Somebody Has Stolen My Son. And who are The Mormons?

I don't know who this new creature is. He turned off his Elmo movie, took my hand, and led me to his bed for nap time. Half an hour early. I hear him playing with his toys and happily shrieking in glee. I tremble.

I just received emails from some of my old friends in our last city! I can't believe how good it is to hear from them! They're buying houses and having children and basically growing up. What a pleasure!

I'm still very homesick, even though I'm trying to focus on the good things around this city. There are flowers out right now, for example, and some of them are quite striking. It is very easy to find a good meal, and even a child friendly one. But this place. Argh. It is a soul killer. I am hoping that when we move into The House we'll have our own little corner of the world that is beautiful and lovely and always welcoming.

That is the plan, anyway.

Niko bit his teacher today. She had to tell me about it, but since it didn't break the skin, she didn't have to write a report. I told her I was sorry, and I was. His sharp little shark teeth can really cause some damage! But on the other hand I thought, "Hey, if he's been going to school for this long, and this is your first bite?! Lucky you!" Secretly I congratulated him in my head. Not for biting, of course, but for doing so well that biting was an anomaly.

He also likes to stick his head in the dryer and yell, "Yaaaaar!" Which is an anomaly, too, I suppose.

My writing friend Dawn and I are writing a script together for Script Frenzy. It's another offshoot of NaNoWriMo, (National Novel Writing Month) and the idea is that you write a 20,000 word script in 30 days. You can write in teams of two, if you want, which is what we're doing. It's going to be a spoof disparaging the stereotypical archetypes of literature, and it should be really fun! Which is what we're doing it for, because script writing is not to be taken seriously by us. Anyway, it will count for our monthly contest, which is great! We're all doing really well on that, and that makes me proud. You guys all know that I'm a dreamer, not a doer.

I watched the PBS special "The Mormons" and was severely disappointed. Luke and I decided that we had both expected too much out of it. Like unbiasness. The creepy, dark pictures and eerie music really was all it took to turn me off. "You come off looking like a bunch of nutters," one of my friends told me. I had to agree. Would I let a missionary in my door after watching that first program? I don't think so! We came across as mindless, sweetly naive people who blindly followed power hungry lunatics. I suppose that I should laugh, really, because it is so off the mark. Hardly anybody that they interviewed actually IS LDS, and what kind of view will a torked-off ex-member or unaffiliated historian present? I want to know where the light is. I want to know how they think so many educated, happy, and industrious people could be so easily led. That just isn't the case. But enough of that. I've ranted already to people who love me, and they treat my religion like the tender, valuable thing that it is. It is very precious to me. And really, when it comes down to it, the people I love are really the ones who matter.