It Was a Dark and Stormy Day...

...and it is.  Snow is expected - brief flurries - in some areas...  Helloooooo, winter (and I worry about my little furry friends now).

I have one badassed cold.  I'm worried about giving it to Jelly, but there isn't anyone else available to keep an eye on him, help him out, so I get to wear latex gloves and a mask around him, and dry out my already parched skin by washing my hands 1,482,630 times a day.

Bob and Gary were around last night.  They want me to prepare to go to Temple.  (The church isn't a temple.  In fact, it isn't called a church by Mormons - it's a Meeting House.  The Temple is a whole other animal, and you need your 'temple recommends' to get into it.)  That takes a year.  A year of no coffee, tea, cigarettes, and special classes, meetings, etc. to attend.  I'd have to spend a mint I don't have on the special clothing you need to wear inside the temple - all white, all specially made right down to the satin slippers and 'Mormon undies' - which, from head to toe, would set me back at least $400 for the cheaper things. (Like a wedding dress or a tux, this outfit is meant to last for years, and only to be worn at the temple, though, so it's all well-made (most of it handstitched) and DOES last - some people are proud of having their temple clothing for 20, 30 years before they had to replace them...)

I'm pretty sure that - once in the inner sanctum - I'd be touched by the angry finger of God and go up in flames...

Besides, in the ritual, I wouldn't be able to go to Heaven as a single woman.  I'd be stuck in the not-quite-here-nor-there, I suppose, waiting for one of my elders to remember I'm waiting there and call me over...  Sigh...  (Because I have respect for the beliefs of my church whether I entertain them or not, I'm not going to relate the ritual here.  People who despise Mormons have enough ammunition to use against them without being able to mock the ceremonies.)


Bob related a cute story from church.  A little one - about four - was concerned because her older brother had devised a cvery crude 'bird trap'.  As he, himself, was only a year or two older, there was never any real danger that he'd actually trap a bird, but she believed he might, and told her mother that she was going to prayer to Heavenly Father that he wasn't successful.

A few days went by, and each day the mother inquired after the success of these anti-bird trapping prayers and was informed that God was 'working on it' by the little one.

Finally, the little girl announced that she knew Heavenly Father wouldn't let any birds be trapped in such nefarious machinery as devised by her evil little brother, and the mother asked why.

"Oh, I prayed and prayed to Him," said the little girl.  "And, then, I kicked it to pieces!"

The point is that the little girl had just heard, via a conversation between her parents, a discussion in which the father, aggravated by his wife wanting to prayer about the smallest decisions, had told her that, sometimes, God wants us to take matters into our own hands and do what we think is the right thing.

Now, that's the kind of little girl I like...