Looking back with Lot's Wife

What I want to know is: how do you remember all of it? To start at the beginning, our, my, canary died this week. And, as it is when a pet dies, even though you’ve often wondered why you bought it in the first place, it leaves a hole in your life, always a bigger hole than you thought. This little piece of life turns out to have been your best friend and confidante and you never realized it until they were gone. Our canary, Bright, was a baldheaded piece of yellow fluff that had lived through everything—cat attacking, air conditioner, people forgetting to feed her. She was so determined to succeed that she continuously laid eggs, but they never hatched. We finally bought tiny soft blue plastic ones so she would stop before she drained herself dry of whatever they make eggs from. When her mate died, we got another bird because we couldn’t stand watching her be what we assumed must be lonely. I got another female. At the time, I just thought she’d like to relax and talk to another woman....

So, what do you think about being fat? It’s in the news all the time lately. By the way, the next time someone tells you that all Utahns are fat, you might want to remind them that Utah is the ninth slimmest state in the Union according to the Center for Disease Control. Anyway, the New York Times just had a huge article in it’s weekly magazine about school lunches and obesity in kids. There are schools in San Francisco where the kids eat only organic foods and grow their own gardens during class time so that they’ll feel connected to the earth. It probably is a good idea, but doesn’t it have that touchy-feely, typical California over-reaction thing going on? Organic is a big issue but also low fat. The kids in my Sunday School class are of the opinion that they would eat school lunch if it was nutritious, a salad bar, for example. At least they were enthusiastic for a minute, and then they remembered that it was geeky to eat school lunch and changed their minds. Therein lies one...

Dear Mrs. Petersen, Thank you so much for my very first—well, not very first, someone once criticized me for saying something apparently not very funny about dead people—letter to the editor! I know, taking a shot at Las Vegas for being “cheap and tacky” is pretty much the easy way to go. I have since done extensive, as extensive as possible considering that today is Sunday and I don’t like to work on Sunday, research on Las Vegas and I have found some useful facts. The name Las Vegas means ‘the meadows” in Spanish. White settlers first discovered the area when a young scout named Rafael Rivera found Las Vegas Springs around Christmas Day in1829, an oasis in the desert. The first I-15-ers to be lured by the promise of free drinks were in covered wagons on the way to California. In 1855, Brigham Young sent a party of 30 there to convert the Piute Indians and maintain a hold on the mail route from Salt Lake to Los Angeles. A fort built there holds the record of being the oldest buil...

It’s Monday morning. I could have written this column Saturday but while THINKING about writing is great and having WRITTEN is great, writing, actually writing, is exactly like giving Sister Mary Michael three pages on The Mayor of Casterbridge in tenth grade. Sister Mary Michaels’s mouth was always, sort of, wet and now that I’m older, it occurs to me that maybe she was nervous. Maybe about getting papers from me. She used to say that I could say less in three pages than anyone she’d ever known. But that’s another story. I can’t stand being bored. I think, more than other people, I over-plan. My mom used to tell me constantly, “You’ve got too much going on, Betty,” when I would be listening to music, talking on the phone, watching TV and making a sandwich at the same time. Chaos—I love it! But that, too, is another story. On Friday we were supposed to drive to California, yet again, for the third time in a month and, while I was dreading it, I had thoroughly prepared—probably because ...

Very expensive $19.99 skirt As a special beginning-of-the-season holiday shopping season treat, I’m going to tell you the worst shopping story you’ve ever heard. It’s about my friend Susan and her $19.99 skirt. Once upon a time, there was a beautiful slim, intelligent, successful, 90’s kind of woman named Susan who had never owned a short skirt because, like all true beautiful, slim, blah, blah, blah 90’s kind of woman, she hated he body, especially her legs. She does wellness training—good mental health, stress management, ect. –for large corporations all over the country. She was in Washington, D.C. last month with a woman named Valerie who also does stress management training. Valerie had to be in New Jersey on Sunday night. It was important that she leave immediately after the Washington session and catch a plane to New Jersey at the Washington airport two hours away. One night during their week-long session together, Valerie bought this cute short skirt for $19.99 and talked Susan...