Scorching the World

  Being the only adult in a house is a big responsibility and hard to do on only a couple of hours of sleep for a few days in a row. Pretty much all I did was feed them and try to function intelligently. I did spend several hours trying to see if I could get their 3 Mac computers to connect to the internet. After I had tried everything I could think of, I talked to Trina and Chris for quite a while and they couldn’t figure it out, then when Tanya came over she tried with me for a while but to no success. We’ll have to wait to see if Chris can figure it out when he gets here.   The Knudsen kids are on Spring break right now, so Kaden has come over every day all day. Tanya drops him off in the morning and stays to help for a while before going to work. The happy boys just play computer all day. Then Tanya comes back in the evening after work and hangs out for a while, has dinner, helps with whatever we are working on, and goes home around 9pm. It has been nice to have her ...

It’s a good thing we love our grandchildren! We spent all day just getting through the day – setting things up better, feeding them, and having fun with them. They are pretty funny and a pleasure to have around. Tom and I were talking with Spencer, Trina, and Chris to see if they felt that they needed more help packing and cleaning and they finally decided they did. So Tom took Geneva and they drove down to Corona. Tom wanted to leave by 5pm, but Geneva decided to take a half-hour shower at 5, then sat down to eat a snack even though she ate right before the shower. We finally got them on the road shortly before 6 pm which meant they got to Corona around 10:30-11pm. It was good that Tom had Geneva to talk to him the whole time, which she is good at, and was able to keep him awake.   I had a hard time going to sleep without Tom, but Ziona had a harder time sleeping without any of her favorite people to cuddle with! Finally at 1:30am, Tom called me to take Z into our bed so she...

Tom and I got up and began our Sunday morning routine. Fast Sunday so no breakfast, and we discussed how to help Chris get the 16’ truck unloaded – first at Chris’ Mom’s garage, and then at our house. I was supposed to go to two ward conferences today, so I was dressed and ready to go. We at first thought we would wait until after Sacrament meeting, then go over to unload, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized this was a more urgent situation. I let my RS stake president know that I would not make it to the ward conferences, which made me sad, but necessary. I talked to Tanya and asked them to join us and we all got to the garage by about 10:45am.   We unloaded for about 2 ½ hours. Lunch time came and went, it was quite warm in the sun 82 degrees, and we were so thirsty! The kids all helped take things out of the truck. I got them to line up, single file, then we would give a box to the front one who would take it into the garage, then a box to the next in line. Af...

Saturday we got up a little slowly because we were so tired, but got all our room packed up and started then started finishing up the packing. Tom started putting things in the truck, and ended up spending a long time re-arranging what the people had done yesterday. He is a much better packer than the average person, and made twice as much room in the truck. Chris got all the kids to help carry things out, and Tom arranged them so efficiently, that the truck seemed to have no end to what we could fit. We worked until about 4pm, then pushed on for another hour. Nobody had eaten since breakfast but all the food, dishes, etc., was packed, so we really needed to get on the road.   We found out that Trina’s surgery was going to be at 11am, so we couldn’t keep texting her after 9:30 until she came out. It was hard to live without her all that time. But she finally texted and said everything went well, no complications and she was doing good.   When we were almost finished packing, T...

These days were a blur of packing and cleaning. I really didn’t know what to pack or what she would want to get rid of, or what she wanted tossed or donated. She also had things that belong to the charter school that have to be returned or she will be charged for them. So all through each day, I texted her with a picture and said, “What about this?” and she would tell me what to do with it. I packed and packed and cleaned each day until I couldn’t stand up anymore. Tom worked as well, and prepared meals. I cleaned and cleaned, but any normal day with a house full of people and children needs constant cleaning, so besides that I tried to do what Clean Queen calls “move out” cleaning, wiping baseboards, cleaning sinks, etc., etc. Lots of work. Most of the time I felt like I was the only one doing anything. The kids were in their own world most of the time and Chris had work he had to do for a company he used to work for. Spencer had a major test that he needed to study for and on Thursda...

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t go to sleep last night. I was awake until about 2am. After I went back to bed, Tom woke up as usual, and came back to bed about 5am. I had been waking up because I started getting texts on the Clean Queen phone. So I got up and took all the noisy phones out to the family room, hoping to go back to sleep after I looked at all of the texts. But Tom’s phone had a text from Trina saying she was in the hospital emergency room. She was rear-ended in her car last Friday and has had stomach pains ever since. Finally last night about midnight she couldn’t take the pain anymore and drove herself to the hospital, parked, and walked in from the parking lot. They admitted her within not too much time and found she has gallstones and pancreatitis. About noon they transferred her to the ICU. They gave her 3 pints of blood which took her iron level from 4 to 7, did an MRI, and put all kinds of IVs in her.   As soon as she told us she was in the hospital, we p...

  We went walking the morning – we haven’t done that for a long time, and it felt really good! We need to take advantage of the wonderful weather and walk every day until it get too hot again. We got part of a bunk bed set up for the Pettus boys to sleep, but never got to the other part. Tom worked on the bathroom where Curtis did plumbing repairs. He left a mess, so now Tom has to patch the wall that Curtis cut open, clean all the sheetrock dust caked on the floor, paint walls, and wash the towels that Curtis used to mop up water from the floor. He got the brushwork done on painting, and got areas mudded, so now they just need sanded and smoothed, then he can paint. It is a whole room we had not planned to have to spend time repairing.   I ran some errands and got things that were needed. At 4, I made a batch of bread for us to take to people we minister to, as well as some neighbors that have helped us so much lately. I used wheat flour and it turned out a little heavy...

There were so many things I had planned for today, but I spent most of the day doing Clean Queen. By the end of the day, I had had it with Clean Queen. Lilian was feeling the same so before shutting down for the night, we were commiserating and wished somebody would just buy the company so we could be done with it. Then, we magically got an email from Lilian’s friend saying he got an offer!!! Happy Days! Lilian was beside herself. But when the offer came, it wasn’t so wonderful. We will have to discuss it and make a counteroffer.   Tom got a lot done – yard, repairs, etc. He decided he would take over doing yard work for a sister he ministers to – Rosy Smith. She lives close by, which is nice, so he spent about 1 ½ hours there. He said several people who were passing by commented to him that the yard was looking much better. Rosy Smith’s husband has been very, very ill for a long time, so nobody has been caring for the yard.

 The day was pretty typical.  Tom went to his Bishopric meeting and came back in time for us to go to the Spanish ward for their ward conference. Tom wasn’t required to go so I was happy that he was willing to go with me. There was a lot of back and forth about whether we would be attending online or in person, but at the last minute they (the stake leaders) agreed that we could go in person. I was glad so translating for the other members of the Stake would be easier.   It was a wonderful meeting. Bishop Salvador spoke, then President Tucker spoke. He always has his son write out his talk in Spanish and he reads it. He speaks Japanese which doesn’t help at all in the Spanish ward, but he does his best. I sure hope the members appreciate the humility, love, and dedication it takes to do that. Amazing! And it was wonderful to be in the Spanish ward again. There are so many people we love there. It was so good to see them, but sad we couldn't hug.   Before the ...

I was involved in a stake service project – a food drive for the Bulldog Pantry, a local charity. Sharon Meers had put the whole thing together – she is the public relations person for our stake and asked the Stake RS to help. I’m on her committee so I was there because of that, too. Tom went with me because he loves to do service.   It started from 10-noon, but we had to be there by 9:30, and by 10 I was already tired. It was fun, though. People from all the wards brought boxes and bags of food, and we had to separate them into categories – one table for each like pasta, peanut butter and Jam, vegetables and fruit, canned meats, etc. I mostly boxed up pasta, and there was a lot of it. There was some disagreement in opinion as to whether beans, split peas, lentils, and Top Ramen were pasta, but so those kind of got put on several different categories, because we figured it really didn’t matter. We were there until about 12:20 when all food had been taken and delivered to Bulldog ...

  That is what they used to say in the Winchester Mystery House – saying it like a ghost to keep evil spirits away. Anyway, sometimes it feels like that with the studio. One of the things I was trying to do yesterday was sign a PDF with Lilian’s name to send to a prospective buyer and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I was going to print it, sign it, scan it, then send it back, but I couldn’t get my printer to work with either computer – mine or the Clean Queen computer. I tried everything including uninstalling it and re-installing it several times. I was never successful to make it work. Finally, on Lilian’s urging, I asked Matt how to do it and he showed me a simple program to do it without printing anything. Life can be so simple if you just now the right tricks!   Then, about 1:30 am last night, the printer started up and printed all the pages I had tried to print. Silly printer!!! Now that the office is in our bedroom, it woke us up and I laughed at the stupid pri...

T om and I worked in the studio from about 9am until around 8pm. I had CONSTANT texts throughout the day from prospective employees, prospective buyers of the company, clients complaining about a carpet cleaning that was done 2 days ago, Lilian, Anne, and Ken. I was on top of a ladder helping install the ceiling fan and painting the walls while trying to keep up with constant texts back and forth for what seemed like a couple of hours. But we got a lot done! I couldn’t paint because the sheetrock mud still wasn’t dry so I helped Tom finish putting up sheetrock (after a quick trip to Lowe’s). Then I realized that if I painted the lower half of the walls where the mud is dry, we could install all the baseboards and door trim! So we did that. Tomorrow I should be able to paint the rest of the walls and we will be so nearly done that Kamila can move in in the evening. Hooray!   We still need to do trim and painting on the outside new wall, but there isn’t such urgency for that. ...

Tom and I got right to work in the studio before breakfast even. We took a break for breakfast later, then lunch, but worked through dinnertime. We got all the sheetrock up – almost. We ran out so we will have to buy more tomorrow. Tom finished the electrical for two new outlets and they actually work!   At the same time, we have had a problem with the hot water in the laundry bathroom, so our friend Curtis Flowe, came over and went into the attic to find the problem. He cut a hole in the wall of the bathroom to see the pipes, and generally made a mess all over. He still isn’t sure why we don’t have any hot water in the sink. He will work on it more tomorrow.   So Tom tried to help him while trying to get our things done, and I kept leaving to do Clean Queen, but in spite of all that, we really did get a lot done.   I was dead by 8pm, but Tom kept working until almost 10pm. I don’t know how he does it, but he got all the taping and mudding done on the sheetr...

We didn’t get much done yesterday, so we tried to get started much earlier this morning. I had some Clean Queen and Tom wanted to do a little yard work, but then we went straight to work. Tom was hooking up some electrical so we can have outlets on the 2 new walls, so I helped him with that, then we finished the sheetrock on the new exterior wall, then we began to lay out how the closet will be. It took a lot of time to figure out.  Tom was out of supplies, so I had made a huge list of things we needed at Lowe’s. It seems pretty consistent that every trip to Lowe’s takes about 2 hours and $300.  I have found an advantage to getting old: when we needed to put the sheetrock on the cart, it was so very heavy that a couple of younger guys volunteered to put it on the cart for us. Then when we needed to put it in the truck, two new younger guys suddenly showed up to do that for us, too. Such nice people in the world!!!   By the time we got home, I was exhausted, and Tom ...

Pie Day (3/14) and Spring forward! Many years ago if we didn’t know it was the morning of the time change, we would be in big trouble! We would need to really focus to remember to change the clocks before we went to bed, and if we managed to remember, we could be on time for Church and snicker with those who forgot when they showed up late. It was always hard to remember, and embarrassing if we forgot. It was easy to forget.   Today we could have just gone through the day without ever being notified and probably not even noticed because the whole change happened automatically. Almost all of our clocks changed automatically. So when we woke up, it was already the new time on our wall clock, our computers, our cable box, our watches, etc. The only clocks that would have confused us were the clocks on the oven and in the car. That’s really funny to me when it used to be such a big deal to try to remember.   So Tom was on time to Bishopric meeting and we were on time for Chu...

Tom arranged for the garage door guy to come at 6am this morning and promised him breakfast if he would. Tom LOVES to cook for people! So they were both out there (Tom and the guy) before I even got up. It took the guy almost 4 hours to move the garage door and get everything hooked up and working. And to think he was offering to come last night at 6pm!   This is the guy taking down the garage door; the 2nd is the garage WITHOUT a door! Yay! While he worked on installing the door on the new garage, Tom and I worked on building the wall for the studio to replace where the door was.    Tom does all the work, and I hand him tools and such. I actually had a few good ideas that he liked, so that felt good. Eventually we got the wall up and siding on it. Then Tom asked our neighbor who is a contractor to help install and level the door. We’re not very good at that part.  And it's "done". It still needs trim and painted, but we can do that after Kamila moves out there. So...

Tom and I have found that almost without fail, NOTHING EVERY HAPPENS ON FRIDAY. If you are waiting for the sale of a house to close and they say it will close on Friday, it doesn’t close until Monday. If you are waiting for important documents and they should arrive by Friday at the latest, they don’t arrive until Monday. That theorem has been proven so often throughout our marriage that by now we know that we should not to expect anything to ever happen on a Friday. Yet we still hold hope. We have waited for 2 weeks for the guys to come and move our garage door from the studio to the new garage. Tom has been working non-stop to be sure the new garage had electricity so they could plug in the new door, and getting everything ready to build the wall on the studio as soon as they take the door off.   They were supposed to be here by 3:30. They confirmed on Monday that they would be her Friday, and confirmed in the morning that they would be here by 3:30. At 4:30, Tom called to ...

I didn’t have a lot of Clean Queen so I was able to work with Tom most of the day. He took down the front driveway gates, and we attempted to remove the post that is in my way when I want to drive into the new garage. The post is made of the same kind of bricks that the previous owner used all over the yard and even on our fireplace. They are clay and crumble easily, so Tom thought he could knock down that post in 30 minutes or so. But when we got swinging the sledgehammer at it, he found that it has a cement core that is solid. We tried pulling it down with my car (because his truck is in the shop) and it didn’t move. We took down one gate and other parts, but that post isn’t coming out. Tom tried to contact our neighbor, Art, to see if he can get us a jack-hammer from the tools rental place where he works. Turned out there wasn’t one available, so the post did not come down today. After all the time we spent on it, it is super funny to me to see how little we actually did!   ...

  I had a lot of Clean Queen throughout the day, but also made bread and cooked some beans for Tom. He is so happy when he smells beans cooking. The bread turned out so good that I ate too much and felt bloated the rest of the day. That was dumb, but it sure is good! I had ordered some stuff from Amazon, and it all arrived today. I decided to buy my own modem instead of paying monthly rental, but after spending an hour trying to make it work, Xfinity told me I needed a router with it. I don’t want to spend that much more $$ so I will now have to return it. That was a huge waste of time, greatly frustrating while Tom and Kamila were trying to do things without internet, and not fun.   I had ordered a digital wall clock because we like to see what time it is in the night, but after opening it, realized it didn’t light up. Now I have to return that. I had already done the same thing with a digital wall clock from Walmart, so I tried to be really careful to make sure it lit ...