The utter joy of daughters

I'm so grateful to have my older daughter home from college for the summer. Without her here I wouldn't know:

That my arm hairs are getting freakishly long.

The calorie content of whatever I'm eating.

That my sweater is ugly.

That we have nothing good to eat in the house.

That I tell "everyone" "everything".

And last but not least, I wouldn't know how incredibly unhappy she is to be back home and how much she hates it. Hmmm. Being someplace you don't want to be and doing things you'd rather not be doing.  Welcome to my life.

I'm breaking out the gin and funny dog pictures. It's gonna be a looooong summer.

It sounds better with animal pictures

So I've been uncharacteristically bitchy the past few weeks. Life has seemed way too hard and everything gets on my nerves. It hasn't been a pretty sight.

But suddenly, from out of the blue, comes a compliment and a wonderful possibility... It's nice to know when you're noticed and appreciated. Being called a fine-ass tree princess doesn't hurt either.

So maybe soon I'll be able to shake off the reins and that damn, itchy saddle and run wild and free, my hair blowing in the wind and laughing at the world again. (But maybe with smaller teeth and less facial hair.)

Guilt and cookies

I got a call on my cell yesterday while I was at work. A perky, unfamiliar voice piped into my ear.

"Hi, this is Sis. Whatserbutt...from the ward? We're visiting people tomorrow night as a Relief Society presidency and we'd like to come visit you."

First of all, if her name starts with "sister", I figure she's from the ward. I'm not stupid. And I was supposed to be touched that they thought of poor little ol' apostate me. But when I replied that I was working that night and wouldn't be available, all I got was:

"Oh, okay! Bye!"

She sure didn't try very hard but she tried hard enough to count me as contacted! Her job was done.

But the Saturday of general conference, I had a very different sort of visit from my long-time visiting teacher. I don't see her often and that's been fine with me because any contact with the church tends to make me break out in hives and boils. But she showed up this day with a plate of cookies and a smile and asked if she could please still come and visit me and she was sorry she hadn't been better at coming regularly. I told her, of course she could! I'd always welcomed her when she came. I've known her for years and had been her visiting teacher years before when her husband died of cancer. We'd never been extremely close but we'd been casual friends. Then she blurted out something I never expected to hear.

"My son is gay!"

Shock and worry showed on her face and she started wringing her hands. "I shouldn't have said that! I don't know why I did!"

A very small part of me wasn't surprised at the idea of her son being gay. I'd watched him grow up and I'd wondered at times. But hearing the words actually come out of her mouth shocked the snot out of me. I could see how difficult those words were for her to say. I had an inkling of the path she'd traveled to even be able to utter those words. I knew she'd been inactive for a few years but I'd been going through my own faith crisis and hadn't given much thought about the reasons. I remembered her son had gone to the MTC and returned after a few weeks, not once, but twice. It doesn't take a genius to guess some of the reasons behind it. We will do lunch and share our pain and our paths to peace and acceptance, whatever they may be. She is reaching out to me, not because I'm an assignment, but because she wants a listening ear, understanding and acceptance. And I will gladly give it.

Well, that was a fast mourning period...

My trusty old laptop passed away this week. I didn't see it coming. One morning he was just...gone. I couldn't turn him on at all. (Kind of like the hubs.) He'd had close brushes with death before but I'd managed to pull him through. This time, though, he was really and truly gone and I didn't resort to fruitless heroic measures. As I cradled his dead carcass in my arms, I cried, "Oh fuck! What am I going to do now?! I need a computer!"

This cry was repeated to my baby sis and a miracle happened. Several days later a box arrived on my porch. As I opened it, my jaw dropped and I sat in stunned horror. I had asked for her old laptop but instead she had sent me...a new one. The first virgin laptop I have ever owned. And it's beautiful! Sleek and slim, it's like wearing petite-size pants after shopping for years at Lane Bryant. And this morning when I had the urge to blog I was about to get up and head for the couch in the living room where my old laptop sat (constantly plugged in to the wall because the battery wouldn't hold a charge) and then I realized I COULD JUST LAY IN BED AND USE MY LAPTOP WITH NO CORD! A real portable laptop! I could even take it to the bathroom with me! I could take it places like Starbucks and be a hipster blogger with coffee! I could take it to Starbucks bathroom! My world is suddenly bursting with possibilities! Like using  lots of caps and exclamation points! And it has all of it's keys! I have an "E" again!

And then I felt like a cheap slut. My old laptop had taken me through so much, how could I replace him so easily?! He gave me his all till he had nothing left to give. Meh. Easy come, easy go. I'll make sure he has a proper burial.

A paradigm shift of epic proportions

And it's time for the Annual General Conference in Utah. In other words, Mormons get to play hookey from church and shop on Sunday. But for those of us unlucky enough to live with devout Mormons, it means hearing those sing-voices drone on through session after session while we long for just a few shots of booze or possibly a good hit to help us cope with the tripe filling the airwaves. I realized yesterday as I tried not to listen, that my anger has only increased in intensity this time around. The arrogance of "only Mormons do good things" and the mental gynastics of "if you only have enough faith" make my brain hurt. Gazing at these faces just make me slightly nauseated now.

 I've been drawing my inspiration more and more from people like this:

And as I read and warched clips from the recent Reason Rally, I loved the feel, the look and the sound. It was as if General Conference had been taken over by a rock concert. But with way cooler people and making much more sense. I may not be an atheist yet, but if I can learn to enjoy babies for breakfast, maybe there's hope.