Looking back with Lot's Wife

December 27, 2000 Day 1: Thursday, December 21. You wake to find that the kids have filled your giant yellow Tupperware bowl with Fruit Loops, milk and five pounds of sugar—and have decided it would be fun to bathe the cat in it. In a situation like this, you can’t even think. “Don’t eat in front of the TV!” This vacation is going to be $#%&heck! Go back to bed and read Danielle Steele. Day 2: Friday, December 22. You decided to make sugar cookies with the kids. After all, this is Christmas and you want them to have happy memories. You get out the flour and sugar and soon everyone is happy dumping and sifting. Bowls appear and cookie sheets, the floor gets dirtier, flour is on all the shelves of your lazy Susan, cookies start to burn. Little brown-edged bells and tress come from the oven and Christmas sprinkles are all over. Gingerbread men with squashed legs and lopsided heads sport red-hot buttons. “Can we eat all the burned ones?” “Is this one good enough to give?” “Can I have t...

The job of being sisters Do you ever look at people in the grocery store and wish you had their hair or their long legs? Well, I do and then I think—gee, what if they have cancer or something I DON”T want? Like poof, that’s really going to happen to me. But I’m starting to think that I am so much (maybe too much) like several someone else’s: my brothers and sisters, those people who share my life experiences, genes, personal views, everything. Any mom, after awhile, starts to wonder if some of the kids did come from the mailman, the milkman and that salesman she talked to in ’72 encyclopedias. How could child number one and child number six even be related? In our society, individuality is so important. With millions of people on the earth, were frantically searching for any way we can say, “Hey, I’M not just another raindrop.” Bur we really are so much alike, particularly in the case of brothers and sisters. What made me start thinking about this was a poem about sisters by the German...

It fell amoung thieves A personal tragedy this past week causes me to reflect on two seemingly unrelated thoughts: At least once a week, someone gives me too much change, and I have to ask them if I can give them money back. And, coming home at two in the morning from a trip to Colorado, I sat at the stoplight by Central Bank and waited until it turned green. Have you ever been on Main Street at 2 a.m.? It’s the definition of empty. And yet, innocent as a lamb, I had my purse stolen Friday in Provo Canyon – it was broad daylight, and the canyon was anything but empty. I had parked at the Bridal Veil Falls parking lot – and no, I don’t want to buy it as a honeymoon present for my hubby. The sign up there tempts me every time I go by, but no. Lately my husband and I have been riding our bikes together around the industrial park. That suits me better. After a few session of aerobics at the Orem Rec Center – I’ve had all sorts of athletic events this week – I was going to make my “final as...