Looking back with Lot's Wife

Well, here it is, folks. The final exam of housewifery. The Grand Championship of Giving and the Pillsbury Bake-Off all rolled into one. The holiday season is upon us! Are you cute? Organized? Thrifty? Creative? Then you’re probably not reading this. This column is for the rest of us. The brave, the proud, the many—the ones who Just Don’t Get It. The ones who’s genetic makeup does not include the ability to distinguish the color “lightly brown” through the heat waves and can’t decide why anyone ever thought it up—and so are destined to never make cookies that don’t taste like homemade charcoal. The ones who can’t ever visualize a complete meal and so always forget something critical—like turkey or the dressing, or the gravy or the plates. The ones who can’t make neat square corners on packages and never think of anything more original than Scotch Tape to decorate with, and so every year, give presents that look like wads of wrapping paper that rattle when shaken. The ones for whom the ...

Secrets October 16, 1991 A girlfriend of mine owes $2,000 to the bank on a check overdraft, and she hasn’t told her husband—she’s paying it off in secret. If I did that, it would burn a hold in my soul and my husband would smell the cinders a mile away. I’d have a scarlet V (for Visa) lit up like a ferris wheel at night on my breast. A couple of weeks ago, at LDS General Conference, one of the speakers mentioned that we should keep certain thoughts and inspirations that we have secret or Satan would take that information and use it against us if we blab it everywhere. If you’re not LDS, that means that whenever you get a great idea and you blab it all over the place, it never works out. It’s a basic principle of life, even for non-Mormons. There are two kinds of people: those who can keep secrets and those who can’t. There are two kinds of secrets: those you should tell and those you can’t. I’m out for both counts—I can’t and I don’t and I won’t. On the other hand, you could grill my h...

‘I Swear…. The other day I told my eight year old that Saddam meant “shut up” in Arabic and that he was going to grow up to be just like Saddam Hussein if he didn’t stop telling his brother to shut up. OK. So I’m not Dr. Spock. The reason I started worrying about it in the first place was because of this little mother I met who told me that she never allowed her children to say shut up to each other ever. Gosh, I remember a hundred years ago when I had my first kids and I never used to let them say, “Shut up!” and we never bought Captain Crunch or watched TV before homework or ate junk food for snacks or said, “Gosh, Bishop, I’m just too busy to do that!” Those were the good old days. Or course, those kids are also in graduate school now and good responsible grown men and women. What’s going to happen to these little guys now that their mom has grown old and corrupt? So I decided we should maybe start first with language. What are the swear word in your house? I’ve noticed that everybo...

When You’re Not Cinderella Anymore If statistics are correct, slightly over half of the married people reading this article either will be or presently are step-parents, the heads of blended families. The biggest part of carrying this burden often falls on the stepmother—partly because everybody know you blame everything that happens at home on mom and partly because she’s most often there and available. Women are usually more than willing to accept the blame and kids instinctively know this. It’s as natural as playing in the mud in your Sunday clothes. So what are some of the most common complaints about being a stepmother besides having to spend extra time in the evening poisoning tomorrow’s apples and trying to pick up kids at school while at the same time staying on your broom? Virginia, step-mother of five and blended mom of eight, unequivocally states that “rudeness is the number one problem of being a stepparent.” Claudia, blended mom of ten, agrees with her wholeheartedly. Davi...

My Heroes Have Not Always Been Cowboys One of the most humiliating experiences of my last few years has been that I’ve started to like county music. This is snobbish, but when I was growing up, the only person in our house who listened to The Grand Old Opry was the maid. I never DREAMED that I would marry someone who listened to county music—let alone consider having children with him. And then on our honeymoon, my husband said, “Oh, look, honey, it’s five! Let’s listen to Hee Haw!” I assumed at first that he was joking and then when I realized that he wasn’t, I went in the bathroom and tried to figure out what I’d do. Was it too late for an annulment? Yes, it was. There was nothing that could be done. People marry people all the time and are surprised by what they don’t know. Those women on Donahue who marry guys who have eight other wives in other states and you can’t imagine how they got that way. That’s exactly how I felt. Completely stunned. No-it-could-never-happen-to-me stunned....

Winners and Losers Once upon a time, I wanted to be Relief Society President. If you’re not a Mormon, the Relief Society President is the head of a ward’s ladies’ aid group, so to speak. This was during my stage when I felt that getting “awards” was the main purpose of life and one of the “awards” I wanted was to be Relief Society President. Well, I didn’t get it. In fact, at one point when I really wanted it, someone I didn’t like got to be “it”. Well, I just bawled my head of. No Kidding, I couldn’t stop crying. I had to leave church and go home I was so upset. I look back on this stage of my life and wonder what possessed me. I would totally embarrassed except that I know that other people have gone through the same thing with their own goals and prizes. Now I see my own kids going through some of this same frustration. This time of year is award time. Kids come home with glowing report cards that tell tales of straight A’s and B’s and they get awards at assemblies for being the fas...