Religious Shortcomings

I don't always do "Mormon" well.

Because you have to have a wreath made of sticks hanging somewhere outside your house in order to be a good Mormon. I don't like stick wreaths.

One of these would also get me in the club, but they're not my thing either:



I don't drink alcohol, I pay my tithing, I willingly go to church every Sunday except Stake Conference days, (which are optional skip days for people with kids, right?), and I sort of keep a journal, if you count this thing you're reading. So I'm not a complete failure, but there are issues beyond the stick wreaths.

For instance, casseroles kind of freak me out. Always the canned green beans and mystery sauce and always some kind of crunchy topping that ends up being stale corn flakes because we shouldn't let things go to waste.

And I don't have stick figure children on the rear window of my mini-van.

I can't sew or play the piano, and I'm really not qualified to help plan any functions because I lean more towards the "less is more" theory, rather than trying to out-do anyone who came before me.

And then there's all that swearing that I do. *Head falls in shame.*

Ah - I feel so much lighter now!

It's possible that there is hope for me though, because I do insist on making a Jell-O salad every Thanksgiving. And there's fruit floating in it, too.

Also, I'm learning to feel proper guilt.

The other day, my neighbor brought over some Filipino egg rolls, which were called "Lumpo" or "Leempo" or something like that. We devoured them in no time and then I put my neighbors dishes in the dishwasher.

Several days later the dishes were still sitting on my kitchen counter, waiting to be returned, because what kind of Mormon would I be if I returned her dishes without food on them? It's an unspoken rule:

The only time you can return dishes without filling those dishes with a "Thank You treat" is if the person made a cake or cheesy potato dish for a funeral and you are returning mass amounts of 9x13 baking dishes. If someone brought you a something-or-other "just because", then you may not return that dish empty. If you do, then you risk being the social outcast at the next Enrichment Night, which Andrew affectionately refers to as "Bitch n' Stitch".

Well, as further evidence that I am not an ideal Mormon, I don't go to those Enrichment Meetings. But that's not to say I didn't feel that obligation riding on my shoulders to make something to put on my neighbor's plate so that I wouldn't appear to be an ungrateful apostate when I returned it.

So one afternoon I finally whipped up a box of Pillsbury cake mix and dutifully poured it into cupcake molds. I topped them with some cream cheese frosting and a light dusting of sprinkles to distract from the fact that I had not made the cake from scratch.

I did a taste test to ensure I wasn't about to deliver unpalatable cupcakes. They were disappointingly dry. I blame Pillsbury, because I never have that problem with Duncan Heins. I considered starting over and making cookies, but then I thought back to a news segment I had watched with Andrew earlier in the day.

It was a report showing that Utah has risen to fourth place in our nation for the highest amount of prescription drug abuse. (I wonder if there's a trophy or plaque associated with that?) When the expert was asked why that might be, she stated that their studies show that people consider it safe to take prescription drugs for non-medical use because they are not, after all, illegal substances. (Forgetting the fact that the way they obtained them is probably less than ethical.) The expert then stated that a lot of mature, adult people are taking them to help them deal with issues or pressures in their lives that they feel otherwise incapable of working through.

So I stood there, staring at my plate of dry cupcakes, and while I could not make disappear the pressure that I felt to deliver them with my neighbor's dishes, I felt proud of myself that I didn't have to take a Vicodin to get me through it.