Well, since I’m all about rebelling, I got her book AND Obama’s book at the library. I intended to go through them and sort out the half-truths and also to try to find parts that sound exactly the same. I thought that would blow the ladies in the book club’s minds. I still might, but I’m finding it to be a rather tedious chore and I’m short of time these days.

(Let me digress a moment to point out that both people have messianic complexes. I heard a late night talk show host say that about Obama the other night–saying that he doesn’t care about being re-elected, he just wants to get his agenda pushed forward. But Palin’s book sure sounds like she feels the same way–called by God! That’s the similarity I’ve found so far) Read more »

Well, at our library, you can order books that the library doesn’t have. It’s called inter-library loan. I pay $1 per order and get whatever I want for a couple weeks. I used to do it all the time and still list books I read about, but haven’t ordered in years, mostly due to time constraints. I’m rushed all the time and I forget about it, etc. Anyway, the other day I took the time, filled out ten forms and sent for the books. About 4 days later, a book arrived, it was, uh, dang, I read it it one day, oh! No Time to Wave Goodbye, by Jacquelyn Mitchard. A few days later, seven more arrived. Yesterday, one more. I’m expecting one more, but I can’t remember what on earth it is. Read more »

Well, we rarely argue anymore and especially not the loud knock-down, drag-outs we used to have. But there are a few things we bicker about, albeit quietly. First, he drives me crazy. Because he’s afraid of the house burning down, so all the fixtures in our house have 60 W bulbs. And it feels dark in here to me. So I go uptown, buy some 100 W bulbs and switch them all out. Once he came home and walked in the kitchen and said, “Wow, you cleaned up the kitchen today!” When we re-did our kitchen, he and the electrician ganged up on me and I let him have his way. I still put 100 W bulbs in the lamps by the bed so I can read. Well, heavens, we’ve been married 29 years and the house hasn’t burned down yet. Read more »

Well, this is going to be things read in book. I can’t even remember the name of it, but I got on a self-help book kick and picked this book on communicating out of the library. It was kind of boring and hard to understand (go ahead and mock if you must), but there were two things I took from the book. One was this quote: “God help me to forgive all those who sin differently than I.” Profound. Read more »

This morning, as is my custom, I staggered out of bed (having gotten home from work at midnight, dinked around until 1 am, and fallen asleep at around 2 am) into the living room where Bill always leaves the paper (Daily News, St. George, UT) on the coffee table for me. I’ve never asked, but I think this is some sort of service thing he and our therapist have agreed upon and now I take it for granted. He’s quite religious about it and it’s a sweet thing because he doesn’t read the paper that much, but even for him to acknowledge this is important to me is pretty big. So….

This morning there was an article about a newly re-vamped Catholic Church in St. George and its dedication, with Elder Russell M. Ballard listed as a keynote speaker. I’m so glad. So glad to read about this and know we’re coming a long way, baby, toward accepting and embracing the validity of other faiths. I don’t know if this happens regularly; I’ve never heard of it before, but that doesn’t mean anything. Read more »

I worked Saturday till 8:30. I’m tired this morning and tempted to stay in bed all day. I feel mellow and at peace which is a rarity these days. I can hear Bill banging around in other parts of the house. Sundays with him are less than serene days of spirital growth. He can’t sit still. This morning I’m feeling mellow so it doesn’t bother me as much.
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I’ve always read the Ensign from cover to cover, but I haven’t always enjoyed it or been inspired or uplifted. But I love the changes that have been made. I can’t put my finger on it exactly but the “feng shu,” is better. There’s a different spirit to it — in some ways the articles remind me of some of the blog posts I’ve read. They’re more pertinent, gentler, less preachy. And more to the point of my experiences and inner challenges. I’ve found myself unable to put it down.
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I always read the Drudge Report, started when the Bush-Gore debacle happened. He’s biased, but I like the way the news is presented, the “fung shei” of the site, so I read it daily.

I couldn’t come up with anything terribly profound for a post today, but there are some things on Drudge that gave me pause.
Here are a few:

Naked woman leads police on chase in Utah.

Boy, I bet she was embarrassed when she sobered up. The really embarrassing thing is that she stole two cars—and one was a police car! I bet it was West Valley City. Read more »

I’m on a non-fiction kick with my reading. Don’t know why; some glitch in my brain or something.

Anyway, I read The Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (my new writer crush –wow!); that book about Chernobyl, a book about a woman who was in a Turkish prison because she bought some antique relic (redundant?) from a street vendor, and I’m working on a book about the hunt for Eichmann. I have Sarah Palin’s book waiting in the wings, which looks quite boring to me, but we’ll see.

This is what I’ve learned: Read more »

I’m not much of an intellectual or artistic genius, but after my son died, I had a period where I read every poetry book I could get my hands on. Not much Wordsworth or the longer poems, but I enjoyed the ones that were short and made a point, or painted a word picture. Here’s a few that I really liked. You guys want to share some of your favorites? Any genre, funny or bawdy—have any of you heard of David Lee? His pig poetry is so funny! But bad words.

Anyway, I don’t remember where I got this poem, but it’s lovely. Read more »

When I was 7, we lived for a time on a little ranchette south of Caliente, Nevada, one of Nevada’s many old dirt towns. My dad lived with us there, unlike most of the other places we lived.

It wasn’t a bad few months (there are caveats to that, but this is the sum of my limited memory and I won’t go into the crud here). I kind of liked it—I would hold Sunday School (we knew one song “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know”) out in the yard. I bullied my little sisters into participating. There were some good moments in that house. Read more »

My first prayers were unanswered. Heartfelt, pleading prayers given by my 8 year old self for the Lord to help me quit cussing. Cussing was learned behavior, picked up from the constant violent fights of my parents. I prayed for other things—for my dad to come back. That we would have food. That kind of thing.

My prayer life has evolved and been rather a roller coaster ride reflecting my life’s ups and downs and spiritual development. I believe in God.
Most of my prayers as an adult have been out of obedience, not faith. God truly has answered my prayers in stunning ways, despite my personal spiritual failings.

When I began to go to 12 step groups, I began to understand how God works in answering prayers and my own powerlessness in my life. My faith grew–baby steps.

But when I left Bill in March 2008, I took a giant leap forward prayer-wise. I was dealing with health, finances, and of course the myriads of personal issues related to the separation. The sense of freedom was exhilarating and I loved most of the aspects of living alone. But it was scary and my job was totally out of my comfort zone.

I worried constantly about being fired. I had a couple of co-workers who made life miserable for me—and for most of the girls. Feeling overwhelmed and helpless, I knelt very day and just poured my heart and turned my problems to the Lord. I was impatient—he didn’t seem to answer my prayers as quickly as I wished but dang, He answered them in startling ways.

My faith grew. I felt like a terrible sinner, having walked out on a temple marriage to a good man. I’d left behind a neighborhood reeling from the sex abuse scandal and the aftershock of one person bent on bitter interactions with every one of us. I felt like a rat deserting a sinking ship.

But the Lord poured His love upon me in a way that I will never be able to deny.

I still pray that way. Sometimes I’m praying by rote, especially if I’m exhausted. But I don’t often forget that I’m not in charge of my life and my best efforts can’t solve my problems. I need God. I pray—talk to Him all dang day long about everything. Sometimes I ask Him to remind me to pray about something later. Sometimes at work, knowing I’ll forget, I say a quick prayer in my heart for a caller who is experiencing pain in their life. I say a lot of “sparrow prayers” as Cheiko Okazaki calls them. He helps me find a lot of lost things :).

I also have to be careful not to forget Him when my prayers are answered. It’s so easy to think “oh, I’m having a good day, I totally rock!” It’s important to give the glory and gratitude to the Lord. To stay humble.

My husband is a doer. He’s a workaholic and task oriented. I shared my philosophy of prayer with him and he said “But I have to do everything I can first before I turn to the Lord.” I believe this actually translates to “I HAVE to do EVERYTHING.” Period.

Mormons are workers and doers. I suspect more people feel like Bill does rather than like I do.

How about you? Have any of you had a paradigm shift regarding prayer? What caused it? How do you approach the Lord in prayer—and do you feel there are trivial and unimportant prayers that impose on the Lord and waste his time? How important is prayer in your life?

PS–Can’t find the “more” link. Would one of my co-bloggers fix it? And why haven’t heard from some of you lately?

I picked up this book at the library the other day called “Wormwood Forest” by Mary Mycio, an American reporter of Ukraine descent. Ukranian? I wish I could say I’m reading it and as far as possible, I am reading it, but it’s pretty scientific and technical and I’ve skipped parts that are simply beyond my understanding. Numbers relating to types of radioactive penetration, etc.

She lives in Kiev and was allowed into ground zero, donning protective gear and carrying a dossimeter. With a friend and various guides, Mary explored villages (where people still live!), forests, former farmlands, and walked on grass planted over mounds of radioactive equipment covered by tons of dirt. The whole place is fully of radiation.

The big news here is that the whole place is thriving—trees, flowers, bugs, birds and all kinds of wildlife. People are alive around Chernobyl. Did you guys know that radiation sort of evaporates into the air and gradually just depletes altogether?

The elk—I think that’s what they mean by “red deer”–and the moose population is huge around Chernobyl. Birds are all over the place, although she reports the stork population has gone downhill because storks like to live around farms and human population. Trees are growing, many stunted and deformed. But there’s life. She said that the animals that are born mutated don’t live so the very strongest have survived. Everything’s radioactive–the radioactive deer eat from radioactive meadows, but they’re alive and jumping all over the place.

The young people of the area around Chernobyl–Ukraine & Belarus both lay claim to infected parts of the area—have mostly left. Of course people died, of the leukemia and thyroid cancer, long term, and radiation sickness, short term. She hasn’t mentioned young couples with babies. Some of the people living the area buy their food from traveling shops, avoiding contamination. Others, who live in rather slovenly conditions, eat mushroom, blueberries and other native vegetation growing in abundance (and, she says, are beautiful, tempting, and reeking of radiation).

Putting aside my faith in God, who will ultimately determine what happens to this planet Earth, global warming or no, it seems clear to me that life—if not life as we know it—can’t be totally destroyed. Trees and flowers are growing on Mt. St. Helen’s. We had a terrible fire just south of us that burned acres of forest by the freeway. It jumped the road and as we drive down to St. George, you can see the devastation. But things are growing back. The earth re-generates.

People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have no clue how many died there, surely hundreds of thousands, but many lived. Life went on. I could say wildlife continues to overcome nature’s obstacles, plants and trees survive, change and prosper, but guess what? People are part of earth’s wildlife, we just think we’re more civilized. Many die, many mutate, but we survive. Death by disaster is a natural part of life, even if the disaster is man-made. But I’m not as worried as I was before I picked up this book. I could die in an atomic bomb attack. But I could live. Maybe I wouldn’t live well. Maybe I would live a shorter life, living on radioactive green beans and eating radioactive fish—we could all be radioactive together. But, bottom line, we can’t (all) be killed.

I hate holidays. All holidays except Halloween because when I was a little girl it meant food. But basically, every holiday in the world is just an excuse to BUY EXPENSIVE CARDS AND PRESENTS!!! I just find it the height of foolishness to pay $ 5 for a card to say “I Love You” just because it’s tradition. People, we are making Hallmark rich.

Holidays mean work for women. Every holiday, even Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is one of the worst holidays of all, because a lot of moms aren’t even moms. Or they have messed up somewhere and Mother’s Day is just another reminder to them and it brings most women down, in my opinion.

I love to watch “The Middle.” They’re all so goofy. But I really loved this week’s show. The mom in the show kept remembering how she’d rubbed her husband’s feet, made him a 3 course breakfast, bought him a wonderful present & let him lay around all day undisturbed. Then her family made her a sucky breakfast, got her a stupid gift, and bugged her all day. She decides to go visit her mom, who’s underwhelmed to see her since she was looking forward to spending the whole day alone. And she reverts to being a child, with her mom waiting on her and making a mess (I totally thought of Sarah LOL). They get in a fight and she says to her mom “you didn’t want me with you on Mother’s Day?” And HER daughter, who’d gone with her said, “Mom, you didn’t want to be with US on Mother’s Day?”

This is my suggestion to dads everywhere for Mother’s Day. Saturday morning, clean the house, then pack up the kids and leave. Go camping or something. No, then she’ll have to clean it up. Take them to visit your mom. Leave your wife home, with a box of chocolates, a pile of magazines, bubble bath, a couple of movies, and a steak thawing in the fridge. Don’t come home or call (for any reason, if one of the kids dies, she can find out on Monday). In fact, unplug all the phones and turn the ringer off on her cell. Tell the bishop she’s coming with you so she doesn’t have to go to church. Or maybe she would enjoy church alone for a change.

If you don’t have children, for heaven’s sake, keep her away from church that day. Take her to a spa. Take her to the Little American for their grand brunch. Buy her a bunch of tulips or daisies and good chocolate. DO NOT MAKE HER GO TO CHURCH WHERE SHE WILL HAVE TO STAND (OR NOT) TO GET HER WILTED BEGONIA.

Anybody got any other suggestions?

But basically, I think we’ve all been emotionally blackmailed into creating work for ourselves and income for card & gift companies for totally made up holidays. If people treated their moms like they should all the time, there’d be no need for Mother’s Day.

I carry a grudge. I did this color thing from a book and I’m a “blue.” Blues are caretakers, but they carry a grudge and have high expectations of others. I have such a sense of outrage when I’m wronged and fantasize revenge. One really bad side effect of that is that I also feel that way toward myself.

But, because I’m a religious person, I don’t feel good about myself when I’m in that unforgiving mode. And then I beat myself up even more. We are supposed to forgive.

My sister’s grandchildren were horribly abused by their stepmother, who is in prison for what she did. My sister speaks to me often of her struggle to forgive. She prays for this woman. She wants to forgive her, to feel peace. But she would also like to torture this woman as badly as the woman tortured the children.

I, too, pray to be able to forgive. I pray for the people who’ve wronged me and ask God to bless them and to help me to put the bitterness aside.

The conclusion I’ve come to with this is that sometimes this is all the forgiveness that’s humanly possible. When the grievance is so outrageous, so life altering, I believe the best I can do is want to forgive them. I’ve not forgiven, but I’m in the process of forgiving.

I hear platitudes about forgiveness, scriptures, and get preached to sometimes. All this makes me tired because they often come from a person who has no concept of being truly injured. We’re not talking somebody calling us a bitch, we’re talking about–in my sister’s case, say—someone who tortured children.

I often refer to the book “The Sunflower” by Simon Weisenthal. I believe this is one of the best treatments of the subject of forgiveness in the history of time. Some sins can only be wiped out by God. And until then, we can be in the process of forgiving. And call it good.

So I got a call from a survey company, I can’t remember the name but it wasn’t that one the media is always quoting. Or “are” always quoting. Whatever.

Anyway, this is how I responded:
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I’m off work for the first Saturday in awhile and I’m going to watch conference and place my pithy comments. I’m not up with the latest on general authorities or church trends, so they may not be apropo, but I suppose you can set me straight. The inkling I have of the church comes from reading the Ensign, which I’m enjoying these days.

I don’t know where my co-bloggers are — maybe translated or something. I do have to run to Bountiful Baskets at 10:30.

One of the things I enjoy during conference weekend are the stories KSL does between sessions, so I’ll comment on those as well, between cleaning house. They could be called “The Carole Mikita Show” but it’s all good.

My sister, who never sends forwards, sent me this and I love it. Since MM has been basically comatose for the last little while, I figured what could it hurt if I posted two things in five minutes? These are fun.

1. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
And do my hair and makeup so I look gorgeous in the casket

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.
Basically, story of my life Read more »

We held the Relief Society Book Club at my house yesterday. Because of my job, my house is filthy. It’s sort of surface clean, in that there’s no visible clutter and acceptable. This time I left it pretty much as is—scrubbed the toilet (last time, I cleaned and mopped and scrubbed to beat the band, set the table with china and cooked all day). I served chips and salsa. And I got home only 10 minutes before it was supposed to start because my friend, Jane, and I had gone to the Mormon Women Writers presentation at the university. Interesting and thought-provoking, but not soul-searing. I would have liked to stay for question and answer, but I had to go home so we could talk about Kathy Soper’s book “The Year My Son and I Were Born.” Read more »

I’ve only been to one book club meeting in the last couple of years, because of my job. It was at my house. We read, something about a Jewish person. I think it was by Chaim Potok—dang, I can’t remember the book! Anyway, this is what I remember: I made yummy chicken salad and green salad and brie baked in phyllo and shrimp cocktail. We had assorted cookies. I’d bought this really pretty china set at a yard sale and I set the table all pretty and we had a tea party in my new dining room filled with light. It was so fun. Read more »