Tomorrow will be my two-week anniversary. Yes, I set my blog up almost two weeks ago, and I’m still in love with it. But, lest you think it was an easy relationship, let me tell you how it started. . .

“The ones that died were the optimists,” I heard my husband, Russ, say to my son on the phone. I found myself hoping he was in reference to someone other than guests who ate my cooking. As it turned out, he was talking about prisoners of war. It seems the ones who did the best in difficult conditions were the realistic optimists.

As a realistic optimist, I felt encouraged by that thought. It meant I was bound to succeed with my latest brilliant scheme—my own author’s blog site, which would eventually be linked to Your LDS Neighborhood.com, a site for Latter-day Saints with wholesome, intelligent articles, and innovative products and services.

My mind brimmed with realism—millions of people blog! It overflowed with optimism—with millions of people blogging, how hard could it be to set it up?

Russ and I sat down together to work on it. The first thing the site building program wanted to know was a name. “Which name?” I asked Russ. “My full name, last name, pen name or a name for the blog?”

He drummed his fingers lightly on the keyboard. “I don’t know; just give it any name and we’ll change it later, if necessary.”

“No! What if I name it something boring and it’s locked in for eternity?” My voice rose in panic; my blood pressure shot up and my face turned red at the thought. Either that or I had a hot flash. Regardless, I did not want to end up with a site named something really mundane, like “My Space.”

After pondering for a few minutes, I picked “The Write Stuff.” I thought it was unique. Yahoo thought there were 456 million other people already using that name.

My husband liked “Writer’s Cramp”, which according to another search on the venerable Yahoo only had 448, 000 entries. Unfortunately, the word "cramp" made me think of female troubles, so we tossed it out, too. Searching “writer’s cramp” wasn’t time wasted, however. Yahoo said that writer’s cramp could be cured with a shot of Botox. Ooo, how handy, erase my wrinkles and cure a muscle spasm in one swift injection. I filed the information away in my brain.

Russ became bored with the naming process, opened another screen on his laptop and began playing a game where squatty little people shot at each other and screamed as they died. It made matters worse. I started coming up with names like, “Point Your Gun Write at Me” and “Blood Running in the Streets” … which, in case you didn’t notice, doesn’t even have the word “write” in it.

After an hour of trying different monikers, I finally came up with a decent one for the site—Write Up My Alley. At least, it seemed decent. If not, it was just too bad, because after trying out names for an hour, my hand was locked in a writer’s cramp.

It was worth all that searching, though. I’d figured out what worked and what didn’t.

All that was left was to find someone to loan me some Botox.

What's playing on my radio: Nothing
What's playing on my TV: Nothing
What's playing in my head: Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tennille

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In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
 
That’s easy for her to say. Her mother didn’t name her Ima Hogg or Candy Cane. Juliet might’ve sung a different tune if her last name was Passwater and Romeo’s was Horsepucky.
 
I’m not kidding, those are real names. Okay, I’ll admit that I made up Horsepucky.  The other names, however, belong to living, breathing people . . . or maybe dead ones who used to breathe.
 
My nickname is Cindy. As a kid, I was certain it was easily spelled. My dream world shattered after I got married and a letter arrived addressed to Rose Beck. Rose Beck? There weren’t any other Becks around, much less a Rose blooming nearby. My husband, Russ, found it so humorous he called me that for years. You can imagine my son’s confusion when he’d find a Christmas present addressed to Rose.
 
Mail began arriving with other crazy variations. Once, an envelope arrived addressed to Sin Beck. I hid it before Russ could show it to everyone in the ward.
 
The worst goof was on a jacket. I took medical technology courses in college and class members decided to have personalized, matching jackets. Money was in short supply for my family. We had this weird compulsion about having food on the table at regular intervals. Fortunately, a check arrived for my birthday, just covering the cost. I agonized over requesting my first name or my full name on the jacket. 
 
After deciding on my full name (which would hold up in a court of law in case the jacket ever got stolen), I awaited its arrival. The day came. We opened the box in class. The class president read the name on each jacket while handing them out. Coming to the last one, he called, “Cinky Beck.”
 
It took a minute before I realized that was mine. I groaned as I took it.
 
At home that night, we conferred about what to do. Since the jacket was personalized, it wasn’t returnable. Was there any way to fix the goof? We considered putting tape over it, praying over it, or cutting the name out entirely. Finally, Russ hit on a solution. “If you take one of those sewing ripper thingies, you could pull out the first name and just leave the last name.”
 
My son, Dave, looked at it closely and with the wisdom of an eight-year-old said, “Or you could pull out the ‘C’ and we could call you Inky.” I wasn’t about to follow his suggestion, but I was glad he said it—I needed the laugh. Within minutes the seam ripper did its work and for twenty years after I wore a jacket with ‘C (space, space, space, space, space) Beck’ on it.
 
My name surely couldn’t get more goofed than Cinky, right? Years later, I submitted an article with a by-line of C. L. Beck. Unfortunately, I signed the email as Cindy. On the day of publication, the by-line at the publisher’s website read, “Cidny Beck.”
 
Latter-day Saints are supposed to forgive. I did. However, it dawned on me that some people might read the ‘c’ as a ‘k’ sound. In which case, my name would be pronounced “Kidney.”
 
Ouch, Kidney—the ultimate insult. I can tolerate being a Rose by any other name, but a Kidney? I don’t think so. If I have to choose, I’ll go with my son’s suggestion—there’s no doubt I’d be much better off as an Inky.

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