three names remained.  This provided some quality entertainment during the less interesting portions of church yesterday.

In Friends Reading My Mind News:

I recently inherited my grandmother’s china.  Inherited is the wrong word, I guess, as my grandmother is still alive.  So that’s good, but it did raise the question why give it to me now?  I mean, it should have raised that question.  Of course  I didn’t actually think about it until my husband asked me:  “Why did she give it to you now?”

Um, because she loves me?

But whatever the reason, I am now the proud owner of a lovely tea service, and as I removed each delicate piece from its bubble-wrap I thought what a shame it is I don’t give tea parties.

What should happen the next week, however, but some of my writer friends and I decide to get together and I offer to host.  And Sara Z. says, “how about a tea?”

Bingo!

Right-side-up photo courtesy of Sara’s iPhone.

The top photo features our original writing posse of me, Anne Bowen, James Dashner and the lovely Sara Zarr (who is, in this picture as in life, head and shoulders above the rest of us).

But wait, there’s more!  Who should grace us with her presence that day but terrific writer and local celebrity Ann E. Cannon.  In fact, she’s head and shoulders above the rest of us, too.

I need a bigger couch.

So, remember how I want to be a TV extra?  This is actually not a totally random whim (of which I have many) and it’s not for my love of the spotlight (which is a lukewarm love at best).   It’s for a writing project I’m working on and have been planning for awhile.  Then, luck of luck:  I discovered that the show I wanted to be an extra for was actually filming an episode in Utah the very NEXT WEEK!

Then the luck ran dry. My husband, who is rarely sick, fell victim to a nasty flu.  Determined not to let it affect me, I avoided this flu by getting 12 hours of sleep a night, drinking plenty of fluids,  bathing in hot water with Epsom salts, and getting close to Daniel only to give him my miracle-cure apple cider.

Unfortunately, I avoided this flu until the day BFF Brodi and I were heading up to Park City to be part of the action.   After a prolonged, boring exchange with the Film Commission and our various “contacts” we learned that the show already had more than enough extras.  Which was good, because although I deluded myself into thinking I was healthy that day, when I washed my hands at Brodi’s and saw myself in the mirror, I said (not just to myself, but audibly) “I look sick.”

Indeed I did.  In every sense of the word.

Worse still, once in Park City my ears clogged up, my hearing not to return until the end of the day.  Oh, and it was FREEZING.  Brodi noted my lack of  usual “sidling skills.”

B:  So what do we do first?”

ME:  Well, first we should…you know…wait, what did you just say?

But the day wasn’t a total waste.  We chatted with an actual extra, and managed to get close to the filming due to our “contacts.”  Of course, I didn’t take a picture then.  No, I waited until we were walking away.

Awesome pic, right?  In case you were wondering, yes, I did take this literally as I was walking away.  I figured it couldn’t be worse than the blurry photos I take while standing still.

The best part was when we stopped for lunch and a hot beverage:

Besides it being a fun time, lunch was also where I met Stephanie, waiting for a pick-up order.  I knew she worked for the show immediately because of her accent specific to the region where the show filmed.  Not, of course, by the puffy vest she was wearing with SHOW’S NAME embroidered on the back.  Stephanie was the tutor for the little boy in the above picture (not Brodi.  The one above that).  This struck me as the COOLEST JOB EVER.

Which is probably why I will never be famous.