Novel Completed and Other Things

Today I ordered my finished books!  I'm sooo happy!  I'm so glad that I get to have a physical item to show off my accomplished work!  Alright, alright, I shouldn't "show it off."  But I'll be so glad to have that so I can really be happy with myself!

I've thought of something lately.  See, I stopped bending over the corners of pages on books because, you know, that's bending the book, and you don't want to do that!  But then I started leaving turning them upside-down and leaving them open that way.  I keep thinking, "It's totally fine, I'm not damaging it or anything."  But Caden (yes, Uncle Caden) pointed out that when you do that, it stresses the binding and weakens it.  I kept thinking, "Well, whatever, that'll happen eventually anyway."  But then I thought of something else.  I'll be lending out my copy of my own novel and I want it to be treated nicely.  I realized that I wouldn't want it to be bent open like that, or have any bent pages, or anything like that; so shouldn't I treat other books nicely, too?  Sure it might be a pain to go hunting around for a bookmark every time I open a new book.  But it'll be worth it to obey the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  If I want my books to be treated well, I had better treat everyone else's books well.

Today is Youth Conference.  Instead of going up to a big camp for Youth Conference this year, or even camping at all, we're doing activities in the evening on Friday and doing activities all day on Saturday.  Today we went to the temple and now I'm at home waiting to go to our neighbor's house for dinner and an early fireside.  Tomorrow morning, I have to wake up before 3am so I can get ready to go on a hike at 3:30 with the youth and our leaders to see the temple lights turn on at 4:15am.  Then we have other things planned like swimming and tubing and cleaning the church and putting together hygiene kits and on Sunday we're going to have testimony meeting during the 3rd hour.  I'm so excited!  Aaaand not excited at the same time...  See, in my ward, I don't connect with a lot of people... at all...  Just one.  And we are good friends, best friends even, but not BEST best friends.  So for me, it's a great experience to do all those things but it's also just sooo awkward...  It's one thing that homeschoolers struggle with, I think...  We manage, though.  :)

I don't have much else to say but that I love you all.  Forever and ever and throughout eternity.

Ma