Dusting, and Other Horrors

I am a child of the 70′s. I am a child of the post-60′s feminist battles. Women worked, women climbed the ladder, women accomplished things. I think because of that, I really hate vacuuming. I think I need to repent.

Tell Me Lies

Guest poster Emily lives in the South with her husband and two children. She writes under a pseudonym because she loves to vent but is deathly afraid of offending people. Someday she will write the great American novel and hopefully have the guts to use her own name. No one likes being lied to. Or [...]

Mother in Me on Whitney Awards Auction

As a benefit for the Whitney Awards, Segullah has donated an autographed copy of The Mother in Me to be auctioned off on Ebay. I linked to it on our sidebar last week, and *sniff* no one has bid on it. Now I commence shameless begging:

Light Reading for Thanksgiving

From Foxy J Thanks again for Guesting with us! Since it’s the day before Thanksgiving I feel pressure to write a holiday post. But I also feel overwhelmed by all the great posts that have already been written about gratitude. What else can I say? I like how Shelah blogged the other day about being [...]

The Simplicity of Thanksgiving

Back in my undergraduate days, I took a Shakespeare course like every other English major. And just like everyone else, we read Macbeth and King Lear. When I was doing research for my paper on King Lear, I remember reading lots of sources that called it Shakespeare’s “most important” dramatic work. I couldn’t decide what [...]

O Revise, What Can I Say More?

As you prepare your wonderful essays for Segullah’s Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest, and your poetry for our poetry contest, I paraphrase Jacob 6:12 with this advice: “O Revise, What Can I say More?” Maybe I should just stop there; maybe the admonition to revise thoroughly ought to speak for itself. But I’m a talker, [...]

Humble pie

Ladling spicy tortellini soup into shallow bowls, I handed each plate to my husband where he added a thick slice of wheat bread and placed the meal in front of a waiting child. Speaking above the din of our six children I outlined for him the indignities and frustrations of hosting both grandmas for Thanksgiving, [...]

The Fullness of a Hungry Heart

Last week my porch turned into a cornucopia. Or a landing spot for manna. Or some type of hasty food bank, or magical snack bar, or restaurant counter where the platters cue up under heat lamps. (Here I feel like there should be a specific word for what it’s called when food appears on your [...]

The Truly Unincorporated King County

This is a guest post from Erin Jones. Originally from Kent, WA, Erin is currently an English and Editing student at Brigham Young University. I didn’t grow up in a city at all, but in a suburb my best friend and I dubbed UKC. UKC stood for Unincorporated King County, because our county didn’t bother [...]

Can Creative Writing Be Taught?

Here’s your answer: yes, creative writing can be taught. Kind of. Except when it can’t. I’ve asked myself whether or not writing can be taught many times over the years. I asked it when I was an undergraduate English major and couldn’t figure out how in the world to get my pioneer novel off the [...]

Little Green Gnome

From FoxyJ Last year a well-meaning family member bought my daughter a book based on the show Dragon Tales. For those of you who haven’t seen the show, there’s a brother and sister in the show who are actually one dragon. They have one body and two heads, and very different personalities.

Not flowers, diamonds, and candlelight

My husband doesn’t surprise me with bouquets of dewy roses flowers or lavish me with expensive diamond bracelets. He doesn’t plan elaborate surprises or whisk me off on exotic vacations to those over water bungalows in Bali. He’s not what I envisioned in my dreamy 15 year old mind. A man so in love with [...]

syn·er·gy

noun 1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. I remember learning the definition of this word from my freshman writing teacher, first year, first semester at BYU. She had us write. A lot. Every week we read, wrote [...]

Kre8ive

Am I the only one who is madly in love with President Uchdorf’s talk from the General Relief Society meeting in September? He spoke about a topic that I don’t believe I’ve ever heard addressed by a General Authority before: creativity.

Compassion

The other day, I went walking with a friend. I love exercising with other women. You find out the most interesting stuff about them that way.

Wait on the Lord

Here’s another Guest Post from Leslie at Heaven’s Overlook. Missed her post on blogging last week? Here it is. You’re welcome. And thanks Leslie! “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” ~Psalm 27:14 When I was a little girl I believed in [...]

Stuff, Stuff, Stuff

From FoxyJ. Don’t know FoxyJ (seriously?)? Go here to learn more When my husband I were first married we attended a birthday party for a small child. As often happens, the child got overwhelmed by the large quantity of presents and lost interest in opening them after a while. In my passionate zeal inspired by [...]

My Husband Seems to Attract Them….

Wherever we go, my husband seems to attract them. They come up to him when we are standing in lines, eating at restaurants, parking our car, or walking in to the movie theater. They want to talk. Some of them have a bit of a belly, some are thin, some walk slowly with a stoop, [...]

So, where are you from?

My dad started a new job in Connecticut in 1979, and he and my mom moved their little family to a Cape Cod cottage, a couple of blocks from Lordship’s Russian Beach. I was four, and I doubt they knew it at the time, but they had picked the perfect place for children to grow [...]

The Art of Blogging

This lovely post comes from Leslie of Heaven’s Overlook. She is a part-time professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City where she lives with her husband and three girls. She’s new to the world of blogging and is interested in exploring blog writing as a genre. She has a Master’s Degree in English (Creative [...]

The Fourth Commandment

My husband and I sat next to each other in bed and stared at our laptops. “I’m not answering that email! You do it!” he said. “No way. You’re the priesthood authority. You do it!” I snapped. Then silence. The email? Just a friendly invitation to our son’s baseball team dinner next week. On a [...]

Love, marriage, sex

Eighteen years ago, when I was dating my future husband, he walked into my apartment where I was in a heated political discussion with my senior thesis group. Spying his face, I pushed my books aside, leapt from my seat and rushed into his arms. Contentment spread across his features as he sighed, “Wow, I [...]

Historic Moments

FoxyJ is married and has two children. She lives in California and recently started a PhD program in Comparative Literature. When she has free time she enjoys reading, blogging, watching movies, and riding her bike. She has been blogging for about three years at Yellow Wallpaper. Welcome FoxyJ! In early August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. [...]

Angel

Linn Allen is a mother to four and wife to one. She recently moved from her beloved California to the freezing state of Massachusetts. She has a BA in Elementary Education, but prefers to take money, on occasion, from people who hire her as an organizational consultant. She loves teaching seminars on organization, reading, photography [...]

The Know-It-All

My story is no different than any other. I grew up Mormon, in Utah. I was the Laurel class president (Beehive and Mia Maid too). I went to BYU. I come from pioneer stock on one side and pioneer + alcoholic stock on the other (beware, this leads to a compulsion to force feed others [...]

Kathy’s Interview with Doug Wright on KSL

Hey Mother in Me fans and contributors! Did you miss Kathy’s amazing interview with Doug Wright on KSL Radio October 12th? Me too! Now you have the chance to listen to her extol the virtues of Segullah’s labor of love. Some other exciting features of the interview include: Hear Kathy Soper’s voice! Did she sound [...]

Therapy for All…

This is a guest post by Lilly, a middle-aged stay at home mother who doesn’t know how to ask for this kind of help without pain, angst, crying, and a stressful Thanksgiving dinner. “Well, I don’t want to horn in, but don’t you think Abby would be happier if you put her in pre-school?”