Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Paradigm shift

Recently I found myself perplexed over the complicated challenges of parenting a strong-willed teenager while not seeing eye-to-eye with the other half of my team on how to do so. The details are not important, but my frustration, worry, hurt and near-despair was both deep and palpable. I am very much a choose-your-battle kind of [...]

Dream On

Though it’s been decades since I graduated from college, every couple of months or so I have the same dream: It’s finals week, and I suddenly discover there’s a class I’m registered for (usually some kind of science class) that I forgot to attend all semester long. I have the textbook—a big one—but there’s no [...]

Trouble, Repentance, and The Worst Kind of Writer’s Block

Today’s guest post comes from Holly Abbe, who says she is a terrible gardener, but loves fresh tulips. She can make a perfect apple pie, but despises washing dishes. And while you will rarely find her organizing her home office, she finds great joy in organizing musical numbers and planning family outings. There is nothing [...]

If envy were a fever

Dining out with Stephanie is always entertaining. She orders the fried something appetizer, the cream covered pasta, a sugary drink. As we await our food she slathers butter on multiple pieces of thick white bread. When the food comes she happily consumes her own and begs for a bit off everyone’s plate. And even if [...]

Rude Crude Dude– and girls

Admittedly, I’m a prude. The f-word that refers to bodily gas is just as offensive and unheard around my home as that other f-word. But I can’t be the only one horrified that two of the top grossing movies in the US for several weeks are Bridesmaids and The Hangover II. From the reviews: If [...]

Since When Am I A Grown Up?

Late 1980’s I’m freshly, garishly dressed, having spent most of my Saturday morning watching the latest music clips on Rage. The inspiration is obvious. My hair is teased at least a hand’s height above my head, I’m still trying to unstick my eyelashes from the deluge of hairspray I’ve used and my outfit is red [...]

The Mighty Wurlitzer

I wrote this a few years ago but decided to post it today in memory of my grandma, who passed away Sunday evening. It used to be a chicken coop. That’s how the history always starts, a history that sounds almost like a legend because it has played in my ears for as long as [...]

The Parenting Works Cited Page

I’m thirty-four weeks pregnant with child number four, and I’ve spent a lot of time in doctor’s offices lately. This means that I have read and reread my doctor’s stash of parenting and baby magazines, mostly out of boredom. When I was expecting my oldest, I devoured these. I mined them for ideas, making mental [...]

My Father Taught Me

Today’s guest post comes from Cami Kesler. When I started playing basketball in third grade, my father taught me that sports are not always about the “game.” Sports, and life, are about doing your best. As basketball became my sport of choice through middle school and high school, it wasn’t always easy to understand that [...]

1st Estate, 2nd Estate, Real Estate?

  We kept our First Estate. Presumably we’re keeping our Second Estate. But have you ever tried to offload Real Estate? For me selling our house in Massachusetts was an opportunity for friendship, interfaith bridging, and an exploration of the tokens and tchotchkes of our religions.

Mormons, Mormons Everywhere

When I moved to Minnesota in 1998, a number of my new Midwestern friends and acquaintances saw my Mormonism as a curiosity. Many of the people I met had never known a Mormon “in real life” before, and a few held some interesting misconceptions. A woman in my MFA program assumed I had left the [...]

On gifts

I remember standing in the gymnasium of our high school, smelling the new varnish smell of the floor, listening to the noisy rustle of students settling into their chairs. I listened to the principal give some sort of speech about the importance of the new gym. Then it was my turn. With the principal, I [...]

Make Bed. Check. Practice Piano. Check.

Summer break started last week, so when I came home from my run this morning, I checked to make sure Bryce had put the garbage can out by the curb (he had), pulled the hose right up next to the flower beds, and opened the door to the dishwasher. Then I came upstairs, verifying on [...]

Confessions of a Compulsive Reader

Today’s guest post comes from Lindsay Denton, who lives in San Antonio, TX where she works full-time as a speech-language pathologist.  Her husband, Jay, graduates from dental school this summer.  When she’s not working or holed up somewhere with a book, you can find her snapping photos, doing something musical, trying (and failing) to organize [...]

A Father’s Blessing

I sighed long as I looked out the window of my plane cresting above the Dulles airport. My husband and I had been married five years – most of which were spent living and working in Washington DC. It had been a difficult year. Months of failed fertility attempts, and a tenuous situation that developed [...]

“Big Word” Braggart

Every  Monday morning Mr. Fulton,  my seventh-grade advanced skills teacher at Marie Schaefer Jr. High, passed out the infamous three-page stapled packet which bore the week’s list of 25 vocabulary words. For the next seven days we all memorized definitions and practiced them in sentences… words like “tortuous,” “flagrant,” “inculcate,”  and “obsequious.” If there was [...]

the books of summer

My older boys set the rule: if you want to see a Harry Potter movie, you must read the book. It’s a simple way to monitor age-appropriateness and for me, at least, to justify a PG13 movie for a 9 year old boy. Motivated by the final movie premiering July 15th, my Gabriel is knee [...]

Your Body is Special

Today’s guest post comes from Anne Hansen. Anne is a mother of boys, wife of Wade, English teacher on extended sabbatical. gardener, reader, and modestly paced runner. She loves naps, flowered dishes, cookies, and light blue. She writes weekly for Hey Nonny (http://www.hey-nonny.com). Is it my recent foray into the painfully early “Body Attack!” class [...]

Prayer Threads

As a child, I loved listening to my dad pray. From an early age I could tell from the inflection and the cadence of his voice that he was really speaking to another person. As a result, despite insisting, as a teenager, that there was no such thing as knowing something spiritually, but that instead, [...]

This summer is going to be great, if it’s the last thing I do!

Tomorrow is the last day of school. This was a grueling year with my children in preschool, elementary, middle and high school. I’m worn out and looking forward to accomplishing not much over the summer. We haven’t even got a family reunion on our agenda. Over the last couple of years we have done “Texas [...]

Slipping Through the Cracks

As I listened to my ward’s seminary graduates speak in sacrament meeting a couple of weeks ago, I found my throat swollen with emotion and an unexpected love fill my heart for all the sudden girl/women who bore testimony boldly (or nonchalantly or emotionally or monotone) and who thanked their parents and teachers with an [...]

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