My PseudoAunt Jillian's family has convened to celebrate the birthday of Tim, her youngest brother. It's turned into a week-long party. The only downside is that no one is passing any booze in my direction. I'm living vicariously through other tipsy people. We're close enough to everything at our hotel that no one needs to drive. I can drive legally, but no one is asking me to drive because everyone but my Uncle Scott has rental cars, which don't allow drivers my age to operate them. My Uncle Scott just says that he likes his car the way it is, without any major dents or deployed airbags. What a buzzkill!
PseudoAunt herself hasn't consumed alcohol becasue she's recovering from a renal calculus procedure. She doesn't drink that much anyway. She went to BYU, and probably gave up the habit of drinking while she ws there. Demerol and Vicodin trump booze any day, apparently. One of PseudoAunt's sisters-in-law is every bit as sober as I am because she's pregnant. She's taking every opportunity to poke fun at the drunks, which is pretty funny, because when she's not pregnant, she's the single largest consumer of alcohol in the entire group. She thinks it doesn't count because she only drinks fine wine. Drunk is drunk, I told her. At least she can stop when she's preggers. She thinks that is proof positive that she doesn't have a problem with alcohol. I say the verdict is not yet in on that one.
I derive a great deal of pleasure from watching people who are under the influence of mood-altering substances. People I ordinarily would barely tolerate are hysterical when they get a little moonshine in their systems. I'm not naming names here.
Cheers!
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Andrew's Sermons While Sober and PseudoAunt's Pontifications While on Vicodin
My PseudoAunt is under the influence of a couple of legally prescribed and medically indicated mind-altering substances. She's been pontificating in a lengthy post to our cyber-friend. I told her twice that her clarity has become seriously compromised by the medications she has taken, and that she might wake up in the morning and wonder why we allowed her to go on and on about whatever topic it is that she's addressing. She's veered sharply with few if any transitions between themes involving Theresa of Judge Alex's fan page (and soon not to be of Judge Alex's page, if Theresa's predictions of her demise on the page are to be believed), hurricanes, the lack of a clear mission in the hearts and minds of many military servicemen and women, and the lack of scruples in certain individuals, who will use the obvious absence of sanity of other posters as a forum for their own jokes.
It's unfortunate that PseudoAunt is not a member of a church where women preach sermons, because all one would need to do would be to give her a Vicodin and perhaps an ibuprofen for good measure, then steer her toward a pulpit, wind her up, and let her talk. Church would instantly become less boring and worth paying attention.
My sort-of-cousin Abdrew is really great at giving bogus sermons. He has several down pat, but he can also wing it on a given topic. He just spouts complete madness for the most part, but he does it in a sort of vitriolic manner that would make most people hearing him wonder if he might be serious in what he says. He talks about how Jesus is opposed to gun control because when people ask the Lord to protect them, they ask as though it is God's total responsibility to take care of everyone without any of us as much as lifting a finger in our own defense. Andrew likens it to the part of the Lord's Prayer that says, "Give us this day our daily bread." We wouldn't pray that prayer but then sit on our butts all day, not working, not growing any food, or at least not collecting cans on the side of the road in order to have sufficient funds to purchase something from the dollar menu at Wendy's. According to Andrew, just as we woulnd't sit idly, praying for food but doing nothing to produce it or to produce the funds that would provide it, we owe it to God and to ourselves to keep AK47's or whatever they're called, in our closets and under our beds to aid God in protecting us. His delivery is virtually flawless.
Andrew was not a great student. He did well in an occasional class, but for the most part, he just took tests but did almost no class assignments except for the ones of which his mother was aware and absolutely insisted that he do. Even with his lack of productivity, most of his teachers liked him because he was funny. Many people strive to be class clowns without the skills to back up the job description. One cannot successfully hold down the position of Class Clown unless the person is genuinely funny. Andrew is genuinely funny. So is PseudoAunt when she's had a Vicodin or two.
PseudoAunt's emails and PMs tonight sounded a lot like Andrew's sermons except that she wasn't attempting to be funny. If it were not a form of drug abuse, someone could give PseudoAunt Vicodin and maybe a benzo of some sort, then push her onto a stage. The smartest thing would be to tell her she was to give a serious academic discourse rather than tell her she was doing stand-up comedy. She'd probably be funnier if she didn't know she was supposed to be funny.
It's unfortunate that PseudoAunt is not a member of a church where women preach sermons, because all one would need to do would be to give her a Vicodin and perhaps an ibuprofen for good measure, then steer her toward a pulpit, wind her up, and let her talk. Church would instantly become less boring and worth paying attention.
My sort-of-cousin Abdrew is really great at giving bogus sermons. He has several down pat, but he can also wing it on a given topic. He just spouts complete madness for the most part, but he does it in a sort of vitriolic manner that would make most people hearing him wonder if he might be serious in what he says. He talks about how Jesus is opposed to gun control because when people ask the Lord to protect them, they ask as though it is God's total responsibility to take care of everyone without any of us as much as lifting a finger in our own defense. Andrew likens it to the part of the Lord's Prayer that says, "Give us this day our daily bread." We wouldn't pray that prayer but then sit on our butts all day, not working, not growing any food, or at least not collecting cans on the side of the road in order to have sufficient funds to purchase something from the dollar menu at Wendy's. According to Andrew, just as we woulnd't sit idly, praying for food but doing nothing to produce it or to produce the funds that would provide it, we owe it to God and to ourselves to keep AK47's or whatever they're called, in our closets and under our beds to aid God in protecting us. His delivery is virtually flawless.
Andrew was not a great student. He did well in an occasional class, but for the most part, he just took tests but did almost no class assignments except for the ones of which his mother was aware and absolutely insisted that he do. Even with his lack of productivity, most of his teachers liked him because he was funny. Many people strive to be class clowns without the skills to back up the job description. One cannot successfully hold down the position of Class Clown unless the person is genuinely funny. Andrew is genuinely funny. So is PseudoAunt when she's had a Vicodin or two.
PseudoAunt's emails and PMs tonight sounded a lot like Andrew's sermons except that she wasn't attempting to be funny. If it were not a form of drug abuse, someone could give PseudoAunt Vicodin and maybe a benzo of some sort, then push her onto a stage. The smartest thing would be to tell her she was to give a serious academic discourse rather than tell her she was doing stand-up comedy. She'd probably be funnier if she didn't know she was supposed to be funny.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Jessica Beagley Is Convicted; Other News
Sistter Jessica Beagley, LDS mother of six, two of whom included adopted Russion twins, was convicted of the single count of child abuse with which she was charged. She'll be sentenced on Monday. I'm really curious as to what her sentence will be. The maximum is something like a year in jail and a fine. I'm not sure either of these penalties would help her tiny and vulnerable son. I don't know what would help him. What if she were sentenced to taking both little Kristoff and his twin brother each by themselves to do something actually fun once or twice a month, where they could each have her undivided attention, and where she wasn't yelling at some kid to eat his or her oatmeal while ear-splittingly drilling another kid on spelling words? Perhaps that would accomplish more than any monetary fine, jail term, or mandatory community service sentence.
The Russian consulate has supposedly threatened to take the child back to Russia if she was convicted. I'm not at all certin that would be in his best interests, either. Neither the orphanage in which he previously resided nor the parents whose lifestyles sent him to that orphanage in the first place would be much of an improvement over Sister beagley' care. Maybe Sister Beagley just needs help, although the way she sought it - by sending tapes to Dr. Phil as opposed to consulting professionals in her own area who are trained to help with such matters, would cause one to think she was more motivayed by the 7.5 minutess of fame that reality television typically offers these days, as opposed to any actual practical assistance she might have received in dealing with the behavior of a troubled little boy. Regardless of her motivations for anything that she's done, or, for that matter, for what she actually deserves in terms of justice, I hope that the guiding force in all of this is what is best for the poor child already harmed enough in this process.
Mt PseudoAunt Jillian underwent a procedure to pilverize her renal calculus into piecess small enough to pass easily. The procedure appears to have been successful. She's already far more comfortable than she was a day ago. Her parents and brothers andd their families were already here celbrating the birthday of her youngest brother, which is nice for her. My parents came as well, becaus my father is a board-certified anaesthesiologist who provided her general anaesthesia for the procedure.
For the remainder of the week, we'll do fun thing as she getss stronger. My job is mostly to keep an eye on the small children when their parents need me to do so. Yhis is something I enjoy doing. If teaching were not such a miserable profession, with less-than-great pay while legislators who haven't a clue as to how education really happens enact legislation all over the place dictating how the job must be done, I could consider teaching as a profession. As things stand, it's out of the question for me.
Have a pleasant night!
The Russian consulate has supposedly threatened to take the child back to Russia if she was convicted. I'm not at all certin that would be in his best interests, either. Neither the orphanage in which he previously resided nor the parents whose lifestyles sent him to that orphanage in the first place would be much of an improvement over Sister beagley' care. Maybe Sister Beagley just needs help, although the way she sought it - by sending tapes to Dr. Phil as opposed to consulting professionals in her own area who are trained to help with such matters, would cause one to think she was more motivayed by the 7.5 minutess of fame that reality television typically offers these days, as opposed to any actual practical assistance she might have received in dealing with the behavior of a troubled little boy. Regardless of her motivations for anything that she's done, or, for that matter, for what she actually deserves in terms of justice, I hope that the guiding force in all of this is what is best for the poor child already harmed enough in this process.
Mt PseudoAunt Jillian underwent a procedure to pilverize her renal calculus into piecess small enough to pass easily. The procedure appears to have been successful. She's already far more comfortable than she was a day ago. Her parents and brothers andd their families were already here celbrating the birthday of her youngest brother, which is nice for her. My parents came as well, becaus my father is a board-certified anaesthesiologist who provided her general anaesthesia for the procedure.
For the remainder of the week, we'll do fun thing as she getss stronger. My job is mostly to keep an eye on the small children when their parents need me to do so. Yhis is something I enjoy doing. If teaching were not such a miserable profession, with less-than-great pay while legislators who haven't a clue as to how education really happens enact legislation all over the place dictating how the job must be done, I could consider teaching as a profession. As things stand, it's out of the question for me.
Have a pleasant night!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Sister Jessica Beagley, Stake Primary Presideny Extraordinaire, Gets Her Day (or Week) in Court
The trial of Jessica Beagley, known to many of us because of her infamous appearance on "Dr. Phil," is standing trial this week for what is, I believe, a single count of misdemeanor child abuse. A jury was selected yesterday, and opening arguments took place today. The videotape that was aired on "Dr. Phil" was allegedly shown to the six jurors and two alternates. More videotape allegedly exists and waa supposedly taken into possession by the Anchorage Police Department. It will be interesting to see if the out-takes were even more incriminating than the one we actually saw, or if they were merely bloopers.
In a San Joaquin Valley city where my cousins live, a woman who was a teacher at one of the local high schools shot her husband and daughter-in-law minutes apart while allegedly accusing them of being romantically involved. The woman then ran down the street, at some point losing her clothing. She was found shortly thereafter by the local police department's K-9 unit hiding in a trash can in her birthday suit.
I haven't been to law school yet, but even without benefit of legal education, I can say without equivocation that this is a case in which I would've begged my client to take the best plea offer she could get. She accidentally shot two people accidentally, minutes apart, and then hid with no clothes on in a trash can several blocks from her home? This stretches the bounds of credulity.
You're probably wondering what the hell this case has to do with
Jessica Beagley's trial. The answer is very little, except for one minor point. The teacher, whom my cousin knew by sight but had not taken classes from, was a very frumpy sixty-ish looking woman with frazzled hair, ill-fitting and un-stylish clothing, and comsmetics, when appled at all, done haphazardly and in shades that did not enhance the woman's overall appearance. Prior to her trial, the woman's attorney arranged for some sort of makeover for the woman. In court she looked like a competent, nicely-coiffed, attractive professional. She still lost her case, but I'm sure her makeover at least lengthened the time the jury spent deliberating, and probably resulted in a shorter sentence for her than she otherwise would have received.
Jessica Beagley's haircut looks as though it was done by one of her six childrem -- probably whichever one likes her the least, which would presumably be Kristoff, the hot sauce boy-- using those scrap-booking scissors that have various designs of scalloped edges. She's not inherently an ugly woman, but she would benefit from skillful and subtle application of cosmetics and careful choice of wardrobe for court appearances. Perhaps a pair of glasses that would lend a less harsh look to her appearance could also be of benefit to Sister Beagley. The way she looks is the way many Stake Primary Presidents look, but it's not necessarily an advantageous look when one is on trial for child abuse. That is, it's not advantageous unless Sister Beagely, in being judged by a jury of her peers, was lucky enough to empanel a jury of Stake Primary Presidents. In that case, she'll walk.
I haven't a clue how this case will go, but I suspect it's been won or lost already by either side in jury selection. If I could see the jury, even without knowing a thing about them, I could probably tell you what the outcome of the trial will be.
In a San Joaquin Valley city where my cousins live, a woman who was a teacher at one of the local high schools shot her husband and daughter-in-law minutes apart while allegedly accusing them of being romantically involved. The woman then ran down the street, at some point losing her clothing. She was found shortly thereafter by the local police department's K-9 unit hiding in a trash can in her birthday suit.
I haven't been to law school yet, but even without benefit of legal education, I can say without equivocation that this is a case in which I would've begged my client to take the best plea offer she could get. She accidentally shot two people accidentally, minutes apart, and then hid with no clothes on in a trash can several blocks from her home? This stretches the bounds of credulity.
You're probably wondering what the hell this case has to do with
Jessica Beagley's trial. The answer is very little, except for one minor point. The teacher, whom my cousin knew by sight but had not taken classes from, was a very frumpy sixty-ish looking woman with frazzled hair, ill-fitting and un-stylish clothing, and comsmetics, when appled at all, done haphazardly and in shades that did not enhance the woman's overall appearance. Prior to her trial, the woman's attorney arranged for some sort of makeover for the woman. In court she looked like a competent, nicely-coiffed, attractive professional. She still lost her case, but I'm sure her makeover at least lengthened the time the jury spent deliberating, and probably resulted in a shorter sentence for her than she otherwise would have received.
Jessica Beagley's haircut looks as though it was done by one of her six childrem -- probably whichever one likes her the least, which would presumably be Kristoff, the hot sauce boy-- using those scrap-booking scissors that have various designs of scalloped edges. She's not inherently an ugly woman, but she would benefit from skillful and subtle application of cosmetics and careful choice of wardrobe for court appearances. Perhaps a pair of glasses that would lend a less harsh look to her appearance could also be of benefit to Sister Beagley. The way she looks is the way many Stake Primary Presidents look, but it's not necessarily an advantageous look when one is on trial for child abuse. That is, it's not advantageous unless Sister Beagely, in being judged by a jury of her peers, was lucky enough to empanel a jury of Stake Primary Presidents. In that case, she'll walk.
I haven't a clue how this case will go, but I suspect it's been won or lost already by either side in jury selection. If I could see the jury, even without knowing a thing about them, I could probably tell you what the outcome of the trial will be.
Finding Wisdom Wherever It Is: Vai Sikahema, My Dad, and Mormonism
Those of you who have read very many of my blogs know that only rarely have I passed on any opportunity to point out oddities in the religious practices in a large number of my relatives. This is not to say that I believe that all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
are lacking in sanity, intelligence, or enlightenment. My dad, as a football fan and a former Utah resident when he was in college, reads online editions of some Utah newspapers. One columnist of whose writings he is especially fond is Vai Sikahema.
Vai Sikahema is a former NFL running back and special teams player who spent most of his eight-year professional football career with the Philadelphia Eagles. Sikahema immigrated to the US from Tonga as a young child. He was raised mostly in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona. He played football for BYU, with his college football career spanning some of the years my father attended BYU. Following his retirement from football, Vai Sikahema found employment covering sports for an NBC affiliate. I believe he now works for the network, although I'm unsure. He also authors a column, "Vai's View" for The Deseret News.
My dad sent me several columns to read when I was being treated for PTSD at an inpatient facility. I liked much of what Mr. Sikahema had to say, so I began reading the column regularly and also searching the archives for past columns. Sometimes the columns were interesting. At other times they were thought-provoking. Sometimes they were humorous. I didn't and don't always agree with everything Mr. Sikahema writes, as he's a died-in-the-wool Mormon and far more conservative than I. Still, even when I don't agree, I read what he has to say.
One column dealt with modesty in clothing for females. I thought it was a bit sexist in that it addressed the topic of female sports uniforms as being immodest when they're comparable to male sports teams' uniforms in terms of total body coverage. Additionally, he was critical of prom gowns with spaghetti straps or even worse, no straps at all. My prom gown was strapless. In all honesty, I wasn't specifically looking for a strapless prom dress, but the one I liked best in terms of fabric, color, and style happened to be strapless, so I bought and wore it. On the other hand, I don't own a bikini, don't wear shorts that are very short, and don't wear clothing that exposes my midriff. For the most part, even Mr. Sikahema would probably consider my wardrobe essentially modest. For me it's not a huge issue because my parents have never made a big deal out of what kind of swimsuit I wore or the overall amount of coverage most of my clothing provides. For Mr. Sikahema, it apparently is. For the record, if I were to attend an LDS function, I would not be so disrespectful as to wear anything that would be considered offensive there.
I suspect Vai Sikahema would not like me personally, as I am not always respectful of my elders and I occasionally disparage things that he would consider sacred, but he doesn't know me, so it's not even an issue. I read what he writes. If it's in line with my own values and belief system, fine, If it isn't, I chalk it up to cultural difference. Either way, it causes me no pain.
In a particular column he wrote about the diversity of the LDS church in the New Jersey area where his family presently resides. The people and incidents he described were ones I'd truly like to experience, such as an African-American female who sings her testimony during Fast and Testimony meeting, or a child who, when asked after being baptized to go back into the fontto pull the plug and drain it, did a cannonball and drenched the first three rows of attendees at his baptism. I hate to think of what would have happened if I'd done that when I was baptized for the dead at the manti Temple. I probably would not be alive to write this blog if such had been the case. That sort of thing is incredibly foreign to the white-bread Utah-sanitized version of the LDS Church that I've always known.
I would provide a link except that any link I have just goes to The Deseret News site and not directly to Mr. Sikahema's column. Google him sometime. He has interesting ideas to share.
are lacking in sanity, intelligence, or enlightenment. My dad, as a football fan and a former Utah resident when he was in college, reads online editions of some Utah newspapers. One columnist of whose writings he is especially fond is Vai Sikahema.
Vai Sikahema is a former NFL running back and special teams player who spent most of his eight-year professional football career with the Philadelphia Eagles. Sikahema immigrated to the US from Tonga as a young child. He was raised mostly in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona. He played football for BYU, with his college football career spanning some of the years my father attended BYU. Following his retirement from football, Vai Sikahema found employment covering sports for an NBC affiliate. I believe he now works for the network, although I'm unsure. He also authors a column, "Vai's View" for The Deseret News.
My dad sent me several columns to read when I was being treated for PTSD at an inpatient facility. I liked much of what Mr. Sikahema had to say, so I began reading the column regularly and also searching the archives for past columns. Sometimes the columns were interesting. At other times they were thought-provoking. Sometimes they were humorous. I didn't and don't always agree with everything Mr. Sikahema writes, as he's a died-in-the-wool Mormon and far more conservative than I. Still, even when I don't agree, I read what he has to say.
One column dealt with modesty in clothing for females. I thought it was a bit sexist in that it addressed the topic of female sports uniforms as being immodest when they're comparable to male sports teams' uniforms in terms of total body coverage. Additionally, he was critical of prom gowns with spaghetti straps or even worse, no straps at all. My prom gown was strapless. In all honesty, I wasn't specifically looking for a strapless prom dress, but the one I liked best in terms of fabric, color, and style happened to be strapless, so I bought and wore it. On the other hand, I don't own a bikini, don't wear shorts that are very short, and don't wear clothing that exposes my midriff. For the most part, even Mr. Sikahema would probably consider my wardrobe essentially modest. For me it's not a huge issue because my parents have never made a big deal out of what kind of swimsuit I wore or the overall amount of coverage most of my clothing provides. For Mr. Sikahema, it apparently is. For the record, if I were to attend an LDS function, I would not be so disrespectful as to wear anything that would be considered offensive there.
I suspect Vai Sikahema would not like me personally, as I am not always respectful of my elders and I occasionally disparage things that he would consider sacred, but he doesn't know me, so it's not even an issue. I read what he writes. If it's in line with my own values and belief system, fine, If it isn't, I chalk it up to cultural difference. Either way, it causes me no pain.
In a particular column he wrote about the diversity of the LDS church in the New Jersey area where his family presently resides. The people and incidents he described were ones I'd truly like to experience, such as an African-American female who sings her testimony during Fast and Testimony meeting, or a child who, when asked after being baptized to go back into the fontto pull the plug and drain it, did a cannonball and drenched the first three rows of attendees at his baptism. I hate to think of what would have happened if I'd done that when I was baptized for the dead at the manti Temple. I probably would not be alive to write this blog if such had been the case. That sort of thing is incredibly foreign to the white-bread Utah-sanitized version of the LDS Church that I've always known.
I would provide a link except that any link I have just goes to The Deseret News site and not directly to Mr. Sikahema's column. Google him sometime. He has interesting ideas to share.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Does living in Utah Cause ADD/ADHD?
Several of my cousins on my dad's side have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. In the previous generation, on my dad's side at least, none of their parents had similar dignoses. From what my mom has learned just through talking to her brothers- and sisters-in-law, my dads' siblings' spouses didn't, for the most part, have the condition in their families, either. The fact that the disorder didn't exist or at least wasn't diagnosed in the previous generation doesn't make it impossible that the diagnoses in my first cousins are legitimate.
One thing that is interesting to me is that every single case of ADHD that has been diagnosed in my family was diagnosed, and medication was prescribed, when the family was living in Utah. My dad's family is large enough (he's one of ten children surviving to adulthood; my dad and my Uncle Steve each had two children surviving past infancy, but the other siblings produced a minimum of five children each, with the mean of offspring, when my dad and Uncle Steve are excluded, being over eight children. So even though it's only one family, it's a large enough sampling to make at least a few generalizations.
Six of my father's nine siblings live in Utah. Of the forty-four of my first cousins on my father's side who have lived in Utah, twenty-four are male. Of those twenty-four male cousins, fourteen were diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD. This ADHD-diagnosed population of male cousins equals 66.5 % of all male cousins who have lived in The Beehive State. The disgnoses in every case occurred no later than during the child's kindergarten year of school, with almost half occurring prior to kindergarten entrance. My mom thinks it's statistically significant that nearly all of these boys with ADHD diagnoses have birthdays no more than two months prior to the cut-off date for kindergarten entrance, and in each case the parents opted to start the boys in kindergarten rather than holding them out an additional year, which many educated parents will do when their children, particularly boys, are born near the kindergarten cut-off date.
Medicating a child with Ritalin (or similar drugs frequently prescribed for children with ADHD, i.e. Concerta or Adderal) is not the equivalient to giving him arsenic. Still, controversy is associated with the practice.
In some cases, medications to control ADHD are cleaarly indicated. If a child's hyperactivity, inattentiveness, distractibility, or impulsivity is making him a danger to himself or others, or his behavior is interfering with the education of either himself or his classmates, medication for the child is ethically and morally imperative. In less blatant cases, which correctly depicts all of the diagnosed cases of ADHD in my family, the prescribing of medications is arguably less imperative.
If I were on better terms with these relatives, I would give you more information on how the diagnoses were reached. Even without documented information in each case, I can state just from anecdotal information that
neighbors and fellow church members have suggested to my aunts and uncles that their lives might be made easier by taking their sons to particular pediatricians or family practitioners who were or are known to freely prescribe the common medications used to treat ADHD.
Again, it's not as though these boys were given poison. Still, some of them were given powerful medications that they did not need. My parents don't like to give my even acetaminophen or ibuprofen unless I really need it. It's impossible to state unequivocally that no harmful effects whatsoever have occurred through the ingestion of these medications.
Statistically speaking, probably at least one or two of the ADHD diagnoses were bona fide. A lot more, however, were borderline at best. My mother feels that they occurred in my family's case as a result of large families with parents lacking the coping skills to deal with boys who have difficulty not annoying parents and other adults in the confined settings of home during harsh winters and church during three-hour marathon sessions. The condition is exacerbated, my mom believes, by too much time spent watching television and playing video games from early ages.
Obvsiouly ADHD is very real, and if a child is truly suffering from it, medication should not be withheld. Equally obvious to me, however, is that ADHD is sometimes diagnosed with medication prescribed when the condition could be managed by more appropriately spent leisure time and better parenting strategies. My mother, whio is a licensed clinical psychologist, once said that there have been many times when she has observed the dynamics of a family in the waiting room of an office. In some of these cases, she has said, she would have loved to be able to approcah the parents and say something to the effect of, "I've seen a whole lot of children with their parents, and in your case, the problem is not your child; it's you!"
Information I received from one of my readers indicated that today was the court date of Jessica Beagley from Dr. Phil's show, of hot sauce fame, for her charge of child abuse. I'll have to see if any information was released. This isn't entirely pertinent, as she doesn't live in Utah, but I wonder if any of Sister Beagley's children, biological or otherwise, have been diagnosed with ADHD and are taking Ritalin or similar medications.
One thing that is interesting to me is that every single case of ADHD that has been diagnosed in my family was diagnosed, and medication was prescribed, when the family was living in Utah. My dad's family is large enough (he's one of ten children surviving to adulthood; my dad and my Uncle Steve each had two children surviving past infancy, but the other siblings produced a minimum of five children each, with the mean of offspring, when my dad and Uncle Steve are excluded, being over eight children. So even though it's only one family, it's a large enough sampling to make at least a few generalizations.
Six of my father's nine siblings live in Utah. Of the forty-four of my first cousins on my father's side who have lived in Utah, twenty-four are male. Of those twenty-four male cousins, fourteen were diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD. This ADHD-diagnosed population of male cousins equals 66.5 % of all male cousins who have lived in The Beehive State. The disgnoses in every case occurred no later than during the child's kindergarten year of school, with almost half occurring prior to kindergarten entrance. My mom thinks it's statistically significant that nearly all of these boys with ADHD diagnoses have birthdays no more than two months prior to the cut-off date for kindergarten entrance, and in each case the parents opted to start the boys in kindergarten rather than holding them out an additional year, which many educated parents will do when their children, particularly boys, are born near the kindergarten cut-off date.
Medicating a child with Ritalin (or similar drugs frequently prescribed for children with ADHD, i.e. Concerta or Adderal) is not the equivalient to giving him arsenic. Still, controversy is associated with the practice.
In some cases, medications to control ADHD are cleaarly indicated. If a child's hyperactivity, inattentiveness, distractibility, or impulsivity is making him a danger to himself or others, or his behavior is interfering with the education of either himself or his classmates, medication for the child is ethically and morally imperative. In less blatant cases, which correctly depicts all of the diagnosed cases of ADHD in my family, the prescribing of medications is arguably less imperative.
If I were on better terms with these relatives, I would give you more information on how the diagnoses were reached. Even without documented information in each case, I can state just from anecdotal information that
neighbors and fellow church members have suggested to my aunts and uncles that their lives might be made easier by taking their sons to particular pediatricians or family practitioners who were or are known to freely prescribe the common medications used to treat ADHD.
Again, it's not as though these boys were given poison. Still, some of them were given powerful medications that they did not need. My parents don't like to give my even acetaminophen or ibuprofen unless I really need it. It's impossible to state unequivocally that no harmful effects whatsoever have occurred through the ingestion of these medications.
Statistically speaking, probably at least one or two of the ADHD diagnoses were bona fide. A lot more, however, were borderline at best. My mother feels that they occurred in my family's case as a result of large families with parents lacking the coping skills to deal with boys who have difficulty not annoying parents and other adults in the confined settings of home during harsh winters and church during three-hour marathon sessions. The condition is exacerbated, my mom believes, by too much time spent watching television and playing video games from early ages.
Obvsiouly ADHD is very real, and if a child is truly suffering from it, medication should not be withheld. Equally obvious to me, however, is that ADHD is sometimes diagnosed with medication prescribed when the condition could be managed by more appropriately spent leisure time and better parenting strategies. My mother, whio is a licensed clinical psychologist, once said that there have been many times when she has observed the dynamics of a family in the waiting room of an office. In some of these cases, she has said, she would have loved to be able to approcah the parents and say something to the effect of, "I've seen a whole lot of children with their parents, and in your case, the problem is not your child; it's you!"
Information I received from one of my readers indicated that today was the court date of Jessica Beagley from Dr. Phil's show, of hot sauce fame, for her charge of child abuse. I'll have to see if any information was released. This isn't entirely pertinent, as she doesn't live in Utah, but I wonder if any of Sister Beagley's children, biological or otherwise, have been diagnosed with ADHD and are taking Ritalin or similar medications.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
To Visit the Old Homestead or Not to Visit?
My brother and I have completed high school and are moving on. My mother has chosen not to remain with the school district for which she has worked for many years. My father's work takes him to several parts of the state, and he doesn't presently work near our home as much as he works in other areas. For this reason and a few others, my parents have chosen to sell the home in which our family has lived for nearly nine years. They will be relocating to the central coast of California. My mother is presently boxing up belongings and preparing for the final move, which will take place in about five weeks.
I have been offered the opportunity to make a final visit to the house that was my home for just over half of my present life, and far longer than I lived in any other home. We moved every few years before settling into the house we are preparing to leave forever. The home of which I speak is filled with memories, some of which are pleasant, but others which are not. I am unsure as to whether a final visit to this home is something I wish to undertake.
It's just a house, for one thing. Wherever we gather as a family when my brother and I are not off on educational pursuits will be our home just as much as the old one was. Once all our furniture and possessions are out of the house, it will mostly be just another house. I'm not saying that in twenty years' time if I happen to be in the area, I won't drive past it to see if it's still standing or to discover what the current owners have or have not done with the place. I just don't know if I need to go inside, sleep there a night or two, and generally pay homage to a place that is just a place.
My PseudoUncle believes that I should go back home at least once before all the furniture has been removed. He thinks I should maybe take some pictures, both inside and outside, of the place. He thinks I should stare up at the roof peak that I once used as a balance beam and take time to give thanks that I'm not a vegetable or a quadriplegic as a result. He thinks I should feel the carpet on the floor where I spent hours immobilized the time I fell trying to get into my wheelchair in the middle of the night when no one could hear me, and remember that I made it through that night. He thinks I should sit on the stair landing where I was stuck because I was too weak to go up or down on my own when my parents were at a party, and remind myself how far I've come and how strong I now am. He thinks I should stare down the window space through which a brick was propelled, waking me from a sound and pain-killer-induced sleep following a physical and sexual assault, and remind myself that nothing will ever come through that window, or likely any other window, at me again. He wants me to walk into my beautiful bedroom that my Godparents had specially created for me after my assault, so I could sleep in a different space than the one containing the window through which the brick was propelled. PseudoUncle says I should crawl into the bed and remember what it was like when I first woke up in that dark room, after having been carried there in my sleep, not having any idea where I was and feeling along walls to find a light switch that would illuminate for me a room as luxurious as a five-star hotel room. He thinks I should feel the textures and smell the smells that will probably be with me for my whole life.
I see his all of his points, but I really don't want to go back there. My five closest friends and most of their families have all moved on. I've already met up with my friends at places closer to where my new residence will be. The old house, and the old town, won't hold much of anything near and dear to me for long. I'm not sure I get the point, since I have no desire to go there. It's almost as though he thinks I need to exorcise demons or something, which will remain forces at work against me if I don't face them down this one last time.
I'm not sure if it's something I really want to do.
I have been offered the opportunity to make a final visit to the house that was my home for just over half of my present life, and far longer than I lived in any other home. We moved every few years before settling into the house we are preparing to leave forever. The home of which I speak is filled with memories, some of which are pleasant, but others which are not. I am unsure as to whether a final visit to this home is something I wish to undertake.
It's just a house, for one thing. Wherever we gather as a family when my brother and I are not off on educational pursuits will be our home just as much as the old one was. Once all our furniture and possessions are out of the house, it will mostly be just another house. I'm not saying that in twenty years' time if I happen to be in the area, I won't drive past it to see if it's still standing or to discover what the current owners have or have not done with the place. I just don't know if I need to go inside, sleep there a night or two, and generally pay homage to a place that is just a place.
My PseudoUncle believes that I should go back home at least once before all the furniture has been removed. He thinks I should maybe take some pictures, both inside and outside, of the place. He thinks I should stare up at the roof peak that I once used as a balance beam and take time to give thanks that I'm not a vegetable or a quadriplegic as a result. He thinks I should feel the carpet on the floor where I spent hours immobilized the time I fell trying to get into my wheelchair in the middle of the night when no one could hear me, and remember that I made it through that night. He thinks I should sit on the stair landing where I was stuck because I was too weak to go up or down on my own when my parents were at a party, and remind myself how far I've come and how strong I now am. He thinks I should stare down the window space through which a brick was propelled, waking me from a sound and pain-killer-induced sleep following a physical and sexual assault, and remind myself that nothing will ever come through that window, or likely any other window, at me again. He wants me to walk into my beautiful bedroom that my Godparents had specially created for me after my assault, so I could sleep in a different space than the one containing the window through which the brick was propelled. PseudoUncle says I should crawl into the bed and remember what it was like when I first woke up in that dark room, after having been carried there in my sleep, not having any idea where I was and feeling along walls to find a light switch that would illuminate for me a room as luxurious as a five-star hotel room. He thinks I should feel the textures and smell the smells that will probably be with me for my whole life.
I see his all of his points, but I really don't want to go back there. My five closest friends and most of their families have all moved on. I've already met up with my friends at places closer to where my new residence will be. The old house, and the old town, won't hold much of anything near and dear to me for long. I'm not sure I get the point, since I have no desire to go there. It's almost as though he thinks I need to exorcise demons or something, which will remain forces at work against me if I don't face them down this one last time.
I'm not sure if it's something I really want to do.
And So It Goes
I fell asleep on the sofa very early tonight, and my PseudoUncle carried me to bed. Unfortunately, dear sweet Warren Jeffs decided to pay a visit to me in my dreams again. This one wasn't so violent that I screamed and woke up the neighborhood, which is good, but I'm having trouble going back to sleep. If I'm not asleep an hour after I wake up from a bad dream I have to wake up my PseudoAunt because I will get in trouble if I lie awake all night without telling anyone.
Tomorrow I have an appointment with my surgeon and one with my psychiatrist. I'm not looking forward to either appointment, but at least the most intimate part of my body I'll probably have to display is my mid-section, which isn't all that bad. Where I draw the line is at anything that's covered up in a strapless backless bikini. They practically have to anaesthetize me to look at anything else. This is one of the reasons I think I'm probably not cut out to be a stripper. I will discuss Warren Jeffs with my shrink. I wonder what insights he'll have into the situation. There's not much he can tell me that I don't already know. I'm well aware that Warren jeffs is locked up in texas, that he's not likely to get out anytime soon, and that even if he does escape, he's probably not coming after me. That knowledge still does little to keep the nightmares away.
PseudoAunt's brother, his wife, and their three-year-old daughter are in the area. Today Pseudoaunt, Timmy, and I took the child to the zoo while her parents slept. Her mom is pregnant and her dad is tired from being a first-year-resident. My dad told me that he was never so tired in his life as when he was a first-year resident. It's not quite as brutal for the people currently aerving residencies as it was in the olden days when my dad did his, but it's not good, either. That's one of the reasons I don't want to wake up PseudoAunt -- because it will probably wake up PseudoUncle as well, and he needs his sleep.
I've tried counting sheep, which is stupid. I've tried mentally recreating the periodic table of elements and reciting poetry in my head and solving complex equations. I've even tried singing mormon hymns in my head. if Mormon hymns do not put a person to sleep, that person is in a certified state of wakefulness. Nothing seems to work. If the people in control of my life would just give me one tablet of something that would make me sleep each night, I would not take it unless I needed it. Nine times out of ten I would give the tablet back to them in the morning. They will not do that, however, because a sixteen-year-old, even an intelligent one, is neither mature nor smart enough to know when it is appropriate to take any drug that falls in the class of benzodiazapenes.
So in five minutes I'll wake up my PseudoAunt. She'll wake up my PseudoUncle. Chances are that they'll make so much noise that Timmy will wake up as well. PseudoUncle will give me an Ativan. I could've taken my own Ativan just fine without waking up an entire condo full of people, but that would have made too much sense, apparently.
It's time to wake up the house and start the Ativan party.
Tomorrow I have an appointment with my surgeon and one with my psychiatrist. I'm not looking forward to either appointment, but at least the most intimate part of my body I'll probably have to display is my mid-section, which isn't all that bad. Where I draw the line is at anything that's covered up in a strapless backless bikini. They practically have to anaesthetize me to look at anything else. This is one of the reasons I think I'm probably not cut out to be a stripper. I will discuss Warren Jeffs with my shrink. I wonder what insights he'll have into the situation. There's not much he can tell me that I don't already know. I'm well aware that Warren jeffs is locked up in texas, that he's not likely to get out anytime soon, and that even if he does escape, he's probably not coming after me. That knowledge still does little to keep the nightmares away.
PseudoAunt's brother, his wife, and their three-year-old daughter are in the area. Today Pseudoaunt, Timmy, and I took the child to the zoo while her parents slept. Her mom is pregnant and her dad is tired from being a first-year-resident. My dad told me that he was never so tired in his life as when he was a first-year resident. It's not quite as brutal for the people currently aerving residencies as it was in the olden days when my dad did his, but it's not good, either. That's one of the reasons I don't want to wake up PseudoAunt -- because it will probably wake up PseudoUncle as well, and he needs his sleep.
I've tried counting sheep, which is stupid. I've tried mentally recreating the periodic table of elements and reciting poetry in my head and solving complex equations. I've even tried singing mormon hymns in my head. if Mormon hymns do not put a person to sleep, that person is in a certified state of wakefulness. Nothing seems to work. If the people in control of my life would just give me one tablet of something that would make me sleep each night, I would not take it unless I needed it. Nine times out of ten I would give the tablet back to them in the morning. They will not do that, however, because a sixteen-year-old, even an intelligent one, is neither mature nor smart enough to know when it is appropriate to take any drug that falls in the class of benzodiazapenes.
So in five minutes I'll wake up my PseudoAunt. She'll wake up my PseudoUncle. Chances are that they'll make so much noise that Timmy will wake up as well. PseudoUncle will give me an Ativan. I could've taken my own Ativan just fine without waking up an entire condo full of people, but that would have made too much sense, apparently.
It's time to wake up the house and start the Ativan party.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Home Again
After a brief stay at the home of a family friend, I'm back in my temporary home with my pseudoaunt and pseudouncle. We had an interesting experience with dry erase markers. I won't go into the entire drawn-out chronology of events, but the three of us present who are not medical doctors were using the surface of the table to solve math problems with dry-erase markerss. Then the MD came home. The MD among us was at first angry -- at me, predictably; I always get the blame for everything -- for writing on his nearly new table. We showed him that they were dry erase markers that wipe off smooth and hard surfaces. The MD proceeded to write on the matte wallpaper with the markers. The giant happy face he drew quite predictably did not come of when wiped when a napkin or cloth. Don't assume your doctors are geniuses, ladies and gentlemen.
I decided to perform a mizvah and get the giant orange happy face that rsembled a jack-o-lantern off the dining area wall. A large portion of the pseudorelatives' security deposit was riding on it. It isn't easy, but with the right chemicals and a lot of elbow grease, the wall looked like it looked before pseudouncle graced it with his kindergarten-style artwork. I explained that most people draw pictures on paper, and then they hang the pictures on theit walls if they're suitably satisfied with the results. If he writes or colors on the wall again, I might not be so lucky in terms of my ability to undo the damage.
I'm going back to physical therapy tomorrow with the stipulation that there be NO MASSAGES. Who in the would would attempt a deep-tissue massage on a person with no deep tissues of which to speak?
I had a bad dram about Warren Jeffs last night. I dreamed I was in one of those pastel dresses that all the girls and women of the FLDS wear, and I was pushed into the temple. I tried to get out but all the doors and windows were locked. Warren was searcing for me, and I was hiding. He kept calling out, "I know where all the hiding places are in this temple because I designed it. You'll never get away. " I woke up screaming. My dad's friend gave me medication to slow my heart rate and stayed in the room until I went back to sleep. I hope I don't have another dream like it tonight because I don't want to wake up the pseudorelatives.
Pseudoaunt's brother Timmy knows were there's a cool rope swing that goes over a canyon. We're trying it out tomorrow.
My brother is still without a woman and may be for quite some time. It's one of the hazards of being a sixteen-year-old college freshman. If he wanted to go back and hang out at a high school campus, he'd probably have the women crawling all over him, but at university, it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
toki sio
I decided to perform a mizvah and get the giant orange happy face that rsembled a jack-o-lantern off the dining area wall. A large portion of the pseudorelatives' security deposit was riding on it. It isn't easy, but with the right chemicals and a lot of elbow grease, the wall looked like it looked before pseudouncle graced it with his kindergarten-style artwork. I explained that most people draw pictures on paper, and then they hang the pictures on theit walls if they're suitably satisfied with the results. If he writes or colors on the wall again, I might not be so lucky in terms of my ability to undo the damage.
I'm going back to physical therapy tomorrow with the stipulation that there be NO MASSAGES. Who in the would would attempt a deep-tissue massage on a person with no deep tissues of which to speak?
I had a bad dram about Warren Jeffs last night. I dreamed I was in one of those pastel dresses that all the girls and women of the FLDS wear, and I was pushed into the temple. I tried to get out but all the doors and windows were locked. Warren was searcing for me, and I was hiding. He kept calling out, "I know where all the hiding places are in this temple because I designed it. You'll never get away. " I woke up screaming. My dad's friend gave me medication to slow my heart rate and stayed in the room until I went back to sleep. I hope I don't have another dream like it tonight because I don't want to wake up the pseudorelatives.
Pseudoaunt's brother Timmy knows were there's a cool rope swing that goes over a canyon. We're trying it out tomorrow.
My brother is still without a woman and may be for quite some time. It's one of the hazards of being a sixteen-year-old college freshman. If he wanted to go back and hang out at a high school campus, he'd probably have the women crawling all over him, but at university, it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
toki sio
Saturday, August 6, 2011
I Need Help
I texted my Uncle Scott at work to tell him that I need help. He texted me back that he's greatly relieved that I'm finally willing to admit I have a problem and that the first step in getting better is acknowledging that one has a problem. Uncle Scott can't hit me because I'm still bruised from my physical therapy massage, so I will say STFU!!! I DON'T need help for myself. DUH! I need it for my brother.
My brother's girlfriend just broke up with him. He's devastated. It doesn't matter to him that the relationship was going absolutely nowhere fast and was doomed from the start. His IQ is probably twice what hers is, and his is nothing about which to boast. He's going to a major university next year. She graduated after summer school (after four years of high school, not early) and is on a wait list for some school that's supposed to teach her to do nails. She wasn't even accepted outright to nail school! She's over eighteen. He's sixteen-and-one-half, as am I. (DUH! We're twins!) That means if the two of them were to boink -- which I'm not advocating -- it would make her a sex offender, hardly better than the King of All Sex Offenders, Warren Jeffs himself. And my brother is sad that this girl wants him out of her life. Go figure.
Still, he's my younger brother (by about thirty seconds), and it is my duty to cheer him up when he is heartbroken. He would do the same for me. Actually, he'd probably beat up the guy who broke up with me, or at least arrange to have him beaned in baseball practice. The girl is not a baseball player. Furthermore, she's five-seven and probably weighs one- hundred-twenty-five at least. I'm almost five-one, and my weight is up to a whopping eighty-three following my pneumonia and appendectomy. I wouldn't stand a chance against my brother's former girlfriend in a physical battle even if I wanted to settle the score in that way, which I don't.
The breakup didn't occur in person. My brother is at some sort of baseball camp that involves traveling around the western states. The former woman of his dreams texted him with the news. He then went out and walked twelve batters, not to mention the three he hit, in last night's game. I told him that at least his part of the game was a no-hitter (no batter can hit the ball if the pitcher either hits him first or throws the ball totally out of his reach) and that it was a compliment that the manager left him in long enough to do so much damage. My dad texted me to tell me that my comments intended to console my brother were pejorative. Anyway, he won't have another start for probably three days. I must get him out of this slump before he takes the mound again.
My Aunt Jillian's brother Timmy, who is typically full of ideas (none of them good, by the way), thinks we should get the girl to take my brother back. He wanted to call that radio program host Delilah and pretend to be my brother. He was going to pour his heart out to Delilah and dedicate some really charged song to the girl. I told Timmy it would never work. Besides, I'm pretty sure those calls on Delilah are fakes anyway. No one in real life could or would call in saying such sappy stuff.
What my brother needs is a new girl, preferably one with an IQ in the average range. It would be best if the girl were based somewhere in the southern California area, since my borther's university of attendance is in that region. If anyone has any good candidates to recommend, please give me a heads up.
The doctor who gave me difficulty is now getting what he deserves. A nurse overheard my earlier conversation with him. He is now being called "Warren Jeffs" by most of the hospital staff. At times Karma can be a female dog.
My brother's girlfriend just broke up with him. He's devastated. It doesn't matter to him that the relationship was going absolutely nowhere fast and was doomed from the start. His IQ is probably twice what hers is, and his is nothing about which to boast. He's going to a major university next year. She graduated after summer school (after four years of high school, not early) and is on a wait list for some school that's supposed to teach her to do nails. She wasn't even accepted outright to nail school! She's over eighteen. He's sixteen-and-one-half, as am I. (DUH! We're twins!) That means if the two of them were to boink -- which I'm not advocating -- it would make her a sex offender, hardly better than the King of All Sex Offenders, Warren Jeffs himself. And my brother is sad that this girl wants him out of her life. Go figure.
Still, he's my younger brother (by about thirty seconds), and it is my duty to cheer him up when he is heartbroken. He would do the same for me. Actually, he'd probably beat up the guy who broke up with me, or at least arrange to have him beaned in baseball practice. The girl is not a baseball player. Furthermore, she's five-seven and probably weighs one- hundred-twenty-five at least. I'm almost five-one, and my weight is up to a whopping eighty-three following my pneumonia and appendectomy. I wouldn't stand a chance against my brother's former girlfriend in a physical battle even if I wanted to settle the score in that way, which I don't.
The breakup didn't occur in person. My brother is at some sort of baseball camp that involves traveling around the western states. The former woman of his dreams texted him with the news. He then went out and walked twelve batters, not to mention the three he hit, in last night's game. I told him that at least his part of the game was a no-hitter (no batter can hit the ball if the pitcher either hits him first or throws the ball totally out of his reach) and that it was a compliment that the manager left him in long enough to do so much damage. My dad texted me to tell me that my comments intended to console my brother were pejorative. Anyway, he won't have another start for probably three days. I must get him out of this slump before he takes the mound again.
My Aunt Jillian's brother Timmy, who is typically full of ideas (none of them good, by the way), thinks we should get the girl to take my brother back. He wanted to call that radio program host Delilah and pretend to be my brother. He was going to pour his heart out to Delilah and dedicate some really charged song to the girl. I told Timmy it would never work. Besides, I'm pretty sure those calls on Delilah are fakes anyway. No one in real life could or would call in saying such sappy stuff.
What my brother needs is a new girl, preferably one with an IQ in the average range. It would be best if the girl were based somewhere in the southern California area, since my borther's university of attendance is in that region. If anyone has any good candidates to recommend, please give me a heads up.
The doctor who gave me difficulty is now getting what he deserves. A nurse overheard my earlier conversation with him. He is now being called "Warren Jeffs" by most of the hospital staff. At times Karma can be a female dog.
Friday, August 5, 2011
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
My blog title is actually the title of an old book. The book was a parody of the more popular How to Win Friends and Influence People. My uncle tells me that though it is several decades old, I could have authored the book (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, not the other book). Why would he say such a thing? He obviously would have a reason, but probably not a very good one. In this particular case, it seems that I insulted a doctor at his hospital by telling the man that he bears a remarkable physical resemblance to Warren Jeffs. Who would have thought that a mere observation of a possible physical resemblance between the doctor in question and a public figure would create such controversy? I didn't suggest that the man has seventy-nine wives or engages in sex with twelve- year-olds. I merely verbalized my highly subjective observation that the man bears a noticeable likeness to the LDS Prophet-in-Chief. Who would've guessed that it was such a hot-button topic? While I don't find Warren Jeffs particularly attractive (I described him earlier as looking somewhat corpse-like), but then again, he's not exactly the Elephant Man or Camilla Parker Bowles. I didn't realize I was disgracing the entire family by saying that.
Some things we can say may seem fairly benign, while those on the receiving end of our words inevitably take offense. Comments pertaining to weight, even when intended to be compliments, must be worded carefully. "You look thin in that outfit" will usually be taken to mean, "It's obviously an optical illusion brought about by the particular outfit you're wearing, because in anything else you look like the 'before' picture in a SlimFast ad." Likwise, if one observes, "You cut [or coloured] your hair" to someone and then says nothing else about it, it's obvious that the person making the statement is not fond of the other person's new look. If a person undergoes cosmetic surgery, should one comment on it? It would seem that the recipient of a cosmetic procedure obviously was dissatisfied with his or her pre-procedural appearance, or else he or she would not have undetaken the discomfort and the expense to make the change or changes. Strangely enough, people often do not appreciate having attention called to a cosmetic surgical procedure recently undergone. I suppose they want others to pretend they've always looked the way they look now. If it's a cosmetic procedure gone wrong, such is all the more true. If a woman's lips look like doughnuts with too much yeast, don't mention it. If a man had a bad hair transplant, just let it go unless he says something first; then you can either lie or commiserate based on your reading of the situation.
I have trouble with these issues at times. I was taught to be honest and to tell the truth. My uncle said that having been taught to tell the truth doesn't give one license to hurl any insult that pops into my mind at my intended victim. I will admit that I was not entirely pleased with the doctor I suggested bears an uncanny resemblance to Warren Jeffs. He had just told my uncle that if I don't drink the nutritional supplements he prescribed, my computer and cell phone should be taken away, along with television and any other privileges I have. (The fascists think they're being humanitarians because they're allowing me to breathe unimpeded.) What did he expect me to say, that he looks like Jake Gyllenhall? People need to be realistic.
I was just talking to an aunt (not the one married to the dictator uncle) and was explaining my predicament. She laughed and said it may be genetic, because my mom used to make teachers and other authority figures angry by suggeting that they looked like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or Gary Gilmore. If it was a female whose skin she wished to get under, she'd say the person looked like either Billie Jean King. I personally don't think Billie Jean is all that ugly, or especially wasn't in my mom's day, but whatever floated her boat is fine with me. I'll share with my uncle that it's not my fault that I'm blunt to the point of rudeness; it's genetic as well as environmental. I was both spawned and raised by a woman with the social skills of Chelsea Handler or Joan Rivers.
Furthermore, I happen to know that my uncle is not as incensed as he pretends to be. He sometimes speaks too loudly when he is talking about me to his wife, and I hear what he says without even trying to eavesdrop. He and his wife were laughing hysterically about the incident with the facist doctor, and my aunt agreed that, now that it's been mentioned, she, too can see the resemblance between the doctor in question and Prophet Jeffs.
In order to help others avoid the pitfalls into which I've become entrapped, I will give you two lists.
This is a list of people to which others will be flattered by any suggested physical resemblance: Denzell Washington (if the person is not a racist), Alex Ferrer (if the person is not my Uncle Jerry), Jake Gyllenhall, Jesse Spencer, the guy who plays Dr. Wilson on House (sorry; I can't recall his name), Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, Jon Stewart, Jay Z, Ben Affleck, President Obama, the good-looking guy from Glee,
Neil Patrick Harris (unless you're a homophobe), George Clooney, Will Swenson, Jonathan Bennett, Hugh Jackman, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Stephanie March, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, the Duchess of Chadwick, Pippa Middleton, Natalie Portman, or Alexis Bledel.
This is a list of people to which many people would be affronted by the suggestion of a resemblance: Warren Jeffs (apparently), Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, Gary Gilmore, Carrot Top, Linda Tripp, Debbie Rowe, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Guy Fieri, Peewee Herman [Paul Reubens?], the Elephant Man, Nancy Grace, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, or Donald Trump.
My lists are merely advisory. If you perceive a resemblance between a private citizen and anyone on either list, make a verbal note of it at your own risk.
May peace be with you, because it's probably not going to be with me, and it may as well be with someone.
P.S. Does anyone really care in the least whether or not the probation Casey Anthony served in jail is reccognized as valid? Does anyone care where she is right now?
Does anyone care in the least about any of the Kardashians besides just wishing they would all go away?
Some things we can say may seem fairly benign, while those on the receiving end of our words inevitably take offense. Comments pertaining to weight, even when intended to be compliments, must be worded carefully. "You look thin in that outfit" will usually be taken to mean, "It's obviously an optical illusion brought about by the particular outfit you're wearing, because in anything else you look like the 'before' picture in a SlimFast ad." Likwise, if one observes, "You cut [or coloured] your hair" to someone and then says nothing else about it, it's obvious that the person making the statement is not fond of the other person's new look. If a person undergoes cosmetic surgery, should one comment on it? It would seem that the recipient of a cosmetic procedure obviously was dissatisfied with his or her pre-procedural appearance, or else he or she would not have undetaken the discomfort and the expense to make the change or changes. Strangely enough, people often do not appreciate having attention called to a cosmetic surgical procedure recently undergone. I suppose they want others to pretend they've always looked the way they look now. If it's a cosmetic procedure gone wrong, such is all the more true. If a woman's lips look like doughnuts with too much yeast, don't mention it. If a man had a bad hair transplant, just let it go unless he says something first; then you can either lie or commiserate based on your reading of the situation.
I have trouble with these issues at times. I was taught to be honest and to tell the truth. My uncle said that having been taught to tell the truth doesn't give one license to hurl any insult that pops into my mind at my intended victim. I will admit that I was not entirely pleased with the doctor I suggested bears an uncanny resemblance to Warren Jeffs. He had just told my uncle that if I don't drink the nutritional supplements he prescribed, my computer and cell phone should be taken away, along with television and any other privileges I have. (The fascists think they're being humanitarians because they're allowing me to breathe unimpeded.) What did he expect me to say, that he looks like Jake Gyllenhall? People need to be realistic.
I was just talking to an aunt (not the one married to the dictator uncle) and was explaining my predicament. She laughed and said it may be genetic, because my mom used to make teachers and other authority figures angry by suggeting that they looked like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or Gary Gilmore. If it was a female whose skin she wished to get under, she'd say the person looked like either Billie Jean King. I personally don't think Billie Jean is all that ugly, or especially wasn't in my mom's day, but whatever floated her boat is fine with me. I'll share with my uncle that it's not my fault that I'm blunt to the point of rudeness; it's genetic as well as environmental. I was both spawned and raised by a woman with the social skills of Chelsea Handler or Joan Rivers.
Furthermore, I happen to know that my uncle is not as incensed as he pretends to be. He sometimes speaks too loudly when he is talking about me to his wife, and I hear what he says without even trying to eavesdrop. He and his wife were laughing hysterically about the incident with the facist doctor, and my aunt agreed that, now that it's been mentioned, she, too can see the resemblance between the doctor in question and Prophet Jeffs.
In order to help others avoid the pitfalls into which I've become entrapped, I will give you two lists.
This is a list of people to which others will be flattered by any suggested physical resemblance: Denzell Washington (if the person is not a racist), Alex Ferrer (if the person is not my Uncle Jerry), Jake Gyllenhall, Jesse Spencer, the guy who plays Dr. Wilson on House (sorry; I can't recall his name), Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, Jon Stewart, Jay Z, Ben Affleck, President Obama, the good-looking guy from Glee,
Neil Patrick Harris (unless you're a homophobe), George Clooney, Will Swenson, Jonathan Bennett, Hugh Jackman, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Stephanie March, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, the Duchess of Chadwick, Pippa Middleton, Natalie Portman, or Alexis Bledel.
This is a list of people to which many people would be affronted by the suggestion of a resemblance: Warren Jeffs (apparently), Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, Gary Gilmore, Carrot Top, Linda Tripp, Debbie Rowe, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Guy Fieri, Peewee Herman [Paul Reubens?], the Elephant Man, Nancy Grace, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, or Donald Trump.
My lists are merely advisory. If you perceive a resemblance between a private citizen and anyone on either list, make a verbal note of it at your own risk.
May peace be with you, because it's probably not going to be with me, and it may as well be with someone.
P.S. Does anyone really care in the least whether or not the probation Casey Anthony served in jail is reccognized as valid? Does anyone care where she is right now?
Does anyone care in the least about any of the Kardashians besides just wishing they would all go away?
Warren Jeffs, Mental Health, PTSD
In what must have come as a surprise to very few, Warren Jeffs was convicted of raping two underage girls. He presumably himself raped or had a hand in arranging similar fates for many more than just two underaged girls. I can't relate to this at all on a personal level. All the adults significant in my life have been very protective of my sexuality, or lack of it, to the extent that there were discussions of parts of the trial I was not able to watch because someone thought it might be upsetting to me, despite the fact that at just over sixteen-and-a-half, I'm less than half a year away from being able to watch R-rated movies. Where were the vigilant people in these girls' (and boys'; being kicked out of one's home and even one's community as early as the age of thirteen is not exactly a walk in the park, either) lives, and now what's going to be done about it.
In addition to a situation I experienced which culminated in my having to crawl from the third floor of a smoky home in a semi-capacitated state at best, I had a single sexual encounter which was, thank God, interrrupted before it reached the point of either forced oral sex or forced intercourse. I underwent many months of relatively intense therapy because of this assault. While there was somewhat graphic violence in my encounter, it was ONE PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL ASSAULT and five days of neglected care in an entire lifetime of otherwise being protected from anything bad. What my situation supported was the hypothesis that a parents can do almost everything right for a kid's entire lifetime, yet one or two really traumatic events can enter the picture and render a young person frantically clinging to what little sanity she has left.
A study was conducted on this very topic when a busload of children and their bus driver from Chowchilla, California, was overtaken, and the children and driver transported in inhumane conditions to a remote underground location. The story had a happy ending when the children and their driver dug their way out of their underground tomb. Someone wanted to know if the PTSD from that single experience could undo a lifetime of normalcy and good parenting. The therapist, whose name was, I think, Lenore Terr, found in her study that, for the most part, one sufficiently devastating event in a child's life could override everything normal and predictable that had happened in those children's lifetimes. Terr concluded that yes, it could. Her conclusions came as a surprise to the mental health field at the time.
But if one icident can bring such devastation to a kid's life, what happens to a child whose entire life is what I would consider devastation. The FLDS employed waterboarding-like techniqes in order to teach babies not to cry and, perhaps more important, to fear their fathers from an such early age that they don't even remember why it is that they fear their fathers. Physical punishment that reached the legal definition of abuse was the norm in the fLDS culture. Children saw their sisters married off at ages where they should possibly have been anticipating attending a first school dance at most. The same children saw their brothers banished from the home and community at ages when they were far too young to be expected to fend for themsleves. Those children knew that, depending upon their gender, one fate or the other would be theirs eventually. Even if the children are rescued after the fact, and chances ar that not all will be, how do they rebound from this hellish life? Can even the ones who are reached be helped?
Just how far should theumbrella of fredom of religion extend to protect people and allow them to live in such a manner? Is there a way to allow the adults in groups such as the FLDS to live according to the dictates of their consciences without involving the children? I don't really see how?
In addition to a situation I experienced which culminated in my having to crawl from the third floor of a smoky home in a semi-capacitated state at best, I had a single sexual encounter which was, thank God, interrrupted before it reached the point of either forced oral sex or forced intercourse. I underwent many months of relatively intense therapy because of this assault. While there was somewhat graphic violence in my encounter, it was ONE PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL ASSAULT and five days of neglected care in an entire lifetime of otherwise being protected from anything bad. What my situation supported was the hypothesis that a parents can do almost everything right for a kid's entire lifetime, yet one or two really traumatic events can enter the picture and render a young person frantically clinging to what little sanity she has left.
A study was conducted on this very topic when a busload of children and their bus driver from Chowchilla, California, was overtaken, and the children and driver transported in inhumane conditions to a remote underground location. The story had a happy ending when the children and their driver dug their way out of their underground tomb. Someone wanted to know if the PTSD from that single experience could undo a lifetime of normalcy and good parenting. The therapist, whose name was, I think, Lenore Terr, found in her study that, for the most part, one sufficiently devastating event in a child's life could override everything normal and predictable that had happened in those children's lifetimes. Terr concluded that yes, it could. Her conclusions came as a surprise to the mental health field at the time.
But if one icident can bring such devastation to a kid's life, what happens to a child whose entire life is what I would consider devastation. The FLDS employed waterboarding-like techniqes in order to teach babies not to cry and, perhaps more important, to fear their fathers from an such early age that they don't even remember why it is that they fear their fathers. Physical punishment that reached the legal definition of abuse was the norm in the fLDS culture. Children saw their sisters married off at ages where they should possibly have been anticipating attending a first school dance at most. The same children saw their brothers banished from the home and community at ages when they were far too young to be expected to fend for themsleves. Those children knew that, depending upon their gender, one fate or the other would be theirs eventually. Even if the children are rescued after the fact, and chances ar that not all will be, how do they rebound from this hellish life? Can even the ones who are reached be helped?
Just how far should theumbrella of fredom of religion extend to protect people and allow them to live in such a manner? Is there a way to allow the adults in groups such as the FLDS to live according to the dictates of their consciences without involving the children? I don't really see how?
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Physical Therapy Is Getting In the Way of My Keeping Up With the Warren Jeffs Trial
If anyone out there is looking for a career change and doesn't mind putting in a few more years in college, I have a field to recommend: physical therapy. My reason is that basically everyone recovering from any illness or injury is now being referred for physical therapy. I had pneumonia and a ruptured appendix. People have been recovering from such ailments for the better part of a century, and those who have succesfully navigated their way back from death's door (it was a little trickier a few years ago when surgical techniques were not so refined and antibiotics were not so plentiful) generally have done so without the benefit of a physical therapist's assistance.
After I had surgery, I stayed in the hospital for more than a week. Then I came home (to a hotel in this area) to be babysat by my parents for a week while I gradually regained strength. That's the way it's always been done. In this enlightened age, however, the medical profession now knows that a post-pneumonia and post-surgery patient can recovery his or her strength oh so much more efficiently with the involvement of physical therapy. This s a win/win proposition for the physical therapists who work with me. I say this not because I am such a delightful patient, which I am, but that is beside the point, but because I am going to get well and regain my strength no matter what methods the physical therapists do or do not use. They could have me draw pictures with my toes in peanut butter on the floor, or spit chocolate milk through a straw, or just stare at the freckled assistant and try to count his freckles, as their sole methods of physical therapy and I would still regain my strength. It takes a little longer, but it's much like curing a mosquito bite or an uncomplicated case of hiccups: it's going to get better as long as you do nothing counterproductive. I'm their dream patient.
Anyway, Pseudoaunt was kind enough to record the coverage of Warren's trial. The coverage actually consists of the talking heads talking about what they saw and heard in the courtroom, as no live audio or video feed is allowed. As much as I'd love to see and hear it, the judge was probably wise not to allow Warren any more of a forum than he already has. I can't imagine how he'd be acting if he knew he had a live nationwide audience. I loved the way the judge sent the jury out while he rambled on and on about his right to religious freedom. Then, after an hour, she basically said, "OK. Now that we've heard this argument, anytime you wish to object on these grounds, just say, 'Objective Number One.' We've already heard all about it, so we'll know exactly what you're talking about. You don't need to go through the entire schpiel again." Brilliant!
A tape was played today in which Warren was instructing at least one underage female in specific instructions for meeting his needs. He supposedly went so far as to say what body parts were to be shaved, and exactly how. Jeffs' megalomania seems to be manifested in part in a bizarre need to immortalize everything he says and does with recordings, which is something that ultimately will contribute greatly to his undoing. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but an audio recording has to be worth at least nine hundred. The reporters said the directions Warren gave were too graphic and explicit for them to repeat on air.
My PseudoAunt is trying to monitor what I'm watching because she doesn't want me to start having Warren Jeffs dreams. She's particularly worried about the audiotape of the women restraining the twelve-year-old on the temple bed while Warren has his way with her. While the tape probably won't be aired on TV, even the discussion of it may be graphic. I'll go along with her wishes because I don't particularly want to have Warren Jeffs nightmares.
I may have a polygamy party, where everyone dresses up as a polyg or as a character in the trial if one cannot stomach being a polygamist. Pseudoaunt was experimenting with her hair, and she eventually achieved the signature FLDS forehead flip. That is the fricking ugliest hairstyle I've ever seen, and that includes the way Nick Nolte's hair looked in his mugshot, or the way Charles Manson's hair always looks. I'll have her do my hair that way as well.
If you're feeling under the weather, perhaps you are in need of physical therapy. If you need a new career, consider physical therapy. Physical therapy is the way of the future!
Sayonara!
After I had surgery, I stayed in the hospital for more than a week. Then I came home (to a hotel in this area) to be babysat by my parents for a week while I gradually regained strength. That's the way it's always been done. In this enlightened age, however, the medical profession now knows that a post-pneumonia and post-surgery patient can recovery his or her strength oh so much more efficiently with the involvement of physical therapy. This s a win/win proposition for the physical therapists who work with me. I say this not because I am such a delightful patient, which I am, but that is beside the point, but because I am going to get well and regain my strength no matter what methods the physical therapists do or do not use. They could have me draw pictures with my toes in peanut butter on the floor, or spit chocolate milk through a straw, or just stare at the freckled assistant and try to count his freckles, as their sole methods of physical therapy and I would still regain my strength. It takes a little longer, but it's much like curing a mosquito bite or an uncomplicated case of hiccups: it's going to get better as long as you do nothing counterproductive. I'm their dream patient.
Anyway, Pseudoaunt was kind enough to record the coverage of Warren's trial. The coverage actually consists of the talking heads talking about what they saw and heard in the courtroom, as no live audio or video feed is allowed. As much as I'd love to see and hear it, the judge was probably wise not to allow Warren any more of a forum than he already has. I can't imagine how he'd be acting if he knew he had a live nationwide audience. I loved the way the judge sent the jury out while he rambled on and on about his right to religious freedom. Then, after an hour, she basically said, "OK. Now that we've heard this argument, anytime you wish to object on these grounds, just say, 'Objective Number One.' We've already heard all about it, so we'll know exactly what you're talking about. You don't need to go through the entire schpiel again." Brilliant!
A tape was played today in which Warren was instructing at least one underage female in specific instructions for meeting his needs. He supposedly went so far as to say what body parts were to be shaved, and exactly how. Jeffs' megalomania seems to be manifested in part in a bizarre need to immortalize everything he says and does with recordings, which is something that ultimately will contribute greatly to his undoing. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but an audio recording has to be worth at least nine hundred. The reporters said the directions Warren gave were too graphic and explicit for them to repeat on air.
My PseudoAunt is trying to monitor what I'm watching because she doesn't want me to start having Warren Jeffs dreams. She's particularly worried about the audiotape of the women restraining the twelve-year-old on the temple bed while Warren has his way with her. While the tape probably won't be aired on TV, even the discussion of it may be graphic. I'll go along with her wishes because I don't particularly want to have Warren Jeffs nightmares.
I may have a polygamy party, where everyone dresses up as a polyg or as a character in the trial if one cannot stomach being a polygamist. Pseudoaunt was experimenting with her hair, and she eventually achieved the signature FLDS forehead flip. That is the fricking ugliest hairstyle I've ever seen, and that includes the way Nick Nolte's hair looked in his mugshot, or the way Charles Manson's hair always looks. I'll have her do my hair that way as well.
If you're feeling under the weather, perhaps you are in need of physical therapy. If you need a new career, consider physical therapy. Physical therapy is the way of the future!
Sayonara!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Keeping Tabs on Warren Jeffs While Convalescing
I've beeen resting a great deal lately, partly because that's mostly what I felt like doing. My parents really don't want me to do much more than lie around in bed and watch TV, anyway. My surgeon released me with the assumption that I would spend about twenty-two of every twenty-four hours in bed. There's been so little to do that I've basically complied with all requests.
My mother thinks the reason that I've been so compliant is that I am going to ask for something really big, such as the right to make a large withdrawal from my saving account to buy a car. Right now that's the furthest thing from my mind. Driving where we lived before was a more-or-less routine procedure. Driving where I now live, with two-way-streets that suddenly curve and become one-way streets, constant road construction, very old stoplights that are placed randomly so that one would not notice them unless one already knew they were there, in addition to bona fide crazy people stepping into traffic without looking one way, much less both ways, is nerve-wracking to say the least. While I am licensed to drive, I'm not to eager to demand the right here in my present location.
For once, I'm not being cooperative because I want something. I just don't have anything better to do than to cooperate. It takes less energy just to do what my parents and doctors say than to be oppositional at this point. Someday I may return to my rather contrary personality, but right now I lack the energy. Why even think for myself when I can get someone else to do my thinking for me? (This is temporary. I will want my brain back eventually.)
We've been following some coverage of the Warren Jeffs trial. The polyg lifestyle has fascinated me since I first heard of it when I was a little kid. I couldn't believe I was hearing correctly when I first heard mention of it. "Now?" I remember asking my older cousin. "There are men married to more than one lady at a time right now?"
She told me yes and showed me some pictures of modern polygamists in a magazine. The pictures wouldn't have convinced me, even looking like modern color photographs with people wearing clothes straight out of "Little House on the Prairie" though their hairstyles looked vaguely extraterrestrial, were it not for the modern automobiles in the background.
My mom showed me on a U. S. map where the twin cities of Colorado City, Arozona, and Hilldale, Utah are. She told me that the cities were formerly called "Short Creek." Since that time when I was quite young, Warren Jeffs built a more deluxe settlement near San Angelo, Texas. This settlement featured a temple. Jeffs' temple on his ranch in Texas differed from conventional Mormon temples in that right next to the altar was a bed so that temple marriages could be consummated right then and there in the presence of witnesses. (While I'm often the first to criticize conventional Mormonism, I know many people who have been throughout multiple Mormon temples, including my Dad and my Uncle Steve, who are no longer practicing Mormons, and they all say that there isn't a single bed to be found in any one of the conventional Mormon temples. Jeffs also supposedly built up communities in South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado, though none so elaborately as the community in Texas. My cousin lived with an off-shoot group in Canada for several months recently.
Last summer, my Pseudo-Aunt and Pseudo-Uncle took me on an overnight trip to see the twin cities of Colorado City and Hilldale. There wasn't a lot to see, as most of the pwoplw actually lived in gated areas, but my uncle finagled an invitation to a church service for us. My pseudo-aunt was scared to death that one of the polygs was going to claim her as his fourteenth wife or something like that, but the visitation went without a hitch. We dressed like them. I was still in a really heavy orthopedic device between casts, so they thought I was a little crippled girl and they prayed for me. We pretended to be living The principle, except we told them I was ten and my mama died a few years ago and my new mama, who was sixteen (she was actually 22, but sixteen sounded better) was raising me until my father could find another wife to help her. While we were there, we bought some really good fudge from a shop there that makes and sells it. Warren was no where to be found at the time. I think he was already locked up in a jail somewhere.
I really wish his trial would be televised. it would be straight out of "Big Love." as it is, there will probably be reporters standing outside the courtroom, as in the Scott Peterson case, ready to share anything of interest that happens, and I suspect many things of interest will happen.
Even though her face is blurred out, the picture of the twelve-year-old girl kissing Warren Jeffs after supposedly just marrying him (I've seen the photo in a version where the young bride's face was not blurred) is positively sickening. If that photo is admitted into evidence, it would seem that it alone would be sufficient to convict Warren Jeffs. One never knows what juries will do, though. Still, the trial is being held in Texas. The people of Texas don't necessarily look kindly upon one's freedon to practice a deviant religion. warren Jeffs probably should have foud a more "live and let live" state than Texas for the site of his Yearning for Zion Ranch.
I'm very close to my Pseudo-Uncle, Scott. He's eleven years older than I, which is far closer in age than Warren Jeffs is to the twelve-year-old he allegedly married and was seen kissing in the infamous photo. I'm sixteen-and-a-half, which is considerably older than twelve, although I probably look younger than the girl does. Still, the idea of PseudoUncle Scott, who's not a blood relative (as likely as not, the twelve-year-old is probably at least a second cousin in more ways than one to Warren Jeffs)kissing me anywhere other than on the forehead or cheek would be positively repulsive to me or to him. And he's very good-looking. Warren Jeffs looks like a corpse that was dressed up and made up with mortician's putty and then came back to life.
Many people with Mormon roots have distant relatives in either Jeffs' groups or in one of the spin-off groups. My family didn't become Mormon until long after polygamy was made against official practice in the Mormon church, so, other than the one lunatic relative who hooked up with the Canadian polygamous group, I have no particular familial connection to polygamy. Still I'll be watching the trial somewhat anxiously.
My mother thinks the reason that I've been so compliant is that I am going to ask for something really big, such as the right to make a large withdrawal from my saving account to buy a car. Right now that's the furthest thing from my mind. Driving where we lived before was a more-or-less routine procedure. Driving where I now live, with two-way-streets that suddenly curve and become one-way streets, constant road construction, very old stoplights that are placed randomly so that one would not notice them unless one already knew they were there, in addition to bona fide crazy people stepping into traffic without looking one way, much less both ways, is nerve-wracking to say the least. While I am licensed to drive, I'm not to eager to demand the right here in my present location.
For once, I'm not being cooperative because I want something. I just don't have anything better to do than to cooperate. It takes less energy just to do what my parents and doctors say than to be oppositional at this point. Someday I may return to my rather contrary personality, but right now I lack the energy. Why even think for myself when I can get someone else to do my thinking for me? (This is temporary. I will want my brain back eventually.)
We've been following some coverage of the Warren Jeffs trial. The polyg lifestyle has fascinated me since I first heard of it when I was a little kid. I couldn't believe I was hearing correctly when I first heard mention of it. "Now?" I remember asking my older cousin. "There are men married to more than one lady at a time right now?"
She told me yes and showed me some pictures of modern polygamists in a magazine. The pictures wouldn't have convinced me, even looking like modern color photographs with people wearing clothes straight out of "Little House on the Prairie" though their hairstyles looked vaguely extraterrestrial, were it not for the modern automobiles in the background.
My mom showed me on a U. S. map where the twin cities of Colorado City, Arozona, and Hilldale, Utah are. She told me that the cities were formerly called "Short Creek." Since that time when I was quite young, Warren Jeffs built a more deluxe settlement near San Angelo, Texas. This settlement featured a temple. Jeffs' temple on his ranch in Texas differed from conventional Mormon temples in that right next to the altar was a bed so that temple marriages could be consummated right then and there in the presence of witnesses. (While I'm often the first to criticize conventional Mormonism, I know many people who have been throughout multiple Mormon temples, including my Dad and my Uncle Steve, who are no longer practicing Mormons, and they all say that there isn't a single bed to be found in any one of the conventional Mormon temples. Jeffs also supposedly built up communities in South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado, though none so elaborately as the community in Texas. My cousin lived with an off-shoot group in Canada for several months recently.
Last summer, my Pseudo-Aunt and Pseudo-Uncle took me on an overnight trip to see the twin cities of Colorado City and Hilldale. There wasn't a lot to see, as most of the pwoplw actually lived in gated areas, but my uncle finagled an invitation to a church service for us. My pseudo-aunt was scared to death that one of the polygs was going to claim her as his fourteenth wife or something like that, but the visitation went without a hitch. We dressed like them. I was still in a really heavy orthopedic device between casts, so they thought I was a little crippled girl and they prayed for me. We pretended to be living The principle, except we told them I was ten and my mama died a few years ago and my new mama, who was sixteen (she was actually 22, but sixteen sounded better) was raising me until my father could find another wife to help her. While we were there, we bought some really good fudge from a shop there that makes and sells it. Warren was no where to be found at the time. I think he was already locked up in a jail somewhere.
I really wish his trial would be televised. it would be straight out of "Big Love." as it is, there will probably be reporters standing outside the courtroom, as in the Scott Peterson case, ready to share anything of interest that happens, and I suspect many things of interest will happen.
Even though her face is blurred out, the picture of the twelve-year-old girl kissing Warren Jeffs after supposedly just marrying him (I've seen the photo in a version where the young bride's face was not blurred) is positively sickening. If that photo is admitted into evidence, it would seem that it alone would be sufficient to convict Warren Jeffs. One never knows what juries will do, though. Still, the trial is being held in Texas. The people of Texas don't necessarily look kindly upon one's freedon to practice a deviant religion. warren Jeffs probably should have foud a more "live and let live" state than Texas for the site of his Yearning for Zion Ranch.
I'm very close to my Pseudo-Uncle, Scott. He's eleven years older than I, which is far closer in age than Warren Jeffs is to the twelve-year-old he allegedly married and was seen kissing in the infamous photo. I'm sixteen-and-a-half, which is considerably older than twelve, although I probably look younger than the girl does. Still, the idea of PseudoUncle Scott, who's not a blood relative (as likely as not, the twelve-year-old is probably at least a second cousin in more ways than one to Warren Jeffs)kissing me anywhere other than on the forehead or cheek would be positively repulsive to me or to him. And he's very good-looking. Warren Jeffs looks like a corpse that was dressed up and made up with mortician's putty and then came back to life.
Many people with Mormon roots have distant relatives in either Jeffs' groups or in one of the spin-off groups. My family didn't become Mormon until long after polygamy was made against official practice in the Mormon church, so, other than the one lunatic relative who hooked up with the Canadian polygamous group, I have no particular familial connection to polygamy. Still I'll be watching the trial somewhat anxiously.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Career Options: Nun, CIA Agent, or Stripper: What I want , What My Parents Think About It, and Drawbacks Associated with all Possibilities
As I enter college, it causes me to think of precisely what it is I'd like to do with my life. I've wanted to be an attorney for a very long time. My dad always said that both my argumentative and analytical tendencies made me a natural lawyer, but my dad is a little concerned that I'm possibly wasting strengths in the areas of math and science. I hear what he's saying, but not everyone needs to be a doctor or a scientist.
Regarding my being a nun, there's nothin in my life totally precluding my finding a vocation or calling at this time except that I do sometimes have trouble with following orders form authorities who are giving out orders just to exercise their power to do so. I would think the incidence of that sort of activity could be fairly high in a nunnery. Chances are I wouldn't last long under the average Mother Superior, which is unfortunate, as I probably would've been a very good nun in many ways. The bottom line here is that I have yet to receive the full impact of adolescent hormones. when that happens, it could change my ability or desire to serve as a nun a a very big way. There is still that matter of my entire family having been formally excommunicated. I suspect it could be cleared up easily enough, but it would most definitely atand out a major blight on my appplication.
As far as being a CIA agent goes, I can keep a secret. I've done so on numerous occasions, and even in cases where I probably should not have for the other party's own good but felt honor-bound by my agreement to maintain confidentiality. The main appeal to me in becoming a CIA agent is that I'm bery nosy. I was born nosy. I think I can recall trying to hear conversations between my parents from my shared position in utero. Matthew, my twin, would've at the same time been trying to stretch out in the tight quarters and take up more than his share of the space while sucking his thumb and liberaally drinking up and peeing out as much amniotic fluid as his more-than-six-pound body would allow him, oblivious to actual life happening just a few sacs and layers of tissue away. My dad says this is impossible -- my memory of listening in on private parental conversations from the womb -- but how would he know? He's never even read The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. My mom read it and pronounced it 98% bullshit, so my dad didn't even bother reading it. Still, before he claims to have expertise regarding what I did or didn't hear in utero, wouldn't one think he would at least read a book on the topic before proclaiming himself an expert? My prenatal activities notwithstanding, I've laways liked being privy to information that not everyone has. The more exciting or sensitive the information, the better. Furthermore, I look liike a person to whom highly sensitive information would not be entrusted. That would be an added benefit to my usefulness to the C. I. A. A law degree would likewise be of added benefit to the CIA, so the two possibilities of attorney and C.I.A. agent are not mutually exclusive.
I just threw the bit about being a stripper in for my dad's enjoyment and peace of mind. I would not be a good stripper for obvious reasons. First and foremost, I have serious issues with undressing in front of others. I even hate it when doctors or nurses pull down the front of my gown to listen to my heart with their stethoscopes. I hate it worse when one of them gives me a shot in my bottom. I have frequent conflict with medical personnel - even my dad sometimes -- because of my heightened sense of modesty when it comes to my own body. My dad thinks I'm just being difficult, but I have a strong aversion to anyone seeing me unclothed.
Right now it would be illegal for me to perform as a stripper. Even once it's legal, though, chances are that I'm going to look like it should not be legal for awhile. This would mean that most of the guys who hung around to watch once I started my performance were probably mildly sick in the head, however legal my activity and their observing it and tipping me for it would be. I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogy here. Let's try this one on for size: Say Mr. MacGoogle liked looking at child porn on his computer, but he knew that doing so was illegal. So instead, he looked at virtual child porn, where the subjects were digitally enhanced to appear younger. Mr. MacGoogle wasn't looking at any actual children, so he was not breaking laws, but because he qa looking at the virtual child por, would that make him any less sick than he would be were he viewing the real thing?
Probably not; the legality of what he was doing wouldn't make him any less sick or pedophilic in the minds of many of us. Likewise with me, were I to become a stripper in one-and-a-half years or so, I would in all likelihood not require any sort of digital enhancement to appear to be jailbait, while I would not, any way one cared to configurate the situation, be jailbait. Would that make any guy who ogled my nude body any less perverse than if he were viewing an actual under-age youngster performing? Probably not.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, because if I'm too shy to take my clothing off at the doctor's office, what would make it suddenly easier to do so in front of a live audience. I love money, but before one of my endocrinologist appointments, my dad offered me twenty-five dollars to cooperate and not resist or make any sort of scene when I had to expose various part of my body that are usually kept under at least two layers of clothing. I really wanted the twenty-five dollars, and I knew I was going to have to let the doctor see what he needed to see, but, hard as I tried to force myself, I could not cooperate well enough to earn the twenty-five dollars. Sorry, but I'm not stripper material.
So I'll most likely finish undergraduate studies and complete law school as well. I haven't totally ruled out my dad's suggestion of medical school, though I do not see myself as doctor material. It's not that I'm totally lacking in feeling for my fellow human beings, but I doubt that I would empathize to the degree that a doctor sometimes must, or must at least pretend to empathize. My brother wants to be a physician, but he's a fairly one-dimensional and transparent character. He can't even fake sincerity well enough to break up with a girfriend without her often hating him as well as every member of our entire family. (It's a miracle I was only beaten up in a school restroom only once, and the once had nothing to do with Matthew and his former girlfriends). This has been the case even when the breakup was over a girl going off to explore whether or not being a nun was in the cards for her. That one was a no-brainer, and he screwed it up to the point that her family to this day doesn't speak to my family.
Suffice it to say that if I really wanted to become a doctor, I probably could do it. My dad suggested for me some branch of medicine like radiology, where I would look at Xrays all day and have limited contact with patients. That is something I could probably do, but I'd really rather carry secrets around for the CIA, with or without a law degree. The law dregree would come in habdy, though, in the event that someone outed me as a secret agent, as happened to Agent Valerie Plame in an ugly political maneuver. At least I'd have my law degree on which to fall back in the event that some Karl Rove-type bureaucrat had a grievance with me or my husband and chose to leak my identity to a few journalists in retaliation for God knows what. Keeping multiple options open is a very smart strategy in the process of entering the job maarket.
Regarding my being a nun, there's nothin in my life totally precluding my finding a vocation or calling at this time except that I do sometimes have trouble with following orders form authorities who are giving out orders just to exercise their power to do so. I would think the incidence of that sort of activity could be fairly high in a nunnery. Chances are I wouldn't last long under the average Mother Superior, which is unfortunate, as I probably would've been a very good nun in many ways. The bottom line here is that I have yet to receive the full impact of adolescent hormones. when that happens, it could change my ability or desire to serve as a nun a a very big way. There is still that matter of my entire family having been formally excommunicated. I suspect it could be cleared up easily enough, but it would most definitely atand out a major blight on my appplication.
As far as being a CIA agent goes, I can keep a secret. I've done so on numerous occasions, and even in cases where I probably should not have for the other party's own good but felt honor-bound by my agreement to maintain confidentiality. The main appeal to me in becoming a CIA agent is that I'm bery nosy. I was born nosy. I think I can recall trying to hear conversations between my parents from my shared position in utero. Matthew, my twin, would've at the same time been trying to stretch out in the tight quarters and take up more than his share of the space while sucking his thumb and liberaally drinking up and peeing out as much amniotic fluid as his more-than-six-pound body would allow him, oblivious to actual life happening just a few sacs and layers of tissue away. My dad says this is impossible -- my memory of listening in on private parental conversations from the womb -- but how would he know? He's never even read The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. My mom read it and pronounced it 98% bullshit, so my dad didn't even bother reading it. Still, before he claims to have expertise regarding what I did or didn't hear in utero, wouldn't one think he would at least read a book on the topic before proclaiming himself an expert? My prenatal activities notwithstanding, I've laways liked being privy to information that not everyone has. The more exciting or sensitive the information, the better. Furthermore, I look liike a person to whom highly sensitive information would not be entrusted. That would be an added benefit to my usefulness to the C. I. A. A law degree would likewise be of added benefit to the CIA, so the two possibilities of attorney and C.I.A. agent are not mutually exclusive.
I just threw the bit about being a stripper in for my dad's enjoyment and peace of mind. I would not be a good stripper for obvious reasons. First and foremost, I have serious issues with undressing in front of others. I even hate it when doctors or nurses pull down the front of my gown to listen to my heart with their stethoscopes. I hate it worse when one of them gives me a shot in my bottom. I have frequent conflict with medical personnel - even my dad sometimes -- because of my heightened sense of modesty when it comes to my own body. My dad thinks I'm just being difficult, but I have a strong aversion to anyone seeing me unclothed.
Right now it would be illegal for me to perform as a stripper. Even once it's legal, though, chances are that I'm going to look like it should not be legal for awhile. This would mean that most of the guys who hung around to watch once I started my performance were probably mildly sick in the head, however legal my activity and their observing it and tipping me for it would be. I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogy here. Let's try this one on for size: Say Mr. MacGoogle liked looking at child porn on his computer, but he knew that doing so was illegal. So instead, he looked at virtual child porn, where the subjects were digitally enhanced to appear younger. Mr. MacGoogle wasn't looking at any actual children, so he was not breaking laws, but because he qa looking at the virtual child por, would that make him any less sick than he would be were he viewing the real thing?
Probably not; the legality of what he was doing wouldn't make him any less sick or pedophilic in the minds of many of us. Likewise with me, were I to become a stripper in one-and-a-half years or so, I would in all likelihood not require any sort of digital enhancement to appear to be jailbait, while I would not, any way one cared to configurate the situation, be jailbait. Would that make any guy who ogled my nude body any less perverse than if he were viewing an actual under-age youngster performing? Probably not.
Anyway, it doesn't matter, because if I'm too shy to take my clothing off at the doctor's office, what would make it suddenly easier to do so in front of a live audience. I love money, but before one of my endocrinologist appointments, my dad offered me twenty-five dollars to cooperate and not resist or make any sort of scene when I had to expose various part of my body that are usually kept under at least two layers of clothing. I really wanted the twenty-five dollars, and I knew I was going to have to let the doctor see what he needed to see, but, hard as I tried to force myself, I could not cooperate well enough to earn the twenty-five dollars. Sorry, but I'm not stripper material.
So I'll most likely finish undergraduate studies and complete law school as well. I haven't totally ruled out my dad's suggestion of medical school, though I do not see myself as doctor material. It's not that I'm totally lacking in feeling for my fellow human beings, but I doubt that I would empathize to the degree that a doctor sometimes must, or must at least pretend to empathize. My brother wants to be a physician, but he's a fairly one-dimensional and transparent character. He can't even fake sincerity well enough to break up with a girfriend without her often hating him as well as every member of our entire family. (It's a miracle I was only beaten up in a school restroom only once, and the once had nothing to do with Matthew and his former girlfriends). This has been the case even when the breakup was over a girl going off to explore whether or not being a nun was in the cards for her. That one was a no-brainer, and he screwed it up to the point that her family to this day doesn't speak to my family.
Suffice it to say that if I really wanted to become a doctor, I probably could do it. My dad suggested for me some branch of medicine like radiology, where I would look at Xrays all day and have limited contact with patients. That is something I could probably do, but I'd really rather carry secrets around for the CIA, with or without a law degree. The law dregree would come in habdy, though, in the event that someone outed me as a secret agent, as happened to Agent Valerie Plame in an ugly political maneuver. At least I'd have my law degree on which to fall back in the event that some Karl Rove-type bureaucrat had a grievance with me or my husband and chose to leak my identity to a few journalists in retaliation for God knows what. Keeping multiple options open is a very smart strategy in the process of entering the job maarket.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Ruining My Parents' Careers or Social Lives by Airing Their Secret Opinions
My parents are concerned that I could cause problems by publicizing their views on religion, politics, social issues, or anything else. Isn't this a Gawd-damned hoot and a half?
Seriously, is there one person who reads this semi-anonymous blog who cares in the least what my parents think about ANYTHING? I didn't think so.
Here's a possible scenario runnning through my father's mind. He hasn't actually told me this, of course, but I'm trying to get inside his head and see from where he could possibly be coming. OK, so here goes it: President Barack Obama is looking for a new surgeon general. Someone suggests Dr. John Rousseau (not even our real surname). Then President Obama happens to be trolling the WWW one night in his ample leisure time, and he comes across one of my blogs. He doesn't like what he sees, so he keeps reading more. Eventually he makes the connection that Dr. John Rousseau (not even his actual last name) is the father of that quasi-terrorist Alexis, or that rabid Anti-Mormon Alexis at the very least. He knows the Mitt Romney camp will make deviled Spam out of him if he dares appoint the father of a known anti-Mormon, who is himself somewhat anti-Mormon, to such an esteemed post as Surgeon General of the United States. The nomination is withdrawn before it is even submitted.
Or, looking at things as they might be from my mom's perspective: She decides to ditch the public sector once and for all and work in private practice as a theraapist even though she knows that half of her salary will go to henchmen attempting unsuccessfully to make collections for her. (It's got to be tough to maintain rapport with a client when that client knows that the rottweiler who is harassing him or her at home, at work, and on his or her cell phone, was sicced on him or her by his or her therapist. wouldn't you say? They could even make a reality series out of the activities of therapists' collection agents. It would make Operation Repo look tame by comparison.) Anyway, my mom starts private practice again and is lucky enough to build up a clientele right away because there happens to be a buttload of crazy Mormons living within walking distance of her office, and my mom leaves toys and cookies in the waiting room so that the Mormon ladies' four-year-olds can more easily babysit the three-, two-. and one- year-olds, as well as newborns in the waiting room while Mommy is talking to her shrink about the unknown stressors that make her want to step directly into the path of a speeding bus. Then one of them finds out the therapist is the mother of the dreaded Alexis. What one Mormon knows, they all soon know. There goes my mother's clientele, still stressed but in search of a therapist who doesn't think Joseph Smith was a pedophile and Brigham Young was a megalomaniac. Can you picture this? I can't either.
My brother, on the other hand, is gratefu; for any publicity I give his views oabout virtually anything. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any interesting views. Neither do my parents, but in their egocentric minds, they think someone might be interested and make the connection.
If you think I am endangerng my parents' employment status or state of well-being in any way, please comment. If you have any thoughts related to anything else, please also feel free to comment.
Ciao!
Alexis, who walked the perimeter of a large city block today. Carpe diem!
Seriously, is there one person who reads this semi-anonymous blog who cares in the least what my parents think about ANYTHING? I didn't think so.
Here's a possible scenario runnning through my father's mind. He hasn't actually told me this, of course, but I'm trying to get inside his head and see from where he could possibly be coming. OK, so here goes it: President Barack Obama is looking for a new surgeon general. Someone suggests Dr. John Rousseau (not even our real surname). Then President Obama happens to be trolling the WWW one night in his ample leisure time, and he comes across one of my blogs. He doesn't like what he sees, so he keeps reading more. Eventually he makes the connection that Dr. John Rousseau (not even his actual last name) is the father of that quasi-terrorist Alexis, or that rabid Anti-Mormon Alexis at the very least. He knows the Mitt Romney camp will make deviled Spam out of him if he dares appoint the father of a known anti-Mormon, who is himself somewhat anti-Mormon, to such an esteemed post as Surgeon General of the United States. The nomination is withdrawn before it is even submitted.
Or, looking at things as they might be from my mom's perspective: She decides to ditch the public sector once and for all and work in private practice as a theraapist even though she knows that half of her salary will go to henchmen attempting unsuccessfully to make collections for her. (It's got to be tough to maintain rapport with a client when that client knows that the rottweiler who is harassing him or her at home, at work, and on his or her cell phone, was sicced on him or her by his or her therapist. wouldn't you say? They could even make a reality series out of the activities of therapists' collection agents. It would make Operation Repo look tame by comparison.) Anyway, my mom starts private practice again and is lucky enough to build up a clientele right away because there happens to be a buttload of crazy Mormons living within walking distance of her office, and my mom leaves toys and cookies in the waiting room so that the Mormon ladies' four-year-olds can more easily babysit the three-, two-. and one- year-olds, as well as newborns in the waiting room while Mommy is talking to her shrink about the unknown stressors that make her want to step directly into the path of a speeding bus. Then one of them finds out the therapist is the mother of the dreaded Alexis. What one Mormon knows, they all soon know. There goes my mother's clientele, still stressed but in search of a therapist who doesn't think Joseph Smith was a pedophile and Brigham Young was a megalomaniac. Can you picture this? I can't either.
My brother, on the other hand, is gratefu; for any publicity I give his views oabout virtually anything. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any interesting views. Neither do my parents, but in their egocentric minds, they think someone might be interested and make the connection.
If you think I am endangerng my parents' employment status or state of well-being in any way, please comment. If you have any thoughts related to anything else, please also feel free to comment.
Ciao!
Alexis, who walked the perimeter of a large city block today. Carpe diem!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
My Mormon Experiences: Chapter One - Necro-Dunking
As I mention from time to time, I am a baptized and confirmed Catholic (who thinks for myself and makes my own choices) but because my father's rather large family converted to Mormonism when he was young, anytime I am with that side of the family, I am exposed to elements of religious practice or culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm usually a bystander, but on occasions I've been right in the thick of things. I've already written about the time I was blessed in an LDS church. http://alexisar.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-blessing.html I will begin an I-don't-know-how-many-chapter series that may or may not be consecutive featuring my other major mormon experiences. I will begin with something I rarely think about, but has come to the forefront of my mind since I wrote about it very briefly on the RFM bulletin board.
I was baptized for the dead. I know. I haven't even been formally dunked for myself Mormon-style -- the Mormons recognize neither the sprinkling done by the Catholic church nor the priest who sprinkles-- so how could I be baptized on behalf of some dead person? For that matter, why was I even allowed inside a temple? Here's how it all went down.
The summer I was 12, I somehow got stuck staying with some of my LDS relatives in Utah for a week or so after my tennis camp ended because my parents' cruise still had to make its way back around Cape Horn and up the Pacific coast. I was spending nights with an aunt whose husband, my uncle by marriage, was a stake president, which is the rough equivalent to a Catholic bishop. The LDS bishop of his ward (the rough equivalent to a catholic parish priest) was another uncle by marriage. The stake was to have a Youth Temple Day on Friday of the week. All the youth ages 12 to 18 who were worthy of entrance in the temple would travel more than one hundred miles south to be baptized for the dead in the Manti Temple in Manti, Utah.
I initially mistook this ordinance as "Baptism of the Dead," wherein the Mormon youth would be charged with unloading dead bodies from stretchers, bags, or coffins, and dropping them into the pools of water supported by fake oxen heads that I had seen in pictures. Once again I was ever so glad not to be an official Mormon and not to be worthy to participate in this somewhat gruesome mission. The idea of even looking at a dead body, much less actually touching it, and helping to drop it into a vat of water, then towing it out, gave me a severe case of the creepy-crawlies. I wondered if someone attached ropes to the bodies to make it easier to hall them in and out of the giant tubs they referred to as "fonts." I wondered a little about the logistics, but mostly I was just glad to be left out. Then I heard I was expected to tag along on this most macabre of field trips. While still less than thrilled to be dragged to Manti for this purpose, I was greatly relieved to learn that the dead were to be baptized by proxy, using our bodies.
The relatives seemed to have forgotten that I was never baptized ("Of course you were baptized! We would never have let you get this old without baptizing you!") As it turns out, all I needed were "interviews" with my bishop and a member of the stake presidency in order to determine my worthiness to enter the House of the Lord. I'm not sure when or why these people suddenly changed their minds concerning my character. On a normal day, any one of my father's siblings or their spouses * * would have told you that I was a first-degree spawn of Satan, not worthy to color in a coloring book with pictures of LDS temples (because my colorbook renditions of temples always looked liked haunted houses when I colored them) much less to set foot in an actual temple. The truth of the matter is that they do look like haunted houses or spooky castles in real life to many people. When my family visted Washington, D.C., someone had spray-painted, "Surrender, Dorothy!" on an overpass on the Washington D.C. Beltway right where the Mormon Temple comes into view in obvious reference to that temple's resemblance to the castle in Oz. . To paraphrase Billy Joel,I didn't start the fire. I was hardly the first person to notice a resemblance between L.D.S. temples and scary places
in general.
Almost before I knew it, I was in an oversized van with a load of other kids from my age to eighteen, nearly all of them at least twice my size. My aunt had thought to grab a baptismal jumpsuit from the ward baptismal font in hopes that, since it was made to fit an eight-year-old, it might not swallow me whole. It pretty much did anyway, but I wore a snapping white one-piece shirt, sort of like a Onesie, under it and my aunt stitched up the collar a bit so that I wouldn't slide out of the neck hole every time I was dunked and puilled up again. The baptismal jumpsuits in the temple were made for twelve-year-olds and older, so there's no way one of those would've remained on my meercat-shaped body in the water.
There was supposed to have been an interview process, but no one asked me a thing, because I certainly wouldn't have told them that the Book of Mormon was true or that Joseph Smith was any sort of a prophet. Someone handed me a form just before we walked into the temple. One uncle had signed, perjuring himself to state that he had interviewed me as bishop, and another had done the same in the Stake Presidency spot. I had in a bag my white Jesus jumpsuit made out of quilted fabric, sort of like an old-fashioned mattress cover, my white Onesie and my little piece of paper stating I was worthy to enter the House of the Lord. (I still have it, with no expiration date. I could get into one off those temples any time I wanted to, as if i'd ever want to.)I hadn't eaten anything since dinner the night before because fasting was required before temple baptisms.
We entered the holiest of buildings to a locker room and put on our funky white mattress-cover jumpsuits, with mine being slightly funkier than average. We wandered into the large basement baptismal room where there was a large font of water held on the backs of fake oxen. Two men, wearing white pants, shirts, and ties, walked up the steps, then down some more steps into each font of water. They would apparently do the dunking. The temple supervisors lined us up, There were two lines - one line of girls and one line of boys. The girls would be baptized by proxy for females who had lived and died on this Earth at some time in the past, while the boys would perform the same function for males.
I quickly found my way back to the girls' line and watched as a man in white garb held his hand up and uttered some prescribed words about baptizing someone in the name of whatever the dead person's name was in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Two men were watching each baptizer and baptizee to ascertain that the person went all the way under the water at the same time. If the person didn't, the procedure had to be repeated, with the name said over and the prayer said again. They were very official in their process. With larger girls or boys, the baptizers seemed to tire after dunking them more than a few times, and baptizers would have to switch off. Additionally, I noticed that the more physically developed girls received fewer dunks. One particularly buxom girl, whose buxomness became more apparent through her increasingly clingy and eventually transparent jumpsuit with each dunk, received only about seven dunks. This did not bode well for me. I kept moving to the back of the line, encouraging girls who had already had turns to take additional advantage of this opportunity to serve the Lord.
One older woman eventually noticed me. She thought I was merely reticent, so she took me by the hand and walked my up the stairs, telling me, "There's nothing to be afraid of, dear." "Here's a new one," she said to the baptizer. The man showed me how to put my fingers over my nose. He said the scripted words, dipped me backwards into the water, then lifted me out. Typically the two men in the font alternated, with a man telling each of them a name to recite for his next dunk as the other guy was dunking his proxy. The two men soon figured out that I was such a lightweight that Man A could easily dunk me twice in the amount of time it took for Man B to dunk his boy once. They also probably noticed my absence of physical development, which might have made it awkward for them to continue baptizing anyone else so many times. There was certainly nothing about my physique that would make any man feel awkward to see me in wet clothing.
Boys kept coming and going in the line next to me while I was dunked repeatedly, two dunks for every single dunk of the boy being dunked by the other man. I became seriously afraid that these people were trying to drown me. No wonder my relatives had been so eager to perjure themselves on my temple recommend. I finally grabbed the guy's arm before he could dunk me again and told him to slow down because I needed to catch my breath. He looked at me apologetically and said,"I'm sorry, honey." He helped me up the stairs and I walked across the ramp and out. As I was making my way to the locker room, still attempting to catch my breath, I heard one of the men say, "How many times did you baptize that little girl, anyway?"
Another one said, "I'm not sure, but it must have been close to a hundred. I think that's some kind of a record."
I hurried into dry clothing and on into the cafeteria to grab just a bit of food before we made the long trip back to my temporary home. My parents returned home a couple of days later, and I caught a plane from Salt Lake City to California. My dad picked me up at the airport. "What did you do in Utah?" he asked me.
"Do you know what 'Baptism for the Dead' is?" I asked him.
He looked at me for moment, then said, "No way!"
I shook my head yes.
He asked me if they baptized me in a regular church or swimming pool first. I told him no, they hadn't, and explained about the paper with my uncles' signatures, and the Onesie, and the jumpsuit that had to be practically sewn onto my body, and the apparent record number of dunks.
He just sort of looked straight ahead and whistled but didn't say anything else to me. As soon as we got home, he pulled my mother into their library before I even had a chance to greet her. I couldn't hear what was being said, but my dad's voice was getting more and more agitated, while my mother just laughed harder and harder.
Eventually they emerged from their library. My mother hugged me and said, "I heard you got baptized."
"Almost a hundred times," I told her.
"Either you must have sinned a lot or you must be really in a state of grace, " my mother said.
My dad said he was going to call the temple and tell them that it was a mixup and that I was a non-member, because the baptisms I had done would need to be done over.
My mom asked him then if he really believed it made any difference.
"Not a damn bit," my dad replied.
"Then why don't you just leave well enough alone?" my mom asked him.
"OK," my dad answered, "but I'm also not leaving my kid with any of them again. They could marry her off in one of those damned temples before she's fourteen."
All was well until he forgot about his promise never to leave me with any of them again, but that was already thoroughly covered in another blog.
* * with the exception of his sister Cristele and her husband Mendel, and his brother, Steve, also an apostate, and Steve's wife, Heather, a Nevermo, but not quite as bad as inherently eveil as my mom because she's Lutheran and not Catholic, and therefore not part of the Great and Abominable Church; Martin Luther had the right idea about the Catholic Church with his Diet of Worms: he just never found the Hill Cumorah , the Angel Moroni, and the Golden Plates. Had he, history might have been written very differently.
I was baptized for the dead. I know. I haven't even been formally dunked for myself Mormon-style -- the Mormons recognize neither the sprinkling done by the Catholic church nor the priest who sprinkles-- so how could I be baptized on behalf of some dead person? For that matter, why was I even allowed inside a temple? Here's how it all went down.
The summer I was 12, I somehow got stuck staying with some of my LDS relatives in Utah for a week or so after my tennis camp ended because my parents' cruise still had to make its way back around Cape Horn and up the Pacific coast. I was spending nights with an aunt whose husband, my uncle by marriage, was a stake president, which is the rough equivalent to a Catholic bishop. The LDS bishop of his ward (the rough equivalent to a catholic parish priest) was another uncle by marriage. The stake was to have a Youth Temple Day on Friday of the week. All the youth ages 12 to 18 who were worthy of entrance in the temple would travel more than one hundred miles south to be baptized for the dead in the Manti Temple in Manti, Utah.
I initially mistook this ordinance as "Baptism of the Dead," wherein the Mormon youth would be charged with unloading dead bodies from stretchers, bags, or coffins, and dropping them into the pools of water supported by fake oxen heads that I had seen in pictures. Once again I was ever so glad not to be an official Mormon and not to be worthy to participate in this somewhat gruesome mission. The idea of even looking at a dead body, much less actually touching it, and helping to drop it into a vat of water, then towing it out, gave me a severe case of the creepy-crawlies. I wondered if someone attached ropes to the bodies to make it easier to hall them in and out of the giant tubs they referred to as "fonts." I wondered a little about the logistics, but mostly I was just glad to be left out. Then I heard I was expected to tag along on this most macabre of field trips. While still less than thrilled to be dragged to Manti for this purpose, I was greatly relieved to learn that the dead were to be baptized by proxy, using our bodies.
The relatives seemed to have forgotten that I was never baptized ("Of course you were baptized! We would never have let you get this old without baptizing you!") As it turns out, all I needed were "interviews" with my bishop and a member of the stake presidency in order to determine my worthiness to enter the House of the Lord. I'm not sure when or why these people suddenly changed their minds concerning my character. On a normal day, any one of my father's siblings or their spouses * * would have told you that I was a first-degree spawn of Satan, not worthy to color in a coloring book with pictures of LDS temples (because my colorbook renditions of temples always looked liked haunted houses when I colored them) much less to set foot in an actual temple. The truth of the matter is that they do look like haunted houses or spooky castles in real life to many people. When my family visted Washington, D.C., someone had spray-painted, "Surrender, Dorothy!" on an overpass on the Washington D.C. Beltway right where the Mormon Temple comes into view in obvious reference to that temple's resemblance to the castle in Oz. . To paraphrase Billy Joel,I didn't start the fire. I was hardly the first person to notice a resemblance between L.D.S. temples and scary places
in general.
Almost before I knew it, I was in an oversized van with a load of other kids from my age to eighteen, nearly all of them at least twice my size. My aunt had thought to grab a baptismal jumpsuit from the ward baptismal font in hopes that, since it was made to fit an eight-year-old, it might not swallow me whole. It pretty much did anyway, but I wore a snapping white one-piece shirt, sort of like a Onesie, under it and my aunt stitched up the collar a bit so that I wouldn't slide out of the neck hole every time I was dunked and puilled up again. The baptismal jumpsuits in the temple were made for twelve-year-olds and older, so there's no way one of those would've remained on my meercat-shaped body in the water.
There was supposed to have been an interview process, but no one asked me a thing, because I certainly wouldn't have told them that the Book of Mormon was true or that Joseph Smith was any sort of a prophet. Someone handed me a form just before we walked into the temple. One uncle had signed, perjuring himself to state that he had interviewed me as bishop, and another had done the same in the Stake Presidency spot. I had in a bag my white Jesus jumpsuit made out of quilted fabric, sort of like an old-fashioned mattress cover, my white Onesie and my little piece of paper stating I was worthy to enter the House of the Lord. (I still have it, with no expiration date. I could get into one off those temples any time I wanted to, as if i'd ever want to.)I hadn't eaten anything since dinner the night before because fasting was required before temple baptisms.
We entered the holiest of buildings to a locker room and put on our funky white mattress-cover jumpsuits, with mine being slightly funkier than average. We wandered into the large basement baptismal room where there was a large font of water held on the backs of fake oxen. Two men, wearing white pants, shirts, and ties, walked up the steps, then down some more steps into each font of water. They would apparently do the dunking. The temple supervisors lined us up, There were two lines - one line of girls and one line of boys. The girls would be baptized by proxy for females who had lived and died on this Earth at some time in the past, while the boys would perform the same function for males.
I quickly found my way back to the girls' line and watched as a man in white garb held his hand up and uttered some prescribed words about baptizing someone in the name of whatever the dead person's name was in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Two men were watching each baptizer and baptizee to ascertain that the person went all the way under the water at the same time. If the person didn't, the procedure had to be repeated, with the name said over and the prayer said again. They were very official in their process. With larger girls or boys, the baptizers seemed to tire after dunking them more than a few times, and baptizers would have to switch off. Additionally, I noticed that the more physically developed girls received fewer dunks. One particularly buxom girl, whose buxomness became more apparent through her increasingly clingy and eventually transparent jumpsuit with each dunk, received only about seven dunks. This did not bode well for me. I kept moving to the back of the line, encouraging girls who had already had turns to take additional advantage of this opportunity to serve the Lord.
One older woman eventually noticed me. She thought I was merely reticent, so she took me by the hand and walked my up the stairs, telling me, "There's nothing to be afraid of, dear." "Here's a new one," she said to the baptizer. The man showed me how to put my fingers over my nose. He said the scripted words, dipped me backwards into the water, then lifted me out. Typically the two men in the font alternated, with a man telling each of them a name to recite for his next dunk as the other guy was dunking his proxy. The two men soon figured out that I was such a lightweight that Man A could easily dunk me twice in the amount of time it took for Man B to dunk his boy once. They also probably noticed my absence of physical development, which might have made it awkward for them to continue baptizing anyone else so many times. There was certainly nothing about my physique that would make any man feel awkward to see me in wet clothing.
Boys kept coming and going in the line next to me while I was dunked repeatedly, two dunks for every single dunk of the boy being dunked by the other man. I became seriously afraid that these people were trying to drown me. No wonder my relatives had been so eager to perjure themselves on my temple recommend. I finally grabbed the guy's arm before he could dunk me again and told him to slow down because I needed to catch my breath. He looked at me apologetically and said,"I'm sorry, honey." He helped me up the stairs and I walked across the ramp and out. As I was making my way to the locker room, still attempting to catch my breath, I heard one of the men say, "How many times did you baptize that little girl, anyway?"
Another one said, "I'm not sure, but it must have been close to a hundred. I think that's some kind of a record."
I hurried into dry clothing and on into the cafeteria to grab just a bit of food before we made the long trip back to my temporary home. My parents returned home a couple of days later, and I caught a plane from Salt Lake City to California. My dad picked me up at the airport. "What did you do in Utah?" he asked me.
"Do you know what 'Baptism for the Dead' is?" I asked him.
He looked at me for moment, then said, "No way!"
I shook my head yes.
He asked me if they baptized me in a regular church or swimming pool first. I told him no, they hadn't, and explained about the paper with my uncles' signatures, and the Onesie, and the jumpsuit that had to be practically sewn onto my body, and the apparent record number of dunks.
He just sort of looked straight ahead and whistled but didn't say anything else to me. As soon as we got home, he pulled my mother into their library before I even had a chance to greet her. I couldn't hear what was being said, but my dad's voice was getting more and more agitated, while my mother just laughed harder and harder.
Eventually they emerged from their library. My mother hugged me and said, "I heard you got baptized."
"Almost a hundred times," I told her.
"Either you must have sinned a lot or you must be really in a state of grace, " my mother said.
My dad said he was going to call the temple and tell them that it was a mixup and that I was a non-member, because the baptisms I had done would need to be done over.
My mom asked him then if he really believed it made any difference.
"Not a damn bit," my dad replied.
"Then why don't you just leave well enough alone?" my mom asked him.
"OK," my dad answered, "but I'm also not leaving my kid with any of them again. They could marry her off in one of those damned temples before she's fourteen."
All was well until he forgot about his promise never to leave me with any of them again, but that was already thoroughly covered in another blog.
* * with the exception of his sister Cristele and her husband Mendel, and his brother, Steve, also an apostate, and Steve's wife, Heather, a Nevermo, but not quite as bad as inherently eveil as my mom because she's Lutheran and not Catholic, and therefore not part of the Great and Abominable Church; Martin Luther had the right idea about the Catholic Church with his Diet of Worms: he just never found the Hill Cumorah , the Angel Moroni, and the Golden Plates. Had he, history might have been written very differently.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Alexis Is Back with a Vengeance!
Actually I do not have any particular vengeance; I'm just back. This should be my final night of incarceration. I've been told that if nothing highly unusual happens before tomorrow morning, I should be sprung from this joint by tomorrow.
I've had my computer back for an hour or so, and I've read comments, tweets, emails, etc. Thanks for the support of so many of you. Amelia, Amy, Aunt Becky, Cara, Catherine, Faery Chaos, Kristine, Matt, Maria, Rebecca, Rachel, Saints Timothy and Titus, sort-of-cousin Peter and his sort-of wife, and anyone else I've missed, thank you so much for your kindness.
To Dr. Drew (not THE Dr. Drew, by the way; I have no sex issues or addictions at this point, although I'll have a better idea if this is really true when they try to take my Vicodin away): Thanks for paying attention during medical school, escpecially when they taught the unit about how to removed ruptured appendices. Thanks also for keeping various human pit bulls at a safe distance from me.
To Pseudorelatives: Thank you for once again coming through for me.
To Uncle Jerry and Aunt Ilianna: Thanks for flying to CA to help take care of me and Auntie j.
To Timmy: Thanks for the comic relief.
To Mom and Dad: Thanks for showing up before the hospital finished me off. Seriously, I enjoyed your company.
Words of wisdom for anyone planning an extended hospitl stay:
#1 Bring your own sheets.My mom had a Kennedy obsession when she was a kid and has half of a library of books written by or about the star-crossed family. When I was in timeout as a kid, I was limited to the books in my parents' library, so I'm walking around with far more knowledge relating to the Kennedys than is normal or healthy. In one book I remember reading how Ethel took satin sheets to the hospital for the birth of her last child. I found her actions elitist and ridiculous. Then I had an extended stay in THIS hospital. Satin sheets, or at least cotton sheets with a thread count higher than 16, would've been a great source of comfort. I've spent extended time on another floor of this hospital. They must've given us better sheets on that floor. Maybe they figure people in this ward are so sick they won't even notice that they've been relegated to convalescing on sandpaper.
#2 Bring your own toothbrush. My gums are so messed up that my dental hygeinist is going to think I have gingivitis or some similar malady at my next checkup, when the real culprit is the hospital-issue toothbrushes.
#3 Be suere that friends from the outside world bring you contraband food. I would most likely be dead of starvation if I had needed to rely solely on the food from the hospital kitchen for sustenance. It's not that I mind eating glue and cardboard; it's just that I can only get so much of the stuff down in one sitting. As it is I've lost far too much weight. I would seriously be a skeleton if cousin Peter's ex and a few others had not come to the rescue.
#4 Make friends with the guards. I failed to do this with my first guard, otherwise known as the resident physician. I did much better when she was replaced with someone from the human species. A few times when the nurses would've let me die, he came to the rescue.
#5 Figure out which nurses are human and treat them well. They may save your life while everyoe else is sitting around drinking something from Starbuck's.
#6 Make most criticisms of the institution in which you are incarcerated inside your head. Choose your words wisely and censor your criticism well because you will pay dearly for any negative comment that makes it to the administrative level.
#7 Don't walk one step more than is medically necessary. Do what your doctor says you need to do in order to recover, but as far as any additional walking, remember that there's a perfectly good reason why God invented wheelchairs. I have a nasty multicolored bump on my forehead because I failed to follow my own advice in this regard.
#8 Keep a cell phone handy. This is particularly crucial if you are underage and the staff thinks they have the legal right to perform any procedure or prescribe any medication without your express consent. Hospitals kill people every day. Don't be a statistic.
#9 Keep extra provisions on hand. An additional remote control is a handy thing to have in the event that a nurse takes away the one you have. Additional snacks (with sugar and not good for you)within reach are a good thing to have, as are bandaids and dental floss. (IF everything else fails you, you can use the detal floss to braid a rope and climb out a window of the hospital to safety.) Don't count on ataff to bring you something as basic as lotion within twelve hours of the time your request it. Be prepared, like a Mormon with a two-year supply of food and essentials, only make it compact enough to fit in a suitcase.
#10 Avoidance is the best proactive measure. Stay away from hospitals in the first place if you can. Stay healthy enough that you do not have to worry about any of this stuff. Only venture inside a hospital if you are fairly certain that you face imminent death if you stay away.
Thanks again for your kindness. Stay well and sane.
Alexis
I've had my computer back for an hour or so, and I've read comments, tweets, emails, etc. Thanks for the support of so many of you. Amelia, Amy, Aunt Becky, Cara, Catherine, Faery Chaos, Kristine, Matt, Maria, Rebecca, Rachel, Saints Timothy and Titus, sort-of-cousin Peter and his sort-of wife, and anyone else I've missed, thank you so much for your kindness.
To Dr. Drew (not THE Dr. Drew, by the way; I have no sex issues or addictions at this point, although I'll have a better idea if this is really true when they try to take my Vicodin away): Thanks for paying attention during medical school, escpecially when they taught the unit about how to removed ruptured appendices. Thanks also for keeping various human pit bulls at a safe distance from me.
To Pseudorelatives: Thank you for once again coming through for me.
To Uncle Jerry and Aunt Ilianna: Thanks for flying to CA to help take care of me and Auntie j.
To Timmy: Thanks for the comic relief.
To Mom and Dad: Thanks for showing up before the hospital finished me off. Seriously, I enjoyed your company.
Words of wisdom for anyone planning an extended hospitl stay:
#1 Bring your own sheets.My mom had a Kennedy obsession when she was a kid and has half of a library of books written by or about the star-crossed family. When I was in timeout as a kid, I was limited to the books in my parents' library, so I'm walking around with far more knowledge relating to the Kennedys than is normal or healthy. In one book I remember reading how Ethel took satin sheets to the hospital for the birth of her last child. I found her actions elitist and ridiculous. Then I had an extended stay in THIS hospital. Satin sheets, or at least cotton sheets with a thread count higher than 16, would've been a great source of comfort. I've spent extended time on another floor of this hospital. They must've given us better sheets on that floor. Maybe they figure people in this ward are so sick they won't even notice that they've been relegated to convalescing on sandpaper.
#2 Bring your own toothbrush. My gums are so messed up that my dental hygeinist is going to think I have gingivitis or some similar malady at my next checkup, when the real culprit is the hospital-issue toothbrushes.
#3 Be suere that friends from the outside world bring you contraband food. I would most likely be dead of starvation if I had needed to rely solely on the food from the hospital kitchen for sustenance. It's not that I mind eating glue and cardboard; it's just that I can only get so much of the stuff down in one sitting. As it is I've lost far too much weight. I would seriously be a skeleton if cousin Peter's ex and a few others had not come to the rescue.
#4 Make friends with the guards. I failed to do this with my first guard, otherwise known as the resident physician. I did much better when she was replaced with someone from the human species. A few times when the nurses would've let me die, he came to the rescue.
#5 Figure out which nurses are human and treat them well. They may save your life while everyoe else is sitting around drinking something from Starbuck's.
#6 Make most criticisms of the institution in which you are incarcerated inside your head. Choose your words wisely and censor your criticism well because you will pay dearly for any negative comment that makes it to the administrative level.
#7 Don't walk one step more than is medically necessary. Do what your doctor says you need to do in order to recover, but as far as any additional walking, remember that there's a perfectly good reason why God invented wheelchairs. I have a nasty multicolored bump on my forehead because I failed to follow my own advice in this regard.
#8 Keep a cell phone handy. This is particularly crucial if you are underage and the staff thinks they have the legal right to perform any procedure or prescribe any medication without your express consent. Hospitals kill people every day. Don't be a statistic.
#9 Keep extra provisions on hand. An additional remote control is a handy thing to have in the event that a nurse takes away the one you have. Additional snacks (with sugar and not good for you)within reach are a good thing to have, as are bandaids and dental floss. (IF everything else fails you, you can use the detal floss to braid a rope and climb out a window of the hospital to safety.) Don't count on ataff to bring you something as basic as lotion within twelve hours of the time your request it. Be prepared, like a Mormon with a two-year supply of food and essentials, only make it compact enough to fit in a suitcase.
#10 Avoidance is the best proactive measure. Stay away from hospitals in the first place if you can. Stay healthy enough that you do not have to worry about any of this stuff. Only venture inside a hospital if you are fairly certain that you face imminent death if you stay away.
Thanks again for your kindness. Stay well and sane.
Alexis
Alexis Couldn't Stay Awake Long Enough to Dictate Her Post Tonight
Alexis, in addition to having her abdominal drain removed, had quite a lot of activity today. Her painkiller dosage was raised a bit because of soreness at the wound site, but she still managed to do quite a lot. Other than her prescribed walking, when she was closely supervised to ensure she didn't lose her balance or otherwise fall, she was mostly confined to sitting.
Alexis made good use of her wheelchair today. She spent several hours upstairs with her friends on the floor where she received her PTSD treatment. They had some sort of a liars' game going. In the time I was up there they were all spouting complete madness.
My husband took Alexis in her wheelchair for a ride around the neighborhood just to get a little fresh air. It sounds like a cliche, but breathing the outside air really did put color in her cheeks. Scott and Alexis were only out for about twenty minutes; the length of the ride was probably perfect for her.
The director of the mental helath wing, who attended medical school with Alexis' father and remains a close friend, ordered a family-style take-out meal, which we all ate on a hospital balcony. The weather was lovely -- it dropped into the 60's when we were outside, which caused most of us to need sweaters or sweatshirts. My mom bundled Alexis in blankets after she had finished eating and put her on an upholstered swing that was soft and the size of a small sofa. She fell asleep as her father and my husband were playing guitar and everyone was singing along. She was carried back to her room, and her mom had to wake her to brush her teeth, but she went right back to sleep. It bothers her to wake up in bed and find that she's been carried there because it makes her feel childish, but I've told her to enjoy it while it lasts because she may not always be light enough to be easily carried to bed by an ordinary person who's not a body builder. Then again, she may always be light enough. I take a free ride to bed anytime someone offers it, I told her.
My husband says there's no sign of the fever coming back yet since the drain was removed, which means that the antibiotics are probably adequaitedly handling any remaining infection in her system. The next step will be to remove the IV tomorrow and to switch her totally to oral fluids and injected antibotics. If that change doesn't cause a return of any fever and if her lungs remain clear, she should be released by Wednesday at the latest. She's hoping for Tuesday.
Thanks again to Alexis. Matt, Faery Chaos, Amelia, Amy, Aunt Becky, Aunt Maria, Marianne, Rachel, Rebecca and family (including adorable Benny, who hand-lettered the beautiful sign, then smiled for a picture to be sent along with the greeting) Catherine, Cara, Kristeen, and anyone else I've forgotten, for all the prayers, positive thoughts, and words of support. You've all greatly accelerated her recovery.
Rebecca, you've succeeded where many have failed in gatting my husband to talk about religion. It's normally not a topic into which he ventures. He served two years in South America as a full-time LDS missionary, took the required religion courses to graduate from BYU, then took the adult confirmation classes to convert to Catholicism. He usually tells anyone who asks him a religious questioned that he's discussed religion enough for a lifetime already and politely declines to answer. I'm amazed that you were able to engage him in a discussion of theology.
Tomorrow evening Alexis should be awake long enough to at least dictate her blog. After that, who knows? If she's a good little patient, she may get her computer back on a limited basis.
Thanks again to everyone for helping.
Alexis' Auntie Jillian
Alexis made good use of her wheelchair today. She spent several hours upstairs with her friends on the floor where she received her PTSD treatment. They had some sort of a liars' game going. In the time I was up there they were all spouting complete madness.
My husband took Alexis in her wheelchair for a ride around the neighborhood just to get a little fresh air. It sounds like a cliche, but breathing the outside air really did put color in her cheeks. Scott and Alexis were only out for about twenty minutes; the length of the ride was probably perfect for her.
The director of the mental helath wing, who attended medical school with Alexis' father and remains a close friend, ordered a family-style take-out meal, which we all ate on a hospital balcony. The weather was lovely -- it dropped into the 60's when we were outside, which caused most of us to need sweaters or sweatshirts. My mom bundled Alexis in blankets after she had finished eating and put her on an upholstered swing that was soft and the size of a small sofa. She fell asleep as her father and my husband were playing guitar and everyone was singing along. She was carried back to her room, and her mom had to wake her to brush her teeth, but she went right back to sleep. It bothers her to wake up in bed and find that she's been carried there because it makes her feel childish, but I've told her to enjoy it while it lasts because she may not always be light enough to be easily carried to bed by an ordinary person who's not a body builder. Then again, she may always be light enough. I take a free ride to bed anytime someone offers it, I told her.
My husband says there's no sign of the fever coming back yet since the drain was removed, which means that the antibiotics are probably adequaitedly handling any remaining infection in her system. The next step will be to remove the IV tomorrow and to switch her totally to oral fluids and injected antibotics. If that change doesn't cause a return of any fever and if her lungs remain clear, she should be released by Wednesday at the latest. She's hoping for Tuesday.
Thanks again to Alexis. Matt, Faery Chaos, Amelia, Amy, Aunt Becky, Aunt Maria, Marianne, Rachel, Rebecca and family (including adorable Benny, who hand-lettered the beautiful sign, then smiled for a picture to be sent along with the greeting) Catherine, Cara, Kristeen, and anyone else I've forgotten, for all the prayers, positive thoughts, and words of support. You've all greatly accelerated her recovery.
Rebecca, you've succeeded where many have failed in gatting my husband to talk about religion. It's normally not a topic into which he ventures. He served two years in South America as a full-time LDS missionary, took the required religion courses to graduate from BYU, then took the adult confirmation classes to convert to Catholicism. He usually tells anyone who asks him a religious questioned that he's discussed religion enough for a lifetime already and politely declines to answer. I'm amazed that you were able to engage him in a discussion of theology.
Tomorrow evening Alexis should be awake long enough to at least dictate her blog. After that, who knows? If she's a good little patient, she may get her computer back on a limited basis.
Thanks again to everyone for helping.
Alexis' Auntie Jillian
Saturday, July 23, 2011
I'm at Least Allowed to Dictate Tonight
I still don't have my computer back. One would think I had done something terrible and was being punished by the way I'm being treated here. I'm pretty sure, though I've never done actual time there, that the prisoners at Gitmo have more privileges than I do. As it is, I'm lucky to have my wonderful favorite aunt, Jillian, typing for me. (If that last sentence didn't sound entirely like my wording, it must be sheer coincidence.)
Today I walked down the corridor six times, and between one-third and halfway back five times. A wheelchair or someone strong enough to carry me had to transport me the rest of the way. My Uncle Scott and the intern assigned to my case say I'm lazy. They complain when I don't eat enough, then they complain when they have to carry me because I'm too heavy and I'm going to give them disc problems or hernias or something bad along those lines. I wish they would make up their minds whether or not they want me to eat more. The inconsistency is killing me!
Uncle Scott told me that Rebecca said it reached 112 degrees where she lives yesterday. It doesn't get that hot where I am now for the most part. I know there's a place near here where winds that are like the Santa Ana winds but less famous come and temporarily heat up the place dangerously and very rapidly, but I think it's just that isolated spot and I believe it happens exceedingly rarely. Where I used to live in northern California (parents are selling the house and I probably won't go back before they're officially out of the place) temperatures were pretty high in the summer, but not usually Death Valley-like hot. If's you're not afraid of tsunamis, mudlides, flooding, earthquakes, gang warfare, or incredibly high cost of living and property taxes, among other things, the California coastal areas are good places to live.
I would like to thank Matt, Faery Chaos, Amy, Amelia, Aunt Becky, Cara, Rebecca, Rebecca's family, Aunt Maria, Saints Timothy and Titus, Kristine, and Catherine for their kind words of support. Conspicuously absent from the list of people I'm thanking is Judge Alex. If you want to know why his name is not on the list, ask him. I would also like to thank my Aunt Jillian for calling and texting me constantly and never allowing me to get any rest. Rest is for sissies anyway. Who needs it?
I heard a rumor that the nursing staff is planning a party for the moment I leave this place. They should have been more discreet, because I would have left the rest of my Baskin Robbins Clown cones for them if they hadn't been so rude as to let me know of their plans for a celebration in honor of my departure. I'm going to ask someone (I'll bribe an intern because most of them are ditch-bank-Okie-poor and thus easy to bribe) to bake a nice batch of Ex Lax chocolate chunk cookies. Do they still even make Ex Lax? If not I'll have to think of something similarly disgusting but not something that will get me, or the intern, thrown into jail.
I just hope that I'm out of here soon. I heard that I have four more days left on my sentence. The nurses would like me out of here sooner, but such things aren't up to the nurses any more than they're up to me. My surgeon feels my pain and would like to get me out of here as soon as possible, but he says it's better to stay one more day and not have to come back because I checked out too soon.
By the way, for anyone truly interested in the workings of weak and bizarre minds, my twenty-six-year-old cousin who joined up with the Blackmore polygamous clan in Canada is now back in the states. She lost the child that she was carrying but is apparently recovering nicely. As soon as she is physically and mentally ready, she will relocate to a part of the globe that does not label a woman as either a prune-faced hag or lesbian (not that there is a thing wrong with being a lesbian, or even a prune-faced hag, if that's what someone is; it's just that the label shouldn't be applied randomly to any female age twenty-six or older who is not married)if she reaches the age of twenty-six without being lawfully wed or at least shacking up with a member of the opposite sex. (If she chooses the "shacking up" option, she will, of course, be branded a slut, but in that neck of the woods, being branded a slut is probably less stigmatizing than being identified as originating from the Isle of Lesbos.)
Peace!
Today I walked down the corridor six times, and between one-third and halfway back five times. A wheelchair or someone strong enough to carry me had to transport me the rest of the way. My Uncle Scott and the intern assigned to my case say I'm lazy. They complain when I don't eat enough, then they complain when they have to carry me because I'm too heavy and I'm going to give them disc problems or hernias or something bad along those lines. I wish they would make up their minds whether or not they want me to eat more. The inconsistency is killing me!
Uncle Scott told me that Rebecca said it reached 112 degrees where she lives yesterday. It doesn't get that hot where I am now for the most part. I know there's a place near here where winds that are like the Santa Ana winds but less famous come and temporarily heat up the place dangerously and very rapidly, but I think it's just that isolated spot and I believe it happens exceedingly rarely. Where I used to live in northern California (parents are selling the house and I probably won't go back before they're officially out of the place) temperatures were pretty high in the summer, but not usually Death Valley-like hot. If's you're not afraid of tsunamis, mudlides, flooding, earthquakes, gang warfare, or incredibly high cost of living and property taxes, among other things, the California coastal areas are good places to live.
I would like to thank Matt, Faery Chaos, Amy, Amelia, Aunt Becky, Cara, Rebecca, Rebecca's family, Aunt Maria, Saints Timothy and Titus, Kristine, and Catherine for their kind words of support. Conspicuously absent from the list of people I'm thanking is Judge Alex. If you want to know why his name is not on the list, ask him. I would also like to thank my Aunt Jillian for calling and texting me constantly and never allowing me to get any rest. Rest is for sissies anyway. Who needs it?
I heard a rumor that the nursing staff is planning a party for the moment I leave this place. They should have been more discreet, because I would have left the rest of my Baskin Robbins Clown cones for them if they hadn't been so rude as to let me know of their plans for a celebration in honor of my departure. I'm going to ask someone (I'll bribe an intern because most of them are ditch-bank-Okie-poor and thus easy to bribe) to bake a nice batch of Ex Lax chocolate chunk cookies. Do they still even make Ex Lax? If not I'll have to think of something similarly disgusting but not something that will get me, or the intern, thrown into jail.
I just hope that I'm out of here soon. I heard that I have four more days left on my sentence. The nurses would like me out of here sooner, but such things aren't up to the nurses any more than they're up to me. My surgeon feels my pain and would like to get me out of here as soon as possible, but he says it's better to stay one more day and not have to come back because I checked out too soon.
By the way, for anyone truly interested in the workings of weak and bizarre minds, my twenty-six-year-old cousin who joined up with the Blackmore polygamous clan in Canada is now back in the states. She lost the child that she was carrying but is apparently recovering nicely. As soon as she is physically and mentally ready, she will relocate to a part of the globe that does not label a woman as either a prune-faced hag or lesbian (not that there is a thing wrong with being a lesbian, or even a prune-faced hag, if that's what someone is; it's just that the label shouldn't be applied randomly to any female age twenty-six or older who is not married)if she reaches the age of twenty-six without being lawfully wed or at least shacking up with a member of the opposite sex. (If she chooses the "shacking up" option, she will, of course, be branded a slut, but in that neck of the woods, being branded a slut is probably less stigmatizing than being identified as originating from the Isle of Lesbos.)
Peace!
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