La Rosa Knows

Give them a read and let me know what you think!

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Let me tell you something: When I was in high school, I could eat two bowls of cereal for breakfast. When I was in middle school, Cocoa Puffs were my only friends. And before that, a bowl of Lucky Charms was the only reason I’d wake up in the morning.

Now, at the age of 28, those days are gone, because what I eat for breakfast is something healthy. Something like wheat toast with organic peanut butter or Greek yogurt with raw almonds. (Yummy, but in comparison…not even close.)

Let me just walk you through some of the cereals I used to fantasize about eating, and then actually ate quite a bit of:

• Pops

The trick is, you’d have to try and eat them all before the milk made them soppy. Or, as I refined my technique, you’d have to eat in increments: filling the bowl ¼ of the way, then refilling when completed.

• Frosted Flakes

Let’s be honest, this is legit sugar in a bowl and it’s like crack. Delicious, wonderful crack.

• Cookie Crisp

How this was even allowed to be a cereal, I’ll never know. It’s a bowl of cookies! Again, not complaining.

• Cap'N Crunch

You know those cereals where it’s clear what they’re supposed to be? Like, Cookie Crisp is cookies. Raisin Bran includes bran and raisins, among other things. No idea what Cap'N Crunch is or why it’s so tasty. Maybe that’s for the best, though.

• Raisin Bran

I read somewhere that even though this is marketed as a “healthy” cereal, it’s actually one of the worst in terms of calories, sugar and carbs. Maybe that’s why it tasted so dang awesome.

• Fruity Pebbles

No question: Rainbow milk at the end of the bowl was what kept me coming back for more.

Those are a few of my faves…what are yours??

Admittedly, Valentine’s Day is a bit of a weird holiday filled with too much pressure and not enough drinking. It is, however, an excuse to send hearts to people and boxes full of chocolate. (And I am all for anything that includes me getting fatter.)

That being said, I’d like to wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to my boyfriend, who some of you may know as “E”. Hopefully he and I will both get fatter tonight! Dream big!

I’ve been doing a lot of scientific research to sort out exactly how I feel about him, and came up with the following results (again, this is extremely factual):

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Here’s hoping we all get fat! xoxo

The Salt Lake Tribune has a polygamy blog and, of course, I found it. While I was on there, I couldn’t help but notice that they covered a post I wrote for BuzzFeed: A “Which Sister Wife Are You?” quiz.

Which got me thinking more about polygamy: a subject I’m fascinated by and simultaneously cannot explain exactly why.

It started when I was in middle school and interacting more and more with my Mormon cousins. My aunt converted to the Church of Latter Day Saints when she was in her twenties, after falling in love with a Mormon man, my uncle.

When I was growing up, my cousins weren’t allowed to have soda or chocolate. They would cram into the car on Sunday mornings and head off to church for hours. Hours. Once they took my brother and I along. We were both very little, but I remember sitting in church and eating bread, then going into a classroom to watch a film, and just wanting to go home. I guess it was like any church service when you’re a kid, it’s just not as interesting as being somewhere else.

Missionaries became a fixture at holiday dinners. There was the Thanksgiving when two missionaries, originally from Vegas, came to dinner. They never came back after my Catholic mother asked if they missed seeing strip clubs. Guess it’s tough to have a sense of humor when you’re doing God’s work. Or the Easter where a handsome missionary came to visit and became keen on my non-Mormon cousin, Caroline. She was just 14 years old at the time, but looked about 18. Needless to say, it didn’t work out.

I remember my mom mentioning that Mormons believed in polygamy sometime around middle school. I’m not sure what prompted it, but I do remember not knowing what that word meant, exactly. I ended up researching it online. Polygamy: more than one wife or husband. That seemed so odd. I thought of my aunt and wondered if there were other secret wives shacked up in her house. I wondered if my uncle had ever suggested such a thing to her. I thought of my own parents and how furious I’d be if my mother or father ever cheated on the other. That’s what polygamy felt like to me, like consensual cheating. It sounded heartbreaking. And, yet, there were people out there doing it. How were they doing it? How were they able to stand it? Was there some secret trick they’d learned so that they could endure it?

I also discovered that members of the Mormon church do not, in fact, believe in polygamy. Or, at least, they say they don’t. They officially stopped endorsing the practice over a hundred years ago, but there are documents that suggest the polygamist vein is a hard one to stop from hemorrhaging. (Especially when you consider that the church founders led an openly poly lifestyle.)

Today, the people openly practicing are the fundamentalist Mormons. Those living in communes like Colorado City or Hildale, and function by rulings from an enigmatic leader and reticence from the followers.

Those are the people who fascinate me. It’s less of the mainstream polygamists, like those you may see on TLC’s Sister Wives, (though, admittedly, I still watch the show) and more the followers who are living in the shadows. Most don’t have access to education or Internet. All are expected to live the poly lifestyle or suffer God’s consequences. And not many are getting the opportunity to tell their stories.

Surely, there are people suffering. Men and women who would want to leave the community, but have no opportunities or skills to do so. But those people aren’t talked about nearly enough. Instead we’re seeing people like those on Sister Wives, who seem happy and well adjusted with their circumstances. In a way, their happiness takes away the much needed attention that the smaller and more isolated communities desperately need.

Some members do manage to escape the lifestyle, like the young girls pictured above, and they get the opportunity to speak out about polygamy. But what about the women still in polygamy? Is it possible that some of them really do like it? Or is it just that it’s all they’ve ever known? What happens if you speak your mind about how you’re feeling? Can ideas that oppose the norm ever really exist in a culture that is, essentially, a cult?

While many women escape the poly life and go on to denounce the practice, surely there are those that would also exalt it? What interests me is that, if those women exist (and I’m sure they do), I’d like to hear their stories. Again, not the mainstream polys, like you see in Sister Wives, but the women who are living under the rule of Warren Jeffs and being denied rights that we all get to enjoy, like the right to an education.

Hearing their stories feels very important to me. It’s part of what drove me to visit Colorado City, and part of what makes me want to go back. I want to meet those women and hear their thinking through this process, even though I know I’d never get access or the chance to do so.

Part of me wonders if I’ll ever get the chance to visit those places again, and part of me has already resigned myself to the fact that I may not. In which case, I’ll just have to keep reading The Salt Lake Tribune’s blog.

Unless, of course, one of you wants to go with me on a trip to Utah again??

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