Scorching the World

12/30      Tom’s bishopric meeting was set for 8am today instead of 7am, so our morning was a little more relaxed getting ready to go. Tom was scheduled to speak in Sacrament meeting, so he needed my help to get his talk typed and printed. At the same time I was worried about having enough time to practice the organ because with Thanksgiving, Lynn’s funeral, and Christmas, I haven’t touched a piano to practice.   So I practiced for about an hour when we got to the church and felt pretty good about the hymns by the time the meeting was to start. Then one of the priests, the Bishop’s son, came over and started posting different hymns. I asked him why he was changing them, and he showed me the program. I HAD POSTED AND HAD BEEN PRACTICING THE WRONG HYMNS! What was worse was that the right hymns were way harder than the ones I had been practicing. How did this happen? I’m the one who chooses the hymns, I’m the one who makes the list of hymns, I’m the one who...

12/29/18              I knew the dinner last night was big and I was awfully full, but it actually made me so sick; I hurt all night and woke up with a massive headache. So Tom went to clean the church alone. Fortunately, others went to help so he didn’t have to do everything. I went back to bed.   We needed to leave by 1pm to get to Marc and Alissa’s house after he woke up (he’s working nights) and before he had to leave for work, so we managed to get a nap before leaving. My head still hurt pretty bad, but it was already getting LOTS better. Hooray!   By the time we got to Marc’s I felt much better. We had a good visit with them. We gave them our Christmas presents and they gave us gifts. The kids all seemed very happy with what they got and it was so fun to see them happily playing with them. It was a nice visit. We sure wish we could see them more often, but our circumstances and their current circumst...

12/28     Tom needed to go back to Sacramento and Stockton again to try to get parks for the marketers who are almost out of work where they are, so we left early again and headed north. I did all the same as yesterday but the difference today was that two park managers agreed to have the service so we had to pass out flyers to 2 huge parks. It took HOURS. One we had to walk to do but for the other we were able to drive from home to home. It wasn’t any faster, because we couldn’t divide up the park, but it was way less tiring!   The thing that makes it hard to contact very many parks in one day after traveling so far to get there is that the park office hours are usually 9-12 and 1-4. So he tries to get to Sacramento by 9am and see as many parks as possible before they close for lunch. Then he has to see as many as possible before they close at 4. There is a lot of traveling between parks, so it is hard to see very many before he has to just quit and go home. He h...

12/27     Tom had a very long day planned. He needed to go to Stockton and Sacramento to pass out thank you candy to park managers as a good will gesture, and he needed to find new parks for his marketers to work. He also wanted to go see dear friends in Stockton before coming home. Since Clean Queen is on vacation, I was able to go with him so I could see our friends, too, and I could help him with his work. We left about 6:30am, which was half hour later than he wanted. We went straight to the Stockton Synergy office where he could make copies of the flyers he wanted to pass out. Then we took off to get to the parks as fast as possible.   So here are the ways I can help him. I can program the GPS to the next location while he’s talking to the park manager, saving him a little time. I can document everything he does so he doesn’t have to take time to do it later and run the risk of forgetting what happened, I can read text messages he receives and respond to ...

12/26      Everybody is gone, the house is quiet,and Yesterday Tom called septic pumping companies to see who he could get to come out quickly. Of course nobody answered, but he left messages and a couple of companies called back this morning. He got the first available appointment and let me know they were coming after he left. He had to go to Porterville today and left about 7am and got home about 5:30 pm.   About 9am Tom called to see if I was home, which I was, and said the guy had already come and cleaned out the septic tank but I wasn’t answering the door. There had not been anyone working in my yard, so it was clear that the guy cleaned out the tank of the wrong house!   Within about half hour, he knocked on my door and started searching for our septic tank. The only way to know was to poke holes in the front lawn with a sort of very large water pick. It took quite a while, but he finally found it and began digging out a big hole so he co...

12/25                 Tom and I woke up before everyone else, partly because we always wake up earlier and partly because we went to bed before anyone else. I woke up at 4 something and took that opportunity to get the cinnamon rolls I made yesterday out of the freezer.   I set them on the counter, covered, and went back to bed. We woke up again about 7:30 and decided it was time to get moving. I tried to be very quiet while I turned on the oven to begin cooking the cinnamon rolls, making arroz con leche, and making Mexican hot chocolate. I had bought milk especially for the arroz con leche and the chocolate but the kids kept drinking it. None of them get regular “cow” milk at home, so they think it’s a special treat, so I had bought another gallon yesterday. Unfortunately, they drank a lot of that, too so Tom had to run to the gas station down the street to get me another gallon.   Trina got up...

12/24     Tanya has a way of making things happen and if people just agree with her and go along, everything works out great! So we wanted to go see Mary Poppins Returns, but she and Trina felt that the kids needed to see the first Mary Poppins and Saving Mr. Banks before that so they could see it in context.   Yesterday/last night we tried to watch the original Mary Poppins but it was too late and we just didn’t make it through to the end. Actually we only watched about 30 minutes of it, if even that. But Tanya came over this morning at 7am with Saving Mr. Banks on Google Play and we watched that before going to the theaters to see Mary Poppins Returns at 10am. I didn’t get to sit down and watch it because I needed to start the rolls for dinner today and cinnamon rolls for tomorrow breakfast.   Actually, my day started before that. I found out that Smart and Final opened at 6 and since Tom and I are up at that hour, we got there just before they opene...

12/23 Tom and I had to leave early as usual so he could go to Bishopric meeting, but after we got there the Bishop never showed up. For some reason Tom and Carlos Donnadieu didn’t get the text that it was canceled, but the ward secretary did. Go figure.   Anyway, there were a lot of things that almost fell apart with our special Christmas Sacrament meeting, but in the end everything came together and it turned out pretty good. After Sacrament meeting, our ward served champurrada, which is a thickened chocolate milk drink. I don’t care for it, but it made people hang around and socialize for quite a while. So when we got home, Tanya and Trina were already there. Trina had made a jello salad and Tanya brought sandwiches so everyone was eating and happy. That was sure nice to come home to!   After lunch we played cards for a LONG time. We played Golf until Trina would have beat us all by a long shot except that Tanya and Tom both got 100 so they both won. Some kids ...

Saturday 12/22 Trina had shopping she wanted to do before it got too crazy at the stores and before kids woke up. She also needed to take her car to get the tires checked. I wanted/needed to pick up some groceries to compensate for the added mouths to feed, so we left at the same time, dropped off her car, then went shopping together in my car. It was fun just going from store to store with her. I got my groceries and then we wandered around several stores looking for gifts for the few remaining people on her list.   It took us way longer than we could have imagined. We left about 7:30 and didn’t get home until almost noon. Tom made breakfast for everyone at home – his famous potatoes, eggs, and pancakes. Trina and I ate after we got home.   Tanya was asleep when we got there and slept for 2 ½ hours. The kids all played happily and Trina and I locked ourselves in the office so she could get gifts wrapped. I had some more Clean Queen stuff to do to get the payroll...

Friday 12/22   Tom worked locally again today. He planned to go to Bakersfield which is only 2 hours away, but people at their office had emergencies going on and he ended up staying there and helping them out.   I began as soon as I got up cleaning, vacuuming, and baking. I made Oatmeal chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin nut, lemon bars, date nut bars, and snickerdoodles. I messed up the recipes on a couple of them, but they were still good enough to eat.   While Tom was home, he had a message from a neighborhood group who were asking if people wanted to join them for caroling around the neighborhood. That sounded like lots of fun, so we signed up. Right after that, I got a text from Trina saying they would be here about 7pm! So I let Tanya know, and we started preparing for company! Obviously we didn’t make it to go caroling but we sure had a lot of fun here!   Tom helped me make soup just before Pettus’ got here and Tanya brought a salad and some taq...

Thursday, 12/21 Today Tom worked locally, which I loved, but he was still gone almost all day. He is busy delivering boxes of See’s candy to all their favorite mobile home park managers. He also had a meeting in the morning at the office and a company luncheon at the bowling alley, so he was really gone all day.   I was going to spend the day making cookies, but found I was out of many very key ingredients, so I texted Tom to pick up a few things on the way home. Then I had to keep adding more to the list over and over, but he was good to me and bought it all on the way home. I did manage to get 2 batches of oatmeal cookies done. The phones were very quiet all day, except for Tom needing me to request and check reports.   I pulled out some craft supplies and prepared things for kids to do while they’re here, then made a couple of samples. That was fun.

Wednesday 12/20/18   After Tom has been working such long, long hours for several weeks, I’ve really got a lot done. My to-do list is pretty much a to-done list. And now that Christmas is only 5 days away, it is time to do grocery shopping and any pre-baking or cooking to make any days that we might have family here a little easier.   Tom left early and got back home in time to meet me at the church at 7pm. I had very little Clean Queen work today – just an occasional text of something to quickly take care of. I returned to a project that will be a gift for Tom that I had set aside for the past few months and worked on that most of the day.   Just as it was time to leave to go to the church for mutual, I got a text from Kathleen about tomorrow’s schedule. I was talking to her about solutions when it all escalated into something that took the next hour. I left for the church, but had to keep pulling over to read and respond to texts. I only had to go to the c...

12/18     Tuesday Tom was going to the Bay Area today and Tanya decided to send their presents for Marc with him, so she got them all wrapped and dropped them off at our house at about 5:45am. Fortunately, I was up and in the livingroom already.   Tom was actually working in South San Jose, and worked a very long day there, then afterwards had to drive all the way to Alameda to take Tanya’s gifts. I had sent brownies with him, too, so he had a fun visit with them before going to Tami’s house to take her birthday gift that I sent with him. So he got to see the McGills. She opened the present, that was a foto album her Tami’s childhood. The kids loved looking at the pictures and loved the brownies, but soon Tami had to leave because for her birthday she was flying to New Mexico to visit Tracey! Cool!   So all this out of the way   errands put Tom really late and he didn’t get home until nearly 11pm. Poor guy. He was sore all over from sitting in the car s...

12/17      We got up early to get ready to go to the temple. I thought all my ducks were in a row so that I could go to clean the temple for the last time. Tom needed to go to the Santa Maria and really should have left by about 6am, but firmly believes that if he goes to serve in the temple, the rest of the day will go better.   So we served in the temple before starting our day. I got a Clean Queen text on the way and was afraid I would have to turn around and go home to take care of the problems that had come up, but things worked out just in time to go in and serve. Blessings   Tom really should have left for Santa Maria straight from the temple, since he was going south, but decided it would put him there during the lunch break, so he might as well go back home and get everything ready and then take off. He was gone until about 9pm.   I worked on STUFF and got a ton of it done. I had a few dire emergencies with Clean Queen, but man...

12/16     Tom didn’t have Bishopric meeting today so we didn’t have to hurry out of the house at 6:30 am. That was a treat. There were quite a few things I had to gather together to make sure I had what I needed ready for what I needed to do today. It’s getting taxing on my old brain to keep track of bunches of things at the same time. I’m so afraid things will slip through.   Anyway, Church was good, Sunday School was good, and Relief Society was good. For some reason the Primary president taught the lesson in Relief Society. She’s a wonderful teacher, so I loved it, but wondered how that was possible.   After Church we had a good choir practice. We had one number to practice for the Stake Christmas program tonight and 2 to practice for Sacrament meeting next week. I have one of my teenage organists accompanying us and she’s doing pretty good. What a sweetie! People in this ward are just so happy to sing and be part of the choir! Music is for joy, so ...

12/15 Saturday Neither of us had to go ANYWHERE today. It was such a treat. I didn’t even get dressed until almost 10. I managed to get more of next week’s Clean Queen calendar set, and I also typed up ALL the rest of my notes from Laurel Lawrence’s classes. That took almost all day, and it was a treat to read through all the notes again. Course sometimes the notes were so cryptic I had no idea what they meant. I need to always transcribe my notes sooner after the classes while everything is fresh in my mind.   We considered going to a movie and Tom really wanted to take Tanya’s kids to a movie but they were too busy and had seen anything we would want to see. I convinced him we could just enjoy staying home. It’s amazing how much there is to do at home when we get to stay here more than a few minutes together. It was a super nice day!

12/14     Friday My first Clean Queen call was Lilian at 5:45am. There were things she needed and needed them right away. So I got up and began answering questions and taking care of problems. At one point, she said, “Did I wake you up? What is it, like 3am in California? You sound like you were asleep.” I just laughed. I never got back to bed and actually never even made the bed!   But the calls and emails kept coming. I set up appointments and set up more appointments. I got enough requests for big jobs that I finally asked Lilian if we could possibly work next week even though she will be on vacation in Brazil. She talked to Kathleen and managed to get a team set up for all 5 days next week. Within a couple of hours I had the whole week booked. Lilian was amazed.   All that was before 8am when I had an appointment with the root canal dentist  to see why my tooth is still sensitive. I had to turn off my phone for a while, and when I got back to it,...

12/12                  Tom worked far away and was gone all day.   The thing I love about being in the Stake Relief Society Presidency, and this is surely the wrong thing to love, is the sociality of it. I love getting to know the sisters in all the wards and I love feeling the love and Spirit in all the different wards. I probably should love the opportunity to serve most, but I love what I’m getting and don’t feel like I’m giving anything in return. It fills my soul to associate with all the wonderful sisters in our stake.   But back to the beginning. Ever since I got a crown on my tooth in September, it has been sensitive. I can’t touch it or even brush it without some pain. I’ve tried to just ignore it or wait to see if I could just get it fixed when I go in in for an implant in January, but I finally decided to stop putting it off and get it looked at. A crown on top of a root cana...