Some people dream of freedom and flings for life; others of finding the perfect person to spend life with until death breaks open the closed door of matrimony. Mormons dream of happily ever after for eternity, two souls bound in one, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Amidst a world of casual hook-ups and laissez faire sex, there is something distinctly beautiful about being with only one person body and soul for life. We are certain forty, fifty, sixty or so years of happiness wed on earth will somehow help us make it as a couple in a celestial glory we can’t understand. It is no wonder that single members sometimes question the wisdom of being tossed together with someone unbeknownst to them in the hereafter in order to fulfill promised blessings. Yet even with the promises of heaven upon us, tragedy in marriage often strikes.

In her essay Mourning (Segullah, Inside and Outside Marriage) Kellie George writes about her own tragedy:

The Coffin lies before me, rude and glossy and solemn. It’s smaller than I thought it would be. It should be much large for what it holds—nearly thirteen years of memories. And my heart. Our dreams, unmet. And my life as it was, before. Who is going to carry it? Can it be lifted? Can it be borne?

I am battered, bruised, broken. My eyes rough, allergic to the world. My thrumming head floats untethered, lost, my neck misplaced in my body’s jigsaw. A piece of my middle; crystal-edged air seeps in, frosting my skin, slowing my blood, chilling me into disuse. I’m splitting, disintegrating, tumbling into the crevasse, motionless.

The pain George displays in her words creates a visceral reaction. I too am left numb by the painful end as the coffin lay before me on the page. And then she peeks inside, and I see inside it too.

I keep staring at the coffin. Blink—it’s still there. Close my eyes, breathe, then peek again. Still there. It isn’t going away.

It holds my marriage.

My marriage is dead.

Start the funeral.

People instinctively understand that the demise of any marriage is tragic, just like the death of a loved one. We want to know, “What happened?” and sometimes impolitely ask like we would about the death of cancer patient, “What kind of cancer?” We wish it could have been saved. We wish more could have been done, and wonder if in years to come new medical advances will save more cancer patients and new research on marriage and families will course correct the divorce rate.

Mostly there is just awkwardness, whispers in ward councils as people, “just want to make you aware that the ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones’ family is going through a divorce right now.”

Kellie George poignantly writes:

 I have wished for a funeral for my marriage. Some outward display to ceremoniously acknowledge what I have lost, what I am mourning, and the changes it has forced into my life…But of course, no one has a funeral for a dead marriage.

 She expresses her deep loneliness, the averted eyes of others and,

No tissue-sodden hands holding shoulders through tears. No funeral meal…[It’s] not like anyone DIED or anything right? I just hurt like it.

Reading her words I want to lift her out of her pain, make that funeral meal for her, hand her tissues and acknowledge what she has lost. Yet when someone is going through a divorce, I am as likely as anyone to advert my eyes.

George ends her essay on an up note, full of courage, with a smile and peace. I imagine the divorcing sisters (and brothers) around me will find that place in years to come too. In the meantime, how can we comfort those going through a divorce? Have you gone through a divorce? What helped you? What hurt?

Related posts:

1. UP CLOSE: Rushing into Remarriage
2. Dating. Courtship. Marriage.
3. Bitte Alle Aussteigen

Poetry represents my first concrete, unpleasant realisation that language could be mean.  My teacher opened my mind to the beauty of poetry, so readily created in six little lines of rhyme, in something called (so delightfully to a besotted seven year old) a “lim-er-ick”. The giddiness lasted 10 minutes, until Mrs Sumpton told the whole class to make up a limerick about someone – and all but two of my classmates wrote a limerick about me. Kellie. Jelly. Telly. Belly. Oh, the inhumanity.

and in my bumbling fearful heartbreak I
find myself as useless in consolation as
I imagine; no more, no less … I loathe this
mortal question

Years passed, and I still wrote poetry (though not limericks if I could avoid it). I even took a poetry class at university and enjoyed every angst hounded syllable of it. I have several favourite Australian poems memorised, and songs that I classify as poetry with music. Nowadays, I read poems if they happens to be included in what I’m reading – generally through my Segullah journal subscription. But I worry that I just “don’t get it”, that the greater meaning is slipping past me, that I’m too dumb or trying too hard. Are poems (and all their lyrical layers) actually simple to understand?

in easy silence, tucking corners easily and
smoothing out the years of complication.

I love words. I love the way that some people can string them together just so to sear a picture in my imagination;

and someday you will run to me with
muddy hands and
pull on my shirt and
lay your head in that warm place between
my neck and my shoulder and

or share a relationship;

Rippling syllables, staccato-like words,
round his soft ears as he pretends to bend
around my life and understand. He sees me,

or a thought;

The quality exceeds the sum total of addends.
Add you up again—
and consider multiplication.

or a question;

Did she walk reluctant or
Grasp with arms open
To have her name forever
Braided with tragedy?

or pull my thoughts to the deeper in everyday

Silver lines snake up my belly
and my daughter claims them
with childlike pride and I’ve

I’m not a poet, and I know it. Like envying people who can sing in tune and on stage, I wish that I could create the music, the cascade of phrase and emotion into such precise, stunningly packaged morsels. But I can’t.

O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart…
…But behold, I… do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.

But Lord, for the effort, and beauty, and connection that such talented women put into their poetry, I’m glad that somehow, somewhere, they are creating something that simply takes my breath away in connection and admiration.

Alleluia.

Do you like poetry? What do/don’t you like about poetry? Do you understand poems easily? Do you write poetry? Do you count song lyrics as poetry? What is poetry to you? What are some of your favourite poems, poets or poetesses?

Related posts:

1. Haiku Away!
2. To Hope For That Which Is Not Seen
3. Weak Words Made Strong

1. That I will always have my sense of humor.
2. That when I visit America, my Australian accent will be happily accepted and understood.
3. That my divorce will help my sons have stronger marriages.

Divorce messes with your head. I have spent a depressing chunk of the past two years looking back on the past 13 years of my life, trying to work out just how this steaming mess of effluent ended up all over me. For most of the first six months after separation, I couldn’t even trust that I would make it through each day – I just prayed fervently that I would, because my sons needed me, because I was the only parent left, because I wanted to be able to function for them, but had no idea how I was going to do so.

The only hope I had glimmering far off amid the muck was a blessing I received the day my husband left, the blessing promising that “all this will work out for you and your sons.” I had no idea how that would happen, when it would happen, what would come to pass to bring such an obviously far-fetched miracle to fruition, but I had faith that the blessing would be true. Believed that somehow and eventually, the words would find form and substance in my every day and not just be a mantra muttered under my breath, or phrases scattered through my prayers like dropped beads.

Of course having hope didn’t stop the emotional rubbish from piling up, didn’t keep me from drafting savage letters in my head or asking God just how He could let such tragedy occur to me of all people. I hoped I would survive, but I also cut people off in traffic, forgot or chose not to study the scriptures every day and certainly didn’t pray for my enemies when and like I should have. I was hurting, and hope couldn’t wipe all the pain and imperfection away.

In the latest issue of Segullah, Emily Inouye shares some of her own experiences in A Catalog of Hopes and Sins. She begins with hopes:

1. That people are basically good.
2. That frozen yogurt is as healthy as regular.
3. That Amy P. has forgiven me for failing to stand up for her the day Trevor and Sam made fun of her on the playground, next to the red tunnel slide.

What struck me with Emily’s essay the first time I read it was the optimism, the positivity in each list. Which is odd and unexpected, since lurking under each story is a powerful, negative emotion like fear or guilt. Emily catalogues her own self-assessed sins, where she has been at fault, selfish, has lied, or simply done nothing:

“…I wondered if I should say something. If friends don’t let friends drive drunk, what about letting total strangers rock climb? I settled on a simple, “Have a safe climb,” as we walked by. I hope they didn’t fall. But if they did, would it be my fault?”

I’m not sure I’m brave enough to catalogue my sins, let alone those situations I have been at fault. When I first read the essay, I thought my cowardice was the itch that kept bringing me back to reread Emily’s words. It wasn’t. Then I thought it was the fun of making lists of hopeful truths – partly, but not quite. My attraction, my interest in the catalogue is that even with the relating of errors, of lamented choices, Emily has catalogued her hopes (and sins) according to the positive, not in relation to the negative. She has used hope as the focus, not fear.

I can quite easily rewrite my initial list of hopes as negative hopes or fears:

1. I hope I won’t lose my sense of humor.
2. I hope people will understand me when I visit America.
3. I hope my divorce won’t damage my sons’ marriages.

The lists are still the same, still holding the same intent – they are just aimed in opposite directions. I can write my lists negatively – but I don’t want to. It’s the aim towards the hopeful happy answer that draws me to Emily’s words, the lists that one day will be more than hope; they will truly be fact and reality.

“And so it goes. I sift the past, cataloging questions and regrets, then seeking answers. Hoping for redemption.”

*************************

What are three pieces in your own catalogue of hopes? Is it easy for you to make a list of hopes? What does sifting the past do for you?

Related posts:

1. Names, Labels and Lists
2. The Know-It-All
3. My New List

I’d stand at the blocks, surveying the competition, looking to the center lanes to see the gleam in the eyes of the strongest swimmer. Unlike me and most of the girls in the other lanes,  she wanted it. I just wanted it to be over– the nerves, the anticipation, the knowledge that I wouldn’t win. I’d often be ahead of the predicted winner going into the final lap, but I’d seen the gleam, I knew she wanted it more, wouldn’t it be rude not to let her have it? Of course, I don’t think not giving it my all was a conscious decision, but I do know I that I valued playing nice over winning.

My area of expertise in sport is limited: I’m pretty decent when I just have to go forward in one direction, hopeless when a ball enters the picture.  Twenty years later, I still don’t think I have the gleam in my eye, the desire to go out and kick butt. I’m still likely to be deferential when I think someone else wants it more during a race. A few weeks ago I ran a marathon hard for the first nineteen miles, and when I realized I wasn’t going to beat my personal best time, I took a break, got a drink, and jogged easy the last seven miles.

Is this a trait peculiar to me? One that goes hand in hand with my inability to ever stand up for myself as a child when the girl across the street bossed me around, with my utter lack of confidence, even now, to tell those close to me when I think they’re about to do something dumb?

In the Winter 2009 issue of Segullah, Marilyn Bushman-Carlton seems to imply that the desire to play nice in sport (and in life) is a trait that we may instill unknowingly in our daughters in her poem, “The Girls’ Game.” She speaks of fathers, watching their young girls play soccer:

where they watch their own daughters
hesitate, lend a hand
to another who is down,

and hear, Oh, sorry! No, YOU go ahead!
rise like doves from the din of the game,

The fathers walk from the field, disappointed, but what about the mothers? Are they pleased by their girls’ good manners or do they hesitate when they see their own deference reflected in their daughters?

My husband and I both spend time on our favorite message boards. On mine, the women say happy birthday to each other, cheer for successes and pray for their friends in times of trial. We rarely criticize. On my husband’s message board, they wisecrack, point out lapses in logic, and call each other boneheads (and worse). Mine’s a community. His is a lot more fun to read.

So when my own daughter stomps to the car in a rage when her project doesn’t win at the science fair, do I tell her it’s okay and that winning isn’t that important, as I’ve been wont to think? Or do I help her strategize and make sure she kicks tail next year? Do I help her become a warrior? Do I even know how?

Related posts:

1. Pats on the back!
2. I’d like a sure thing, with a side order of easy
3. Everybody ought to have a body . . .a body is the only way to go!

I agreed, and though I haven’t started writing it yet, I’ve been thinking a lot about it since then (pre-writing is an important step in the writing process after all). When did I become converted? Can I record it in a way that others will find interesting to read—a way that accurately reflects my love for and feelings about the gospel? Why did they ask me to do this again?

I come from a long line of Mormons. My mom and dad both have pioneers in their genealogy. I was born in Provo, Utah and spent the bulk of my growing up years in Utah Valley surrounded by other members of the church. I went to BYU, served a mission, and then got married in the temple. If we’re talking about story in the Greek drama sense, I haven’t really got one. But I am converted to this gospel. I know it’s true; I love it; I try to share it and live it. So, how have I become converted? What is my story?

Michelle Lehnardt’s essay, Nauvoo in the Summer 2009 issue of Segullah, shares a piece of her conversion. As a young girl and part of a new convert family she took part in a journey to Nauvoo that helped her discover how she fit in to the heritage of Saints. That childhood experience led her to long for involvement in the events surrounding the rebuilding of the Nauvoo temple. Due to life, a new baby, all the demands of her growing family, she was unable to be there, disappointment and frustration were her companions until the week of the dedication. She writes, “I was doing the usual evening routine of putting the kids to bed. They laughed in the tub, chased each other in the hallway, and fought over the toothpaste. As I sat on the floor drinking in baby’s freshly bathed head on my shoulder and my beautiful boys leap-frogging over my legs, I was struck with profound joy. This is where I was supposed to be—this is what I needed to be doing. . . I laughed out loud in jubilation as every blessing, both spiritual and physical, flickered through my mind. I didn’t have to fight for a place in the kingdom. Christ had opened the gate, and taking His name at baptism secured my divine genealogy. I had enough. I was enough. “

When I re-read this in preparing to write today it helped me remember, dramatic or not, I do have a conversion story. It is made up of moments like this, when the Spirit brings to mind my blessings, the surety of the Gospel, the covenants I’ve made and how God is fully keeping his covenants to me. A couple of years ago, President Eyring spoke in general conference. He said, “’O remember, remember’,” Book of Mormon prophets often implored. My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness.” (Ensign, Nov. 2007, “O Remember, Remember”.) He told us that as he was raising his children he kept a journal and before he would write he would ponder the question, “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?” Then he would write it down. He said, “I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it.” As Michelle concludes her essay she says of her children, “I’ll teach them to look for the Spirit, not just in the grand venues, but in the hallways and fields and corners of their lives.” If we all do that, and follow President Eyring’s counsel as well, we will remember. We will know our divine genealogy and God’s kindness and when someone asks us to write our conversion story, we’ll have something to share.

What helps you remember God’s kindness?
If you keep a journal, how do you keep that habit up?
Tell us about your conversion if you like.

Related posts:

1. What about the children?
2. Downright Strange
3. Segullah: Gifts of the Spirit

And then I received my patriarchal blessing, which said nothing of greatness and fame, or marrying Donny Osmond, but which did give me clues about my life’s mission: I would get a good education, be a missionary and spread the gospel through my example, raise a righteous family, and be a “ray of sunshine” to those around me. A good life, to be sure, but rather quiet and unassuming, it seemed to me. Still, I looked for ways to make my mark and fulfill my destiny as I served a mission in Peru, went to graduate school, married and had children, did a little writing. And though I haven’t become famous or written a bestseller (thanks for taking that one, Stephenie Meyer) or cured cancer or saved India, I’m learning that my life’s mission is important, nevertheless, and that it evolves as my life unfolds.

In her essay “Wherever She Is,” published in the Summer, 2009 issue of Segullah, Lani R. Axman shares similar feelings. She describes how she tried to fulfill her “life’s true mission” by following the admonition in her patriarchal blessing to “uplift and strengthen others” through giving them “special care and tender touches.” As Axman explored different avenues for service—learning Spanish, majoring first in social work and then in English, applying to law school, studying to become a doula—she searched for the one true fulfillment of her life’s mission: “I was going to fulfill my purpose, and I was going to do it on a grand scale. I would swing open a mighty door, step in, and dispense my ‘special care’ to the masses. Isn’t a mission from God inherently laced with magnitude?” One day she read a pamphlet written by Sister Hinckley, in which Sister Hinckley quoted Elaine Cannon: “A woman’s significant role is that of being an influence wherever she is.” Is that it, Axman wondered? Is that all? But then, as the weeks passed, Axman understood through the Spirit’s gentle tutelage that she was fulfilling her life’s mission—uplifting and strengthening others—by influencing those closest to her. She realized, “There have been no downtrodden masses uplifted or strengthened by my efforts, but somehow, in all my searching (or perhaps despite it), I managed to touch a few souls here and there.”

Like Axman, I’m learning that a significant part of my life’s mission is to nurture those in my own small circle. And that, though each of us has a unique life mission, making a difference wherever we are seems to be at the heart of each of our missions. “The Master does not focus on the how and the what. He simply savors the why and for whom,” says Axman. I might still do some *big* and *important* things (and I will admit to you that one of my secret ambitions is to one day speak in Women’s Conference—my current version of fame), but right now I seem to be accomplishing my life’s mission by driving my daughter to soccer games; teaching my Beehives how to keep a journal; writing to my missionary nephews; taking a loaf of pumpkin bread to the sweet, elderly widow I visit teach; matching socks and folding laundry; tutoring my son in writing a coherent essay; and writing a blog post here and there. In short, by quietly exerting my influence wherever I am, by being a ray of sunshine in my own tiny section of the garden. And as my life continues to unfold, I hope to remain open to the opportunities the Lord gives me to make my mark, one tiny brushstroke at a time.

Discuss any/all of the following:
What were your ambitions when you were young?
What do you perceive as being your “life’s true mission” and how has that mission evolved throughout your life?
How has being a woman affected your perception/execution of your life’s mission?
In what ways has your patriarchal blessing been fulfilled, and in what ways has its fulfillment been different than you envisioned?
How are you making your mark on the world?

Related posts:

1. just show up
2. A New Heart
3. UP CLOSE: Living Single– Titanic Tears and Ministering Angels – Just Another Day Really

I realize that I’ve had an enviously easy, even boring, life, at least as far as the big-picture things go. Last year I watched a friend and her husband decide to uproot their school-age children and move to London for a work assignment that would certainly be an adventure, but also an upheaval of the predictable order of their lives. Another friend and her husband determined that the job prospects in his field wouldn’t be satisfying in the long run, and he’s now back in school, set to finish around the time his daughter graduates from high school. Still others have jumped back into the baby fray, years after the cribs were given away and the potty-training books packed up and stuffed in the attic.

Even though I haven’t had to make big leaps– no career changes or cabooses in my life (so far at least), I can identify with the sweaty-palmed, sleepless expectation that comes with small leaps of faith– “Do I really need to take on this new calling?” or “Seriously– another move across the country?” or “Can I handle both full-time work and graduate school?”– the kinds of questions that we all face from time to time. In Heather Oman’s personal essay, “Breathing,” published in the Summer 2009 issue of Segullah, she writes about a job she took as a college student, a job she didn’t want to take at first, that required a leap of faith and changed the course of her life:

It seemed ridiculous, preposterous, unthinkable to take their offer. Live with a family I hardly knew? Take care of medically fragile teenagers? Give up any semblance of a social life—for them? I told them I would have to think about it. They told me they needed an answer as soon as possible….

But sometimes it seems the Lord doesn’t really care what you want. He’s more interested in what needs to be done.

I pulled up to my apartment and turned off the ignition. I sat in the quiet car and looked down at my hands as I fidgeted with my keys. Facing graduation, I knew I needed to find a job, but was this the kind of job I wanted? What about a mission? I’d always wanted to serve a mission. I even had the packet of papers sitting in a drawer in my room, fresh from the bishop, ready to be filled out. Didn’t the Lord want missionaries?

I sat in the car so long I began to get cold. I looked up into the rearview mirror and said aloud, “OK. I’ll do it.”

Oman goes on to talk about the confidence she gained from her work, the way that it influenced her career path, and how staying close to the family she worked with has enriched her life. All because of a prompting heeded, and a leap taken.

What does a leap of faith feel like to you? What are leaps of faith you’ve taken in your life?

Related posts:

1. Leap-Frogging Forgiveness
2. Are Mothers Born or Made?
3. I Hope By Then I Will Be Ready . . .

In primary school I had to run sprints, from the wattles at one end of the school to some indeterminate spot far off. I hated sprinting. I sprinted like a hanging scarecrow, elbows and knees flying but going nowhere.  I hated sneezing through the pollen clouds, loathed watching everyone’s back get further and further away, stared intently at the gum trees off to the side as my classmates ran back towards me. I never reached the turning point, my teacher would always call me back to follow my classmates.  One of my first declarations of war in adulthood was to not ever sprint again.

But like Kylie in her poem, I didn’t give up the task or end goal. Kylie rebels against hoeing, choosing instead to “nip and tuck weeds between thumb and finger”. I fight sprinting, and instead run at a measured pace over several kilometres, still looking at the gum trees I run past,  enjoying them even more now without the pressure and fear of death by internal explosion.

 I am a woman now.

Tasteless brown slimy vegetables,

I do not have to eat

if I don’t want to.

I do not want to.

The one line heard most often in our kitchen growing up was “No afters if you don’t finish your dinner.” It didn’t matter what was on the plate, or how much, I had to choke it all down if I was going to lay claim to dessert. Qualifying for my afters usually killed my appreciation of it, and I would remind myself that things would be different “when I grew up”.

Now when I’m out for dinner or lunch, I ask to see the dessert menu before I order my meal.  My friends and family are bemused at the shimmy-wiggle I do in my seat when dessert is placed before me. I order my main after I’ve chosen my afters, I won’t eat the entire main if I don’t feel like it, or if room for dessert is threatened. Yet I don’t make a big deal of any of this – as Kylie writes, “Now I sit small” and quietly make my choice of dessert, and continue to enjoy the conversation.

As an adult, I have the freedom and opportunity to wage war on my childhood, my youth, my younger self, to change the way I live to be different to how I grew up. I can choose my battles, run the race, and usually eat the spoils. I am a woman now, and it can be fun.

What have you chosen to rebel against? How does that manifest in your everyday? What is something that you did as a child and now deliberately wage war against? You are a woman now – what is something “you do not want to”, so you don’t?

Related posts:

1. Eat Dessert
2. Relating
3. Guess Who’s Paying for Dinner?

I participated in a focus group and received a million dollars as a gratuity.

I am running up some stairs to get to a class and run into an estranged family member.

I take my lawn clippings to the green waste yard, which has turned into a frozen tundra by the time I arrive, and then rollerblade home in the cold.

I’m sleeping in a room I’ve never seen before, with all white linens, when a terrific storm blows in and takes off one of the window screens. I chase it, the wind and rain whipping my face, down a grassy hill.

Those are just a few of the dreams I’ve had this month.

I first read Barbara Bishop’s “Dreams as Gifts of the Spirit” (from the summer issue that will be posted online soon!) when it was submitted for editing. Her ideas impressed me, and I decided to start keeping a dream journal.

Dreams are slippery things. Sometimes they can be bizarre and embarrassing, but I’ve also had beautiful, comforting dreams that have wrapped around me like a favorite blanket. Many times I wake up with just a whisper of memory remaining. Trying to recall any concrete images is like grasping at smoke. Only a few dreams leave any lasting impression, but I’m intrigued with trying to remember and record.

I’ve never felt as though the Spirit was speaking to me through dreams, though I’ve known other people who have had dreams of divine origin. I wonder if I’ve not felt the Spirit through my dreams because I’ve not been listening.

So that’s what I’m doing now–listening. I’m not delving deep into dream symbolism or trying to understand what these scraps of my subconcious may mean. For now, I’m just writing it down and waiting to see if there’s a possibility that God will speak to me while I’m sleeping.

Related posts:

1. The Threads Still Whisper Her Love
2. Dream On
3. Dreams as Spiritual Gifts: An Interview with Barbara Bishop

In fact, I spent a couple of hours last week reading blogs trying to find copycat cookie recipes for some stellar bakeries here in NYC. You can call me silly if you want, but I found it invigorating. I was so anxious to experiment, taste, and share. They turned out FANTASTIC! I always share my recipes. I figure, share the love, none of this keep it secret nonsense. However, you do have to actually follow the recipe, and that includes sifting when it says to sift, and room temperature butter and eggs are not optional if the recipe says “room temperature”. Baking is a science people! Anyway, that’s a tangent for another day. Because I don’t want to scare you away from trying new stuff. I want to remind you that the best way to learn is to do it. I gave an excellently delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe to a friend of mine and she still hasn’t tried it. I asked her, “What in the world are you waiting for?”

“I’m too scared to try it. I’m afraid they won’t turn out as good as yours.” I gave her the recipe THREE YEARS AGO! But fear of failure is a real thing. Whether it be about cookies or something bigger. And here’s where I make my English major leap to an article from the last issue of Segullah, Finding Courage by Nicole Trone. She shares her first experiences as a missionary with a nervous trainer during a steamy Ukraine summer. Go read it and relate. We have to find the courage to overcome things that scare us. We have to admit our fears and face them. The things that follow may be scary, and we may even fail, but we’ll grow; we’ll learn.

The first batch of dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies were over baked and a little too cakey, but next time around I’ll use less baking powder, more soda and bake them less. I only know because I’ve tried. Gotta run, I can smell cinnamon and sugar and yeasty delicious rolls about to be ready in the oven.

Related posts:

1. I remember many things, but mostly cookies
2. Recipes and Remembrances
3. Where The Word Talking Actually Means Typing