Counterpoint

I love to spend time with Mercedes so when she invited me to the annual Counterpoint Conference, I jumped on it. I had read about Lavina Fielding Anderson, Margaret Toscano and Janice Allred, all of whom were excommunicated for publishing research on Church History. Meeting them in person was heartwarming, awe inspiring, and tragic. You would think that someone who has been excommunicated from the Church would be different in some way. They were different. They were more lovely, articulate, intelligent, empathic, accepting and peaceful than most members of the Church. Not only that but they have continued to go to Church every week, participate in the Church activities that they are allowed to, and and to maintain a testimony of the Church that discarded them. They refused to let Church Priesthood leaders destroy their Mormon identities.

There was a panel in the morning entitled "Why I Left, Why I stayed." Two of the women left because they didn't get anything out of the meetings, they felt like Joseph Smith was not a prophet, they felt ostracized even in activity, they felt they weren't allowed to express their feelings freely.

Two stayed because they love the community of their ward, they need a spiritual venue, they felt it would be too disruptive to their families to leave, and just because they feel Mormon.

I thought it was telling that the ones who left were single, the ones who stayed are married.

Lisa Butterworth, an exuberant young mother, who started the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, spoke of the fourth wave of feminism, which would target young mothers. Those mothers need liberated and I have faith that with the help of internet free dialogue and information, that wave will come sooner and easier than the previous three movements.

The free expression of true feelings was exhilarating. I felt blessed to be there with Mercedes.

The Mystery of the Missing Lips

So, I looked in the mirror and something was missing...........my lips. Once when I was a little girl some rude child told me I had fat lips and I was crushed. Oddly enough, when I looked in the mirror and my lips were gone, I was crushed again. It's like someone poked a hole in them and they deflated in a slow leak, leaving little wrinkles around them where voluptuosity used to be. Trying to be one of those glass-half-full persons, I have dug deep and found a benefit to having no lips. Lipstick. I have saved money by using less lipstick, since I'm not one to try the futile optical illusion of painted-on lipstick lips.

One of my colleagues has beautiful fat lips and uses lip liner with the lip filled in with lipstick. Since the color in my lips also disappeared, I tried it. When I closed my mouth you could see the liner but none of the lipstick. Until I smiled. The lipsitck was all over my teeth. So there I was was, a wrinkled, lipless woman who appeared to have bleeding gums. Nice try, french fry. I suppose I could invest in some Botox treatments every once in awhile, but that would be like getting a new house. New houses make the old furniture look terrible, so then I would have to have a facelift, liposuction, laser treatments, lapband surgery, my eyes done, permanent makeup, my earlobes shortened, and a new wardrobe.

There is no greater test to having a healthy body image than aging. But I think there are some things that you can control to make up for the things you can't control. Things you can do to make up for the onset of ugly, to make yourself more acceptable in a youth and beauty-crazed society.

A. Focus on clothes. Maybe even stop shopping at Wet Seal and go more for the mature but hip look.
B. Keep your hairstyle updated. When people know what year you graduated from high school by your hairstyle, it's time to change.
C. Listen and laugh. People don't care as much if you are ugly if you are making them feel special.
D. Don't make your grandchildren kiss you. This is a carry-over from gagging after kissing my grandparents.
E. Smell good. I have a ways to go on this one since my grandson calls me his stinky grandma.
F. Look on the bright side of growing older, more money, less work, enjoying adult children and grandchildren, more freedom.
G. Don't purse your lips.

When I looked in the mirror, I also noticed that my unibrow had disappeared. But, at closer look, I noticed that many of those hairs had just relocated to my chin.

Sigh.

Don't Buy Petite

Fall Break: My Greek odyssey is over. The Reunion at Bear Lake is over. And I have a couple of days to regroup. Fall break, which used to be Utah Education Association Conference, until they noticed that the teachers were not spending UEA at UEA, is the time that teachers and faculty catch up on the things that other people do on a regular basis. Like mending, organizing the coat room and doing the dishes. It took me two and a half days to complete my list of tasks and I am now relaxing with a cup of Tension Tamer tea. I remodeled a pair of jeans today that I got on sale because they were petites. My legs (which I discover EVERYTIME I buy bargain petite pants), are longer than women who are petite. Since they were pricey even on sale, I told myself I could lengthen them, maybe even with a strip of coordinating but eye catching fabric. I found the perfect fabric and proceeded to add a couple of inches. It took me two hours to do one leg. That leg looked dorky. But maybe if I skinnied up these jeans, they would be stylin'. So the next step was to take the jeans in about 3 inches everywhere, and to get both sides even. (Harder than it sounds, especially for what I call eyeball sewers. I am one of those rare people with fabulous visual memory, so I figure I can eyeball the seams and then sew them fairly accurately from memory). That's why I had skinny jeans up to my hips and then a kind of a ballooning effect around the hips. Maybe, even though I don't have a horse, I could wear them horse back riding. I would need a long coat, black, shiny high top boots, an English hat and a whip to do that. So...........That's why it took another two hours, not counting ripping out stitches time. Well, OK. I exagerrate. That's counting ripping out stitches time. At any rate, I now have four hours into these pants. Lengthening the other leg went much smoother and before I knew it (yeah, right) I had a pair of really groovy black skinny jeans with black and white houndstooth around the ankles. They look really good, even though everyone I asked said, "Lose the houndstooth." I stayed true to my intuitive fashion sense. I'm going to my closet right now to see how many outfits I can make with them. I am so happy and not a little proud that I designed and put together these one of a kind jeans. But deep down I want to scream, "SOMEONE REMIND ME NOT TO BUY PETITE EVER AGAIN!"