YOGURT, A BLACK AND WHITE CAT, COOKIES AND RUN ON SENTENCES

I have added photo's to my yogurt recipe, here. It is delicious and cheap to make. All you need is a gallon of whole milk, two cups of sugar, some commercial yogurt--to use as a starter--and vanilla. Mmm. Wonderful with fresh strawberries.

And look at this darling kitty. He belongs to someone in my neighborhood. I think this window was built especially for a kitty to check on things in the kitchen. And this is what happens when you are making cookies and you have the directions for the regular size batch and the doubled size, and you are distracted and you add the salt from the doubled size, and so you double everything else EXCEPT you forget to double the flour and so the cookies spread all over the cookie sheet, they are brittle, and won't come off without breaking and so what you get are a few crunchy cookies and a lot of cookie crumbs. Ack!And so then you add more flour but you must have only needed ONE cup instead of TWO because this time the cookies don't spread AT ALL, and so you have to bake then four minutes less than the recipe says, and then they are so underdone that they sink down a bit into the cooling rack and won't come off. One cookie sheet full should fill this cookie cooling rack. I was going to take cookies to a friend who has had surgery but I can't take these pathetic things. ~sigh~ Recipe is here and it really is an excellent recipe--when it's made right.

WHO LOVES THE LITTLE LAMB?

My niece, Lezlie Evans, is an author. She mostly writes picture books--the hardest books to write, honestly, they are. And her picture books rhyme. That is also difficult. Most editors say, "don't send us rhyming picture books!" That is because it's so difficult to get the cadence perfect but Lezlie always does. She also writes Young Adult novels and has one under consideration at a publishing house right now.

This is her latest picture book, WHO LOVES THE LITTLE LAMB. It may very well be my favorite. It asks who loves--and then we see a "child" with a problem--such as being messy--"Who loves the messy pup?"

"Come on dear, I'll help clean up." Moma loves her little pup.Yesterday I was sitting on the lawn swings with Miss Ruby, reading Lezlie's book. This is a secret. Ruby is rather a messy pup herself. She takes after her Grandma, I'm afraid. Ruby is banished to her room on many occasions and told to "clean it up!" Ruby always finds other things to do. I do too. If I'm determined to clean the kitchen I clean part of the bar--or whatever--and then I find something delicious to make because making something delicious is way more fun than cleaning. Yup, Ruby takes after me, poor messy pup.

So we sat on the lawn swings and every time I read, "Who loves the..." She piped up, "Oooh, I love the messy pup/fussy lamb/noisy bird/bumbling boar/etc until we came to the hungry 'beest.

"Oooh," she said, "I do not love the hungry 'beest" (wildebeest).

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because, I don't like the way he looks."

Time for a "don't judge people by the way they look," lecture, I thought and was going to do that as soon as we finished the book. So we finished the book and she loved every other child/animal. When we got to the end pages--I can't for the life of me remember what they are called--maybe end pages--there was the 'beest and, looking almost exactly like the wildebeest was the little kid, only with not so messy of a hair-do.

"Oh," she said, "I like that one. She's cute!" She pointed to the little kid.

"You like that one? It's cute? How about this one?"

"No, I don't like him," she said.

They look so much alike, I can hardly tell the difference, but she can. And then it hit me. The wildebeest had messy hair and Ruby's mother is fussy about hair, she's a hair stylist. So, maybe Rudy saw messy hair and thought he needed a good comb, after all, she gets combed and fussed with every morning until she looks like a little fashion plate.

Here are a couple of other problems with the animals. This is the pouting calf.

This is the noisy bird and the bumbling boar. Lezlie has covered just about every problem a child can have--fussy, pouting, hungry, dirty, even sleepy. Moma always loves them.
Yes, this book is my favorite--her first--RAIN SONG--was my favorite for years and years. And if you are local--Provo, Utah--you can meet Lezlie and she will sign her latest book for you. She will be at the BYU bookstore on Thursday, April 22nd from 12:30 to 2:30. And if you are an author wannabe, she can give you tips of the trade. She is very generous and loves to help other authors.

Lezlie is in town to see one of her girls graduate from BYU. Congratulations to one of Lezlie's "little ones."

And congratulations to Lezlie for another great book. And to the illustrator who made almost all the animals lovable (David McPhail). And congratulations to Ruby, who loves so many of the little animals with problems and for loving her grandma, who passed on the "messy gene."

WORDS TO THE YOUTH AND THE REST OF US (WHEN OUR "STOOPID" GENE TAKES OVER)

Sunday was testimony meeting in our ward. One of my most favorite people bore her testimony and said "...years and years ago President. N. Eldon Tanner told the kids, (and I don't know exactly what he said, ) but in essence it was, 'Now go out and have a good time,... but make sure that it will still be good when you look back on it in five years, ten years, twenty years...'"

Good advice, no? When I remember some of the things I did and the repenting I've had to do to be able to live with myself I wonder why I didn't know this years ago.

Thanks, Maisel!

A NEW PLACE TO STASH DIRTY DIAPERS

This driver wanted to share her little darling's aroma with everyone on the road. Some people are generous in ways the rest of us--who are probably terribly dull and uninspired--would never consider.

SONIC THE DOG SLEEPS ON THE BED

This is not a photo of Sonic. Sonic makes this dog look like a pygmy. Sonic is huge. He does everything in a huge way. You ought to see him devour a rawhide bone as big as your arm. Twenty minutes, tops.

We have some friends who have a HUGE golden Labrador. He is a beautiful dog, and does everything with gusto. His name is Sonic and he loves to sleep on the bed with his master and mistress. He waits until they are asleep and then he sneaks, stealthily onto the bed, so stealthily that Mr. Successful doesn't even wake up. He sleeps in between them. He probably weighs as much as the mistress, who I am going to call Blondie. He might even weigh as much as his master, Mr. Successful. Blondie likes Sonic to sleep on the bed because he is like a furry heater and she puts her back up against him and is warm all winter. (Sonic sleeps on top of the covers.)

Mr. Successful is not so fond of Sonic sleeping on the bed. In the first place he'd like to be the one his wife snuggles up against. The second reason is that Sonic has the breath of a dragon. When he lays on his back his breath actually turns the ceiling fan. I'm not making this up, Mr. Successful told Phil. Can you imagine? A dog having breath so strong it will turn the ceiling fan?

The other night Mr. Successful was having a dream of the perfect storm--a storm that smelled like dog breath. He woke up and there was Sonic, with his hot-dog-breath, four inches from Mr. Successful's face. Mr. Suiccessful's eyebrows were wafting to and fro with Sonic's every breath.

So, if you ever have an annoying pet remember it can't be this bad--going to bed with a beautiful woman and waking up to an furry snout, breathing hot breath in your face. Kind of kills any romance you might have, doesn't it? Poor Mr. Successful. Happy, warm Blondie.