Scorching the World

2/27  First  I had to run a couple of errands to get groceries, drop off donations and make a deposit at the bank. I had very little Clean Queen work again, so I spent a LOT of time fixing up my files with matching hanging folders and file folders. It took most of the day, but I think they turned out so pretty! It makes me happy every time I open the drawers. Tom worked far away, got rained on, and was gone about 12 hours. Again. But I was super happy to have him back home safe and sound at the end of the day!

2/26      Tom left early for faraway places. He had a miserable day, with no park being willing to let Synergy service their residents, and having to pass out flyers in some pretty heavy rain. He was able to do it from the car, placing the flyers in little tubes, but his whole left side got soaked. He was gone more than 12 hours, but still came home happy and cheerful. He’s amazing. I got a lot of desk work done and did some sewing, which is always fun. Clean Queen continues to be very slow, which is fine with me, but I think the craziness will return any day, especially if Lilian has anything to do with it.

2/25      Tom got to work from home today, but had to do so much actual work that he didn’t get to do any yard work or other home stuff. I tried to get some basic cleaning done. I’ve ignored it too long, so I swept, mopped, and vacuumed most of the house. It looks so much better but the hard flooring is sure not easy to sweep or to mop. Several times I had to lie down because I still felt woosy from donating blood last Saturday. Clean Queen was way too quiet again today. In the evening we had family home evening at Sue and Mel Davis’ house. It was a good lesson and fun to be together with friends. After we got home Tom packed all of his stuff for tomorrow. He has to leave early, so he got his briefcase and ready to go, and packed his lunch.

Today was our 4th week belonging to Riverview Ward, but our first week to attend. They were beginning to think we had gone inactive. Riverview starts at 11:30. I was scheduled to visit another ward's relief society at 10am, so I went there first and Tom wanted to go to the farewell of Patty, another young woman going on a mission from our Spanish Ward, so he went at 10am, too, but to a different building. We met at our ward for Sacrament meeting. We were welcomed warmly into the ward, but I think it was just because we already know a lot of them. Nobody who didn't already know us greeted us. Actually, nobody greeted us before the meeting. Kinda weird. But the two meetings were good and we found out they were putting together a choir for ward conference, so we stayed for choir practice. IT WAS SO NICE TO BE  ABLE TO SING IN A WARD CHOIR! Especially one where she could talk in music language and everyone knew what she was talking about. I also liked her style of practicing be...

2/21-2/23       There wasn’t that much to report this week. Basically Tom worked far away, leaving early and getting home late. I worked from home and did other stuff that would be boring in a blog. Just glad to be alive and happy with my honey! On 2/23 (Saturday) Tom had scheduled us to donate blood. I had other plans in mind, but this took precedence. Our appointment was at 9am and while we were there giving away our blood, our ex-Bishop walked in. He also was donating blood today! What a coincidence! It was fun to see him. The rest of the day we were told not to do any hard work or lifting, so I didn’t scrub the floor as I had planned, or other cleaning that needed done. I had slacked all week on house cleaning and planned to do it Saturday, but if I got up too fast, or stood too long, I got super dizzy, so I focused on drinking water and relaxing. We did manage to go see a movie at night. We saw Miss Bala, which was so action packed I was afr...

2/20       For some reason I couldn’t sleep last night. I woke up at 1:11 am but stayed in bed with my eyes closed until 2:22 am. But I stayed in bed until 3:30 and finally gave up and got up. I played on the computer, trying out different excel budget spreadsheets. It was really fun and finally was ready to go back to bed about 6:30, slept a couple of hours, and stayed in bed till 9am! I had a lot of Clean Queen to do today and it kept me pretty busy, along with other desk/computer stuff I needed to do. I hardly left the office all day. Tom thought he was going to go to places far away and couldn’t because Tom and I both had dentist appointments today. His as at 1:30 and mine was at 2:00, but we had to go in separate cars because I had a presidency meeting after the dentist. When my meeting finished, Tom met me in Fresno to park the Oldsmobile somewhere public in the hope somebody will buy it, and then I gave him a ride home. He had stuff he needed help...

Tuesday            Maggie gets her call Tom left about 5:30 this morning and called several times during the day to have me help with different things. He drove a very long way to not get any success. He got home about 4:30. I worked from home and worked a several different things that took up the whole day. I had a mix up  with the bank that required that I go personally into the bank, something I NEVER do, to straighten it out. It took quite a while, but they got it cleared up so all is good. I didn’t have any other errands to run afterwards, so I just came back home. I got a text from Maggie that she had received her mission call and would be opening the envelope in an hour. I got to be on a google groups video chat with her at college, Becky and all the other kids at home, and Mike in a hotel somewhere. We were anxious, so we started the video chat an hour early and just kept waiting and guessing where she could be going. Maggie was c...

Monday  2/18      The Knudsen kids were out of school today, so Tanya dropped them off at 8am on her way to work. Todd was also off work, but he hoped to clean carpets without anybody walking on them, so he stayed home alone. The kids are super easy to take care of because all they want to do is watch TV or play computer games. They brought their own computer, and their phones that they can plan on, too, so they were happy little campers. I had recorded many hours of fun movies for them to watch, so there was no reason to go anywhere or do anything that required standing or walking. Or even talking. Tom had breakfast ready for them when they got here, which made them very happy and then they settled into their comfort zone. Tom was able to be home all day and rarely even got a phone call, so he spent almost all day on the couch with Caeli cuddled up to him. I was super busy all day. I did laundry, Clean Queen, budget, bill pay, taxes, cleaning, a...

Sunday 2/17/19 It wasn’t raining when Tom and I went to the 7am meeting for all ward and stake council members. Tom didn’t need to go because he doesn’t actually have a calling yet, but he went with me anyway, which was super nice. The training was really good and I took lots of notes. Tom was glad he was there. We figured he might have a calling soon that might make him glad he was there. We forgot to eat breakfast before leaving so we thought we could run home between that meeting and the 10am session, but as we almost left, there were so many people already arriving, and it was raining hard, so we decided to just tough it out till lunch and keep our super-good parking place and super-good seats. We were glad we did. We got to talk to a lot of wonderful people between the two meetings and were happy we were already there when the chapel quickly filled up and on to the back of the cultural hall. Again the meeting was really good. I don’t know what else to say except ...

Saturday 2/16 After trying to sell the cars on Craig’s list in Fresno area, and having no response except from scammers, Tami gave us the suggestion to list it in the Bay Area, which I did. We got two interested parties immediately. Tom talked (texted back and forth) extensively with both of them, so we felt it was worth a trip to the Bay Area. We left about 8am with me in the Miata and Tom in the Sentra and got to Tami’s house about 5 minutes before the prospective buyers. Tami and the girls weren’t home and Phil was sleeping, so we stayed outside. I felt bad that I hadn’t vacuumed out the car or cleaned it up at all. It was raining pretty hard most of the way there, but when the first couple got there, it stopped raining long enough to talk to them. They took it for a test drive and it rained while they were gone, but when they got back, it stopped raining while they told Tom they weren’t interested after all. It started raining again, but stopped when the next coup...

2/14       In Spanish they call it the Day of people in love and friends, or something like that. It is a long name for a holiday, but it’s a nice sentiment. Tom and I didn’t get anything for each other because we think our trip to La Paz was enough gift!!! Tom left at about 5:30 this morning. I’m not sure what time because I tried really hard not to open my eyes. Sadly I’m not like other women I hear about who get up at 3am to fix a lunch for their husbands. He had to go far away and had a deadline that he didn’t make because on one of the freeways there was a car turned upside down – a fatal accident. I’m sorry for whoever it was but I’m sure glad it wasn’t my husband. I pray hard for him every time he leaves the house. I went to Lauren Lawrence’s class on General Joseph Smith. It was so interesting and I will type up my notes on my other blog. I like typing them up because it helps me remember what she said. Back at home, after stopping at Costco, I w...

2/13   Tom stayed home by accident. He was planning to leave by 6:30 or 7, but got on business calls and never made it out of the house. He was in pajamas until after lunch, then got dressed to go to the office and mail some gifts I had boxed up, then came home and put his pajamas back on. I think he was tired from yesterday! I worked a little on Clean Queen, then spent the day sewing shopping bags with a new pattern I found. It was fun. Sewing is my favorite thing to do.

2/12      My work day was pretty quiet. I barely worked one hour! That’s pretty unusual. So I had a pretty relaxing day, practicing piano, cleaning, organizing, and I got to talk to Tracey and Ryan today. Fun   times! Tom, however, got to do a little yard work, trying to connect a water supply to the trees he just planted, then left around noon for the Bay Area. He had a meeting in the evening, and then stopped to see some friends, then Tami, then Marc and Alissa, and Ryan. He dropped off the little gifts we had bought in Mexico. So he didn’t get home until 11:30 pm! Way too long of a day in his truck! But he got done what he needed to, so that was good.

2/11 My head still hurt all night, but not as bad. As soon as I got up I felt great! Hooray for feeling great! It was a little hard getting back into the groove of working Clean Queen. Tom tried through the whole vacation to convince me to just quit, but I feel like I need to stay with it at least one year. Then we’ll see, but I think it’s a good thing to keep my mind active and give me a purpose every day. Whenever I start to think I really have the hang of it, I mess up really bad and realize I might be too old for something that requires concentration and focus on details! Anyway, I did a lot of Clean Queen and some housework. Tom did some of his work, but spent most of the day in the yard. He bought fruit trees before we left for Mexico and has been trying to get them in the ground. I think he finally got them all planted, now he just has to get some water to them. In the evening we went to Family Home Evening with friends. That’s always good and very uplifting. We ...

Sunday 2/10/19    I got a horrible headache before we went to bed last night. I took a pain pill but my head hurt all night so I didn’t sleep very well. It was a good thing that church starts later! Today was supposed to our first day in our regular ward but I was scheduled to visit the Relief Society in our Spanish ward, and Tom remembered that one of our favorite girls, Olivia Fernandez, was having her missionary farewell today, so we went together to the Spanish ward. The Sacrament meeting was good. Olivia did a really good job on her talk. She is an amazing young woman and will be a great missionary! She is going to Brazil! My headache was much less pain by now, but I didn’t feel well enough to stay for their linger-longer so we went home and took an hour long nap! That helped a lot!  Then we talked Tanya into bringing her family over so they could bring our birds back that they were taking care of while we were gone, and we showed them our pictures f...

Saturday 2/9 We slept in, which felt great! I did laundry and computer stuff including 3 ½ hours of clean Queen. Tom did yard work. In the evening I needed to go buy groceries and Tom finally agreed to get a new Sunday shirt, so we went shopping. It was fun for us because Tom RARELY has time to go shopping and never wants to buy anything for himself. We tried several stores looking for a white shirt and finally went to Macy’s where he found a couple of shirts and a pair of slippers all on sale. Happy days! We grabbed some groceries, made a deposit at the bank, and went home. We have a lot of Jeopardy! to catch up on!

Friday 2/7   We slept really good at Trina’s house. I’m sure most people know this, but we discovered that traveling is exhausting – especially at our age!   Tom and I cleaned the kitchen a bit before Trina got up, and then Tom helped Trina make breakfast. We were relaxing and Trina was doing homeschool with the kids. Tom and I realized that we were being a distraction to their process. Besides that, Tom got thinking he would really like to get some yard work done before Sunday, and I wanted to have time to unpack, do all the laundry, bathe, and relax at home before Sunday, so we decided to go ahead and take off for home instead of spending the weekend at Trina’s. They were sad, but we will see them again soon probably. On the way home we made two stops – one for lunch (we had pizza as our last splurge) and one to pick up our new car. The car stop took a long time, but we still got home about 5:30. It sure seemed like a long trip, considering La Paz would only b...

2/7        We didn’t sleep very well last night. My phone keep sounding notifications, which woke me up. I turned it off but afterwards just couldn’t go back to sleep. I thought if I just held still long enough, I would fall asleep, but after 2 hours I gave up and got up. Sadly, that woke Tom up. We had started watching a good movie on You Tube earlier, so we decided to finish watching it. It was really good, called Home Base or something like that. Then we went back to sleep for a few hours until time to get up. We had breakfast, packed, Tom took a short nap, and we headed out at 9:30 am. That was supposed to give us time to stop at Walmart for a couple more things, stop for gas, travel to the airport 2 ½ hours away in Cabo San Jose  turn in the rental car, and check in by 1pm for the flight at 3pm. But it took way longer to get to the airport. It seemed like a very, very long trip. We kept almost getting lost, but always quickly asked direc...

2/6        We didn’t have to be anywhere today so we took it easy getting ready. Breakfast downstairs was wonderful again with a new batch of great food. I think we’re enjoying it a little too much. Eventually we headed to town. Our hotel is about 5 miles from the boardwalk so we are really glad we rented a car. We parked in an area that we know pretty well now and took off walking. We looked through a bunch of fun stores and street vendors and bought some fun stuff.    Cool sculptures on the boardwalk Around 1 or 2:00 we found a little cozy restaurant for lunch. It only had 3 tables inside, but about 5 outside. The food was good. Tom had a sandwich and fries and I had a mushroom with vegetables dish. It was really good. This was a creation in the restaurant where we ate. The head is a faucet, the chest is a light switch, the arms and legs are copper pipes, and there is a wire that goes from the plug in the wall through the fishi...

2/5        Tom’s cousin, Tom, was supposed to pick us up at 9am, so we got up fairly early and went down for breakfast. We ate light because we had a feeling they would feed us later. Or at least we tried to eat light, but again they had different choices for the breakfast. It goes way beyond breakfast and it all is so delicious. The thing about the yogurt is that it is fresh – does not taste packaged, and is so good Tom even likes it and he has never liked yogurt. They got here right when they said and we took off for adventures. Tom brought his son, whose name is also Tom, so we had 3 Toms in the car. Josefina wasn’t ready when they left to pick us up, so we picked her up on the way of the town. On the way we stopped at a favorite place of theirs to eat. It’s called La Garita. They said they always stop there on their way to Todos Santos and it’s a favorite for most people – Mexicans and tourists. The food was wonderful and the place was pre...