Category Archive

A couple nights ago I had a dream that I was watching Brokeback Mountain.  I’ve never actually seen Brokeback Mountain, so my subconscious had to make it up as it went along.  I have to tell you, when it comes to the art of filmmaking, my subconscious is an uneven talent.  I understand that the real Brokeback Mountain had some scenes that made some viewers uncomfortable.  I wouldn’t know anything about that.  The most memorable scene in the version I saw had the two cowboys drinking beer and making Jiffy Pop popcorn.  I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about that either. 

Except that I do, because I just made some Jiffy Pop popcorn last Friday.  It was because we were out of microwave popcorn, and we just happened to have this Jiffy Pop that Elvis had gotten as a present from his teachers at school.  So I made the Jiffy Pop.  It was okay.  Microwave popcorn would have been better.

When I was a kid, they didn’t have microwave popcorn.  Well, I’m assuming that there was no microwave popcorn because most people I knew didn’t own microwaves.  And I remember what a big deal it was when my mother finally got an air-popper.  That was amazing.  We would totally gather around and watch the popcorn popping because that’s what you do when a technological marvel is occurring.  Anyway, before the air popper my mother would make popcorn on the stove.  Not Jiffy Pop, though, because that was too expensive.  No, she’d just make it in a pot.  We wouldn’t gather around and watch because, you know, there wasn’t really anything to see. 

I think my mother must have made popcorn every day and we’d all eat it while she watched The Doctors and Days of Our Lives.  I was never that into The Doctors, but Days of Our Lives had a really interesting storyline at that time, what with the Salem Strangler killing people and Jessica having that split personality (nun by day, shameless hussy by night), and then it turns out her boyfriend is the strangler and Sister Marie is her mom?  Holy crap, that was exciting.  I guess you had to be there.  Anyway, Another World came on after that, but usually by then the popcorn was gone.  My father didn’t like my mother to watch soap operas.  He thought they were a waste of time.  My mother would watch them anyway, but it was a secret, so we had to keep it on the downlow, as it were. 

There were never any gay cowboys on Days of Our Lives when I was watching it.  Things might be different now, just like the popcorn is different.  I would never watch soap operas with my children.  And yet that is one of my fond memories of childhood. 

I had another dream that I went to high school with Johnny Depp.  I had known Johnny Depp since the fourth grade.  We didn’t talk much, so we weren’t close, but in my dream we were in high school together, and one day during math class he tried to kill me.  I never understood why, but I got asked to tell the story over and over, and that’s when people started noticing some inconsistencies in the narrative.  It turned out that I’d just read Winona Ryder’s memoir of the event, because it had actually happened to her, not me.  Then it turned out that she made the whole thing up, and I felt pretty ripped off.  Kind of like Oprah, I imagine.

I didn’t go to high school with Johnny Depp, of course.  Johnny Depp and I aren’t even the same age.  I think 21 Jump Street may have been on when I was in high school.  Probably some episode of 21 Jump Street had some high school students trying to kill each other and lying about it, but I don’t remember much specific about 21 Jump Street, except when Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise would go undercover as delinquent brothers.  I’m not sure why that made such a strong impression on me, unless I really dug the way Johnny Depp looked in a do-rag.  Really don’t know the answer there. 

I think I know where this dream came from, though.  I’ve been eating Frosted Mini-Wheats this week, and on the back of the cereal box there’s this movie offer, and one of the movies you can get is Lucas–you know, that movie Corey Haim made before he got old and desperate?  Winona Ryder was in that movie, too.  She was very young.  Johnny Depp was not in that movie.  But Johnny Depp dated Winona Ryder, as you know.  That’s how he got his “Wino Forever” tattoo.  There were no tattoos in my dream, though.  Just attempted murder and literary fraud.  It was more exciting than the gay cowboys eating Jiffy Pop, though.

There was something wrong with that Jiffy Pop. 

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I should have written something about love.  Instead I wrote about dreams of love and love gone wrong.  Also the popcorn going wrong.  I love popcorn, and I love this blog.  And I love you guys.  (Nothing funny, just being festive.  Grow up, for Pete’s sake.)

Last night I dreamed (dreamt?) that I had the baby, and it was a boy.  This is the second time I've dreamt (dreamed?) the baby was a boy.  I don't think it means anything, except maybe that I'm having a boy.  Anyway, I had the baby and brought him home, and my whole family was there–I mean, the family I had growing up.  Interestingly enough, none of my other children was there, and Sugar Daddy was nowhere to be seen for much of the dream.  Anyway (again), my family kept trying to feed the baby spaghetti.  This is a newborn, a few days old, and they're trying to feed him spaghetti.  I said, "You know, I really only have to feed him breastmilk for the first 4-6 months.  He doesn't need any spaghetti."  And my mother (who was alive in this dream) said, "Oh, I know you did that with the other three, but this one really seems hungry for something else."  And I said, "Maybe it's because you haven't let me nurse him more than twice since I've come home.  You keep whisking him away for spaghetti."  And my sister said–as she was spooning pasta with tomato sauce into my newborn's mouth–"Oh, Mad, stop freaking out.  It's just spaghetti."

 

What was freaking me out was that I knew my baby should not be eating spaghetti, but for some reason I couldn't just say, "Hey!  I'm the mother here!  Stop feeding my baby spaghetti, you freaks!"  (And why are you all in my house?  Where are my other kids?  Why aren't you still dead, Mom?)  It was really disturbing.  Then I finally found SD, who was reading on the couch, and I said, "SD, have we picked out a name for this baby yet?"  And he said, "Uhh…no," and went back to reading.  And I continued to worry about the spaghetti and the fact that the baby hadn't breastfed in several hours.

 

I told SD about this dream this morning, and he said he had a dream that the Harriet Miers nomination was withdrawn.  He always has to have better dreams than me.

 

 

 

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I'm registering for the hospital, and I'm looking through all the brochures and papers they give you, and there's a newspaper birth announcement form that I find a little over the top.  It asks for the parents' names and the baby's name, date of birth, blah blah, you know, the normal stuff, but additionally it asks for the time of birth, the weight, the length, the siblings' names, the grandparents' names, the great-grandparents' names–and I'm thinking, "Who the freak cares about all this?"  I mean, I care, but does the greater
Portland area care?  How can they possibly have room to print all of this information? 

 

I used to be responsible for the birth announcements when I worked at the newspaper, and it was a tedious job, but the thing that bothered me the most was when parents would ask me to notify them when the announcement was going to run–which I was willing to do, when I had the time–but when I called them, as soon as I identified myself, they assumed I was trying to sell them the paper, and they'd hang up on me.  Needless to say, I did not call them back, and they did not know when their birth announcement ran.  The happiest day of my life was when one mother called to ask about her announcement and I got to say, "Yes, that ran about three weeks ago.  I tried to call you to let you know, but you hung up on me."  Sorry.

 

 

 

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SD and I have tentatively decided on a boy's name, so I was feeling okay about having a boy, but the dorkus had to tell his mother what the name was, and she said she hates it.  Well, I don't really care if she hates it, but I care that she feels obligated to tell us she hates it.  I suppose it doesn't matter because everyone in his family feels obligated to tell us they hate the baby's name, even after the baby's been born, the birth certificate's filled out, we've blessed him in church, and he's about to start kindergarten.  On my side of the family, they have the decency to talk about it behind my back.  Except for my step-mother, who doesn't really talk about it so much to our faces, but when she comes to visit the baby, she'll talk to the baby and let him know that our parenting leaves much to be desired, and she's very sorry he has such an awful name.

 

In all honesty, I'm not in love with the name we've picked for this one, so I don't need this further discouragement.  I can just hope my dreams about the baby being a boy are as accurate as the dreams I had about Elvis being a girl. 

 

 

 

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I also have a form here to outline my birth plan.  It's pretty open-ended.  I'm not too picky about my birthing experience.  I mean, beyond the basics, I don't have any special requests, like live studio audiences or relaxing music (pfft!) or scented candles.  When I was getting near my due date with Elvis, my midwife asked how involved SD wanted to be with the delivery, and I said, "Well…he definitely wants to be there."  And she said, "How does he feel about stuff like cutting the cord, helping bring the baby out, etc.?"

 

"Oh, he'd probably think that was cool."

 

"And how do you feel about that?" she asked earnestly.

 

Confused, I just shook my head and said, "What do I care?"

 

I don't think the midwife was prepared for that response because she just about peed her pants laughing.

 

I'm really tired of being pregnant.

So I spent most of the last 36 hours battling what might have been food poisoning, an overachieving 24-hour stomach flu, or simply the dietary justice meted out to those who consume Double Fudge Brownie ice cream and Cheetos before they go to bed.  Whatever it was, I can tell you that churning stomach + hyperactive fetus = bad.

 

Add to the mix three children who don't understand the meaning of "Mommy is sick and you're all heartless ******** for screaming at her when she doesn't get your juice/band-aid/Star Wars Cheerio cereal (excuse me, puking) as fast as you think she ought to" and I think the solution is something with mathematical symbols I'm incapable of reproducing here.  To his credit, however, once Elvis saw me fully reclined and sobbing on the La-Z-Boy in the living room, he immediately went into Florence Nightingale mode.  First he got me a blanket.  Then he brought me some water (which I didn't want, but he insisted).  Then he brought me a stuffed giraffe and, for some reason, his toy light saber.  Then he brought me some reading material.  Then he played me some music.  Then he started climbing on me and throwing things at me.  Well, it was nice while it lasted.

 

I feel better today, which is good because Sugar Daddy left for
Arizona again this morning, and will be gone for the rest of the week.  I had some really effed-up dreams last night, though, including one in which I went to the free clinic in the wee hours of the morning, and, as long as I was in the neighborhood, decided to go shopping at the (apparently) 24-Hour Jennifer Lopez Natural Foods Store.  I don't know why I would dream about such a thing because I'm sure I only spend about 0% of my average day thinking about Jennifer Lopez, but there it is.  Anyway, while I was there I picked up some multi-grain bread flour and J. Lo's special Protein Powder, which turned out to be dehydrated bananas, but it was pretty tasty nonetheless.  Well, that comes later.  While I was still at the store, pondering the nutritional wisdom of Jennifer Lopez, I realized that it was 6:10 a.m. and SD's plane was supposed to leave at 6:40, and I'd just left him at home with all the kids and unless he'd found a sitter at 5 in the morning, there was no way he was going to make it.

 

Long story short, I suddenly had a cell phone and managed to work everything out so that SD could get to
Arizona, at great inconvenience to everyone but myself.  Needless to say, I felt terribly guilty and knew that I would never live this one down.  I can't tell you how many times I then dreamed that I woke up wondering if this had actually happened, and if it had, where were my powdered bananas?  A rough night, to be sure.

 

But now I'm awake, J. Lo's powdered protein bananas a thing of the past, alone with my children and a mostly-functioning digestive system.  Tonight is my last tap class of the term, and possibly my last tap class until after the baby is born.  I'm already having balance issues, and add to that the fact that tap dancing tends to result in a full uterus bouncing up and down on one's bladder, and I just don't think I'm going to make the Third Trimester Tipsy Tappers Team this season.  No worries, though.  Assuming the actual birth doesn't kill me, I can start again in January.

 

Speaking of the actual birth, I also dreamed last night that I had the baby, and it was, of course, a boy.  Unfortunately, I can't remember what I named him, and I'm really ticked off–especially since I still can't shake the taste of those stupid bananas.  My subconscious has no sense of priorities.

New stuff I've learned Department

 

There is no difference between queen-size pantyhose and size B pantyhose.  It's all a big conspiracy, girls.  They're laughing at us.  If you have not yet joined the great pantyhose rebellion, now is the time.  (Nice, 'cause it's summer.)

 

 

Stuff I don't freaking care about Department

 

PBS losing its government funding.  Probably because I'm one of the few people in
America who doesn't even claim to watch PBS.  Not that I've never watched anything on PBS that I've enjoyed.  Over the course of my lifetime I have seen several good things on public television.  Which is why I, along with lots of other upper-middle class people with too much disposable income, would be happy to join the Carnegie Foundation and General Motors in writing generous checks to support quality programming on PBS, should I ever start to miss it.  (I might conceivably get the hankering for one of those cheesy British sitcoms the networks haven't bothered to rip off yet–ever see the one about the nurse who lives with a guy who's really a superhero from another planet?  Funny, funny stuff.)  Sesame Street is a nice show, but if

Sesame Street

can't support itself by now, it can only be because someone at the Childrens Television Workshop merchandising department has a serious drug problem.  But just say for a moment that there is an embezzling drug addict somewhere in the organization, and

Sesame Street

goes off the air tomorrow.  Will the world come to an end?  No, really.  I'm being perfectly serious.  If your kid never gets to watch

Sesame Street

–if your television exploded tomorrow, in fact–he or she would be okay.  He or she will probably even learn to read and live independently one day.  This may come as a surprise to some people, but television has not always existed.  The human race functioned and thrived for centuries without it, actually.  No joke.  Look it up.

 

And before you chalk this up to more random rantings from an anti-NPR right-wing nutjob, you should know that I've always been against government funding of the arts.  Even in my big-government-lovin', Utne Reader-subscribin' youth, I thought government funding of the arts was total BS.  How were we ever going to have universal health care when we were wasting all this money on the damn arts?  (Not that the NEA budget would come close to covering the costs of universal health care, but it was the principle of the thing.  Yes, even then I had principles.)  Nothing annoys me more than hearing these millionaires in the entertainment industry complain about how the government needs to support the arts more.  I have an idea, Mr. Forty Million Dollars Per Movie–how about you take some of your undertaxed income you don't know what to do with and support some arts?  Sell one of your six vacation homes and buy some violins for inner-city children.  Bathe in tap water for a week so the rest of us can watch Lawrence Welk on Saturday night.  Funding the arts is easy when you don't try to argue with a Republican-controlled Congress.

 

 

What's the matter with me? Department

 

The other night I had the most bizarre dream starring Brad Pitt.  Yeah, don't get too excited, it wasn't that kind of dream.  (I've never actually gotten what the Big Deal was about Brad Pitt, though I must say, I've been fonder of him since I realized how much he reminds me of a young Robert Redford.  Not that I have a big thing about Robert Redford, but now my feelings about him and Brad Pitt are about equal.)  So I had this dream that I was watching a movie starring Brad Pitt, and it was supposed to be Fight Club, which I've never seen, but Brad Pitt was playing this guy with this huge, I mean enormous, goiter-like thing sticking out of his stomach.  It was the size of a small planet, but it did not affect his love life one iota, because he was engaged to this girl who had fallen in love with him in spite of his deformity, but he was secretly planning to have the goiter-thing surgically removed so as to surprise her on their wedding day.  Okay, so I'm watching this movie and I keep thinking, "When does he start fighting people?  After his surgery?"  But then I woke up.  I told Sugar Daddy about the dream, and he said it sounded like a pretty good movie to him.  Actually, it was quite engaging, but I have no idea how it ends, so I don't think I'll be pitching the script to
Paramount anytime soon.

 

That's all.

Sometimes there's nothing like a good light saber fight.  Mister Bubby got a purple light saber from Santa last month, to go with his green one, so now he has both of his favorite colors, and he needs someone to fight with.  That's me!  Woo-hoo!  I'm good, too.  A little too good, maybe.  Of course I let him win.  Usually.  But the Star Wars fantasy has evolved over the last few weeks to incorporate his new The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fantasy.  Now we have to use shields with our light sabers.  Those would be my pot lids.  And he's decided we should no longer fight each other because we're both good guys.  So now we have to fight together against the bad guys–which would be, of course, the White Witch of Narnia and all her ghouls and hags and MB's favorite villain, the wolf Maugrim, Captain of the Secret Police.  Since we don't have anyone else to be the bad guys, really, we usually end up fighting inanimate objects.  Which isn't as fun, I must say.  But at least his values aren't messed up.

He informed me a few minutes ago that his favorite animal is a sheep.  I don't get it.  I just hope it isn't symbolic.

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Today is one of those days when I forgot to eat breakfast.  It always surprises me when I forget to eat.  Forget to feed the kids, sure, but forget to feed me?  What's going on?  I was too busy picking up the kitchen.  Which is filthy, but now it's a tidy filthy.  I also took an inventory of my coupons.  No, not a mental inventory.  I actually wrote it all down.  I'm having one of my manic organizational episodes.  It's really not healthy.  I can think of little else besides putting things in boxes and sticking color-coded labels on them.  And lists.  I must make lists.  If I had a working printer, I would really be going overboard right now.  The kids would never get lunch.  Not that they've all had breakfast.  Whatever.  Is it noon yet?

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Yesterday Sugar Daddy and I went to another "team meeting" at Princess Zurg's school.  The thing I really hate about these meetings is that we always spend 30-45 minutes describing PZ's issues and wondering aloud, "Oh, what is to be done?" and describing the issues some more, hoping that if we talk about them enough, eventually we will come up with a strategy by accident.  Part of the problem–and I'm talking about the meeting problem, not the PZ problem–is that we're all a bunch of women reluctant to say what we're really thinking.  I use "we" in the sense of "they," of course, because SD is not a woman, and after nearly eight years of being married to SD, I've developed even more of that cut-to-the-chase plain-talking men are supposed to be so famous for than he has. 

Still, I am female, so unlike SD I understand more of what's going on while nothing is actually being said.  Yesterday I knew that at least two of the ladies there wanted to talk about placement–putting PZ in a different classroom, different school, Some Place Not Here–but none would come out and say it.  The autism specialist wanted to say we were all full of crap and going about things all wrong, but she wouldn't say it.  Wouldn't say much of anything, really, which is how I could be so sure of what she was thinking. 

Everyone was obviously frustrated, but no one would say what she meant.  Saying what you mean is not rewarded in these meetings.  People will think you've taken offense, which they'll find offensive.  Say what you mean or what you think someone else means, and everyone will immediately back off, rewind, erase what they said before, and you're back at square one.  Which is detailing the inventory of your child's deficiencies.  Ad nauseum.  No one means for this to be a vent-about-Princess-Zurg session, but that's what it is because everyone's too afraid of saying what's really on her mind.

Even SD is afraid because he knows he's not at the Big Satan, where everyone says what he means no matter how offensive it is because if they don't, the company will probably lose money, and no one wants that.  But education isn't a money-making enterprise.  It's only a child's well-being at stake. 

There was one moment of candor in the meeting.  PZ's teacher, God bless her, said that in thirty years of teaching and working with special needs children, including her own children, PZ was the most challenging, and she considered our current course of action to be wasting precious time.  Before I could get my verbal agreement completely out of my mouth, let alone jump up and kiss her for being so honest, two or three of the other ladies rushed to mitigate that harsh-sounding comment, and we got off track entirely.  Again.I could use a good light saber fight now.

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I'm dreaming again, which means I'm stressed out.  The other night I dreamt that I was picking up a prescription for an antibiotic which looked suspiciously like a bottle of Spray-n-Wash and suddenly realized that PZ's bus was going to arrive home any minute.  I started looking for my car and couldn't find it.  I realized I didn't have my car.  How I got there without my car, I didn't know.  I started wandering around aimlessly.  I went to the library, tried to use their pay phone to call home because I remembered my mother was there.  In my dream she was still alive, so that wasn't so creepy.  I didn't have any change, or I couldn't get through, or something.  I hoped she remembered about PZ coming home on the bus.  I went outside.  My father picked me up in the Dodge
Vista he owned twenty years ago.  My sons were in the car, I think, along with one or two of my siblings, who were the age they were when we had the car, not the age they are now.  I thought, oh, good, this must have been how I got here, and now I'm going home.  My dad drove and drove, and I finally said, "Dad, where are you going?"  He said, "Oh, I don't know, I'm just driving."  Then I remembered I left my Spray-n-Wash prescription at the library by the phone, so we went back.  I wanted to stay and pick up a copy of Lolita because I'd been meaning to read it, but my dad had the car running, so I didn't.  Then I really hoped my mother would remember about meeting PZ's bus because it was much too late.  Then I woke up and my father owned a
Toyota Prius and my mother was dead again.  Okay, maybe it didn't hit me all at once, but I had returned to reality. And last night I dreamt about eating bad Mexican food.  When I dream about eating something, it's always a bad experience, and it stays with me long after I wake up.  In college I dreamt I overdosed on peanut butter, and I couldn't eat the stuff for months.  Fortunately there's no good Mexican food in
Portland anyway.

My favorite questions asked when seeing a psychiatrist for the first time:"Do you feel like you have any special powers, e.g. flying?"

"Are the radio and television sending messages especially for you?"

"Does the air conditioner talk to you?"

Actually, these questions tend to give me an inferiority complex.  Why am I wasting this person's time?  I should just go home and start eating a balanced diet, take a multi-vitamin.  Maybe get a facial.

I almost made some facetious remarks about how a conversation with the air conditioner or ceiling fan might actually improve my quality of life, but that seemed tacky.

I so rarely talk to anyone anymore.  Talking is not fun when everything you want to talk about is too embarrassing to discuss with just anybody.  Talking to therapists isn't much fun either.  It's kind of a drag, dredging up all that stuff from one's childhood and subconscious and whatnot.

Speaking of the subconscious, I had a dream this weekend that I had bought a house in this secluded area, and the back yard had a lake and a boat and whatnot–you know, very picturesque and serene–and I was very happy with it.  My sister came to visit, and I was so excited to show her my beautiful house with the cool backyard, but when I went to take her on the guided tour, so to speak, I discovered that my home was not in a secluded area at all, but in some kind of townhouse development.  Oh well, I thought, theren't aren't that many people here, and I still have that cool backyard with the lake and so forth–but when I showed her the backyard, the lake was more like a pond and the yard opened out onto the parking lot.  Then I took my sister inside the house, which was pretty cool except for the fact that my dining room opened up into someone else's dining room, with only a breakfast nook and some plants serving as a divider. 

"That's not very private," my sister said. 

"No.  No.  But it's not that bad.  My neighbors don't bother me.  We don't, you know, look at each other much…"

That's when I started to wonder.  Obviously my house was not at all what I thought it was.  Was I losing my freaking mind?  What happened to my secluded, serene home?  Did it ever exist?  Had I just imagined the whole thing?  Had some crazy developer built a whole community on my property while I was out?  I couldn't decide if I'd been wronged or if I'd just made a really big mistake.  Then I thought, who freaking cares.  This is not where I want to live anymore.  It's time to buy another house.

This is why the safe place exercise hasn't been working.  My subconscious is constantly sabotaging me.

Last week junnnglecat asked me,How is it that you can be so satyrically brilliant and yet claim such a religion? I dont mean that as a bashing comment, because like I said, I once loved a Mormon, more than my family or friends or life itself, but we were extreme opposites. How is it that you seem so completely 'normal' to my world and yet still live in yours? I, in all honesty, do not understand. If you have any grasp on what this entails, please clue me in.

Junnnglecat, I appreciate that you asked this question, and I hope you don't mind me answering it in this forum.  The answer was important enough to me that I couldn't contain it in one concise comment.  For those of you who aren't interested in a long, boring post about my religion, I give you one of my dreams to analyze:

Last night I dreamed that I was on one of those dating reality shows wherein I was selected among dozens of bachelorettes by this super-hunky guy named Astroturf.  (No kidding.  It may have been a nickname or his last name, but that's what everyone called him.)  Anyway, he was one handsome devil.  Not at all the kind of cat who would normally be attracted to a gal like me.  Turns out he picked me because we just had so much in common.  For one thing, we worked in the same factory, manufacturing who knows what, but we did have to wear those crazy bunny suits with the hoods.  Also, we were both Wiccans.  Discuss.

I will now answer Junnnglecat's question.

First, a story.

My mother was a convert to the LDS church.  When she was baptized, she was estranged from her alcoholic, abusive husband and pregnant with my older sister.  For her first few years as a Mormon, she had a lot of reasons to feel like she didn't fit in.  She was divorced.  She was a single mother.  She was a working mother.  That would have been enough, but there was still one more thing. 

Back in the day, Mormon women used to get together once a month for what was called "Homemaking Meeting."  Ostensibly it was an opportunity for women to improve their household management skills; in practice, it was often an excuse to get together and gossip while making useless crap–er, crafts.  (Technically we still have this meeting, only now it's called "Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment"–the Church's little way of saying that there's more to womanhood than glue guns and raffia.)  Certain craft fads spread like wildfire throughout the church.  Someone's cousin in Utah would fashion a decorative pillow out of old flour sacks and macaroni or something, and before you knew it, every Mormon woman west of the Mississippi (and probably a few east) had one gracing her sofa.  It was just what the ladies did.

When my mother was a new Mormon, the craft du jour was this decorative bowl of white plastic grapes.  Maybe they weren't plastic.  Maybe they were fabric.  Who really cares?  That's not the point.  It seemed like every woman in the church had a set living on her end table.  Everyone, that is, except for my mother.  It was a source of great humiliation for her.  To make matters worse, when she married my dad, she discovered that her mother-in-law had two sets (one for the living room and another for the den).  Needless to say, my mother was in quite a state over her lack of phony white grapes.  She was sure she could not be fully accepted into the community without them.

Well, what's the point of that story, other than the fact that my mother was a little bit cuckoo?  The first point is that it doesn't take much to feel like you don't belong in the Mormon world.  The other point is that at some point my mother came to the conclusion that her personal faith was greater than the Church or the Mormon community at large.  Some people never learn this lesson, to the detriment not only of their own souls but to others' souls as well.

I won't try to tell you that the joke about cookie cutter Mormons is not rooted in some truth.  The Church and its people tend to value conformity.  This doesn't mean that they don't value individuals, but that their desire to show their collective "best face" to the rest of the world (I call it the "wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" missionary strategy) sometimes has unintended consequences.  As my mother's story illustrates, the Mormon world can be unintentionally insular to the point of absurdity, and the reasons for not fitting in range from the trivial to the substantial.

When I was growing up, I often felt like I didn't belong in the Church.  I was not, and am not, a particularly "spiritual" person, whatever that means.  I was a cerebral, skeptical, cynical person.  I had some "liberal views," as they say.  It wasn't just the "culture" of Mormonism that rubbed me the wrong way; I found some of its theological elements troubling as well.  I still do.  Really, my personality has not changed so much over the years.  I continue to struggle with my faith on a daily basis.  Some days I just feel like giving it up altogether.

So what on earth am I still doing here?  Living with my religion requires me to accept some things that don't make sense to me, even a couple things that I'm just downright uncomfortable believing.  But I've seen what else is out there, and there isn't any theology–or non-theology–that strikes me as altogether logical.  Certain other religions are appealing in some ways (the ways my own is not), but to embrace any of them wholesale would require me to give up other beliefs that are important to me.  My religion contains a lot of wisdom that I am unwilling to reject.  My religious heritage–the incredible faith and strength of my Mormon forebears–is something that I am also unwilling to discount.  I am willing to accept the possibility that they knew something that I don't know; in fact, I hope it is more than a possibility and that someday I will know it too.

I am not the only Mormon in the world who takes this approach to religious life, though I may be one of the few who are willing to admit as much in public.  My best friend, who is also a Mormon and has endured similar crises of faith as I have, says that when she goes to church, her brain has a "Truth" file and a "Bull" file, and everything she hears there gets filed in its appropriate place.  (As I've said before, compartmentalization is a useful skill.)  I would, however, differentiate myself from those Mormons who call themselves "intellectuals," meaning that they justify their dissent from traditional or orthodox teachings because they're just so darn much smarter than the rest of us.  I find their attitudes arrogant and elitist.  I don't believe for a minute that God gave some people brains enough to discern Truth and that all the people with the lower SAT scores are just destined to be sheep.  I think there are as many paths to God as there are people.  Some of us have longer, windier roads than others.  It doesn't make us better or worse.  It just makes us individuals.

I go to church with a woman who considers herself the "black sheep" of the ward.  She's outspoken and often irreverent.  She teaches sex education in high schools.  She evens wears a bikini to ward swim parties.  (Yikes!)  In other words, she has a lot of nerve.  She's also one of our most beloved sisters because she is so generous, honest and funny.  People are often surprised to learn that she's a Mormon.  "You know, you don't act like a normal Mormon," they say.  She says there's no such thing as a normal Mormon.  To which I reply, You can say that again.  Heh.  But seriously, folks, what she means is that image isn't everything.  This sister may not fit the "typical Mormon" jell-o mold, but make no mistake, people, she is Mormon through and through.  And so, for better or worse, am I. 

Except I have better taste in food.   

The boys have been picking flowers, i.e. dandelions, for me this afternoon.  Elvis has been crawling around the back yard, dutifully pulling the yellow heads off, depositing them in my hand, and then heading out for another harvest.  Mister Bubby has picking me bouquets of the long-stemmed variety all week.

I'm glad he has started to trust me with his treasures again.  A couple weeks ago he interrupted me in the middle of a cleaning frenzy to give me some of the local flora he'd been collecting, and not paying an ounce of attention to what I was doing, I automatically turned around and threw them in the trash can next to me.  Let me tell you, he was nonplussed by this act.  I don't think a guilty conscience has ever spurred me to fits of laughter before, but I couldn't help myself.  I felt just as ridiculous as I did guilty.  I even pulled the dandelions back out of the trash, but no amount of apologizing for my temporary insanity would wipe the "what did you do that for?" look off his face.

These days I have three or four vases in my kitchen window sill, and they're all filled with dandelions.

It's a good thing I like dandelions because they're all over our place.  I've never seen the point in trying to keep the kids from blowing the seeds all over creation–I mean, wouldn't the wind do pretty much the same thing, only not appreciate the experience nearly as much?  Now we're reaping what I've allowed them to sow.  We have a dandelion field in the back yard.  It almost looks like we did it on purpose.  But I guess in a a way we did.

I can't bring myself to call them weeds.  They're just too yellow for that.  Of course, they aren't quite as attractive when they go all white and fuzzy on you, but then again, what is?

If I were Sisyphus75, I could turn this into some lovely metaphor about life or the human condition, but unfortunately, I'm a selfish, insecure writer.  If I manage to come up with a metaphor I think is any good, I hoarde it in my mattress for fear it will be my last.   Anyway, I think the dandelion/life metaphor has been done before, by a writing mother with a greater sense of wonder than I.  I think I look at these dandelions more as a metaphor for my parenting style:  I'm too lazy to beat 'em, so I join 'em.

Now that's an ambiguous statement.

Speaking of the kids, Princess Zurg has officially adopted the ladybug Elvis accidentally maimed during his frolic with nature today.  Any pointers for us, powva?  (Other than "don't squish it anymore"?)

Madhousedreams (skip if you bore easily)So last night I dreamt that I was riding in a bus driven by two ladies who didn't know how to drive–at least that's what they told me.  We were following a tiny minivan which kept driving into the back of a huge minivan in front of it and backing out again.  Eventually we reached our destination, which was goodness knows where.  All I know is that I was in a big hurry to drop Princess Zurg off for a private tutoring session with her Sunday School teacher, who in real life is Mister Bubby's Sunday School teacher, but in the dream Mister Bubby had to go to school school.  I was helping him find his homework, which was buried in our barren front yard.  Somehow I knew exactly where to dig (with my fingers, of course, in very hard dirt), and I found the item he was looking for, which was a small plastic brain.  During this whole ordeal of dropping off PZ and hunting for MB's little brain, I was wondering how I could get my hands on a copy of a speech George W. Bush had given about Ronald Reagan on Martin Luther King Jr. Day of this year.  I didn't have the internet.  I tried calling 1-800-MARTINLUTHERKING or something like that.  All I got was a recording.  But MB had to get to school, and my mother, who is dead while I'm awake but almost always alive when I'm asleep, was helping me feed the boys breakfast, which for some reason was chunky vegetable soup with so many fresh herbs it was like eating boiled potatoes with grass.  In a light tomato sauce.  And I thought to myself, "Why does Ronald Reagan remind me of fresh herbs?"  Then I woke up.

One night while I was in college, my friend and I were talking about a guy she had dated in the recent past.  He had graduated the year before and had stayed on as the student activities director.  Yeah, we thought it was kind of lame, too.  Anyway, one of us, probably me, was reading a Glamour magazine, or something, and happened upon this offer from Hanes Her Way (or Jockey For Her or some other ladies underwear company) for a free pair of underpants if you sent in this business reply postcard.  So we filled out the card with this guy's name and had ladies underwear sent to his office in Student Life.  Some people, while they're in college, get drunk and do crazy things.  My friends and I didn't drink–not enough to get drunk, anyway–so we would get bored and do things that just made absolutely no sense.  It might have been funny, at the time or in retrospect, if we'd been drunk–but instead it was just kind of stupid.

I don't think my friend's ex ever got his free ladies underwear.  I'm sure the folks at Hanes or wherever figured out that this was the work of two very bored college students who didn't have enough sense to get drunk on the weekends.  (If we'd been drunk, the writing on the postcard would not have been as legible.)

While Sugar Daddy was serving his mission, he started getting mail from this 17-year-old girl he'd never met.  She had just converted to Mormonism and, I assume, was suddenly bored and wanted a pen pal, so some mutual acquaintance gave her SD's address in the mission field, and they started exchanging letters.  At one point in their correspondence she sent him a pair of ladies underpants.  I'm not talking about
Victoria's Secret or Fredericks of
Hollywood underwear–that might have made more sense.  No, it was actually just some run-of-the-mill cotton briefs.  SD claims he doesn't remember the context of this shipment.  What he does remember is that he and his missionary companion would take turns hiding the underwear in various indiscreet places so that when they were supposed to be sharing the gospel with some Honest Seeker Of Truth, one of them would reach into his coat pocket open his day-planner to get a brochure or a card, he would instead pull out a pair of ladies cotton briefs.  Apparently this went on for several weeks, until one of them was transferred to another area.  Ah, the secret lives of Mormon missionaries.  They don't get drunk much, either.

The reason I'm thinking about this now is that while the sibs-in-law were here last month, one of my bros-in-law left his underwear behind.  I'm not especially comfortable with having another man's underwear in my house, even if he is related to me by marriage.  It kind of gives me the creeps.  But I haven't done anything with them yet because it just seems wrong to send them back in the mail.  I just envision him opening this package from his sister-in-law, and ta da, it's underpants.  So what if it's his underpants?  It just seems weird.  I feel like I should be sending something else along with them, like, I don't know, a batch of cookies or something.  That would seem more wholesome.  But it's too hot to bake, so the underpants sit folded some random place in our bedroom.  Yeah, that seems weird, too.  I realize I'm giving this way too much thought.  You're probably going to advise me to have a drink and do something crazy.

With My Dreams Shall I Burden Thee

This is going to be a new, recurring feature in my blog, not because I think it will be interesting or entertaining, but because my dreams have been disturbing me as of late.  Because usually I don't dream.  I don't know if that's possible, but I don't usually remember dreaming.  But lately I've been having several bizarre dreams every night, and I wake up very confused.  So I need to get them off my chest, so to speak, and what better way to do that than to talk about them with strangers who couldn't care less?

So last night I dreamt that I was visiting my dad and his wife, and while I was sitting in their living room, my dad's wife walks in and hands me a sheet of paper, on which is written, "My baby died two weeks ago of a fever.  Life sucks."  Or something like that.  I immediately started bawling my head off.  I was really embarrassed because I seemed to be a lot more upset about it than my step-mother was, but I couldn't stop crying–I mean, I was wailing and sobbing with grief.  So when I finally calmed down a bit, I started asking her about the baby and how old she was (it was a girl, apparently), and while my step-mother was talking about her, I started thinking, "Wait–you're like, fifty-something, and you had a hysterectomy 20 years ago.  Where did you get a baby from?"  And then I woke up, very relieved no had died and my father wasn't reproducing this late in life.

In another dream I had a bathroom shower the size of my living room, and I was cleaning it with a mop.  Other people had left these blankets and quilts in there and they had gotten sopping wet, and I had no idea how or where I was going to move them so I could finish cleaning the shower.  Let me tell you, I was annoyed.  It wasn't a happy dream, either.

So those are my dreams of Sunday night.  Do with them what you will.  B.S. dream analyses are always welcome.