The month I didn't become wildly famous

I had two very little dreams for October.

The first one began in October 2014, when a hymn was published in the Ensign (as they occasionally are). I saw that and thought, "I would love to see my hymn there someday!" My ward choir was currently working on it, but I didn't know how anyone else would really hear about it. So I submitted it to the Church Music Festival, got an honorable mention, heard it performed on Temple Square, and then waited, hoping that maybe this October would be the one where it would suddenly show up in the Ensign. When I got the Ensign this month, I flipped through and didn't see any music. Lots of other great things, but not that. Not really a surprise, but it was a fun fantasy.

The other little dream came one night after Kevin was reading the spring BYU Magazine. "You should write one of these First Person stories," he told me. "Don't you have all these stairs stories from when you were pregnant?"

Intrigued by the $50 prize and another chance for fame and glory (ha!) I sat down and twenty minutes later had about 242 words describing my experiences with stairs for 9 or so months (max word limit 250). I proofread it a few times, added one word to give it more detail, and then submitted it.

When we got the magazine, Kevin flipped through it. "Your story didn't make it in," he said. Again, no surprise -- I had never heard back from them, and in retrospect they didn't want a montage. And that word I added. Rancid. To describe the plums. Was that the problem? Was "rancid" too negative of a word to describe an aspect of the BYU landscape? When you're in the throes of morning sickness "rancid" is just a word that describes most everything you smell, but it can come across badly without that context.

Anyway. Point is I did not become famous this month. (Not, of course, that two tiny little magazine pieces would catapult anyone to stardom, but it is fun to see your name in print.) But the good news is . . .  I still have a blog! And if you've made it this far into the blog post you may as well finish it! So without further ado, here are . . . supplementary materials to the Ensign and BYU Magazine.

I admit it is cool to have that blurb at the bottom added on

And here is my silly story about BYU stairs.

I knew that being pregnant during my master's degree would be tiring, but I didn't take into account the added difficulty from the stairs.

Each morning in the fall as I walked up to campus, I would dodge the fallen plums squished into the stairs and attempt to avoid inhaling their rancid scent. I had a speech prepared for bystanders in case my morning sickness got the better of me, but luckily I never had to use it.

As fall turned to winter and winter to spring I continued my daily trek up the stairs, pausing occasionally for contractions and to catch my breath.

Of course, it wasn't just stairs up to campus that caused me problems. There were still plenty I had to scale within each building. The day my thesis was due, I found out at about 1:56 that it was due at 2 rather than 5 pm. Clutching my thesis in my swollen hands, I dashed down the stairs from the 4th floor of the Clyde Building to the Former President's Home -- and I made it with seconds to spare, along with my 8-month-pregnant belly.

I took a break from the stairs after that for the next month. But the day before my due date, I decided to try the stairs up to campus one last time. 10 flights of stairs later, all I could say is that I hurt a lot, but still no labor. I'm sure though that all the exercise over the previous 9 months helped with labor when it finally occurred 5 days later.

I'm not really sad that neither of them made it into magazines, but they were fun to work on. And maybe someday something will make it in for real!