Scorching the World

3/30      Tanya left first thing to go to San Diego to see a dear friend of hers. She couldn’t resist since she is now 4 hours closer to her than in Fresno. She took the dogs with her, which all of us adults appreciated. Again Trina, Tom and I spent all day looking in boxes and relocating them to the room where they belonged and unpacking them. I was already sore from yesterday and was exhausting from all the squatting and lifting and carrying. The kids were looking for a specific toy which we never found, but we kept looking. Trina had planned out all the meals, which made it every so much easier to keep everyone fed throughout the days.  In the afternoon Tom, Trina, Cannon, Ziona, and I put the trampoline together. It took a while to figure out how it was supposed to be done even though we set it up the first time, but once we got it started, it was easy. It was sweet to have Cannon and Ziona helping. Even though I coul...

3/29/18             Trina has been in her house 3 weeks and has still not unpacked enough boxes to find very important kitchen supplies, like hot pads, large pots, silverware and plates and cups! They’ve been using paper plates and cups and plasticware for 3 weeks! So Tom and I carried box after box into the house and Trina told us where to put them. I unpacked all the kitchen boxes and washed whatever was in them before putting it away. Anything that needed to go upstairs, I put on the bottom of the steps because I wasn’t about to carry all those boxes upstairs. Somebody stronger than me could do that! The kids helped for a while because they were hoping I could find the Wii, but we didn’t so they gave up. Christian hid out the whole day so he wasn’t any help. Trina spent all day unloading the boxes of books and arranging them into the shelves in her library. It really took all day and there are still a lot of boxes of book...

3/28       Wednesday We found out that Mike was in San Jose, so Tom wanted to go out there and spend a little time with him.. We left about 8am and got to where we were meeting for lunch about 45 minutes, so we went to a TJ Max store and bought Tom a new shirt! Hooray for getting Tom to buy something for himself! We had a nice lunch with Mike and his best friend, Kevin. They are both intelligent beyond our brains, so much of the time they talked about things they both understood, but we had no clue. Still, it was fun to be with them and share some good food. Tom thought he might be working in San Jose today, so he kept checking his phone and his marketers to see if they would need him to do something, but they never did, so that was nice for us. We were picking up Caeli on the way home, so we stopped at Tami’s house. Phil had just had knee surgery so he was resting. We bought some French pastries on the way and they were happy to get them. On the way home,...

3/27       Tuesday I was waiting anxiously all morning for my phone to come. I really hoped it would come in time to get it   set up before I had to leave for piano. I practiced quite a bit, and Tom needed help with a few things for work. Finally, about half hour before I was leaving I saw the UPS guy walking away from the door. He didn’t even knock! If I hadn’t seen him, the phone would have sat on the patio until much later. I decided to take it to Verizon and have them set it up for me, so I left for my piano lesson. I got there about 10 minutes early and was chillin in the car when my teacher came out and told me to come on in. Turned out I got the time confused and was half hour late! Fortunately, she had time for me, so it worked out well. Once again, I was frustrated because I feel like I’m not progressing and I will NEVER learn to play these pieces. She reassured me and encouraged me to keep working on it. I felt much better when I left. I ran erran...

3/26       Monday Tom left early so I was alone all day. I love being able to just choose what I want to do, when I want to do it, and how I want to do it. I got a bag from Time Out for Women and I really like it. I’ve been looking for along time for a purse that was big enough to hold my tablet when I want to take it with me, but not massive. This bag is just the right size, but I didn’t love advertising TOFW all the time if I used it. So I decided to cover their logo and fix my bag better. I used fabric to cover over the pocket on one side where I had to glue it because there was a pocket on the other side I didn’t want to sew shut. I also added some Velcro so whatever I put in that pocket doesn’t fall out. On the opposite side, I took matching fabric and created another pocket with a zipper. I had to do the zipper twice because it didn’t like how it looked when I finished the first time. I had to sew the zipper on by hand because I didn’t think to...

3/25      Sundays are nice Last night I accidently dropped my phone in water. I grabbed it really fast, dried it off, and put it in a Ziploc of rice overnight. This morning it seemed good, but every time I turned it certain way, more moisture would drip out. Tom and I went early as usual to the church and nobody was there. We’re almost never the first ones to get there for bishopric meeting. We were afraid Tom had missed a message, but they all showed up eventually. I enjoyed practicing the organ for almost 2 ½ hours. In that time I can almost play all the hymns that I know how to play from the hymnbook. Our meeting was nice, as usual. My other organist wasn’t able to play today because she mashed her finger in a door – on the hinge side – ouch! So I played all the hymns. I think I might be getting a little better after 15 years playing. I am way less stressed when I play. I used to get so nervous that my fingers would sweat and I couldn’t slide them on th...

Tom and I went as usual to the church so he could help clean and I could practice. It was fun for me to have that time on a good piano and on the organ. He had help cleaning this time, so I didn’t get as much practice as usual. Good for him, not as fun for me. Afterwards he really wanted to go buy some shoes. He asked if I minded going with him; he really likes to have my input, although I don’t think it makes any difference in what he chooses. He is incredibly picky and will try on dozens of shoes more than once to compare before deciding. I looked around for shoes for me, but they were all way more than I’m willing to pay. He had a coupon that made his, which he found were also on sale, a good bargain. He thanked me profusely for going with him shoe shopping but I said all he had to do to thank me was to take me to lunch. We still had $$ left on a gift card that McGills gave us for Christmas 2016, so it was happiness.   We had good food and didn’t need to eat again th...

3/23 Friday Tom got to stay home today, so we had a nice day together. I had no where I had to go, so I set a goal to not put on makeup or a bra for one whole day. It was hard to stick to that because we wanted to go to a movie or something in the afternoon, but it was so nice to not have to. We worked on computer stuff most of the morning – stuff for Tom’s work. In the afternoon we went out to the yard and did quite a bit of weed pulling. Our lawn mower died, so Tom got it fixed and the next weekend our weed whacker died, so Tom had to replace it. The weeds were so high we almost couldn’t see a chair that was out in the back yard. He got a lot of it cut down, but the weed whacker ran out of gas before Tom did. It does look way better, but he needs to hit it with weed killer and pre-emergent for it to look good. There never is enough time for all the yard work that needs done. Tom really wanted to go out or invite the Knudsens over in the evening but settled with hanging ou...

3/22       Thursday I went first thing to Laurel Lawrence’s class. It is such a privilege to go to her classes and to get to know her a little. We so love and admire her husband who used to be a Seventy, but she is definitely the teacher in their family. She is incredibly knowledgeable and had an amazing memory. She can recall scripture references to just about any topic, although she feels bad that she can’t always quote them perfectly. She knows where they are! In her classes she talks so fast; I just write notes as fast and I can write and usually forget the end of one sentence before she is ending a couple more that I also wanted to write. She’s amazing. Tom had left for work early and was going to be gone all day, so he missed Laurel’s class again. I put my notes on my other blog but I’m not sure any of them make any sense to anyone but me. After her class I went to a thrift store a friend had told me about and was pretty frustrated that they didn’t...

3/21        Tanya texted me last night to see if I wanted to go to the temple with her. She had a bunch of names from doing family history that she needed help with. What happiness to be able to go to the temple with my daughter! She works outside the home and is always so busy; usually our schedules don’t mesh to go to the temple together. So this was especially nice. Unfortunately, Tom had to work out of town, so he couldn’t join us, but Tanya and I had a wonderful time. We did initiatories, and many of the names were from Tom’s side of the family. There was a worker there who speaks Spanish, so I asked her if she could possibly do them for me in Spanish. She was excited but had to get the card to be sure she remembered correctly. It was an especially wonderful experience listening to the ordinances in Spanish. It is so beautiful and so moving. We were both in lots of tears. After initiatories Tanya and I did a session together. So sweet. ‘Sweet’ soun...

3/20/18               I didn’t sleep very well because of worrying about waking up at 5:30. I should have just set an alarm so I wouldn’t have to keep waking up to look at the clock. I did wake up at 5:30 and started to get up but Tom said he got texts late last night that 4 other people were going so I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. I went right back to bed and to sleep. A while later when Tom got up he asked if I was going. I said, “Not if you don’t need me.” I think he was hoping I would want to go anyway and spend that time with him doing what he enjoyed so much. I felt bad to disappoint him,   but preferred to sleep. I had my piano lesson at noon, so I practiced in the morning before going. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress, but my teacher says I am. I really enjoy playing pretty music, though, so I’ll keep it up even if I never get good. Tom called me while I was running errands on the way home...

Monday 3/19 I thought I would have a “day off” today and could just lounge around and not have to ever get dressed or put on make-up (or a bra). It lasted a couple of hours, then I remembered that on Mondays I go and cook with Tanya. Oh well. Some other time. I did get a lot of office work done before I made myself presentable. I love doing office work. My favorite chore is paying bills and balancing the checkbook. I love working with Quicken where I keep all my expenditures straight with the bank and I really LOVE working with my spreadsheets and reports. I love tracking where the money went, how well we are budgeting, how we are paying off debt (just the house), and preparing for the future. All week I look forward to Mondays so I get to play with budgets. Sometimes I can’t stand it and I download from the bank to my accounts on my computer but then it makes less work I get to do on Mondays, so then I regret it. I have it so streamlined that it doesn’t take much time. I would...

Tom didn’t have Bishopric, so we got up later than usual, which was nice because I was super tired from the weekend fun. We actually got going a little too late and had to rush to get to the church on time. Unfortunately, I found I had left my music at home, so after about 5 minutes on the road we had to turn around and go back for it. Then Tom remembered he had been asked at the last minute to make a dessert for Ward conference, which we had failed to do last night, so he stopped to pull the ox out of the mire and pick up something. Still, we made it in time to do what we both needed before the meetings started. The talks were really good. Our sweet Stake President actually learned his talk in Spanish! It was impressive that he could and would do such a thing so he could communicate in our ward. The Primary and YM/YW were given their own special presentations and  all other  adults  were  combined where  the Stake Presidency member had us divide int...

3/17 Neither of us slept very well so morning came early, but we were wide awake. We met the other sisters at Marie Callendars again for breakfast, which was delicious again. The sisters that went with me were sure funny. We laughed a LOT and it was fun to hang out together. Unfortunately, we enjoyed it too much and were almost late to the presentations that morning. I had a hard time finding a parking place, in spite of the handicapped placard. But all the presentations were really good. I saw lots of people I love from lots of places – the Bay Area, Madera, West Stake, and our stake. It was fun. Tanya had gone with a friend of hers, but hung out with me for part of it. It was fun to compare notes later and discuss what we had learned and what we hope to do about it. All the speakers were people who had suffered huge trials and had found the way to survive them by drawing closer to Christ. One had gone through 3 bouts of Leukemia and was still fighting it; one had a disorder t...

3/16      I didn’t do much in the morning; just a few chores, but mostly killed time until I could leave to go to Time Out for Women. Tom gassed up the car for me and made sure I had everything I needed. I had arranged 4 sisters to go with me, so I picked them up on the way.   We got there early enough to stop for dinner. We decided to go to Marie Calendar’s and it was delicious. Because one of the sisters has a handicapped placard, we were able to get close parking for at the restaurant and at the convention center Friday night. The whole thing was really good and I can’t wait to share lots of it with Tom. When it ended, I dropped 3 of the sisters at a cousin’s house, then the other sister and I went to a hotel. It was going on 11pm and we were both dead dog tired, but it still took a little while to unwind.

Tom got to go with me to Laurel Lawrence’s class today. I like it when he goes with me. Her lesson today was about Adam and Eve. She always includes a lot of things from her vast storage of knowledge from all the studies she does, so I always learn quite a bit, or at least it puts a lot of stuff into perspective the way she presents it. I especially like it when I know the answer to something that nobody else knows, or at least that nobody else voices. This time she was talking about experiences Joseph Smith had and asked where we got all that information. I said, “From Lucy Mack”, and she looked over to see who said it. Hee hee. The sister next to me said, “Good Job!” Anyway, I’ll post my notes when I get time. It’s always good, but it takes some work to organize it when I transcribe my notes. Tom needed to run some errands in the afternoon, so he took charge of picking up Caeli and taking her to her house on the way home. A friend of ours was making and selling tamales, so ...

3/14/18              This was the only day that Tom had to work – actually work. He left about 8:30 and was gone all day to a faraway place. I didn’t feel good in the morning so it took me until nearly 1pm to get moving but after that I felt great! I sprayed scotchguard on the chairs I had re-covered last week. Unfortunately, it smelled so bad I had to leave them outside several hours, and then spray them with Fabreeze to get rid of the smell.   I brought them back in and I‘m still hoping they smell more neutral soon. With nowhere to go until evening, I got quite a few of the things on my list crossed off. It felt good. It amazes me how busy I still am without a job or children. What do I do all day? I could show you the list. Tanya came over while Caeli was at gymnastics so we could cook some food. I honestly tried to get her interested in cooking when she was a teenager, before leaving for college, but sh...

3/13                   I had piano lessons at 12:30, so I practiced quite a bit in the morning. It sure seems like I don’t progress at all with all the practicing, but my teacher says I’m going well and that slow progress is normal, the closer you get to knowing a piece. I have a few pieces of music that I love playing, especially on my wonderful piano and at the church. Also in the afternoon, I went to Tanya’s house to help cook something for dinner. It’s funny to me that she is FINALLY ready to learn how to cook. She’s avoided it her whole life but now she really wants to be able to make healthy meals that her family will eat. We ran to the store for ingredients and then got 2 main dishes put together before I had to leave. It was fun working/playing with her. I ran errands on the way home. While I was gone, Tom ran some errands to try to get our permit for the new HVAC unit we installed la...

3/12       Tom got to work from home today. I finished covering the 2 chairs for the family room and they look pretty good – certainly not professional, but better than the last time I covered them, and the color is so much better that it changes the look of the whole family room. Tom enjoyed being home and with nice weather so he could work outside. I hate that there is always SO MUCH work that needs done for the yards, front and back to look decent, but Tom loves working outside, so he’s a happy guy! We had our empty nesters’ family home evening and I delivered some goodies to a sister I “visit teach” on the way. She is never, ever available, so I do what I can to let her know I’m thinking of her and care how she is. FHE was fun. It’s nice to be able to build some friendships in our stake!

We had a funny morning. Tom always wakes up around 3 or 4am. Now that we have our office back, he goes in to the office and gets on the computer instead of going to the family room and watching tv. He had been on a while when he looked at the clock on his computer and saw it was nearly 7am! Usually he has Bishopric at 7, so he almost started to panic. He saw he had a text saying Bishopric was changed to 8am, so all was good. He went in to wake me up, but our clock, which is a plug-in, said it was 6am. He woke me up anyway. We discussed why our clock would be an hour slow. We had just re-set it a couple of days ago when we re-arranged the room. Was it possible that we hadn’t noticed in 2 days that that clock was an hour off? Couldn’t be. So we checked all the clocks and they all had differing times. We looked outside to see if it looked like it was 7am or 6am. I looked out the glass doors in the bedroom. It was totally dark outside, meaning it had to be 6am. Tom looked out the fro...

We went to the church early so Tom could help clean and I could practice the organ. I got in a good 2 hours of practice. It was fun. At 10:00am, our ward had their RS birthday celebration. They had done a ton of work to prepare and make it special. I was really impressed. Then they had a good lunch, but our secretary of our RS Stake Presidency, who came to the event with me, was disappointed that the food wasn’t Mexican food. We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, a roll, a yummy fruit salad, arroz con leche, and cake. Good stuff. I had listed our treadmill for sale so we had to hurry home to meet the guy who was buying it, but Tom wanted to help get the building all cleaned up from the activity first. He is so incredibly responsible and helpful. Always the last to finish up. The rest of the day I worked on recovering a chair for the family room. It looks sooooo much better! It was super hard, but it turned out pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.     T...

Today was nice because Tom was home all day. We got to just stay home and do stuff here. I worked on cleaning and organizing still. I had purchased fabric to recover my sofa pillows. I found fabric that looks so much better than what I had! I also shortened the livingroom drapes and shortened our bedroom drapes for the 4 th time. I think this time I finally got them right. They look so much better than the other drapes I had made for there. I love having my house all clean and nice. Tom got my registration fixed on my car. Before we moved from Napa, I did an address change with the DMV for all 3 of our cars. Ever since then, we’ve missed deadlines to renew registration because the renewal notices went to the Napa address. We got a ticked for an expired registration on the van and after Tom stood in line for hours at DMV, they said they could see a change of address had been submitted, but it hadn’t been done yet. So we got that taken care of, but now the same thing happened wi...

Tom had to leave earlier than me; I first had Laurel Lawrence’s class. Today it was on patience as we can learn of it from our latter day prophets. She talked about each of the prophets from Joseph Smith to President Nelson and spoke very briefly on some of the lesser known struggles/trials that they had. It is true that they are not spared difficulties in this life and we can learn from the way they faced tribulations. I’ll write about it on my other blog. I ran some errands on the way home and then was home long enough to unpack groceries and have some lunch. Then I left to pick up Caeli and take her home. I ran a couple more errands and then was home long enough to grab some dinner. Then I left for Cannon’s concert.   I had a dilemma today. I had a ward RS birthday celebration I was supposed to go to because of my calling in the stake RS presidency and my president really wanted me to go with her, but Cannon had a concert and Tanya really wanted me to be there. And I wan...

Tom and I accomplished a lot today. I really enjoy cleaning and moving/rearranging furniture. I love making everything look better.  Today I/we: Put our bedroom back to how it was before Pettus’ came Got new curtains for the family room; sewed the panels together, hemmed them and hung them Put the family room curtains in the bedroom after hemming them, taking out that hem and re-hemming them Sewed a couple of pillow covers Fixed a skirt that didn’t fit – I love having my sewing machine set up again! Brought in more of the stuff that belongs in the office Had a cable guy come to put our tv connection back in the office Began cleaning the kitchen Took stuff from my closet that belongs in the closet in the office And I took down the curtains in the livingroom and sewed the panels together. I don't like having 4 panels to close and open so I sew them into 2 doublewide panels. Much better. I still need to scrub floors, make the beds in the guest room and ...

Sadness all around. Tom got up at 3 when we heard people moving about, so he could help them get the last stuff in the car and truck, but went to the bathroom first and when he came out, they were already gone! The house is empty. No giggles, no kid laughter and now I get to clean. I spent all day rearranging the furniture, cleaning, vacuuming, sweeping, etc. We put the piano in the living room and the chairs that it replaced we put in the family room. Since Trina took one of the couches, there was room for something smaller. I had considered painting the office before moving back in there, but just couldn’t get myself worked up enough to do it. So I moved our office furniture back in, and began washing all the sheets from the guest room and pillows from the living room and family room. It took all day and I’m pretty happy with the new arrangements. At night I had visiting teaching appointments. I now have a companion, and Tom was sad that he doesn’t get to go with me to do...

Tom didn’t have Bishopric meeting again, but went early with me so I could practice the organ for an hour and a half before church. He’s so nice to me. Sarah, the drug addict that Tom has been helping, has been in rehab for a month now and is doing very well. She found two other women there who are also members of the Church and they read the Book of Mormon together. They are a good support for each other, even though they all have issues they are working on. Anyway,    they are now allowed to leave for church, so she  called Tom and told him how good she is doing and asked him to pick them up. So he left before Sacrament meeting to pick them up and they were all so happy to be back in Church. They’ve all been inactive for a very long time.  After Sacrament meeting, Tom arranged for the sister missionaries to teach them a special Sunday School Class that went very well, then we took them back to the rehab place. I think 2 hours of Church was a bit much for th...

We’ve had some super heavy rain here and there, but it stopped raining long enough for us to be able to take all the Pettus’ stuff from our shed and put it in the garage so it can be easily packed in the truck on Monday. We also had a guy come to inspect our ducts at 8 am. We had a new air conditioner installed last summer, and Tom is still working on getting the inspection from it signed off. He was GREATLY, beyond belief relieved that it finally passed inspection so he can go to the county and close the permit. Hooray! Anyway, it was a little awkward moving boxes to the garage while the guy had his stuff all over the house, but we worked around him. We got most things packed and put in the garage. Tom also worked to get all of Trina’s family’s bikes in good working order, then we put them in the garage, too. It was good to get all that done. Chris took the bus here today so that he can take another car to Los Angeles on Monday morning. He didn’t get in until 8:30 pm, so T...