Scorching the World

Tom had to run to the Bay Area today, and took Sara with him, so I got to have almost the whole day at home by myself. I treasure alone time way more now that I’m old than I used to when I was young. I did 7 loads of laundry and dried all of them on the clotheslines outside, cleaned a little inside and out and worked on a project on the computer. It was WONDERFUL! I also ran to the store for a few more groceries. While I was shopping, I got a call from Tom and it was obvious that the phone had been dialed by accident. I listened in on their conversations for nearly an hour. It sounded like they were having lots of fun. There are two ways that having Sara (the homeless girl) here have changed our circumstances: We have no privacy because we always have to have her with us. That means we can’t go to the temple or anywhere alone because we don’t want her left in our home alone. We can’t walk around in our underwear or have private conversations in normal voices, etc. It’s just ...

Now that the front is done (except for one little leak which someone was supposed to come over and help us fix today and didn’t show) we turned out attention and many talents to the west side of the back yard. We keep reminding ourselves what a mess it used to be with ivy and weeds growing all the way to the sidewalk. Now it’s mostly trees and cleared dirt. We installed the sprinklers to water it, and will put grass seed and hope we can get it to grow in spite of the summer heat we now have. It drives Sara crazy that we are always working. She has healed to the point that she is now awake almost all day. She only took a few little naps and spent most of the day on the couch watching tv. She’s pretty self-sufficient; she does her own laundry when needed, cooks her own food or grabs snacks all day, and such, so having her here isn’t the major stress I was afraid it would be. It’s only a little inconvenient not having our house to ourselves and having to take her everywhere we go. She ...

The Bishop was sick today, so Tom had to fill in all of his meetings. I went to Sacrament meeting, then went to visit another ward. The RS lesson was SO WONDERFUL in that ward! The teacher was excellent. I kinda hated for the lesson to end. I love visiting other wards. After that meeting, I took off to meet Trina and Chris in Patterson to look at some more houses. Unfortunately, there was a mix-up with the realtor, so we couldn’t get in to see all the ones they wanted, but it was still fun to be with them and look at pretty houses. I got home about 7, when Tom and Sara were at Seminary graduation. He had gone to about 4 meetings and she had to go with him to all of them and either wait in the car or in the foyer. We don’t want to leave her home alone, and he promised to keep her with him. It was the first day where she wasn’t able to take naps throughout the day. She did well, and when she got home she discovered she could work the tv remote and spent until late watching si...

We got all the sprinklers in for the area on the west side of the back yard! Hooray! Now we just have to clear it out a bit, then we can plant grass. Grass will look so much better! There’s just one more area where we need to add some drip sprinklers on the east side of the yard – then this whole sprinkler project will be done. Hooray! Happiness. I had a major headache last night. It was the first bad one since I started the vegetable juice diet, (about 6 weeks, which I think is a record) and I think it was just caused by stress and exhaustion. Fortunately, by morning I felt much better. It was such nice weather again today. I love working outside with Tom all day! The homeless girl who is staying with us came outside about 6pm and told us it was time for us to take a break and that we work too much and if we kept it up, it was going to drive her crazy. LOL.  While she has been healing from her bronchitis and bladder infection, she has been sleeping a lot. She is also d...

It only took 6 days, but we conquered! We’ll finally be able to fill all the dirt back in and set the timers. Hooray! Now we can work on the back yard. Once Tom gets all the sprinklers running, he can finish the shed and then we can clear out the garage of all the stuff that should be in his shed. Then we can move the water heater to the garage, and that gives me a new storage closet in the kitchen. ?Whoever puts the water heater in the kitchen anyway? So…. Everything is waiting for sprinklers to be done. My ankle itches still, but it is much better, so I was finally able to finish painting the fence. It was really hard where the bushes are right next to it, but I did it and I’m done and I’m glad. Then I helped Tom work on sprinklers. We love working in the yard together! It’s so nice his job allows him so much spare time so we can do things like this. And he still gets paid

We finally worked up the courage to try to fix the leaking valves of the front sprinkler system again. Tom figured out how to take out the two that leak, and even though they were brand new, he returned them and bought new ones. We spent the evening installing them and hooking everything up. We have to let the glue dry overnight, so now we can’t wait to try them in the morning. My ankle still itched and burned all day, but it was noticeably less swollen and less red. Sarah slept most of the day again. She occasionally comes out, grabs a snack, then goes back to bed. 

The ankle itched so intensely, I could hardly stand it. I’ve put everything on it, but it remains red and swollen.          Tom took Sarah with him to work and they were gone from 8am until 6pm. He said she slept the whole time. Then he too her with him to mutual because I didn’t want her left home alone. I drove a separate car for piano lessons so that I wouldn’t have to stay the whole time.

I was working outside early in the morning, cleaning up the mess I left from playing with my new toy, the hedge trimmer. I had left all the trimmings for Tom to see, but everyone else got to see the mess, too, which didn’t make my work look impressive, it made my work sloppy. So I cleaned it all up. While I was raking up the leaves and branches, I got bit by something. It started itching immediately and intensely, but I ignored it until I finished. Tom needed to go to the office first thing in the morning, and before he left he got a call from Sarah, the homeless girl he is trying to help. She complained that she was still sick and needed a ride to the hospital. He left immediately and took her. The doctor told Tom she had something similar to bronchitis and needed medication. She also had a kidney infection, from the last time Tom took her to the hospital and she refused to stay for treatment. He told Tom if she didn’t get cleaned up, she wouldn’t live much longer because the m...

When it’s going to be 100 degrees outside, I don’t want to go out after 9am. Tom and I were both awake by 6am or so. At 7am, he told me he had signed us up to clean the temple and we had to be there by 7:45am. So we hurried and got ready. We were late, and Tom couldn’t find his recommend so it took him a while to get approved to serve. I worked with a couple of sisters from our ward who don’t speak English, to help them understand the instruction sheets that they hand out. I talked to the coordinators about getting those sheets translated for them. Funny that they had never considered it. I know when I worked for the Church, I got all those sheets translated; I wonder what happened to them. It’s fun to clean the temple; there are lots of nice people there to work with. It only took me an hour, then I left to meet Tanya. We had planned to go to the family history center together to see if we can learn to do some work. Up till now, every time I want to do some research, I open F...

Tom had a stake priesthood meeting at 7am, so we went in separate cars. I went to the church to practice before the meeting started. The Pettus’ decided to go to Tanya’s ward, which starts in the afternoon. After my Sacrament meeting, I went to visit another ward’s Relief Society as a Stake visitor, and then joined Knudsens and Pettus’ in Tanya’s ward. It was fun to be there with my daughters! There was a linger-longer after church which I skipped because by then I was starving and they didn’t have anything I wanted to eat. Tom was home already and had made dinner. After everyone got there and had eaten, Trina, Tanya, Chris and I went to look at a few houses while Tom went to a baptism.  When we got back we got to play cards until everyone had to go home. Tom got home just before they all left. It sure was fun to have some of my kids and their families here!

May 20 th as day 5 of a 1 day project We went to the church and Tom cleaned while I practiced the organ. I already know I wouldn’t have a student today. At 10am, there was a Relief Society activity which I stayed for, and Tom became the designated Priesthood in the building. It was a fun activity. They showed us how to can pickled veggies with jalapenos. It wasn’t very complicated and when we tasted them, they were delicious! We also made small jars of bath salts, then they served lunch. They had huge pulled-pork sandwiches and a salad. They had me feed Tom, too, so when we got home we didn’t need any lunch! It was a nice activity. After we got home, we tried again to figure out why the valves leak, but got discouraged. Then we found out Trina and Chris were coming, so I did a little clean up and getting ready. Tom worked on the back yard some; it’s way less discouraging than our problems with the valves in the front. Trina and Chris are looking for a house to buy so they ...

I forgot to say that yesterday (Wednesday) Caeli found a baby dove lying on the ground by the chicken coop. I made her wait till Tom got home to decide what to do with it.  Together they got it and put it in our outdoor birdcage. I texted Nina to see what we should do with it, but before we could do anything else, it was time to go to mutual/piano lessons. So today, I texted Nina a picture of the bird and she said it was grown enough to fly and to see if any other birds were hanging around it. So later when we heard the mama bird calling it, and the baby bird would answer, Tom opened the cage door. It slowly moved closer and closer to the door and eventually flew away. Here, it had flown to our outdoor ceiling fan.  From there it flew away and we never saw it again. Happy little bird.  We’re not sure why it was lying on the ground yesterday; it must have been injured or stunned or something. But it was fine today. Just a little more excitement in a normal day. ...

We were so happy to be able to work on the sprinklers for the front yard. Now that we’re allowed to water outside, we might have a chance to have a green lawn and live flowers, so we’re anxious to get the sprinklers working before the heat hits. We really thought it would only take one day to fix what was broken in the front yard. Unfortunately, all the valves needed replaced and we decided to put pots with flowers along the entrance sidewalk, so we added some lines. We worked all day on it and still haven’t finished! Course today was a shorter workday because I had to leave at 2 to pick up Caeli. When I took her home, I found Tanya already there, so we got to sit and have a nice chat until time for me to take Caeli to gymnastics. That was really nice because we were way behind on our visiting and sharing news. We sat on the back patio in the beautiful weather. I love my daughters! I only had one piano student tonight, so after practicing I sat and read until Tom was ready t...

Tom only had to work on the computer for about an hour in the morning, then had the whole rest of the day to work on the yard. The goal for the day was to get all the front yard sprinklers and timer working. Tom didn’t think it would take very long. LOL! We ran all of the sprinklers to see how well they worked and adjusted them to spray the right direction. We got pretty wet in the process, which added to the adventure. It was a nice, cool day, so getting wet made it even cooler.  He dug up another sprinkler that was leaking, fixed it, and then worked on digging out the valves. They are all too old and leak really bad.     When he had the valves mostly dug out, we went to Lowe’s to buy the supplies to repair everything. By the time we got back, we were too tired to finished the repairs and will work on that tomorrow. It was a really nice day spent working together. Every day we pick a few blueberries and eat them. Today I picked half a basket! Hooray! T...

Tami is really having a hard time. Mother’s Day was hard for her because it was the first Mother’s Day since Draven died. Besides that, her MS is getting worse every week. The stress of losing Draven has made the MS progress rapidly, so she is having a pretty hard time. After she got up and had cleaned the house a little she asked if I wanted to go to IKEA with her. I jumped at the chance, first of all because I love going to IKEA, even if I don’t need anything, but mostly because that gave me several hours to be alone with Tami, which I haven’t had since Draven died. She had a hard time walking around IKEA, but said walking is something she really needs to do, even though it is painful and awkward, so that her muscles don’t get too weak. Several times I thought she was going to fall and I was nervous for her the whole time, but she did pretty good. We were in no hurry because Phil and Tracey (who was there visiting for a couple of weeks) had gone to run a different errand a...

We didn’t sleep very well because the air mattress went flat again. It’s almost new, so we’re really sad it isn’t staying inflated! We need to find the leak one of these days before we need to use it again. The farewell was held at Trina’s old ward in Fremont. There are so many people in that ward that we’ve known for decades – from the years that we lived in Union City. We love those people and it was fun to be able to go to that ward. Some people commented that now that Trina has moved back to Hayward, they will probably never see us again. So sweet of them. Spencer spoke in Sacrament meeting even though it was Mother’s Day. Actually, Mothers were hardly mentioned. The first speaker talked about doing family history work. Anyway, his talk was really good. He is a great speaker! And it was a good meeting. Sunday School was really good, too, although we were late because we were catching up with people we haven’t seen for a long time. Relief Society and Young Women’s was...

I spent last night and this morning packing and preparing food for our trip while Tom was gone. I was basically ready to go by 11am, which is when Tom was supposed to get home from the Father-Son campout. He actually got home about noon, which was still ok, but as he was packing he got a call from Sara, the homeless woman, saying the guy she was living with had hit her and she was afraid to go back and didn’t have anywhere to go. So Tom dropped everything and ran to her aid. He found her curled up in a corner at a gas station, crying. When she left, she left her backpack with her ID behind, so they called the guy to get that back from him. He said he would be home in half-hour and they would have to wait until then, which they did. In the mean time, h e tried to help her find some place to stay, but wasn't able to find anything.  After half-hour, the guy called and said he was home but would be there 10 minutes only. If they didn’t come in that amount of time, he would be gone. ...

I’ve done so many projects outside, and it’s been really fun, but  today  was pretty windy and cold, so I mostly stayed inside. I completed some past-due sewing and had lots of fun just not going anywhere. Tom had to work in the morning and on his way home he bought the ingredients for tomorrow. He volunteered to make his famous breakfast for the father son overnighter breakfast tomorrow. He pre-cooked most of the foods and prepared everything so that all he has to do tomorrow is warm everything up. It took a couple of hours to do all that, then he took off. I hated having to sleep alone, but when I asked him if this was payback for all the years I went to girls’ camp, he said, “But I’m only going to be gone one night!” I guess it will take quite a few years to make up for years of week-long girl’s camps!

It was still nice weather, so I worked outside again. We have a potting shed that the previous owners built, and it’s always been a place to collect junk and was covered in spider webs and dirt. I spent most of today cleaning it out and cleaning it up. Here’s the before and after:  Obviously, it was a mess! After I put things away and cleaned all the cobwebs and dirt: On another note, Tom opened the cage where he's been keeping his pet squirrel, Tim. Did you know squirrels can actually walk on vertical, flat surfaces like walls?  Tom was really hoping he was tame enough that he would return to his home base (the cage) to eat and wander around the yard at will. Unfortunately, he never came back.  Oh well, Tom really loved feeding him and helping him recuperate from the 80' fall from the tree.

I’m not sure why they celebrate on May 10 th  instead of  the 3 rd  Sunday of May,  and I’m not sure why we celebrate on the 3 rd Sunday of May instead of May 10th, but I had a friend (Mexican) who congratulated me today for Mother’s Day. How sweet. I guess Hispanics in the U.S. get to celebrate twice! Tom had to go to the Bay Area, but I couldn’t go with him because of my usual Wednesday commitments. I worked in the yard in the morning, then was about to start getting ready to go pick up Caeli when I got a call from Tanya asking if I could give the boys a ride home from school at 1:30. Cannon had fallen and hurt his arm and didn’t feel like he could ride his scooter home. So I rushed to get out of the house and picked them up. Cannon was crying and was pretty sure his arm was broken again. I dropped them off at home because Todd was there, then went to get some groceries. I finished just in time to go pick up Caeli, then I took her straight to my house. ...

I think and hope that yard work counts as exercise, because I’d rather do yard work for an hour than walk on the treadmill or do sit-ups. So I started a new project. On the end of the pool, I had put some large potted plants along the sidewalk. I wanted to move them off the sidewalk, but they didn’t look good just sitting on top of the rocky area with weeds all around them, so Tanya suggested I move more pavers to be under them. I’m really tired of moving pavers, but they do look better than rocks and weeds. I worked on that until I got too hot and tired, took a long break, then did a little more. It was hard and hot work. I got about a third of it done before it was too hot outside to work in the sun. In the evening I went to Tanya’s ward for a Relief Society activity on doing family history work. It was interesting and Tanya and I decided to go every week to the family history center to see what we can do. That will be fun!

Tami had said they were coming back home in the morning, so we waited around for them. Tom had to work (on his computer) and thought he might have to work in San Jose, so he was busy the whole time. I decided to go to my favorite thrift store in Dublin; that’s always fun! We didn’t want to call to see when they were coming because if they were having fun, we didn’t want them to cut it short because of us. Tom finally called them at noon and found out they were swimming in the lake and Marc and Alissa were on their way up to the lake, too. If we had known how that would turn out, we would have slept up there, too, but it all just sort of worked out that way, so we missed the fun. Nobody’s fault. We headed back home. It would have been easy to think the whole trip was a waste of time, but the truth is, we were able to clean Tami’s a house a little, deliver freezer meals to her, and a few other things she appreciated. Tom was able to work from there, so work paid for our gas, and w...

I went with Tom when he left for his meetings so I could practice the organ for 2 ½ hours. I haven’t touched the piano or organ for a couple of weeks because of vacation, so I needed the practice. The meetings were all good and all seemed to focus around keeping the Sabbath day holy and how to get the most out of Sacrament meeting. Anyway, it turned out I played piano/organ in all three meetings. My two organ players weren’t prepared to play today, so I played all three hymns. Then in Sunday School, the teacher likes to end with a hymn, so he always asks me to play. Then in RS, the regular pianist wasn’t there, so they asked me to play. Good thing they were all hymns I know pretty good. I enjoy playing and I’m pretty sure that when we are released from our assignment in this ward, I won’t be needed to play anymore, so I’ll enjoy it while I can. After church I had to wait for Tom to do the tithing count, which ended up taking 1 ½ hours. Then he and the other counselor had to go g...

It just can’t get much better than today. First of all it was my oldest son’s birthday, so we thought about him all day. As usual, we went to the church for my organ lesson and so Tom could clean. That went well, and on the way home we went to Lowe’s to get some supplies for projects for the back yard. I had a planter that I wanted to make and really wanted to do it myself – partly because I don’t like to take up Tom’s time when he has so many things he needs to do and partly because I like accomplishing something by myself. Anyway, as soon as I started it, I needed help. It turned out to be a really hard project, so it took both of us a couple of hours to complete. It was supposed to be this And it turned out to be this It looks much better with the flowers in it than it really is. Then Tom and I worked on the sprinklers. This house already had a full set of tubing and pipes and timers and valves to water everywhere outside. Unfortunately, some of it is old ...

The homeless woman Tom is trying to help called first thing this morning. She had tried to sleep on the hospital lawn, but they didn’t let her, so she went somewhere else and wanted him to give her a ride somewhere else. He was worried about how she was, so he went and got her. She wanted to go to the Catholic Charities to eat and told him she was good from there. She fell asleep in the car on the way, so he didn’t get to talk much or get any further information on how she was doing. He needed to go to the office after that, so he was gone most of the day. I decided to make some meals to take to Tami this weekend, so I went to the store and bought ingredients, then spent about 4 hours preparing a bunch of meals which I stuck in the freezer, with instructions for baking written on the aluminum foil on top. They were all delicious – I had to taste as I prepared – so next time I do this, I’ll make a batch for us, too. It was way hot outside, so I was glad to have things to...

Between the pool and the patio by the house, it used to have all rocks. Not river rocks, but sharp, jagged rocks that really hurt to walk on barefoot. To get to the pool from the back door, you had to walk around the rock area, which was quite a pain. It wasn't even nice to cross with shoes on. This is an old picture that shows how it used to be. There was lots of overgrowth and you can see the rocks.   This one is after we tore out the palm bushes, but what cute girls! So a long time ago I put in two pathways with random pavers I found around the yard. I was never happy with how it turned out; the pavers were uneven and unlevel. When Anitta was here, she suggested it would look better if it were one wide walkway instead of two. It had been so much work to put them in – it took me a couple of weeks – but since I didn’t like how they looked anyway, I decided to follow her suggestion. At the same time, I got the idea to turn them at an angle, which made the whole ...

for some reason, this didn't ever get published: It’s a new year! I love it when things are Brand new. There’s nothing wrong with then, they are shiny and clean, and they have unlimited possibilities. That’s how I feel about this brand new year. I’m excited to have another year with Tom, closer to his retirement, unlimited possibilities, and fulfilling life goals. Pretty exciting! It was still, as always, a shock to get up at 5:30 to go to the church. We didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve at all so that we could wake up this morning. Nobody was there when we got there and we wondered if they changed Bishopric meeting to another time and didn’t tell Tom. But we were early, and the others were right on time. This Bishopric is very punctual. Testimony meeting was really good. There are a lot of very knowledgeable Priesthood holders in this ward and I think this is the first ward I’ve ever been in where more men bear their testimonies than women. We hadn’t made arrangement...

We got up leisurely this morning. It felt good to sleep until we were ready and well rested. We stopped at Peggy Sue’s again and had a delicious lunch. There’s a Diner-saur park behind the restaurant with ducks and turtles. It’s a fun place with good food.     In this one you have to see the pirate that is hanging from a rope,  trying not to get eaten by the dinosaur under him. Here Tom is trying to get near the pretty ducks   We stopped occasionally for little breaks and got home by 6pm. It was   a very pleasant trip and we were glad to be home, except for the fact that it was 98 degrees when we hit Fresno! We’ve had such good weather all week; it’s a little painful to be back to the heat. Some of our yard plants are near death and I don’t know if they will come back, but we’ll try. It was a fun trip, but we’re sure glad to be home again.

It was sad to say good-bye to Ray and Renee. It always is! But we took off after breakfast and made a few stops on the way to Las Vegas where we were going to spend the night. It was fun to play a little instead of trying to hurry straight through to our destination. First we stopped to see the Cedar City temple    Then we stopped to see the St. George temple. It is so beautiful and so white! Then when we got to Las Vegas, we went to see that temple. It was so peaceful and serene; a huge difference from walking on the strip like we did the last time we passed through. We spent some time there, walking around the grounds.   We did drive down the strip and stopped to go to the interior of the Luxor. Tom has always wanted to see the inside because of the shape of the building.   We also passed a building that peaked our interest; it was so weird – we had to stop and look at it. It turned out to be an event center. Eventually we got...

The funeral was very nice. There were tears and laughter and two very good musical numbers. Carmen couldn’t go because she had to work, but Margie was there with us. It was good to be able to talk to her for a few minutes. We went with the family to the dedication of the grave. Since he had served in the military, they had a 15 gun salute and folded the flag and gave it to Olivia. Then they played taps. It was beautiful. Then we went back to the church for a picnic in the pavilion behind the church. It was sunny but there was a very cold wind that they hadn’t counted on. But we got to visit with Olivia and her sisters a little more, so that was nice. We made a couple of visits before going back to Renee’s. We saw Yany and then Carmen. As usual, Yany was sick and depressed, and Carmen was upbeat and fed us. The contrast between them is amazing, especially considering Carmen has been diagnosed with cancer and knows she’s going to have to go through some serious struggles. ...

We didn’t sleep very well last night because our brand new air mattress kept going flat so we both ended up sleeping on couches and hoping for afternoon naps. Church was really good, and it’s wonderful to be able to go to church with our children and grandchildren! We were expecting Kresten Erickson (son of my niece Arlene) and his fiancé, Abby, who Becky found out both attend college in Logan, but they didn’t come when they said, and Tom and I needed to leave by 3:30, so we were afraid we would miss them completely. Fortunately, they showed up just before we would have left. We had a great visit with them but had to cut it short to get to the viewing in Farmington. Still, it was great catching up with them and they missions, wedding plans, etc. The added bonus was that they had Gwyn with them!     We got to the viewing right after it was supposed to start, and there was already a huge line of people waiting to pass through the Relief Society room to give con...