The Pleasant Grove Polygamist and Other Matters

one mental image of Daniel Kretchmer

another rendition of how the Pleasant Grove Polygamist might look

probably my creepiest mental image of the guy -- the stuff of nightmares

I'm now in The State of the Deseret.  It's reassuring in some ways to know that my insomnia is consistent, and rears its ugly head without regard to location, time zone, or anything else.

Most of the others in my party will be skiing or snowboarding tomorrow. i'm not joining in on the festivities because I cannot risk injuring arms or fingers in nay way that coud impact my senior violin recital. Even injuring a leg or ankle could be a bad thing in terms of the recital. I obviously don't play the violin with my legs or feet, but it's better to be able to stand when playing than to be relegated to a chair for an entire violin recital, and, furthermore,  a walking cast or brace would interfere with the overall look of formal attire.For that matter, I don't have official clearance after my head injury to do anything so hazardous. I didn't evenmention it on my last appointment because I knew I would forego snowboarding on this trip, anyway. No one else has told me that snowboarding cannot be done with a recital looming in the near future, but I'm just mature enough to realize it for myself.

My friend Alyssa has been officially forbidden to ski, snowboard, or snowmobile. she had a collision in a soccer class at her university, and ended up with a hairline pelvic fracure. Ouch. She really want to be over it as soon as possible, so no one is having to threaten her to keep her off the slopes.

Tomorrow Alyssa and I will have an easy day while others ski and snowboard. We offered to babysit, but her grandmother already has that covered. On Wednesday the family is getting together, and I'm expected to be there even though I'm not technically related to anyone there. I'm performing my entire violin recital lineup for the relatives who will be there. My accompanist -- pseudouncle -- is in Utah as well, and he says it will be a good early dress rehearsal.

On Saturday I need to have lunch with my grandmother.  Alyssa doesn't know it, but she's coming along with me for the lunch appointment. It will impress my grandmother that I have at least one friend who is a nice LDS girl.  It's not a terrible deal for Alyssa, because my grandmother always picks really nice restaurants for our lunch dates.

I have lots of other relatives in Utah, but none of them especially desire to see me, and the feeling is essentially mutual. I will have dinner, along with pseudoaunt and I don't know who else,  on Saturday evening with a girl who was briefly married to my cousin. It was a crazy event -- my cousin sneaked the girl out of her home on the morning of her eighteenth birthday under the guise of taking her to breakfast, but instead spirited her away to a temple (she had a recommend, but the wedding wasn't supposed to have happened  for several months) for a wedding without anyone in her family being present.

The girl's  parents had been trying to talk her out of marrying my cousin, and he was afraid they would eventually get through to her. Then, not long after the wedding, my cousin threw a hissy fi t (over whether or not to get cable tV, which the girl insisted they could not afford) that crossed the line into bona fide domestic violence.  My dad knew the girl's father well (he knew the groom's parents well also, as the grrom was his sister's son, but sometimes right and wrong trumps familial ties), and he arranged to have pseudoaunt come to Utah and straighten things out for the girl (and for the groom as well; it would not have done him any favors to allow him to remain in a situation that was, in all likelihood,  going to  wind up with him eventually being prosecuted). I served as  a paralegal.  Pseudaunt did a really good job and found some technicality as a means of having the marriage annulled, which supposedly doesn't often happen in Utah County when temple sealings are involved.  Anyway,  pseudoaunt and I are having dinner with my cousin's former bride and will find out how she is doing.

I need to try to get some sleep. I have my choice of a really comfy twin bed downstairs in pseudouncle's office, or a makeshift bed on a loveseat in the upstairs loft, which is much closer to where everyone else is. I don't actually believe any of the stories about Daniel Kretchmer, the supposed one-time polygamist of Pleasant Grove, but at night when I hear funny sounds outside, it's fairly easy to forget that I don't believe any of those stories.