Mormon History Quiz

Q: How many women did Joseph Smith marry between 1827, when he married Emma, and 1844, when he died?
A: The historians are not exactly sure, but it's at least 30, and probably several more.

Q: How many do they bother telling you about at church?
A: Just one. Emma's a hero, after all - but not so much when Joseph keeps bedding most young (and some not-so-young) women in his vicinity and she's yelling at him and smacking him around some, as any right-headed person would do. So it saves Joseph's and the church's face if their first prophet isn't a polygamist (especially not [gasp] BEFORE the revelation was publicized) and saves hers if she looks like such a generous, loving, supportive woman instead of a reasonable normal human being.

Oh yeah - another thing they don't tell you about is the fact that several of these women were already married at the time, to living husbands, some of whom knew about the marriages and some of whom did not. I don't think they're too interested in the polyandrous side of things, although I knew from a young age that I'd be a sister-wife in a polygamous heaven.

Q: (just for fun, this one)How many sets of sisters did Joseph marry?
A: I think it's 3 or 4, can't remember exactly, but at least 3.

Q: How old was the youngest and the oldest when they were married?
A: Helen Mar Kimball - 14. Rhoda Richards - 58.

You can see short bios of all the well-documented wives at www.wivesofjosephsmith.org.

Dental p.s.

I guess it's a result of being invisible for so many years that I maintain a quasi-subconscious fear that I don't exist, or maybe just don't exist enough. When the airport toilet doesn't auto-flush after I stand up it really freaks me out.

I've been working and working on my self-validation skills but still.

So now, despite the fact that I was sobbing in extreme pain last night, since I haven't had a relapse of that intensity since then, I have this feeling that I'll go the endodontist and he'll dismiss me, like, "why are you whining? there's nothing wrong."

-No, Maybe Girl, you did your research, all the information says the same thing; if there's a lot of pain, there's a problem, call the doctor right away.
-But I've been pretty much pain-free all night. Maybe I was blowing it out of proportion.
-Remember? You may blow some things out of proportion, but physical pain has never been one of them.

Okay. Damn. Time to go. Guess I'll see what happens.

Dental dental

It could be political. It would most certainly be economic and social. They're too much entangled. Infuriation. Too much effort, too much destruction for this moment. We only just got me calmed down (thank you my dear).

I guess the most disembodied feeling was brought on by seeing hearing smelling dust from the hardest tissue in my body floating away in tiny particles toward the light they were using to see into my mouth. Go toward the light, little granules of enamel! You smell weird and wrong - go toward the light! And don't forget to tell jesus I'm coming. Good thing the doctor and his assistant had protective glasses on. That'd be like tiny shards of glass, or something - getting in your eyes, your lungs, your nose. I'm practically choking just thinking of it. Well, they're the ones who have to clean the tools afterward, not me. If it's such damned hard tissue why isn't it holding up as well as my bones? My heart, liver, kidneys, even! All fine!They're exposed to bacteria, too, or...some..other...bad..stuff..or..whatever.

Not unhappily disembodied, though. Novocaine a godsend, a reprieve from pain which would only worsen in the coming days (and let me tell you, that's not what's supposed to happen). At least HE explained what the fuck was going on.

Humorous too, because I've never used a dental dam, not until my root canal. Kinky. They poked a little hole in it and trapped it around that one tooth so it'd stay dry. And I thought, this is interesting.

But really, now, what boggles my mind is the outs they constantly give themselves. I mean, come ON, health care professionals are supposed to be trustworthy, infallible! Just like church leaders. Oh. (again, thanks a bunch mom. also thanks larry for the crappy teeth.)

So that he has an out when I see him later and say, it's these waves of the sharpest of pain, coursing through my jaw into my face, my head, my neck. White-hot-white-cold fire, it's waves that give me the chills, I break out immediately in a cold sweat, it's I can't hold still kind of pain. It's if this lasted 10 seconds longer I'd head for the emergency room kind of pain. Yeah. He'll say, oops! I guess we missed some. Happens all the time. Oh well.

It's oh well to him and to me it's two days of a lot of seething, crying, trying to continue to breathe, lying around but not feeling rested, anticipating the new set of surges when I get the hint of pain, almost a tickle (one full of terror), that precedes it.

I could be just a baby, learn to deal with it, life is hard blah blah blah. Pema Chodron's Buddhist 'leaning into the sharp points.' No, you know what? Ask anybody who knows me reasonably well. I can handle an awful lot of pain before it really gets to me. In some cases I enjoy pain, court it. This? This at its worst was, no question, a 10. This shit was leaning into ME. Running me through, more like. Yeah, see? There's a mark where my ribs meet, and in the middle of my back - run clear through -

Big Families = no no NO!

Hey I think every person who reads this blog was needing to know this so I'll tell you:

It's not okay when parents have so many goddamned children (maybe 7) that communication becomes a grade school game of gossip, even in important situations such as what could be (or could have been) a life-threatening illness of one of the parents.

!!! those !'s are code for my furrowed brow and my indignant petulant feelings. (But thanks to Sissie for telling me, I'd never have known!)

Give me a fucking break, Diane! After 40 years of parenting, you still don't realize this is a problem?

And also bitchety bitch bitch bitch about x and y and z, blah blah yeah george you know the story. I don't mean to undermine myself it's just that I'm such a whinerbaby. WTF.

PLux (you know, like JLo?)

[Lily in her pup tent. (ha ha ha.)]

Okay, really I'm talking patellar luxation, or a luxating patella, meaning that Lily Bug's kneecap until recently had been sliding back and forth over her femur in and out of alignment, not too painfully but decidedly uncomfortably, such that she's been declining to run on her right rear leg for a couple of months.

So she had surgery on her knee, and we both had a visit to Ponder, Texas, where my brother-in-law is a junior partner in a vet clinic (i.e., we got an amazing deal - thanks Chris!). Ponder is... small enough that there's no stoplight. I was as queer as queer could be there, even just drinking coffee in the gas station (since I wasn't allowed to bring coffee into my sister's Mormon home, since apparently its very presence would violate the Word of Wisdom and soil the whole house). But anyway I don't mean to be a dick, I do appreciate their help and had a good time getting reaquainted with my nephews. And sleeping.

But she was a champ, really. No crying except when she was waking up from the surgery in a room with a bunch of strange, sad dogs in crates and she was thinking, "What the fuck did you hosers do to my leg? And why is my brain so fuzzy? Give me some drugs, now." She was extremely well-behaved on the plane in both directions, too. Now as she's healing, it's a matter of keeping her down more than anything - she doesn't realize they chiseled off and moved her tibial tuberosity (a chunk of her shin bone) from one place to the other, held there until it heals only by a little steel pin, and is apparently feeling pretty well - but I'd much prefer that to any complications or having her in any pain.


Here's Lily, pre-surgery in my arms, after the anesthetist shot her in the bum with sleepy happy drugs.



I watched the whole surgery, and I must say it was fucking cool. I was a couple of feet away, watching this master dog-surgeon-dude sawing away on my tiny dog's tiny bones. My brother-in-law watched from her other side, as he is learning to do the surgery but hadn't seen it done live before. I quite enjoyed it.


Here is her scar. It's a crappy camera phone picture. She looks like a badass now. But needs some tattoos.

E. the Catholic (my roommate) has taken to calling her tripod, which I find pretty funny. And after two and a half weeks, all her stitches have fallen out except the very bottom one, which the surgeon showed me how to remove. She must've done a bit too much today, as I was home and she was out of her crate quite a bit, because this evening after some serious bone chewing she got down from my lap and sleepily limped over to get to bed, not using the leg at all. It doesn't even look weird when she's trotting or running with a rhythm; from the opposite side you can't even tell she's not using that leg. But when she moves slowly, it's obvious and very pathetic. And absurdly cute.

Sinking-Feeling-Smile Sandwich

Mason Jennings, the total shift of tone and pace in the song, the riff the intensity the harmonics followed by the mellow quiet and he sings, slowly,

"You know loving me is not enough...
(moment of quiet + guitar)
I know future is as future does..."


Courtesy of my 3-year old nephew Tommy:
Knock knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange who? Orange I didn't glad to say poop?
(I made him tell it over and over until I could memorize his grammar.)


Courtesy of Bee Season by Myra Goldberg:
"...Though Aaron can identify a few Hebrew words, his knowledge of the language is largely limited to the ability to parse letters...there's no way for him to know he's welcoming in the Sabbath bride as the English translation claims. For all he knows, the entire congregation could be chanting
Green Eggs and Ham.

"Aaron is still musing over his Dr. Seuss realization when he remembers his father's early lessons in consumer consciousness. Ever since Saul dissected a Snoopy Cone Machine commercial for Aaron at age seven, Aaron has been aware of the manipulative powers of advertising. "Never buy a product just because you've seen it on TV," Saul instructed at an age at which recognizing characters on cereal boxes made leaving aisle three empty-handed tantamount to abandoning a friend. As a result, Aaron has grown to mid-adolescence with an eye for label reading. It is at the service's completion, while munching on an oneg cookie, that Aaron realizes he's bought Judaism without consulting the side of the box."
[I feel I can say the same, with different details.]