How I Learned I Love Ribs

I married young (19), so as a newlywed, some of my friends were still in high school, and I continued hanging out with them. 

(This is actually the first time I’ve really acknowledged this. There were a few years when I was first married when friendships were kind of strange to navigate. Then I started having kids, and that made things weird too. Wow. Future blog post forming… )

One of my high schooler friends was named Josh, and he happened to work with me. Josh had a crush on the same girl for a really long time, and he asked her to prom his senior year. My mom's house had a patio on the roof of the garage, and Josh thought it would be really funny for him and his friends to tell their prom dates that they were going to "The Roof" for dinner and then eat on "the roof" at my mom's house, so he asked me if I might be able to work that out for him. 

I wasn't sure if this was a good idea or a bad idea... if it was funny or not funny... but my mom said they could have dinner on her roof, and I agreed to help Josh with the set up. I made a sign that said "Welcome to The Roof," and I had my friend Michelle come help me serve the prom kids their dinner. Josh ordered takeout from Chili's for everyone.* That's where I saw a bit of a red flag - he ordered Chili's baby back ribs for a bunch of girls in prom dresses. 

Michelle and I plated the food and served it to the group, and whatdoyouknow, those girls didn't eat the ribs. When we brought all of the plates back in the house, most of the girls’ ribs were just sitting there in piles. You could tell the girls had kind of poked and prodded at them, trying to make it look like they’d eaten something, but aside from a courtesy bite or two, the ribs were not eaten. I didn't blame them one bit! At that point in my life, even when I wasn't in a nice dress, I didn't like to eat anything by hand. I truly believed that I didn't like hamburgers or sandwiches or pizza, and I definitely wouldn't have eaten saucy ribs. 

After the group left, and we were cleaning up, I decided to take a random nibble on a rib. If nothing else, it would be fun to at least gnaw on the meat for a bit and sing, "Chiliiiiiiiii's baby back ribs!" to Michelle and see if she would sing back, "Bar.be.que sauce!" (I don't remember if that part happened, but I'd like to think it did). 

To my surprise, the ribs were delicious! For so many years, I’d avoided finger foods, and I didn’t know what I was missing. It was then that Michelle and I resigned ourselves to eating every last bite of the rejected ribs of the prom dates. 

There are a few lessons to take away here:

Lesson 1: Don’t serve ribs to your prom dates.

Lesson 2: But also… don’t be afraid of messy food. 

Lesson 3: Most importantly, don’t be afraid to eat other people’s discarded food.

Life experience has taught me to go for the eclair.

*Note that this was not a normal practice back then. You had to make special accommodations to get takeout from a sit-down restaurant, which is why everyone didn’t get to pick what they wanted. 

Missionary Email Overview

As you know, our son is on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Saints. 

When you’re on a 17 sq ft mile island, this is what you see everyday!

A lot of his friends are also serving missions, so we get a fair amount of emails every week from missionaries all over the world. It’s really fun to explore my Monday inbox and check on all my lil guys and gals. 

Each missionary adds a bit of their own personality to their emails, but overall, they all kind of sound the same. If you haven’t read an email from a missionary in 2026, here is what it’s like:

Hola! (Random Spanish word).* This week was lit! Bro got baptized Saturday. It was so hype. (Another random Spanish word). Three friends came to church on Sunday, it was peak. Me and my comp had to speak in sacrament meeting, and I was crashing out, but it was low key fire. My comp is actually the goat, high key. He ate. 

Spiritual thought: The BOM is fire. Lock in on the spirit bro. The Holy Ghost is goated (random mission slang).

Jesus loves you!

*Swap for any language 

Things the Kids Say: Episode 39

 “I hope the afterlife is a musical!” 

-Zoe

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“I feel like a mom. I picked up Zoe from school and drove to the grocery store all in one day!”

-Daisy

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“Remember PP76 and FU89?”

-Zoe, referencing two of my codes for mobile ordering at McDonald’s

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“I don’t know if France is a country, but I know what colors are on its flag.”

-Daisy

—————

“Wait, these are real?”

-Daisy upon seeing a laundromat in real life

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“We went to the top of a mountain, and it was freezing. It was like 70 degrees!”

-Nicky acclimated to Puerto Rico

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“Mom, you read boring books like The Book Thief and Lord of the Fish.”

-Zoe

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“You know what’s not cold in Idaho? The cowboys.”

-Daisy

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“Did you put sour crap in this?”

(Sauerkraut)

-Eva

Currently (March 2026 Edition)

Reading:

I was finally starting to read again, and then Scotty downloaded Viticulture and Everdell (two digital board games), and I started using every spare minute to feed my gaming addiction instead of my reading addiction. So I’ve been reading the third book in the housemaid series for almost a month now!

Wearing: black stretchy pants and a Yellowstone hoodie (which I will soon have to remove because it’s too warm for hoodies).

Eating: Chicken Pesto Tortellini Soup

Watching: 

Right now my favorite shows are Shrinking and The Pitt, but I cannot recommend them because they are both very much not PG. 

I was a diehard Scrubs fan back in its prime, so I am obligated to watch the reboot. They have released two episodes so far (I’ve watched them both twice because I watched them at work and felt like I was cheating on Scotty, so I rewatched them with him later). 

I don’t know if the series will do well or not, but I will say that I wept for the first five minutes of the first episode because I felt like I was meeting up with old friends after years of separation. 

(Random fact: Scrubs and Shrinking are from the same creator - Bill Lawrence - and the shows have many overlapping cast members and cameos. This is something I have to geek over in silence because being a fan of a TV show can sometimes be very lonely. I realize there’s an entire fandom online I could participate in, but that’s not the same as interacting with a real human and sharing a common interest).

Last week while I was sick I rewatched Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights. 

Angel and Heathcliff make me so angry!

Hoping: that everything I currently have saturated in stain remover will come out of the laundry with success (working with grass stains and pork grease).

Happy about: finding a loophole to make it possible to post photos from my phone. I have to use a different browser, and there are some inconveniences to that, but it works!

Update: Never mind. It worked for a few photos, and now it’s not working anymore.

Singing: “Lucky” by Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz.

Worried about: Mexico, Iran, the entire world being ran by perverts, technology, AI, my children, everyone’s mental and physical health, how we will take care of our eight aging parents, medical bills, the weird sounds our pipes make when we flush the toilet, a million Church things, and my high blood pressure that won’t go down even though I’m on the highest allowable dose of two different BP meds. 

Buying: butter from Sam's Club because it's unusually cheap right now. 

Annoyed by: loud cars.

Playing: the newest expansion of Wingspan.

Baking: Tres Leches for Game Night (I started this post on Friday. Right now it’s Saturday. But I probably won’t finish and post it until Monday, so the concept of “currently” spans across many days and is usually a lie by the time my post is actually published).

Grateful for: all of my working limbs.

Sunday Sentiments - Good with One

Last Sunday was our ward conference. Our stake president spoke in our sacrament meeting, and he talked a bit about his mission. He was assigned to serve in Atlanta, Georgia speaking Vietnamese. I won't try to recap his entire experience because I'll probably get a lot of the details wrong, but I can tell you a few things - first, he spent 12 weeks in the MTC learning the language. Then, when he was in Atlanta, the Vietnamese program in his mission was dissolved, and he was reassigned to be English speaking. BUT through one of those right place/right time situations, he was asked if he could teach a young man the gospel in Vietnamese. That young man had been meeting with the missionaries for quite some time, but it wasn't until he met with our stake president and heard the teachings in Vietnamese that he made the decision to be baptized. He has been a faithful member of our Church ever since. 

This story got me thinking about how God has the power and willingness to set things into motion for the benefit of one. There are a lot of things that happen that bless humans on a grand scale, but there are a lot of things that happen for the benefit of a single individual. Sometimes we get to see those things unfold, but a lot of times, I think we are completely unaware. 

That night, I had the opportunity to teach some youth in another ward about covenants. I found the subject matter (and the presence of young people) a bit intimidating. "Covenants" isn't a comfortable topic for me (I find that I am rarely assigned topics I'm comfortable with or feel adequate to teach - I guess that's how the Lord deals with me. I don't get asked to teach because I know stuff... I get asked to teach because I need to learn stuff). 

I always take my teaching/speaking assignments very seriously, and I study and pray my guts out as I prepare. This time, I worked especially hard because I felt so inadequate in my own understanding and knowledge of covenants. Plus, it's not a topic that holds my attention well. I confess, for me, it's what I would consider a "shut off" topic - one that makes me glaze over, so I'm sure the youth struggle, too. I hoped that what I taught would be simple and clear, and that it would be what the Lord wanted.

We had 28 youth come to our class (which blew our minds because we live in an elderly ward, so we would have had 6 youth on a good day in our own ward). We taught the class. We went home. (I say "we" because Scotty came and helped me). 

In the end, I was a little disappointed with how things went. I didn't think it was terrible, but I also didn't feel like it was successful at the level I would have hoped for considering how much effort I'd put in. I didn't know if I'd accomplished what the Lord wanted. I wished I could have a do-over and fix some things.

The next day while I was driving to work, my stake president's story came to mind, and I was thinking about how wild it was that a young boy in Utah spent twelve weeks learning Vietnamese seemingly to reach one person in Georgia. I have such a strong testimony of God working in this way, and as I acknowledged that, the Spirit washed over me, and I had this thought, "You weren't meant to reach 28 youth last night. No one can do that. But you reached The One."

That's when I realized that if my study and preparation only resulted in one of the kids feeling the Spirit in the room that night, I'm good with that. If one kid took something away from the activities and discussions we had, then I needn’t have done it any differently. 

Weird Little Britt Faces Her Fears

I recently wrote about how I thought I was going to die by gunshot when I was a child. 

There was a period of about two years in the 90's when I lived in absolute fear of gangs. This was a result of things presented to us at school and through the media. We were told not to wear certain colors or logos, or we would be targeted. We were constantly told things gang members would do for initiation. Graffiti terrified me. I had to walk through an alleyway everyday to get to school. I wouldn’t step foot in the alley if there was any graffiti on the wall. I would go almost a mile out of the way to go up the street and around. If I was desperate and short on time, I would sprint through the alley as fast as I could and cry the whole way.

My parents were divorced and both of them lived on busy streets. I was paranoid about drive by shootings. That was my ultimate fear! Any time a car backfired, I would hit the floor because I thought my house was being shot at. I was scared to be in the front of my house where there were big windows. I often crawled on the floor so the couch would provide an additional barrier for bullets to pass through before they could hit me. 

I hated being in the front yard. If I had to go outside for any reason, I went as quickly as I could. I remember my dad giving me the Saturday chore of raking leaves in the front yard. I begged to trade someone for a backyard job, but dad wouldn’t let me trade, so I raked leaves and every time I heard a car coming, I would run and hide behind the camping trailer on the side of the house. When I had to do something like take out the garbage, I would try and time it so no cars would pass my house as I quickly ran to the garbage can and back. 

In addition to my fear of being shot, I was terrified of being raped. When I walked to school, I carried a big stick with me for self-defense. I would hide it in my yard at home and take it with me when I left the house. Then when I got to the gate of my school, I hid it in a bush and would retrieve it after school. I had to walk on a long, tree lined street, and every time I knew a car was coming, I would disappear behind a tree or parked car until it passed. As the kids lined the street walking to school, I knew whoever was at the top of the street was going to get shot first, and I came to accept my fate whenever it was me. I would think, “Okay, I’m the one who has to take the bullet now!” Anyone after me would at least have the chance to run for cover. 

It didn’t help that one of my friend’s dads was shot in a drive by in his home. This happened not far from my house while I was in the thick of my paranoia, and it obviously added fuel to the fire. 

During that time, I truly believed that I wouldn't live to see my 12th birthday. I was resigned to dying by gunshot - it was just a matter of where and when. I wrote letters to some of my family and friends and made a will in my journal (for all of the really important things I owned at ages 10 & 11). 

This wasn't a fear that I had to battle "occasionally." It didn't come and go. It consumed me. I carried it with me all day everyday. I could never set it aside - it was absolutely present, always. It's actually really hard for me to write about because I feel so sad for Weird Little Britt. Also, I've never really talked to anyone about it. I don't even know to what extent my husband knows. 

You might wonder about my parents. What did they do about my behavior? Were they concerned? 

My parents didn't know. Splitting time between two households made it really convenient to keep my fears to myself. If my parents were home, I would do silly things like somersault on the floor in the living room to stay at couch level. That way it just looked like I was playing, but I was really "staying low." I would sleep in my brother's room in the back of the house instead of in my room at the front of the house, and just play it off like I wanted to hang out with my brother. My parents weren't with me walking to school. They didn't see me carry a stick or hide behind trees. They didn't see me bolt through the alley in tears. Keeping it hidden was easy. 

Eventually, I overcame those specific fears (and moved on to different ones). I don't know why, exactly, I was able to start moving forward, but I bet turning twelve and still being alive helped! The biggest indication that I had recovered was the fact that I started wearing a University of Utah coat in 6th grade. For two years prior, I wouldn't wear anything red - not even a hint of it! - because I was so worried I was putting a target on myself (this wasn't ideal, being raised a Utah fan). Wearing that coat was monumental for me! 

Clearly, I've had an anxiety disorder my whole life. I got a little bit of treatment in my early 20's and an official diagnosis in 2012 (though I confess, I'm not fully confident in the way my mental health has been assessed across the years. You just say "I'm sad and afraid," and they're like, "Okay, take this pill -it's good for both." And then you take the pills and just wonder if it's the right thing or if something is missing). 

That two-year period of gang fear was definitely the worst phase of it I've experienced. In comparison to that, I'm doing quite well currently. I definitely have better thought patterns now and a lot better coping skills. I just hope I never dive that deep again. 

Weird Little Britt

(First time at Disneyland)

Things from a box that made me cry

The other day I went through one of my boxes of keepsakes trying to find a specific old photo. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I stumbled across a few other things, and some of them made me weepy. I ended up abandoning my to do list and having a good cry instead. Then I went to Target and invested in a fresh stick of waterproof eyeliner.

Here are some of the things I stumbled across:

-A poem my grandpa wrote me for my birthday when I was a teenager

-Multiple cards from someone I am no longer friends with (I couldn’t bring myself to read them)

-This photo 

-James (as in a portion of my brother’s ashes in a tiny urn)

-A note in Nicky’s childhood scribble that says, “I love you Mommy!”

This isn't the note, but finding the note made me remember this painted piece of wood in the garage and made me go out to hunt for it

- Instructions my grandma wrote down for knitting dishcloths

My box made me miss people. My grandpa, my friend, my brother, Nicky, and my grandma. And that box was only the size of a pair of shoes. I can't imagine what would happen if I started digging through one of my bigger boxes! I'll have to save that for another day when I'm fully stocked in waterproof makeup products.