Scorching the World

This was the last big breakfast with Pettus’ and Knudsens here, so Tom made potatoes and eggs and Trina made pancakes. Everyone was happy tummied. For lunch we made enchiladas from all the ingredients Tanya dropped off before going the zoo, and everyone was happy tummied again. Cai’s last wish was to go to the Chaffee Zoo in Fresno, but it took so long for them to get there that they only had 2 hours. It is a huge zoo so 2 hours wasn’t nearly enough, but they were at our house by 4pm. We spent the evening watching favorite movies, the last of which was Aquaman. Knudsens and Pettus’ loved it, but Tom and I aren’t into Marvel-type movies. It was just another fun day with my children and grandchildren. So grateful that God invented families! There isn’t anything better! It was beautiful weather again to day, so the kids went outside. We have a large tricycle that we keep thinking we should get rid of because there aren't any little kids anymore, but they still seem to make good ...

Tom was up all night throwing up. He was weak and dizzy and pretty miserable. I got to clean the bathroom walls and floor and wash the rugs. Lol He kept apologizing, but he is the one that has always taken such good care of me when I’m sick and also always cleaned up after the kids were sick. I owed him bigtime! He took it easy all day and felt much better as the day wore on. Chris went to the Bay Area to return some things to his old work office and dropped of their Christmas present to Marc and Alissa while there. Tanya and Cai and Dawson went to the beach today but left Cannon and Kaden here to play with their cousins. She invited us to go, but Trina wasn’t interested in spending 5 hours in the car to see the beach since she is only an hour away from it at home. So we spent all day watching Christmas movies and snacking on leftovers. We played a lot of Rummy and Solitaire during the movies. It was just a nice relaxing day. The kids love "exercising" on my equipment. ...

I had a lot of Clean Queen question again this morning and fund a couple of errors I had made in my spreadsheet. I hate when that happens. I had checked it over and over but there were little things that slipped through. Ug. So I spent some time working on those things before I could begin to work on my share of Thanksgiving dinner. I think this was the first time I didn’t host Thanksgiving and do most of the cooking. Since it was Tanya’s birthday today, she wanted to host and have all the things for dinner that she loves the most, so she planned the meal and made assignments. I only made rolls, stuffing, and sweet potatoes and provided ice cream for the pies. Trina made the cranberry sauce – hers is the best ever and Kim is always in charge of the green bean casserole because hers is the best ever! Cai made the mashed potatoes and deviled eggs because she is excellent at that! We never know what Ryan and Anitta will do but whatever it is, it is always the best ever. They made some C...

After breakfast, Tom and I coaxed people outside again to help in the yard. It is a little hard to get some of the  kids to leave the computers and get some sunshine, but it was another beautiful day. Tom is trying to get the overhang part of the shed off where the garage needs to go, and Chris volunteered to help him with it. He climbed the very tall ladder and pried and banged, and knocked at boards until he got quite a few to come down. It was hard work and he was sweating. He spent more than an hour on it and got maybe a dozen boards off the end. It is definitely something Tom can't do. We knew that Kim Harisay was coming today to be here for Thanksgiving and Tanya’s birthday. We expected her around 4 or 5:00 pm. Unfortunately, she got caught in holiday traffic coming out of the Bay Area, so it took her nearly 5 hours to make the 2 ½ hour trip! We saved some dinner for her. We also knew that Cai and Dawson were in the Bay Area and headed out about 3pm – the worst time for com...

Tom and I both woke up about 2am – probably because we were sound asleep by 10pm last night. Tom got up but I stayed in bed trying to go back to sleep until about 3:30, then I got up and joined him in the office. We went back to bed about 5 and slept until 7, but it wasn’t enough sleep for me! Oh well. We wanted to go to the grocery store first thing before it got busy in the house and in the world, and as we headed out of the house, Trina volunteered to join us. We filled two grocery carts and the only thing they didn’t have was Claim Jumpers pies. We didn’t know that Claim Jumpers was bought out by Marie Callendars. So sad. Claim Jumper pies were the best. We took our groceries home about 10am and the kids were very happy to finally get some breakfast. They all went to play and the adults all went to work on computers. Again I had a whole lot of Clean Queen work. It seems to dominate my days right now. We have a lot of clients and a lot of work. The trick is finding enough wo...

  We didn’t get to bed until after midnight last night, but true to form, Tom and I woke up before 6am. We just don’t remember how to sleep in anymore. We had made sure that nobody sleeps in the office so that we can be on our computers there and not wake anybody up. We both got a lot done on the computers while we had no interruptions. Kaden was up by 6am, so the boys started playing games pretty early and played all day, only leaving their one position long enough to eat regularly. Tom made fried potatoes and scrambled eggs for breakfast while I did Clean Queen. I had a whole lot of Clean Queen, especially in the morning, so I wasn’t much help. The rest of the day, Tom worked. He is counting down the days to retirement – 12 left! After Trina had taken care of a bunch of things on her computer, we were ready to watch some Cheesy Christmas movies. I got so many Clean Queen interruptions, that I had a hard time keeping up with the stories, but it was still fun. Todd dropped ...

Our Church started at 10am, which I think was the earliest of the day. We managed to make waffles before it started, then we turned on our meeting. Tanya had a meeting at the same time, so she put on headphones so she could listen to hers while we did ours on my computer, showing on the tv. Later we had our Sunday School on Zoom and nobody else in the house was in a meeting so the kids were pretty noisy, so Tom and I went into the office where we didn’t have to make everyone be quiet. Tanya had her Relief Society while we were in the middle of playing cards, and Trina had her Sacrament meeting somewhere in-between. Caeli, Cannon, and Kaden had a YMYW online thing that they did while Tanya, Trina, Tom, Geneva, and I played cards. Actually Caeli skipped it to play cards with us. We played golf and garbage, but most of the time we had the most fun playing multi-person solitaire. Caeli is really good but also very funny to play with. Geneva didn’t know how to play when she started, so ...

  Trina told us she would be here around mid-day, but everyone knows that the more people you have the harder it is to get out of the house. After two return trips to home to get things people forgot, they got on the road and made it here about 4:15. While we were waiting I got a ton of Clean Queen done – I thought I wasn’t working today, and then I worked in the yard. There is a bush that has never flowered, and is always in the way at the corner of the back of the house. I dug around it, which was super hard because it has about 3” deep of river stones that have to be taken out – a shovel won’t dig those up. So I dug and took   out rocks and moved dirt to try to get to the roots. I cut a bunch of roots near the trunk, but nothing loosened the bush trunk. So I got the ax and hacked at the roots, then I got the pick ax and worked with that for a while, and then I got the saws-all and just sawed off the trunk as low as I could. It was hard because it is close enough to the ho...

  I did a ton of Clean Queen today. Lilian has raised the hourly rates for her cleaners, so now she has a whole new group of people applying for the job. This is a new thing for us, and so wonderful; she has her pick of employees, instead of depending on friends of Brazilian friends who may or may not speak English and none of whom drive. They were a pretty unruly bunch of very young girls most of whom were required to take an English class in the evening that made it so we had to quit work by 4pm. Now we can work longer, people speak English, and Lilian can pick and choose good employees. So now she is able to add a 2 nd crew, so I spent a lot of hours creating a letter to go out to all of our clients, telling of our COVID precautions and offering a discount if they book. It took a lot of time, and I only got halfway through the list. We have over 600 clients on the books with about 40 active. Fun stuff. But it was also very nice weather – in the 50’s! Perfect for working out...

I haven’t listed the numbers of days of quarantine for a long time. We are getting very close to a year of quarantine, and I have no doubt that we could easily go to 365 days of it. I had a headache all night, but managed to sleep most of the night; it was pounding when I woke up. I worked with it all day, but managed to get a nap long enough to ease the pain so I could finish all the sewing! Yay for finishing! Tom had to go to the Bay Area for work, and while he was there, he got to go see Alissa who had her girls taking horse-back riding lessons from Mila! It was so cute to see Mila as the teacher now! I forget that she is almost 17; she still seems like just tiny Mila, but in reality, she is nearly an adult!    He got home about 7pm. I was feeling a little better by then, but was still glad to go to bed when the time came, but still so happy that I got that my sewing done!

  Hooray!!! My car came! But first: I slept great and woke up feeling great! Tom slept hardly at all and came to bed at the same time I was getting up. So sad. I spent the day sewing to finish up my Christmas project, but when I got the text that my car would be here in 15 minutes, that became the focus. It was pretty cool how the truck parked in front of our house and off-loaded the car. Tom cleaned up the driveway so we would have a lovely place to park the car. The driver of the big auto-hauler car was a young lady, probably in her mid-30’s. We were both surprised to see a young lady hop out of it.. What a happy sight! There are choices of different displays for the screen, but I like this one best. What I like here is that it shows that it is 73 degrees outside, and it has over 500 miles before I run out of gas. That's a long way to go without buying gas. We got all the papers signed and she left and Tom and I spent some time checking everything out. We have 7 days to s...

I cleaned today. Since I spent all week last week sewing, the house really needed a good cleaning. I vacuumed, swept/mopped, cleaned the bathrooms, including scrubbing the toilets really good, and cleaned the kitchen, including scrubbing the stove really good. It took several hours because I had lots of interruptions. Tom needed about 7 reports run for his work, and Clean Queen always keeps me busy. I need to finish my Christmas gifts this week, so I’ve been thinking about how to do that. I tried a few things, but haven’t figured out how I want to do it yet. Every year my goal is to have Christmas gifts finished and wrapped before Thanksgiving. It makes December a much more relaxed month. Tom is getting several bids from guys to do the cement foundation for our garage. One came today, so that was exciting. We also got the building permit filed with the county. At least we think we filed the right permit. We hope we filed the right permit. With quarantine, it is harder than every to...

Sunday is such a nice day of the week! Tom had ward council at 8am, then we left to go to Church in person at 10am. I didn’t know a year ago to be grateful to be able to go to Church in person. I had never considered there would be any other way to do church a year ago. Now COVID is getting bad again, so quarantine is becoming more strict again starting this week, so we probably won’t be back to Church in person for a while. Everyone predicted it would get bad again in the winter, so I’m not surprised and have been preparing for it. When we got home, Tom started making everything for tostadas while I took care of some computer stuff, then I helped him and we had everything ready when Knudsens got here. The tostadas were so delicious! We should really eat them more often! We watched the YW broadcast at 3; it was really good and I know I wouldn’t have watched it if Knudsens hadn’t been here. Caeli was busy making some interesting decorations by sewing leaves together. They were p...

  I spent the whole day sewing and by 7pm I finished! Yay! So that’s the sewing part – I still need to press and do one more thing to it. Don’t ask questions so close to Christmas!  There were a LOT of interruptions from Clean Queen throughout the day. I couldn’t believe how many hours I racked up on a Saturday when we are supposed to not be working. I know I shouldn't call it interruptions – it’s my job - but when I’m sewing, everything is an interruption. hahahahaha We had a gift certificate for Texas Roadhouse (our favorite restaurant) that we got from Tami and Phil for Christmas that we still hadn’t used! With the pandemic, it hasn’t been so easy to eat out! But now that restaurants are allowing some dining-in, we decided we better use the gift certificate before the year ends and it expires! So about 2pm, we stopped what we were doing to go indulge. They have it set up so that you check in, give them your phone number, then go sit in the car until they send a text. Th...

 I  sewed all day. It has been fun. I brought my sewing machine to the family room so I have a sturdier table to sew on, more surface for cutting and pinning, and I can watch TV while I sew. I binge-watched several series from the 1800’s like Dr Thorne, The Paradise, and even Downton Abby. I love those old times when everyone was so polite and proper. Tom worked on details for getting the garage started– permits, hiring contractors, finding a notary, etc. Those things are always slow to happen and complicated enough, but with COVID, everyone who is working is working at half capacity and half speed. For example, it took a few days just to find a notary, and a couple of weeks to find out that the title company has closed most of their offices.   I went to lunch with Janice, the Stake RS President. It is fun to get to know her better. She is darn impressive with how on the ball and go-getter she is. It was fun. We went to a bakery I hadn’t been to before. The food was p...

I am sewing. I am in my happy place. I had constant CQ work, but only a couple of minutes each time. It’s frustrating to try to be in a flow of sewing but have to stop every couple of minutes to read a text. Most interruptions were less than 10 seconds, but it still stops everything, then I get back to what I’m doing and two minutes later I have to stop again for a few seconds. That went on all day. I think I would prefer if all the texts could be saved up for one block of time, but that’s not possible. Oh well. I just don’t like to be interrupted when I’m sewing, not even to eat. I was so happily sewing that if it weren’t for Alexa reminding me, I might have forgotten that I had a Zoom meeting at 7pm. We had our Roundtable for all the ward RS presidents. Golly I would have been embarrassed if I had forgotten that! I had plenty of reminders all week and even today, but once I get sewing, I forget all else. Usually we do a dinner with the roundtable, but since we are quarantined, we...

  Cut, cut, cut. I spent most of today cutting fabric. It was fun. The end. I also had a bunch of interruptions CQ work, and Tom needed me to create reports for him. I think that’s the same thing I said yesterday. I could just copy and paste from day to day. It is repetitive when written down, but actually every day is pretty fun!

  I slept really well and, woke up with a headache again but I got up and got moving and it went away shortly. I spent all day wrapping Christmas presents and doing Clean Queen. If I looked like I was slowing down, Tom would ask me to run some reports for him. I really got a lot done, but it took allllllll day! Our propane tank was moved and hooked up in the early afternoon, so the house warmed up quickly. It was 59 degrees in the house before they came. Brrr. It felt good to get everything wrapped. Now I can start on the next Christmas project tomorrow.

The air is fresh and clear! It is so pretty with the sun shining, I feel like I can see forever - if I were outside on a hill somewhere because here in my house I can only see to the trees and across the street. I slept well but woke up with a headache. Usually after I get up and get moving, the headache goes away, but it didn’t want to go away today. So I took the day off and just relaxed all day. (except for constant phone calls and texts from Clean Queen) Tom took care of everything, and spent most of the day rubbing my head and getting me anything I needed. So nice! We have no heat because Tom disconnected the propane tank after moving the lines to the front yard. Tomorrow the propane company will come, move the tank and hook it back up. So Tom built a fire and kept it going all day. It really does warm up the house but I still had on sweats and blankets to feel warm. And thus passed the day. After lying around all day, it felt really good to go to bed. lol

Tom arranged with the guy who wanted to buy my car to come this morning around 11am. We had our Zoom “devotional” then Tom and I had the sacrament all alone It was such a sweet experience. We sang a Sacrament hymn, then Tom blessed and passed the Sacrament. It was just the two of us, and very reverent and special. I loved it. I don’t know why there was no Sunday School or other meetings, but Tom and I spent the morning just doing Sunday-type things at home. I had an MCM at 2pm, so we left at 1:30. Tom waited in the car because they have taken all of the furniture out of the foyer so that people don’t sit around being near each other. My meeting was really good with the Stake President, Hall Smeltzer who is the high councilor over missionary work, and the zone leaders. The mission president was with us on the phone. I took lots of notes. When the meeting ended, we went to Tanya’s house. Since we would be near her house anyway, it made more sense for us to go there this time instea...

It actually rained last night! Hooray! First rain of the season, and it is very welcome! Tom had planned to do a lot of yard work today, including moving the plumbing for the propane tank because they are coming on Tuesday to move the tank to the front yard by the driveway. He’s been preparing for that for several weeks, and needed to finish it today. So he was not that happy  when the rain began again about the time he was ready to start work. He kind of wandered around the house, not knowing what to do inside for a few hours. I was happy to have a day off from Clean Queen. Lilian decided we won’t work Saturdays anymore, so I was happy to not have to think about it all day. Yay! But the sun came out in the early afternoon and we headed outside to play in the clean, fresh air! So nice to finally have clean air! I think of all the years I never thought to be grateful for air that isn’t full of soot! Tom mowed the back yard, then set to moving the pipes for the propane tank. I ...

  Tom was able to get windows at a greatly reduced price from Synergy, but he had to go to Stockton to pick them up. He had a work zoom meeting at 3pm, so he had to go and hurry to get back in time for it. We have been looking for a car for months. After we bought our current car, Nissan Sentra, Tom found out that this model frequently has transmission failure that is so expensive to repair that it isn’t worth it. So we needed to get rid of it before it dies. I’m so very tired of looking at cars, talking about cars, and all that! I admit that we were extremely picky: Tom refused to have a car with black interior, and I refused to have a car with white, black, or silver exterior. We really wanted a car that beeps when you back up if something is in the way, but turned out there aren’t very many of those. We had a huge list of other “requirements” very few of which would make any difference in the eternities, but Tom kept saying this is our last car, so we want one that will last...

Mostly I tried to be the good ostrich that I am and ignored the election results that dominated the tv and news al day. I watched some dumb Hallmark movies where you can always tell that someone is sincere because they shake their heads like they are saying “no” while saying things like, “you are a wonderful person”. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t get an “A” in acting class if shaking your head is the only way to show emotion. I also watched some Murdock Mysteries, which is always good. While watching tv, I was interrupted frequently with Clean Queen so it takes a lot longer to get through a show, but that’s ok. I’ve been trying to get my prescription for thyroid medicine renewed for a couple of weeks. I sent in a request online, then after about 5 days when it hadn’t arrived yet, I double checked online and it didn’t show as ever being ordered. So I ordered it again and made sure it went through. After another 5 days when it hadn’t arrived, I tried to contact my doctor, but apparently...

  I got a great idea for Christmas presents this year and spent a LOT of time on the internet researching. It was fun. I tried to get Tom to help now and then so he could be involved in the gifting process. I also did a lot of computer work, mostly for Clean Queen. I got to talk to a couple more of the Ward RS first counselors who followed up on my texts, so that was fun. And I focused on exercising a little. I set a reminder to go do 5 minutes on the elliptical every hour, but I kept forgetting to set the reminder. I’ve been trying to get food storage built up. I went to Costco last week and bought a bunch, then when Tom went to Smart and Final today, I had him pick up a bunch more. I would like my pantry full before the end of the year. Tom had talked to Tanya to arrange to go play tennis but forgot to tell me. Suddenly he came to me and asked if I was ready to go. I was in the middle of a chat with my sisters and had some Clean Queen waiting for me to get off the computer....

We actually got to go church today! First time since March! I was so excited! We woke up early and didn’t know why. I watched the rest of the episodes of The Chosen. So good. Then we left for Church. It was like everyone else’s in that there were only 2 doors where we could enter, every other bench had a piece of blue tape, and a missionary showed us to our bench where we weren’t near anyone. We didn’t get to sing, but were encouraged to ponder the message while the organist played one verse of each of the hymns. I love hearing the hymns, but I missed singing. And the organist kept cutting off the whole notes, so that was annoying while I was trying to ponder. After the closing hymn and prayer, they turned off the zoom connection and blessed and passed the sacrament. The bread was in little cups that we had to hang on to, then dispose of in the garbage can in the foyer as we left. Then the meeting ended and we were encouraged to wipe down our bench, so a lot of people went up...

Tom worked tirelessly (but got really tired doing it) on moving our peach tree to get ready for the garage, and on preparing to move the gas lines for the propane tank. Both required a lot of digging. We have hard pan here which can’t be dug into even with a pick ax, so it has to be soaked, then it turns to heavy mud, which can be dug. He has dug around the peach tree in that way all week, and really thought he had to ground soft enough and dug deep enough. But when he tried to pull the tree out, it just snapped off. So sad. We would have had peaches next year. As for the gas line trenches, he worked all day to have them ready and when the guy came who can move the lines, he took one look and said he would have to research how to move them without blowing himself up. Well, at least Tom has that much more prepared for the garage. Right now we are waiting for the plans so he can take them to the city for approval. They should be here within a week. Yay. Now he is also working on gettin...