And you can feed the monkeys, too….

I ran across this hilarious article on a Website that I’m sure all my critics will HATE. They will scream, THIS IS NOT AN UNBIASED SOURCE, and I will say, “Really? So, where exactly is it I tried to HIDE where I got the story from? Was that link in a color your eyes cannot SEE?”

These will be the same detractors who told me they HEARD THAT SLUT HERSELF SAY ON NATIONAL TELEVISION THAT SHE WANTS US TO PAY FOR HER TO HAVE SEX AS MANY TIMES AS SHE WANTS. Of course, when proven wrong–since Sandra Fluke, the “slut” in mention said no such thing on national television, for many reasons that include the fact she didn’t want the American people to pay for her birth control every time she has sex, but mostly because she WASN’T ALLOWED TO SPEAK at a panel on birth control, because it was filled with conservative religious MEN who have never taken a birth control pill in their life–those same detractors will crawl off under their rock for a few days until they find something new to complain about.

Conveniently forgetting how they told me THEY HEARD IT THEMSELVES, until I pointed out that was not possible, since she didn’t say it. I even gave them the complete transcripts of what she did say, which was NOT in front of any congressional panel because the decisions about women’s bodies are being made by MEN.

Just as a side note, when they claim I am being biased, they often give me a Sean Hannity link to prove me wrong. Um. Okay. First of all, I never HIDE where I get a story from. You can take that to the bank. I give credit where credit is due.

But I damn sure wish I had written this one.

But I do wish, if people were going to base their entire stance against gay marriage on Biblical principles, that they would explain their position on other issues the same way. If Mr. Romney is against gay marriage based on ancient religious teachings, shouldn’t he also take a stand against witchcraft, and not just change his position whenever it suits him to gain a little in the wiccan vote? This matter is addressed in Leviticus, too, 20:27:  “A man or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death:  they shall stone them with stones:  their blood shall beupon them.”

I’d like to hear him address the plague of children cursing parents in troubled modern times. Mr. Romney doesn’t curse much, himself, according to reporters. He has a reputation as a fine father, too, and his children probably don’t do much cursing, either. If other boys and girls do, however, what would be Dad Romney’s stand when we look at Leviticus 20:9?  “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death:  he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

In the end, if you’re going to base your case for intolerance toward homosexuals on what men and women were originally taught two or three thousand years ago, then I’d have liked to have seen someone ask during the Republican primaries this spring:  “Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich, you both oppose gay marriage. What is your stance on adultery?”

I’d like to have seen Mitt lay it on Newt, and watch Newt squirm, when Mr. Romney quoted Leviticus yet again (20:10):  “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adultress shall surely be put to death.”

Bullies are spiteful, nasty cowards–is this you, Mitt?

As soon as President Barack Obama threw his support into the “gay marriage” arena, things got dicey on the old campaign trail. Apparently, the Washington Post had been working up a hella bad story about Mitt Romney, and his high school/prep school antics. Talk about bad timing for Mitt.

Now the words are flying through the internet so swiftly that if they were physical entities, lots of heads would be lost to this war. Obama smoked pot and did some other drugs. Mitt was  a bully. Which one is worse?

I personally feel that we ought to consider the fact that all teenagers are mutants, and forgive them both, but a disturbing question has yet to be answered. Is Mitt’s bullying a sign of a personality disorder? Is it something we should tolerate in a man who wants to lead our country?

Bullying can be deadly. I had my own “high school” horror stories, as I’m sure all of you did. Kids are mean. Cruel, vicious, nasty. Put them together in a crowd mentality and things get really bad. They feed off each other. Which, of course, makes them cowards, but they don’t see this. The ones who don’t feel right about what is happening still don’t feel comfortable confronting the “leader.” So they don’t.

When my oldest daughter was in eighth grade, I about lost her to a pack of nasty, rotten, mean, ugly, spiteful, yellow-bellied, cowardly bullies. Boys and girls. And I was never quite sure she would come out of it okay. Sometimes, I still wonder if it left an everlasting scar, and she is almost 20.

Kids who are different have a hard time in school. Everybody is so worried about fitting in, that those who simply cannot, or are not capable of it, often become the verbal and mental punching bags of the bullies. When it became apparent my oldest daughter was struggling with public school, I moved both of my daughters to a private school.

What this meant for my younger daughter, Dancing Daughter, was I moved her from a school where she had plenty of friends and always someone to hang out with to a school with 15 kids in a class where everyone hated her and treated her like dirt, because the class diva–a tall beautiful elegant girl who spoke both English and French fluently–was jealous of her. That’s one we never got. I saw it in the girl’s eyes more than once. In the look on her face. She wanted to physically reach out and SHOVE my daughter out of the way. She was probably glad when she went back to public school. I formed a bond with this girl, but I still saw that jealousy. And it made me realize just how wobbly all teenagers are during these years. They are walking a tightrope of trying to belong, and one wrong step and you fall. Even if you are beautiful, and talented, and multi-lingual. Those things don’t really help you when you are trying to grasp the rope.

Dancing Daughter was tough. She hung in there. An eternal optimist, she kept her head high.

Chatter Child, however, thrived at the small school. Her grade was small (only twelve girls), and they were tight-knit. This was a Christian school, so there was an emphasis on Christlike behavior. Apparently, somebody tuned things out during that part of the learning experience. It ended up being the worst possible choice for both of my daughters.

After two years of one or two friends, Dancing Daughter asked to please be allowed to return to public school for seventh grade. And I couldn’t say no. I still remember how bravely she walked through the doors of the public junior high where her old friends barely remembered her, and started over once again. We hoped this would not be a repeat of the private school. But the truth is, Dancing Daughter is able to morph to whatever situation fits her. She is an optimist. If one group of friends are not working out, then she finds another. And not the bad kids. She has always been too busy to be bad, with dance, and cheer, and drill…. But she doesn’t take crap from fake friends. Life is too short.

Chatter Child needed the small classes and one-on-one guidance, and she wanted to stay with her friends at the private school.

So, the horror commenced.

There were two new girls in the class, and they were known for being snotty and nasty, and then turning around and trying to be your friend when no one else was around. Chatter Child didn’t much like this. One was a “cheerleader,” who cheered at a professional cheerleading studio, and thought way too much of herself. In fact, she returned to public school as a sophomore and didn’t even try out for the cheer squad, probably because she knew she wouldn’t make it. In our state, county, and town, cheer and dance are huge. Parents train their kids for years before entering high school, so they can make the cheer squad, drill team or any sport. When you reach high school age, there is no other reason–except for lack of skill or fear–for cheering with a studio and not at a large 5A school, unless you haven’t got the grades. This is not meant to dismiss those who don’t wish to cheer or dance. It is meant to show the character–or lack of–of this girl.

The other girl was a solid athlete with a bad history whose parents had moved her from the state where they lived because she was having problems with boys.

These two decided, one day, that Chatter Child would be the target of their anger, and so they assaulted. It took place at school, where they would invite everyone standing in the circle at lunchtime to a movie, except for my daughter. And they planned parties where everyone was invited but her. And they made sure she knew. There were 12 girls in the class. How do you get away from that? How do you find new friends when there are no other girls to be friends with? And then they started taunting her online. They would post rude comments on her Myspace and Bebo pages. They would call her names. They would text her rude messages. She would cry herself to sleep every night, and refuse to wake up every morning. One day, I’d had enough and I took the phone from her and confronted the little cheer snot, and she backtracked all over the place trying to get herself out of trouble. And I reported it to the office. And to the principal. And they called the girls in. They had long talks with them.

And nothing changed.

Finally, one night, I accessed an Internet chat where the soccer girl was verbally attacking my daughter in an instant message. She called her fat, piggy, ugly, stinky. Told her that her “belly roll” was completely disgusting and all the boys thought she was gross. Mind you, my daughter was not fat, and the girl who attacked her probably outweighed her by twenty pounds. But as someone pointed out to me, why was weight even being used? I can tell you. Because our society has a deep abiding hatred towards “fat” and for some reason it’s still acceptable to attack anyone with this moniker. It’s not right. It doesn’t matter whether she was fat or thin, or the attackers were fat or thin. She should never have been subjected to this. The soccer girl also told her how much everyone hated her. Told her she had no friends at the school, and she should just kill herself. I caught my daughter in tears, and so I took over the chat. I didn’t let it go on for too long before I told her just exactly WHO she was chatting to, and that a transcript of the chat would be taken to her parents, the school, and if necessary the police.

She proceeded to assault me, sending insults at me that no 14-year-old girl should have to endure, let alone an adult.

I figured this would be easily solved now. I had proof. I had the chat transcript. I gave it to the school. They would fix things.

I was wrong.

I took the chat to the principal and the administration. They suspended the girl who wrote it for one day. So all the kids in the class skipped school and went to her house that day. And I realized that a solution would not be coming from this “Christian” school. I still have many friends there, and I do love them dearly, but I do not believe this was handled correctly.

With very few days of school left, I pulled my daughter out. And come fall, she had to go to public school. She failed miserably there. She missed excessively. She cried. She had been depressed during the assault, but now she was most definitely suffering from PTSD, as I tried to help her in any way I could survive the taunts of “you’re fat,” “you’re ugly,” “piggy,” “oink oink,” etc. etc. etc. that still echoed through her head.

Here at public school, she was overwhelmed. She would miss for days at a time. Her grades suffered. Then she tore her ACL and had to have surgery to have it replaced, and that racked up even more time missed. She had a teacher who was disorganized and rude, and one day she told my daughter to “shut up.” I confronted the teacher. I got crap from her, so I went to the principal. The teacher was nicer after that, but it didn’t matter. My daughter was wasting away before my eyes.

She would do okay for a few days, and then one of the kids from the private school–often a boy–would randomly text her a nasty message, and the pain would start all over again.

Sophomore year in high school, we finally had to do something drastic.The mean girl, the cheerleader, was now at her same high school, and in some of her same classes. And she was turning other mean girls who she was friends with against my daughter–AGAIN.

Unfortunately, the solution to a lot of my daughter’s issues was violence.

We preach against it, but it apparently was the only language these mean girls heard. As a sophomore, a girl who was always in trouble, who shared my daughter’s name, befriended her. And at a football game where the nasty girls from the old school showed up to hang with the mean cheer girl and her new mean friends, there was a confrontation. They were taunting my daughter again, this time at a large public school, and the ringleader was a girl who barely knew my daughter. Chatter Child ran from the game, all the way home, more than a mile. It was late and dark, but she didn’t care. She was trying to escape. She didn’t stay to see her friend–the girl with the troubled past–punch out the girl who was causing most of the trouble.

After that punch, things changed. A lot of the girls from the old school apologized, and they became “friends” with my daughter again–sort of. It was tentative. If a snake bites you once, you should always be wary, even if it seems to like you the next day. She never hung out with them again, but they would say hi at the mall, or in public places.

Throughout the entire ordeal, the saddest thing to me was the bystanders. The girls and boys who didn’t really participate but never once stood up to tell the bullies to STOP or to knock it off. They allowed it to happen. Back then I wanted to implore them to speak up. Be Brave. They never did, save one girl who also became an outcast. I am still proud of her.

I never thought of violence as an answer, but in this case, it did the trick. We still had to move Chatter Child to another school, but there she thrived, did well, and graduated.

I asked for a special plan, as the school district is required to do, so her teachers would work with her. The school countered with an alternative. They would send her to another school, which was smaller and where they dealt with “emotionally fragile” kids and young parents.

We went for a tour. The counselor talked to Chatter Child, and she jumped on it. Somehow, the counselors at this school helped her. They got her through graduation. She was a speaker, and I cried my eyes out, remembering the days when I wondered if she would try to kill herself. The panic I would feel some mornings as I would reach in to her bed, and check for a heartbeat to make sure she was still breathing.Waiting to see if she would move, because I couldn’t rouse her to get ready for school.

You don’t know fear until your child isn’t moving, and panic runs through your mind. Did I fall asleep? Did she get up and find some pills? Take too many Tylenol? Did I fail on my watch? Please move. Please breathe.

I was one of the lucky ones. My daughter made it through alive. Not every parent is so fortunate. I watched her like a hawk for all this time, worried that I would lose her, because some stupid mean girl had issues and took them out on someone who was innocent of anything except being there, available, and an easy target.

I wanted to take a shovel to those kids. I am a pacifist, so this anger inside me was alarming, to say the least.

She graduated from high school with honors, in a class with a transgender boy and another young man who came to school dressed in forties style clothing and never talked. Her friends were young parents who ended up dealing with adulthood far too early, and had babies to deal with along with homework.

But she had counselors and teachers who cared. They worked at this school because they cared. It was more than just a job to them.

I lost track of the mean girls, and frankly, I don’t care to find them. I’m a mamma bear. Don’t mess with my cubs. And this was some serious messing.

I read stories now, of kids who suffer similar bullying and kill themselves, and it physically hurts me to even THINK about it.

I write this blog post with tears in my eyes as I look back at what happened. I blame myself for putting her in this school. I blame myself for putting my other daughter in this school, where she had no friends, just so her sister could do better. Could survive. Could get out of bed everyday and go to school.

In the final countdown, it ended up bad for both of them. One just happened to be able to “roll with the punches” a little easier than the other.

And those punches? Did I mention the shovel I wanted to wield?

Bullying is not acceptable. Ever. FOR ANY REASON.

And Mitt Romney, if you were a bully, you better come out and straight up apologize. Don’t claim you don’t remember, because if you did it, I’m pretty damn sure you do remember. Evasive action will not work here. Address it. Then move on.

Vengeance is mine

What is Vengeance?
“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”– Romans 12:19 (King James Version)

Who is Vengeance?
“Behold what the scripture says–man shall not smite, neither shall he judge; for judgment is mine, saith the Lord, and vengeance is mine also, and I will repay.”—Moroni 8:20

TIES THAT BIND, coming July 2012 from Natalie R. Collins (St. Martin’s Press).
#tiesthatbind

Feeling old

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Lying for the Lord–Will Mitt Romney Do It?

This is the most important question that must be asked of Mitt Romney. When the phone rings, and on one line he has the vice president, and on the other line he has Mormon Church President Thomas S. Monson, which call does he take?

Is he prepared to lead our country, and take that on OVER the wishes of his church? We need to know.

In the above-noted video, which the Church tried to have repressed, an apostle instructs Mormon missionaries how to “lie for the Lord,” or “answer the question he should have asked.”

Lying for the Lord is a very common Mormon concept. They’ve been doing it for years.

“My duty as a member of the Council of the Twelve is to protect what is most unique about the LDS church, namely the authority of priesthood, testimony regarding the restoration of the gospel, and the divine mission of the Savior. Everything may be sacrificed in order to maintain the integrity of those essential facts. Thus, if Mormon Enigma reveals information that is detrimental to the reputation of Joseph Smith, then it is necessary to try to limit its influence and that of its authors.” — Apostle Dallin Oaks, footnote 28, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon, Introduction p. xliii

And my favorite little quote from Boyd K. Packer:

“There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.” –Boyd K. Packer

Millet’s video says, “We will never provide meat when milk will do.” And the video gives the proof that this IS a tenet.

From the Mormon Wiki.

One Mormon blogger writes, “When I was a missionary, the church’s official Missionary Guide instructed missionaries to avoid providing direct answers or solutions to investigators’ questions or concerns.” On his mission, he “fell back on rhetorical tricks or even outright denials.” He writes on:

“I wonder if it might be fair to say that, while individual responses to such questions by particular missionaries are not instances of sophistry, the system which puts missionaries in the line of rhetorical fire without providing them with the information necessary to craft meaningful answers to legitimate questions about the church is a form of collective sophistry?” ^[5]

Mitt Romney has served a Mormon mission. And so the question must be asked. Mitt Romney, where do you stand? What comes first? Church or country? And are you lying if we ask you which comes first and you say “The Country?” Are you “Lying for the Lord” there? What a conundrum.

TIES THAT BIND teaser….

The first victim is found hanging from a tree in her backyard. A popular cheerleader in the small town of Kanesville, Utah, she appears to have committed suicide. #tiesthatbind

To juice or not to juice….

100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe Cross is at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. In the mirror he saw a 310lb man whose gut was bigger than a beach ball and a path laid out before him that wouldn’t end well— with one foot already in the grave, the other wasn’t far behind. FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD is an inspiring film that chronicles Joe’s personal mission to regain his health.

With doctors and conventional medicines unable to help long- term, Joe turns to the only option left, the body’s ability to heal itself. He trades in the junk food and hits the road with juicer and generator in tow, vowing only to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for the next 60 days. Across 3,000 miles Joe has one goal in mind: To get off his pills and achieve a balanced lifestyle.

While talking to more than 500 Americans about food, health and longevity, it’s at a truck stop in Arizona where Joe meets a truck driver who suffers from the same rare condition. Phil Staples is morbidly obese weighing in at 429 lbs; a cheeseburger away from a heart-attack. As Joe is recovering his health, Phil begins his own epic journey to get well.

What emerges is nothing short of amazing – an inspiring tale of healing and human connection.
Part road trip, part self-help manifesto, FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD defies the traditional documentary format to present an unconventional and uplifting story of two men from different worlds who each realize that the only person who can save them is themselves.

So, my sister and her husband, who is recovering from stomach cancer, watched a documentary called, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. It told the story of Australian Joe Cross, who was morbidly obese, on massive amounts of medication including prednisone and other nasty stuff, and finally decided he had had ENOUGH.

Joe has an autoimmune disorder called Urticaria, and it causes nasty skin flare ups and lesions. He made the decision to completely change his life, so he flew to New York, spent the first 30 days of his juice fast there, and then made his way across the country trying to get people to try his juice, all with a film crew in tow. The first couple of days were rough. He just stayed in bed. I think people develop a relationship with food, and it can be very unhealthy. But he slowly started getting up and around, and he’d go into restaurants and drink his juice, and smell the food. Throughout the movie you watch his incredible weight loss, along with his lowering of medication (until he was off of it) and more. In short, juicing worked.

He also met a man in an Arizona truck stop who was more than 400 pounds, suffering from the same autoimmune disorder, and “one cheeseburger away from a heart attack.” Joe tried to talk him into the juicing, but was not successful. However, he gave him a card. And one day, he got a message on his voicemail. He flew back to American to help Phil Staples. Under the care of a doctor, Phil began the juice fast. And he, too, saw remarkable results. Another woman did the juice fast and was able to cure her migraine headaches.

I watched this video, and decided I wanted to try this, because I have been sick my whole life, but the last two years have been horrible. I, too, have an autoimmune disorder, although mine is called CVID and sarcoidosis. And I just found out that my liver is not happy, either. I can’t get well. I walk out the door and catch every flu, virus, bug, germ….. I am a germ magnet. I recently spent 14 days on IV antibiotics, because my body will not fight back when the germs come calling.

And I don’t think this is going to cure me. I really don’t. But I can try to do the very best I can.

I don”t want to live my life in a bubble, which is about what it has come down to. And that doesn’t work for me.

So my dad also watched the video, and then he went rogue and bought a juicer without telling my mom. Heh. He finally fessed up, and we tried the juicer tonight. And he HATED it. LOL. “Definitely an acquired taste.”

I’ll keep you posted on my journey.

Natalie on the radio

I promised some people in the Indie Marketplace group that I would talk about what it was like to be a radio guest, so here it is.

I have done radio interviews about eight or nine times. Three times I did phone interviews. This was when they were interviewing me after kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart was found; during an ex-Mormon conference (Tom Barberi); and about my cozy mystery series, The Jenny T. Partridge Dance Mystery Series.

For phone interviews I recommend this:

Wear your pajamas. It will make you feel good to know you can DO YOUR JOB in pajamas. (Don’t be naked. This would be distracting. And kinda creepy.)

Use a land-line, if anyone even has one of those anymore. When I was talking to Tom Barberi, I got cut off because of spotty cell phone reception. My bad. It was just after he said, “I don’t like zucchini, but I don’t start a group for people who don’t like zucchini,” and I said, “Yeah, well zucchini doesn’t come to your door trying to find out what you aren’t coming to zucchini meeting anymore, or call your parents and tattle on you, even though you’re an adult and can abstain from zucchini meetings if you want to!” Luckily, I got all that in before we got disconnected.

Be brief, be humorous, and make sure you have your tough skin on. There is no point in getting angry if someone gets combative with you. That’s their job. Play it off with humor. You can bury them in the backyard later.

Now, live interviews. I did about three of these with Frankie, DB, and Jessica on the Z-Morning zoo here in Utah. It was actually fun to be in studio, and see how it works. I was nervous the first time, but got over it fast. If someone invites you to do an in-studio interview, do it. Great experience. Of course, we spent most of the time talking about my books, why they are controversial, and why schizophrenic former Mormons might stalk you if you write these kinds of books. (Yeah, it happened. It was NOT fun.)

I guess I did okay because they kept inviting me back. The most important thing I can really say about this is BE RELEVANT. Answer the question. Don’t incessantly promo your book. DO take your books in and give them to them. I donated a few books to Frankie’s mom who was battling some health issues.

Most of all, do NOT take yourself too seriously. There are enough people walking around with a stick up the wazoo. Don’t be one of them.

The boa constrictor effect

Two dogs on extendable leashes. One slightly wobby blonde. An unsuspecting elderly neighbor. The boa constrictor squeeze, meant all in love, of course. We’ll be looking for a new place to live tomorrow. Or at least as long as it takes them to look up reptile ninja moves by dogs, as they peruse the homeowners tenets.

Rape victims say military labels them ‘crazy’ – CNN.com

Rape victims say military labels them ‘crazy’ – CNN.com.
This makes me sick. These people, our soldiers, are putting their lives in harm’s way to protect us. WHY aren’t we protecting them?

I have to admit that when I read and edited PFC Liberty Stryker, it opened my eyes to a side of the military I did not understand existed. THIS. MUST. STOP.