Mormon Mommy Blogs

Because I have apparent masochistic tendencies, I sometimes click on the "next blog" button on the Blogspot bar. I don't know if what I get when I click on the button is representative of what's truly out there in Blogspot's corner of the blogosphere, or if I'm just lucky, but at least once out of every four times that I click, I land on a Mormon Mommy blog.

I have nothing against Mormons.  Maybe I do, actually, but I don't hate all of them, especially since I am a "sort of" Mormon. I was blessed in the LDS church, and, through a statistical and record-keeping anomaly, I was baptized by proxy for numerous dead people in a Mormon temple even though I was never baptized for myself outside of the temple, which is supposed to happen before a person is allowed to undertake the same ordinance on behalf of others. (Similarly, my brother, who was not baptized, either, holds the Aaronic Priesthood of the LDS church. We Rousseaus are apparently incredibly talented at being Mormons to the degree that we're allowed to skip necessary steps, pass Go, and collect our two hundred dollar stipends without troubling ourselves with Chance, Community Chest, or any of the four railroads. When someone's grandfather is among The Lord's Annointed, sometimes others make silly assumptions about pesky little matters such as baptism.)

Getting back to the subject at hand, while I may take many cheap shots at Mormons and Mormonism, many people whom I love or about whom I care are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Some of them are mothers. Paradoxically, though, they're not Mormon Mommies. Merely being both a Mormon and a mother (or even a mommy, if one prefers)  does not make a person a Mormon Mommy. Being a Mormon Mommy involves more than practicing a religion and begetting children.  "Mormon Mommies" are far more special than that.

A Mormon Mommy gives her children names such as Kennedie, Shelayna,  Gracie Claire,   or Sariah.  Sometimes she chooses to highlight her child's specialness by creating a one-of-a-kind designer name such as Emmalia or Deseret, and she becomes  most irate if anyone, upon seeing the name in print, mispronounces the first name /em-muh-LEE-uh/ or the second as /DES-ur-et/. (They're pronounced  /em-MAHL-lee-uh/ and 'des-ur-RAY/, idiots.)

She spends many of her waking hours on Pinterest, creating projects she learned about on Pinterest, photographing her Pinterestic creations, and publishing her fantastic Pinterest results there and elsewhere. She can blog for weeks about hairstyles she learned about on Pinterest.  Her children's birthday parties (the themes and implementation procedures of which usually sprung from Pinterest) are documented more exhaustively than was the birth of Jesus.


One may reach the conclusion that I have some sort of issue with Pinterest, which is not entirely accurate. While I have no desire to create adorable Christmas card holders from recycled Tampax boxes, or, for that matter, to create anything through any process that involves the use of a glue gun, I'm open-minded enough not to deny others that privilege; I just don't want to hear about it. What happens on Pinterest should remain on Pinterest. If I'm sitting on a chair that was slip-covered with individual Starburst wrappers that were melted with a steaming iron onto discarded hospital gowns, please leave me to wallow in my ignorance as to the process that created this one-of-a-kind work of art on which I'm sitting. If the chair is too precious for me to sit on, just say so, but don't torture me with cumbersome stories about the preciousness of the chair. I don't want to read about it on Blogspot, either. If anyone truly wants to know about all the bizarre hygiene products be created in one's own kitchen using only cornstarch, baking soda, candle wax, and Herbal Essence Shampoo, the person probably knows how to find Pinterest. the rest of the world would appreciate being spared the gory details.

Standard written English and A Mormon Mommy are not usually best friends, or even casual acquaintances. A Mormon Mommy connects independent clauses with commas.  ("We are laughing, we are friends.") The distinction between adjectives and adverbs is not a matter to which she gives much thought. Likewise, if subject/verb agreement happens, fine; if it fails to happen, that, too, is fine. Pronoun/antecedent compatibility? What's that? She uses apostrophes liberally, though not necessarily in any way of which David Foster Wallace or any other grammar Nazi would approve. (The Anderson's  had  BLAST'S at  Alicias' and at Great-Grandmas "60th" birthday bash's.)  Blogspot's spelling correction feature keeps her blog from containing even more spelling errors than a person would find in an average posting of this blog (I admit to being a notoriously poor typist who doesn't take the time that I should to edit), but provides more than enough homophonic errors to make up for the lack of outright spelling miscues. ("My great-great-grandfather still serves on the steak high counsel and sings base in the choir. He and my great-great-grandmother receive so many complements about they're many descendence whenever there entire family is together, like at my cousins bridle shower.") Exclamation points are a Mormon Mommy's best friend, and she hearts them!!!!! (A Mormon Mommy does not merely love people, places, things, or ideas. She hearts them!

I most definitely do not hold disdain for LDS mothers as a whole. I'm related to a great many of them, some of with whom I'm even on speaking terms. Two ladies (one a relative and the other not) with whom I have close relationships are both practicing Latter-Day Saints and mothers. One works full-time as an ENT, otherwise known as an otolaryngologist, and, along with her husband, who is a gastroenterologist, looks after her two children.  The other one, who has six children, is a non-practicing dental hygienist. though she likes to boast that not one of her six children has ever had a cavity. In what little spare time she has, she handles accounting for family operated enterprises.  Both women are intelligent, attractive,  articulate, nice, and funny. To the best of my knowledge,  neither woman blogs, but if either one did, it wouldn't be a Mormon Mommy blog. They would have more intelligent messages to share than how to conserve energy by baking cheesecake atop the engine of a just-parked SUV (that gets a whopping eleven miles to the gallon) after she has driven it around the neighborhood for thirty-seven minutes for the sole purpose of heating  the engine sufficiently to back the cheesecake. How's that for conservation of natural resources? Natural resources do not actually need to conserved, nor does the concept of overpopulation need to be considered, according to  Mormon Mommies, because The Savior will return soon enough, ushering in The Millenium and rendering as moot any discussion of the Earth's resources.

I shared my distaste for Mormon Mommy blogs with my dad, who said, "If you don't like 'em, don't read 'em." I could follow his advice, but it's not that simple. Mormon Mommy blogs are the proverbial train wreck from which i cannot turn away. I also, on the other hand, reserve the first amendment-supported  right to criticize what I find worthy of criticism.  If anything is worthy of criticism, it's the average Mormon Mommy blog.