What Happens In Vegas Stays in Vegas

Except when you are a mormon mother, I'm not sure anything happens in Vegas that needs to stay in Vegas.  It's all pretty much above board fun.

Shannon and I have been going to Vegas for quite a while, though it has been YEARS since we have been able to get away.  I don't even know the reasons - kids, school, busy schedules...

So for one of my rewards

 on this diet I asked for a trip to Vegas with Shannon.  

I love going to Vegas with Kirk but that's  a whole different trip - Kirk does NOT want to spend the day in the spa.  

Here are some photos of us in Vegas and to hear m

ore about our adventures there you can mosey on over to the Shando blog.  

(this is the view from our room - we stayed at the Luxor this time so this is a view of Excalibur next door - we started out in a different room which had a view of the pool but which also had a leaking ceiling - or at least it had been leaking at some frequent rainy past - and stains on the window sill and general dreariness.  On vacations where something like this happens I am glad to be with Shannon because she has no problem calling up and telling the hotel staff how wildly inappropriate our acomodations are and that we would please like a different room - then she proceeds to let them know in great detail every possible problem until they relent and give us not only a different room, but an upgraded room - so we ended up in the new tower in a more expensive room with this view)

(this is me at the pool at the Luxor - see my smile, that is the smile of a woman who does not have to worry about feeding anyone, cleaning up after anyone, driving anyone anywhere, etc. etc.  basically this is me when I am totally relaxed which only happens on vacation)

(here we are in our room right before we left to go to "O" at the Belaggio - We took about 20 photos to try to get this because we are not teenage girls who take photos of ourselves all the time and kept not managing to get ourselves in frame - then we had to take it over multiple times because Shannon felt her skin was not quite taut and youthful enough so in this one she is simulating a taut face, but it mostly ends up looking like she is strangling herself - this is the only photo she will let me have here though I took several others of her but apparently her lipstick was too pink and her hair was not the proper shad of auburn and a plethora of other concerns and complaints so we should feel lucky that we get this one here to prove she was on the trip and I am not totally making that part up)

And basically the trip was fabulous - we ate yummy steak and chicken at the Bellaggio, spent almost a full day at the spa (more on that in the Shando blog) sat by the pool, walked down the strip, went to the movie, read our books and magazines and....okay I'll admit, played the penny slots for a while (look, I can't help it, I'm incredibly lucky, I almost never lose - I ended up ahead 50 dollars by the time we left vegas and all playing penny or nickel slots - if you think that's shocking or sinful.....I kindasorta respectfully disagree) 

Bliss is...

Here is what I like to do while I am in Mexico:











And when I am not looking at my book, I'm looking at this:

Ranting Corelates to Inverse Hunger Ratio

Sometimes my political spouting off directly corelates to the amount of hunger I am feeling on a particular day. Sometimes my diet makes me cranky. (ask my husband)

I normally have tried to stay a bit clear of politics here because I know many people who read the blog are republicans and probably disagree with a lot of what I say. And I am fine with that because I think that's what makes the world an interesting place - variety.

I'll try to squelch my thoughts in this area a little more effectively in the future.

For more on my hunger see here

My Boyfriend & a Little Ranting

My boyfriend John Cusack just did an ad for Moveon.org

It's been mentioned here before that I love John Cusack

He admits that he's no more important and his opinion is no more important than anyone else but that it's important to speak up about things we care about.

I'm super tired of ridiculous oil costs in a country where our options besides sucking it up and paying are extremely limited, lack of healthcare for the needy (and though I have healthcare - some would say the "cadillac plan" I pay $800 a month for it, which many families cannot even consider and it's STILL not all that great if someone has to go to the hospital), no intelligent plan to help the immigration problems we (Or maybe I should say immigrants) face, Insane spending getting us into further and further debt, a war fought on false pretenses where I fear we will continue to lose lives for many years to come, fear mongering, greedy, greedy, greedy "the dollar is GOD" decision makers. I'm so tired of hearing 'let the market decide'. Yeah, let's keep letting the market decide when it makes economic sense to cover healthcare costs for the poor. Let's keep letting the market dictate when viable renewable energy will become our main source rather than fossil fuels. Because that's worked incredibly well so far.

I miss the 90s.

At least Richard Nixon had the balls to say "F*** the doomed". Now everything is just pretense and posturing.

Keeping Tabs

New Shando Post Here

Just letting everyone know since that blog is updated so infrequently.

A Silly Quiz

This isn't very scientific but it's the short version of an often used well known personality test.

Interestingly, I don't think our personalities are completely static. At various time in my life I've been an INFJ, and a INFP depending on my current mood.

Take the test for fun and see what you are [these things are also what that whole 'gold, blue, orange, green' personality thing is too - there are 16 personality types, for the purposes of gold blue orange green they break them down into just 4 - but when you think about it and rank the colors in an order (I'm usually Blue/Orange/Green/Gold) there are really a lot of possible combinations.]

I'm curious what some of my friends are so leave a comment and let me know (that's the budding shrink in me)

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. In love, you tend to have high (and often unrealistic) standards. You are very sensitive. You tend to have intense feelings. At work, you need to do something that expresses your personal values. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist. How you see yourself: Unselfish, empathetic, and spiritual When other people don't get you, they see you as: Unrealistic, naive, and weak

What's Your Personality Type?

More thoughts on Rocky Point...

I love going to Rocky Point. I love the sea and the sand and the sun. I love the smell of shrimp on the grill while the surf lulls softly in the background. I love waking up to a full moon that shines so bright off the sand, you have to close all the blinds just to be able to sleep.

I love getting up early in the morning and feeling the slight chill outside while people run up and down the beach, take morning walks and look for treasure in the tide pools. I love finding perfect shells and sea glass and the occasional octopus.

I love watching my kids have a blast body surfing, horseback riding, and running hard to wave down the banana boat man. I love buying freshly made tortillas from the local ladies. I love talking with the guys who sell their jewelry on the beach. I always feel the warmness of the people is so wonderful when you take the time to talk to them.

I love all the bold colors. I love how the ladies stand outside their homes and sweep the dirt to keep it away from the front of their house. I always find it fascinating how clean everything is in a certain kind of way - how much everything smells like 'fabuloso'. Every person you walk next too smells strongly of laundry soap. And yet how weirdly un-antiseptic everything is too. At the grocery store there are strong smells of the produce over ripeness mixed with fishy fish and strange cheese. The bakery smells sickly sweet and the fresh seafood on ice is just feet away. It's a cacophony of olfactory over-load that amazes me. Everything here in the U.S. is so wrapped in plastic and refrigerated. It's a shock to go from carefully saran wrapped meat to hanging beef on a hook with a few flys for good measure. In a strange way it's refreshing to be reminded of where your food really comes from.

I admire the people. I admire the work ethic. Even the beggars are offering to clean your windows and do a better job than I've ever dreamed. Their circumstances are often meager - yet they always seem happy. There are a lot of smiles. There are a lot of school kids with ice cream, families getting ice cream or popsicles on a hot day. It's not an easy life, but no one seems unhappy. I feel so spoiled while we are there.

When I come home I stare out the window at the vast wealth. It's a little hard to reconcile. Neighborhoods which did not look that nice the week before appear completely differently to me when I come back. We're all so rich and most of us don't even know it.

Rocky Point

Back from Rocky Point...

Very, Very, Reluctantly back from Rocky Point












I'll talk more about it later but right now I wish I were still on the beach...

Update

For those of you keeping track on my other blog this news comes as a rather ho-hum declaration, but for those of you who are not, I am proud to announce that I have successfully cleared the 30 pounds lost hurdle and now have my eyes on 40. Here's a portion of my chart for the past little while (these skinnyr charts are cool but they can't post more than like 10 days at a time or something)

Get your own graph at skinnyr

Next up I'm planning to write that embarassing moment post for Shando that Cynthia tagged her on. I think that's something we can all look foward to -

(don't end you sentence in a preposition! Mrs. Barton my high school AP English teacher would tell me...but I don't really answer to Mrs. Barton anymore - I like to live on the edge and dangle my participles as well)

Lezlee

Making Scents

I have always strongly associated perfumes with different eras in my life. When I think about it, in terms of perfume, my life can be roughly divided by decades with a perfume brand:

Love's Baby Soft (and isn't this ad from the same era rather disturbing? but this was back in the days when Brooke Shields was "pretty baby" and donning her Calvins, and Jody Foster was playing a teenage prostitute in Taxi so...)

Love's baby soft is so Jr. High for me. I had a lavendar turtle neck sweater (which I wore with my deep purple corduroy pants and my brown high heel clogs) and the inside of the neck of that sweater was sprayed with love's baby soft so that I could smell it all the time. I loved that stupid sweater.

L'Air Du Temps was roughly high school. I never really loved this perfume, I was just trying to be more mature. It had a strong floral scent. I ditched when I got to college (I never loved it much, and never particularly loved high school either so I figured it was bad karma to wear it in college).

I replaced it with Lutece. You can still buy Lutece though it's a bit tricky to track down. It's a bit more mature floral scent. It's softer. I still like it. My husband loves it because it's what I wore all the time when we were dating.

Into my 20s I paired this with Anais Anais, I wore them both intermitently. Anais Anais was the first really expensive perfume I ever owned. It's a floral too but it has a lot of very soft and subtle undertones. You can barely smell this on someone but it's very distinct. It has the slightest hint of spice but maybe just a touch of baby powder underneath. Very soft, but sophisticated. I wore it well on my way to 30.

Sometime after starting to have children my perfume consumption sank. It seems silly to put a lot of perfume on when you're just going to be changing diapers all day and running kids around. (though as I type this I am wondering if that wouldn't be a more practical use of the perfume). At some point I wanted my perfume to be more fun and I started buying Escada in my 30s. Escada does this weird thing where they slightly tinker with a scent every year (sorta like someone there is a little ADHD) it smells almost exactly the same as the year before, but not quite. I guess they think you will not get bored with it that way. So I started out loving Ibiza Hippy and then it was Rockin Rio and then it was Pacific Paradise and then it was Sunset Heat...you get the idea. It was suppose to make you feel like you were on a exotic vacation all the time and that really appealed to me (I'm highly suspectible to marketing ploys like this). When I sprayed it on I would imagine that Ibiza Hippy was the perfect scent for a free spirit like me. (nevermind that I've never been to Ibiza or that I don't qualify as a hippy in any way). Escada is floral, but it's fruity and fun.

So on to my 40s...time for a new perfume. I asked for this for mother's day:



The ad copy for Le Feu d' Orange reads:

A heady mix of blood orange, woods and fruit with a hint of cinnamon and vanilla.


This stuff smells delicous. And of course I like to imagine that it's a bit more serious than Escada - more appropriate for my 40s. I feel like a sophisticated internationally travelled woman with good luggage and chic though practical shoes.

Well...it's important to have a rich fantasy life anyway don't you think?

Dipping My Toe into the Political Topic

Most people know, I am a democrat -

a majority of my friends (though not all) are republican.

I usually avoid discussing politics for that reason.

Politics are super important to me. Of all the things I do everyday to keep myself plugged in to the world, my favorite is to listen to a lot of political analysis and read a lot of political articles. I read things from all over - I read things I totally disagree with fairly frequently because I like to understand how other people think.

This morning I am happy. Obama is my guy.

I used to like McCain a long time ago and I used to say I could vote for him. I liked the fact that he thumbed his nose at the republican party fairly often - seemed to follow his heart and his own sense of right and wrong rather than a party line. I think that appeals to a lot of democrats.

But seemingly winning the primary has made him re-think that strategy and he has to appeal to a broader range of republicans (many of whom have despised him for years...we have die-hard republican friends who absolutely can't stand the man - some of them say they will hold their nose and vote for him, some say they are considering Obama). In doing so he's totally lost me.

I've never loved Hilary. Never hated her either. I never understood people's intense dis-like of her. And when I ask my republican friends about it they usually say two things - her intense drive to scamble to the top (and they think that's the only reason she's stayed married to Bill) and the comment she made about Tammy Wynette and "standing by her man" and the whole "baking cookies" thing. One woman I know doesn't like her because she put up with Bill's wandering eye all those years. Ironically that woman had an affair herself so...I could write a whole psychology study on that thought process. At any rate I always liked Obama more than Hillary. For the record I started out as a John Edwards supporter - and I still like him very much and wish he had stuck in the race longer. But Obama has always been a close second to Edwards for me. But until recently, I felt, that I could definitely vote for Hilary if my choices were McCain vs. Hilary (though a year ago I would have said that race would probably have me voting for McCain). In the last few weeks I have been very disappointed in her behavior.

I saw this quote this morning that really summed it up for me: "After the Reverend Wright controversy, Hillary Clinton had the nomination in her hands. Obama was suffering the worst press month of his campaign," said Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos. "Then she had a choice. She could have gotten bigger, more presidential, less political, could have risen to defend Obama. 'This is outrageous and has no place in politics.' She didn't do that. Instead, she chose to become smaller, more political, less presidential. Her own political instincts betrayed her."

That's where she lost me exactly.

What Reverand Wright said was pretty outrageous (though to be fair, I've read the entire sermon and it is not nearly as outrageous in the context of the whole thing) probably even more outrageous was the way he tried to defend what he said. He's quite indignant about it. He took a very bad tone at the press club - was rude to reporters and would not answer questions if a reporter had not read the entire sermon (which is why I did...and he had a point, but it was totally the wrong way to make that point).

I kept thinking "wow! I hope if I ever run for office I don't have to have someone dredge up wacky things, racist things, crazy things my former Bishops have said". I am telling you that on a political spectrum Jed Riding and I do not agree on much. But he's my Bishop. I respect him. I actually consider him a friend as well. I've spent time in their home - I've even been to their cabin. Is it that hard to understand that politics and church don't mix?

I remember the time we ushered out kids out of sacrament meeting with the skinhead was there. The man with the shaved head that said 'white power' in huge letters all the way around his head. We kept looking at the Bishop like "aren't you going to do something?" and he didn't do anything. This guy was down front and center. Clearly his head had been shaved absolutely clean that morning. Come on. Kirk sent a note up to the Bishop explaining our departure. I am still very glad we left. We wanted our kids to be very clear about where we stood. In a conversation with the Bishop later he said that 1. He couldn't see all the way around his head so he wasn't sure exactly what it said and 2. When he realized what it said he asked him to grow out his hair if he was going to keep coming to church and taking the missionary discussions. Now look, I am all for a skinhead coming to Jesus. I have no problems with a skinhead who has fully changed his views and ways. But this guy was clearly still shaving that head everyday. Had I been the Bishop I would have offered to let the guy wear a hat and sit in the over-flow or something until his hair came in. But that's me, and I'm not a Bishop. The guy kept trying to talk with the missionaries but never attempting to grow his hair in. Which is when the Bishop drew the line. 2 weeks later he raped an old lady in the neighborhood. Nice.

But what if I had not gotten up and left. What if I ran for political office and someone said that my church, my specific congregation was being attended by active skinheads and that in fact, my Bishop had welcomed the man with open arms. And I sat in the pew and sang hymms with this man and I had no problem with it. Well of course, I did have a problem with it. But you know, it would have been easy to sit there and justify not leaving - afterall, I think we were the only ones at church that day who did leave. I'm just saying I think it's a bad idea to mix these worlds.

Things happen at church that I think are completely wacky. People say stuff that makes me internally groan. Over the years I've had leaders say things I TOTALLY disagree with. But I stay because over-riding all of that I feel a great spirit of love there. I felt it this sunday. It's a wonderful place to be. And maybe partly it's a wonderful place to be because it is flawed. People are flawed. I'm flawed. And yet God just keeps on loving every single one of us - watching us all try to do our best. Watching us try to serve one another and make the world just a tiny bit better place. I think that makes God happy. All those little kindnesses we show all the time make up for a lot of our mistakes.

So I'm happy that it looks like Obama will get the nomination. That seems right to me today.

Sometime in my college years I became almost obsessed with JD Salinger and Catcher in the Rye. A lot of people dismiss the book far too easily. I don't know anyone who loves it as much as I do.

I've read everything that was every published by Salinger, including all his short stories published in magazines during the 50s. Once you connect all the dots, it's very fascinating.

Holden Caulfield was my hero in a kind of way.

When I named my first born Holden in my early 20s, I caught a lot of crap for it. "Why would you name your child after someone who had a mental breakdown?!" - was a usual refrain.

I always hoped that someday Holden would read the novel and understand. So when he was about 13 or so I gave him "Catcher in the Rye". He read it and liked it. Then he re-read it. I do not know how many times he has read it now.

A few weeks ago I heard someone complaining about what a 'whiner' Holden is in Catcher and how he needs to grow up. Complaining about the book and the plot and the immaturity of it all. Holden became completely incensed. Holden said "Holden Caulfield is just about the most awesome guy ever because Holden Caulfield wants to preserve all the innocense in the world - He wants to catch all the children before they grow up too fast and tell them to slow down!".

Then he told me he was happy his name was Holden. That it's the coolest name ever.

That made my heart smile.

Here is a quote I found recently from JD Salinger himself talking about Holden "The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it."

That almost makes me cry.

On a lighter note...

I seriously love 30 Rock...

Re-Visiting the Polygamy Debate

After expressing some opinion here recently about the fiasco in Texas with the FLDS church I've spent a fair amount of time trying to really educate myself about what is going on in that community. I read Carolyn Jessops book "Escape" - she grew up in Colorado City, married a much older man, had 8 kids, and eventually fled to Salt Lake taking her children with her. Her oldest daughter left and went back to the polygamist lifestyle even after going to high school in salt lake for a couple of years. (I mention that because I think most people would imagine that a teenage girl, having tasted the freedom of "normal life" would not choose to return to that insular community and lifestyle...but she did). Many of the women mentioned in that book, Carolyn's sister wives, are now in Texas in the FLDS YFZ Ranch complex. And their children have been taken.

Here is my dilemma:

1. I think the FLDS church under Warren Jeffs has become a messed up situation - I think he's possibly quite a very evil man.

2. While I believe there are many things about this life style I disagree with - I keep thinking that it's wrong to persecute or prosecute these people for their religious beliefs - which I think, is in a sense, what is happening.

3. I don't think teenage girls should be forced in to marriage. I think it's wrong. I hate to see women being used as 'property' and think that's what polygamy can de-volve into.

4. Teenage girls all over this country get pregnant at young ages all the time, in all kinds of neighborhoods. They just don't happen to be fundamentalist polygamist families. And do we take away all the children of any family where this kind of thing happens? How about we take their close friends and neighbors children? This is what it seems is happening here. 415 children taken. Do we really think every single one of those children is better off NOT being with their mothers? I just can't buy into this theory.

5. I think the state of Texas is going to find itself in a lot of legal trouble over this situation. Ultimately, I think they went in there based on a false phone call. There's no evidence this girl exists. But there is evidence of a woman here in Arizona making these kinds of phone calls erroneously.

6. As much as I was sickened by some of what I read in Carolyn Jessops book - I also couldn't help but think as I read it about how many of these women in these polygamist families are really good people just trying to do what they think is right.

7. I haven't seen a single shred of evidence that the bed in the temple was used to have sex with anyone. All that's been reported in the media regarding that bed has been hearsay "he said someone else said they heard from somebody". They have said the bed is for nothing of the sort. In the St. George temple there was a bed for years for tired workers to use. I asked my mom and she said they have a sort of cot/bed in the temple where she and my dad work in case someone isn't feeling well or needs to lie down for a while. It's not that weird that they would have a bed there.

8. There was record of a lot of young girls married to old guys. No matter how you look at it that is just creepy.

Ultimately, I just find myself confused about what is really in the best interest of the people involved.

At the hearing one of the women begged to have her daughter back and she promised she would leave the polygamist lifestyle and support herself on her own if she could just have her 7 year old daugther back.

The judge denied her request. Her daughter will remain in foster care.

These images taken in the past few years by Salt Lake Tribune photographer Trent Nelson are so powerful:
This is a 'big love' polygamist family in Salt Lake City. Three wives. This is one wife holding the birthday cake, the other wife blowing out her candles and wife number three is in the backgound watching.
FLDS community in Canada (they have a large group up there too) baking their daily bread.

An FLDS girl catches a salamander and shows it to photographers in the Canadian community


FLDS women in Texas after their children are taken


Courthouse in Texas
Convicted "prophet" of the FLDS church Warren Jeffs - who has fathered around 100 children

A woman testifies at the Jeffs trial

Polygamist Couple
Travel on the roads at Short Creek (Colorado City and Hildale)

Polygamist Family

polygamist children playing

Polygamist young men on their "mission" - where they work construction and do service hours.
Polygamist home behind walls

Kids play at home in Short Creek
Polygamist mom and her daughter go for a hike near Short Creek.

Sorry for the Ranting and News of New Blog

Okay so that last post was a little ranty. I have further thoughts on the subject which I will share shortly in another entry when I have more time.

In the meantime, I've started a new blog related to my weight loss so if you want to hear me go on and on about the merits of lettuce - please see Bandanamom's New Weight Loss Ramblings Here.

Stuff that "Bugs"

Am I just getting old and cranky?

Stuff that is bugging me!


1. Scouts

This could be a big huge entry unto itself this week. But rather than airing the specifics of my irritation on the internet I will just say that no one should ever give me a calling in Scouts! I have a laundry lists of complaints, 'nuff said.



2. Yesterday I got an email from a welling meaning member of my Stake asking me to add my name to a petition that we needed to send to President Bush, or the FCC or someone (that part was completely unclear, as I should mention was the part where you tried to figure out how this magical petition that you were suppose to forward, was every going to end up in the intended proper hands) and the petition was to ask the FCC and the President and Congress and whoever else wants to listen to not banish LDS Conference and Music and the Spoken Word from the television. WHAT? This just sounds really weird to me. I am looking at a petition with over a thousand names on it, I am looking at this very long list of people it was just forwarded to and I am thinking....this sounds really weird. The email goes on to say that this bill (I can't remember Rtwenty something twenty something) is to try to pass it so that the mention of God cannot be made on the airwaves. In addition this bill is being sponsered by head atheist Madelyn O'Hare (who I happen to remember is dead). WHAT? So I am suppose to add my name to this list because if I don't all kinds of terrible things will happen. Also - the liberals are about to take over the country, yada yada yada. WHAT? AND at the bottom above the petition names it says "sign to return prayer to our schools!". WHAT? Clearly the whole email looks like a hodge-podge of other weird emails I've gotten before. So I spend two seconds looking up the facts.

It's a hoax.

This hoax has existed in some form since 1975. The bill referenced in the email was knocked down in 1975 and has never been brought up again. No one ever took it seriously to begin with. The FCC has received over 3 million pieces of mail about this since 1975...people KEEP perpetuating this rumor over and over.

And by the way - why is it that mormons never realize that one of the families who sued over the prayer in school was a mormon family in Texas who felt persecuted by public prayers asking for 'help' from God to deliver this same mormon family from the evil grips of their church. THIS is why prayer in schools is not such a hot idea.

Which brings me to my next point:

3. TEXAS & the Polygamists


I am not going to just believe every cruddy thing I am hearing about these poor people in Texas. Warren Jeffs might be a complete jerk and I am sure there are probably some girls who end up in polygamist marraiges who are less than thrilled about it all. BUT I am not going to quickly condemn every father and mother in this compound because the authorities in Texas tell me I should. Did you hear the news yesterday about the bed found in the temple? Crap like that has been said about mormons forever, and not just the polygamist kind- who knows what they found. Could it be an alter? We don't know and the deputy of the deputy of the Sherrif who heard it from an alleged 'source' needs to quit putting these terrible ideas out without substantiation.

A woman from a different polygamist community in Utah yesterday made a wise comment. She said something along the lines of "Most men know it's very unwise to take a wife who isn't 100% committed to a polygamist marriage. It's hard enough as it is. The law is not on the side of our husbands. They know that if one thing goes wrong a woman can call tapestry or the authorities and something exactly like this raid in Texas is always a possibility. "

Maybe it's my polygamist roots showing, but I think the way this thing is playing out is just entirely wrong.

"The authorities in Texas say that the mothers are staying voluntarily in custody."

Really? Or could it be because they will have to LEAVE THEIR CHILDREN there if they decide to leave 'custody'. What mother is going to do that?

And well meaning baptists have taken in these children - some have said the following "they don't even know what crayons are! they just stare at them!"

REALLY? Or do you think maybe they don't feel like coloring right now when their families have been completely ripped apart.

I could go on for days.

I am not saying that I agree with the lifestyle of these people and I am not saying that there isn't any abuse going on - there might be. BUT I guarantee you taking 400 children from their parents is massively over-reaching.

The only thing I can't figure out is why the FLDS church decided to build in the same county as WACO? Did they not learn anything from the Branch Davidian fiasco? Or were they naive enough to think that could never happen again and the local baptists of Texas would just leave them alone?

Que Sera Sera

It's been a weird week.

It's been busy. I stressed out about silly things I probably shouldn't have.

Sometimes I find that I no longer have a good way to de-stress.

It used to be that a good bubble bath worked - and I still really like a bubble bath. But sometimes when I am really busy a bubble bath feels like laziness and that stresses me out more.

I was thinking today about how when I was in high school I absolutely, positively had to have plans on a Friday night. On Saturday night it was okay to have plans or not have plans - but on Friday you HAD to have plans, otherwise you felt like a giant loser. And usually those plans involved something with my girlfriends.

There were 5 of us who hung out together in a sort of group. Sometimes one of us might have a date or some other obligation, but usually, there was always someone to do something with. This group had a sort of dynamic to it that kept it kind of held together fairly well. My best friend was Alicia. Then there was Kari, Tirzah and Tina. My second best friend was Kari. Kari's best friend was Tirzah and vice versa. Tirzah was Alicia's second best friend and Tina was Tirzah's second best friend followed by Alicia. Tina and Tirzah were sort of tied as my third best. Tina was Kari's second best friend. I don't know who Tina thought her best friend was. I think it was her horse. (She loved her horse and her dog, then boys, then us, so I think her need for a best friend was proportionally diminished by the animals and the boys).

Anyway we did a lot of silly things.

Sometimes we just went to the movies.

Sometimes we dragged main (or in the past tense that's known as drug main as well or we might say we were dragging main) sometimes we had a slumber party or a sleep-over (a slumber party requires more than 1 girl - a sleep over is just 1) and talked a lot about boys.

We often played a game which was played with PIT cards, but which was not PIT, but rather some sort of fortune telling game. I won't even go into all the details of how that worked exactly, it started by accident one time and weirdly, many things that were foretold in that game eventually came to pass (I still put a fair amount of stock in the fact that I was suppose to be both the fattest adult and the thinnest...I am waiting for that thinnest part).

Sometimes we went to the dance clubs (which was usually a blast)- we had two clubs in town, the "Galleria" and the "Connection". Often we were dancing with college guys who thought we were college girls. There was usually a fair amount of disappointment on their faces when they asked you how old you were or where you lived and figured out you were still in high school.

We had a "funny" booth at McDonalds. We always sat in the same booth and it was called the "funny" booth because we did a fair amount of giggling and laughing there. So you could just say to your girlfriend "meet me at the funny booth" and we all knew exactly where that was.

We loved to go to JB's Big Boy late at night and order HOT FUDGE CAKE. I don't know if any dessert in my life has ever lived up to that chocolately hot goodness. JB's was the only restaurant in town that stayed open late.

There was often giggly calling up boys on the phone and taking pretend surveys about which girls at school they liked (as if they had no idea what we were doing!) We had this thing when we started driving where we would just drive by boy's houses that we liked. Kinda in a stalkerish way. My best friend Alica had a weird superstition that if her favorite song came on the radio we had to hurry and drive by the house of the boy she had a crush on. It was a little crazy. He lived about a mile out of town so we had to book it out to the South side of town fast and make it to his house before the song ended. It was a Kenny Loggins song. Everytime I hear that song I think of the red interior of her mom's white Ford Thunderbird and driving as fast as we can to get to Gordon Harmon's house before the song is over. We hardly ever saw the boys we liked when we did this stalking routine. And if we did we totally FREAKED out and ducked down in the seats. Mostly it seems like those years were filled with a lot of shreiking and general silliness.

There were stupid girl fights too. At various times I think I was mad at all 4 of them collectively and individually.

But that stuff diminishes in memory over time and you just remember things like the time we kidnapped Tirzah on her 16th birthday, had a chinese fire drill in Kari's parents Suburban and almost wrecked the car in the process, picked up some college boys while dragging main and made them take us to a movie (after which we quickly ditched them when we realized they expected something in return for the movie) or got lost in the dark countryside driving Kari's parents Toronado around looking for the "KNOCKING GRAVE". I miss all of these things sometimes.

I miss the luxury of time we had then.

Sometimes when it had been a stressful week, or boys seemed stupid, or we were just tired, Tirzah would suggest we should just get together on Friday night and watch a old Doris Day movie. So we would. Honestly, those might have been some of the best Friday nights ever.


Our lives really weren't that stressful - but that was our way of just de-stressing. It was a perfect solution to a hectic or otherwise less than stellar week.


I can't even remember the last time I saw a Doris Day movie.

Maybe that's what I need.