It’s that time again!

Date: Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Time: 6:45 PM
Where: home in Laguna Beach (Orange co., halfway between San Diego & L.A.)
Hosted by: Jeannine

Leave a comment or email us if you need directions.

I’ve more or less been away from the Bloggernacle for a while, due to the birth of my daughter Artemis (yes, she’s actually named Artemis - she hasn’t learned to blog yet, though). First, my brain melted because of the fertility drugs I took to conceive. Then, my brain melted more because of the exciting pregnancy hormones with which I was flooded. Finally, I had a newborn, and the melted brain oozed out of my ears.However, Artie is more than three months old now. She’s big - people generally think she’s an unusually floppy six-month old - and she sleeps eight or nine hours every night, so I’ve recently had time to mop my brain up and pour it back in my head. (more…)

Spud came over and helped me paint my kitchen cabinets grandma-green: (more…)

So, it’s an excellent time to buy a house (if you don’t have to sell one). And I’m feeling myself in a bit of a quandary.

I live in a smallish house, by American standards. It’s a very comfortable house in a sprawltastic neighborhood, we bought it as a “starter home” fully intending to upgrade (in true American fashion) but then a lot of my ideas changed. Ideas about lowering my carbon footprint, and not buying into the warped American standards of success, and consuming less. Now a part of me feels like I should be content to live here the rest of my life. The part of me that read Jana’s post on living small and admire people like her who really really live their convictions. (more…)

Artemis received her hospital discharge yesterday evening and is now battling the boredom of highly restrictive bed rest. Both she and the baby are fine for the time being, so we’re all hopeful the leaking will continue to slow or (pleasepleaseplease) cease . The baby will reach primary viability in three and a half weeks, so if she can hold on that long Artemis will transfer to hospital for bedrest so the doctors can deliver the baby when labor begins. The next week - 10 days present an especial challenge, since approximately half of pregnancies deliver within a week of rupture.

If you are local to the Salt Lake City area and would like to help Artemis and her famiy, please email me at fmhjanet at gmail dot com. I’m trying to work on a meal schedule as well as a few other possibilities.

Artemis and family very much appreciate your concern and prayers. God be with her and her family, and with us all.

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Artemis currently inhabits the stressful space of a hospital room due to significant leakage of her amniotic fluid. While her baby shows a strong heartbeat and no signs of distress, the situation still requires close monitoring. The pregnancy is still several weeks shy of vaiblity and doctors can really only prevent infection and watch. In all likelihood, Artemis has at least a couple weeks of bedrest in her immediate future. She’d very much appreciate general prayers asking God to reseal the membranes (medically possible but not common) or stop the leakage, as well as general prayers on her and her family’s behalf. Thanks, in advance, for your concern, love, and prayers.

being the 4th of July and all, I thought we could revisit a post by lisa on patriotism. This was originally published back in June, 2006. have a good holiday. mfranti

I admit that I’m often annoyed by the whole, “I’m not a feminist but . . .” line that I often hear round these parts. It is my opinion that your average moderate women should be perfectly comfortable embracing the word feminist. Despite all the spin to the contrary, “feminist” doesn’t mean man-hating baby-kicking lesbian sans bust support.

So what does this have to do with patriotism you ask? Well . . . (more…)

I grew up in a small town in southern Utah (you haven’t heard of it, trust me) where every August we produced a pageant, about the Mormon pioneers who settled the Castle Valley. Every night after the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, there is a (admittedly rather touching) armed-services-appreciation ceremony. Members of the audience who served in the Army (for instance) are asked to stand, enthusiastic horse riders gallop by carrying the Army flag, the official Army song plays, the audience claps. This is repeated for every branch of the armed services.

It’s wonderful to see the men and women stand and be applauded for their service, and it makes me happy for them to be recognized this way.

At the same time, I always squirm for the (potential) Non-Americans in the audience. It’s all very pro-military and pro-American and it has nothing to do with Mormonism. I wonder about the appropriateness of holding this ceremony at a church sponsored event. We are a world church, with members in countries on both sides of most any civil conflict.

What do you think?

Everyone, go give John R a great big Cyber Kiss for fixing our database!

In one of my recent posts, many commenters cited the example of single-sex gyms to justify some country clubs’ refusal to admit women as full members. While I continue to believe that women-only gyms like “Curves” or “Healthworks” are an insufficient comparison to the bastion of power represented on the membership rolls of male-only Augusta National, it’s an important question nonetheless.

(more…)

I have to tell you I’ve been annoyed with the public (read: Male) reaction to the Sex in the City movie. I’ve not seen it myself and I’m not terribly interested, but that’s not really the point. The point is the enthusiastic and thoughtless contempt of feminine things.

I realize there’s probably not a lot of deep meaning or redeeming social value or great artistic merit in said movie, I’m sure it glorifies our unsustainable consumer culture, questionable social morality, and American self-obsession. And if these moaning men objected to the movie based on those issues, I’d be peachy keen. But that’s not it at all, no, men object because it’s a movie that is apologetically feminine, it’s about pretty dresses and relationships and love and female lives. And they feel it is necessary to loudly proclaim that they’d rather have their toenails yanked out with pliers than go to that movie.

Why? Well, obviously interest in womanly things is humiliating and degrading. Of course. (more…)

Apparently, women are denied full membership privileges at an exclusive country club in Phoenix, Arizona.

What? Are you kidding me?! Do we have cooties or something?

Can you imagine the political fallout if the Phoenix Country Club refused to admit blacks as full members? Especially considering John McCain’s son is a member of the club?

(more…)

I live on several acres of bushland. Australians hate it when I say this, but most winter mornings, we have kangaroos in our front yard. Today there were five of them, six if you count the joey in the pouch. It’s not at all uncommon for us to have echidnas in the garden. Our dog loves trying to get at them; but echidnas have a very good defense system, they burrow into the ground and expose the sharp spines along their back and wait out the threat. Once our dog had an echidna trapped under the car for three hours. (Yes, it took us that long to go out and see why she was making such a racket.) We locked up the dog and had to wait for another 3 hours before the echidna thought it was save enough to move.

And then there are other animals that aren’t so nice. Take the hunstman spider - they won’t hurt you, not really, but they are big and they move fast. It’s very scary when you’re driving along and suddenly see a huntsman out of the corner of your eye. The only thing scarier is looking back five seconds later and not seeing it.

We also have snakes. In fact, in February, we had a snake in the house. This wasn’t any ordinary garden snake, this was a brown snake, the second most venomous land snake in the world. (more…)

The bloggernacle is awash with posts on same-sex marriage, the First Presidency’s upcoming letter and the demise of traditional marriage. Over and over I read comments about how ‘traditional marriage’ is under attack. How gays and lesbians marrying will ‘destroy marriage.’ How we have to fight to defend ‘traditional marriage’ and the family from variously, the homosexual agenda, the evils of the world, the forces of Satan, etc. etc. etc. But the sad (glad) news is that Traditional marriage is dying or dead in much of the world and has been for a long time. And its demise has nothing to do with gays or lesbians. It was us women who killed it, forced its reinvention and started us down this ’slippery slope’ to where we are today. (more…)

by Ayla

I was hoping the church would sit this one out. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, “the LDS Church is asking California Mormons to support a proposed constitutional amendment that would recognize only marriages between a man and a woman.”

As a Californian this affects me. So here’s my take on it. In the Journal of Discourses, which is not official LDS doctrine I know, Brigham Young stated that a white person conceiving a child with a black person was a sin punishable by death and that this would always be so.

OK, so obviously it wasn’t always so. The whole gay marriage issue is the same thing to me. It’s a civil rights issue, period. The current presidency consists of older men, they’ve been raised to think that gay marriage is wrong and this is their opinion. However, I do not believe nor will you ever convince me that condemning homosexual marriages and families is coming from God. (more…)

This one is just too good for the side bar …….

If you live in Utah, you’ve probably heard of the Wasatch Back relay, which took place this weekend. The race starts in Logan and ends in Park City. Each runner is part of a twelve-person (or six-person, if you’re really crazy) team and runs three legs of the 180-mile distance between the two cities.

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Blue is a regular reader and infrequent commenter on FMH. She thought these tips might be of interest to some in this community.

Most of us can not afford to go 100% organic. Looking for a solution? Focus on just those foods that come with the heaviest burden of pesticides, chemicals, additives and hormones. Whenever possible, deploy your organic spending power to buy organic versions. See the list below to find the top 12 foods to eat organic.
Can’t find organic versions of the organic foods listed below? The list offers safer alternatives that contain similar valuable vitamins and minerals. (more…)

As part of my self-directed pregnancy reading program, I am just finishing up Marsden Wagner’s (M.D., M.S.) book, Born in the USA: How A Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First. Fascinating read, actually, though I think many OB’s would find it unnecessarily provocative. I’ve not actually been able to find any OB reviews of the book (if you know of any good ones, let me know), but from what I can tell, the book is solidly grounded in good science and research. I especially like the later chapters where he outlines his thoughts on what needs to be done to make family-friendly, evidence-based maternity care standard in the U.S., and how to do it.

However, this post is not intended to be a thorough review of the book or the issues involved. All I want to do here is re-post a list of patients’ rights that Wagner reviews in his chapter 7 of the book (more…)

Earlier this week, an adult member of a local sports team shot his girlfriend and then himself. Some members of the team wanted to wear black armbands to remember him at their next game; the team president asked that they didn’t do so, because he thought it would send the wrong message about violence towards women. I was listening to a brief discussion on local ABC radio (the Australian equivalent of NPR) when a woman called up. She identified herself as a friend of the family. And then she said, and I paraphrase: The media is not telling the whole truth. When the truth emerges about who and what this woman was, and what she was doing, their opinion would change. The man was the real victim in this. (The clear implication was: She deserved it.)

The female radio host asked, “Is violence against women ever justified?” The family friend replied: “He was never violent against any woman. Never.” Huh? So shooting her isn’t violent?

Are we our own worst enemy when it comes to violence against women? How do we go about changing attitudes?

If you haven’t heard it yet and would like to, here’s the link to the interview mfranti, Lisa & I had with krcl:

RadioActive! June 18 Feminist Mormon Housewives
They’re not your mamma’s Relief Society!