Scorching the World

I had so much to do today I wanted to start early. So we left for the grocery store at 6am. We were both awake, so why not? I like to get to Walmart before it gets crowded and there were already plenty of people there even at that hour. It took a long time to get everything we needed for the week with Mike and Becky here, plus Knudsens plan to spend all the time they can here, too. That’s 12 people – 6 days – 3 meals/day. Fun stuff. But Tom helped me plan the menu and we got what we needed. When we got home and put the groceries away, I felt like I had to rest. I was too tired to eat breakfast. So we both laid down for a while. After a rest, I swept and mopped the whole house and cleaned the bathrooms. After that Tom vacuumed. It is so nice of him to do that. After that I felt like I needed a rest.again. we both laid down and took a short nap. I woke up when my stomach was growling. After a little breakfast I practiced the piano and then cleaned the stove. It was a mess again...

I had to do a LOT of Clean Queen today. Jeramey was leaving to take the young men in his ward camping, so wasn’t available all day. First thing in the morning, before even packing to go, he and Peseta fired Bre, who had replaced me. She just wasn’t keeping up with things. So I spent most of the day dealing with Clean Queen – setting up appointments, answering the phone and text messages, and trying to straightening out next week’s schedule. It took most of the day. Tom and I left for the temple at noon, and I barely finished some urgent things in time to go. I had been busy all morning, yet when it was time to go, there was nothing more that was urgent. Miracle! We had 6 show up today. They kept commenting on what a small group it was, but we thought it was a big group compared to how many have been showing up lately. We got everything done. The workers weren’t very fast, and Tom and I managed to do 2-3 jobs each. By the time we left, I was exhausted. When we left, I immediatel...

I’ve been looking at videos on how to pack everything for a multi-week trip into a carry-on, and all of the videos say it helps to use packing cubes. I looked online for them, and they aren’t expensive, but they look simple to make, so I searched how to make them. That was fairly complicated with supplies I didn’t have, so I decided to just make some bags with zippers.  I wanted them fairly see-through and pretty, so I had fun putting together some bags. I didn’t finish, though, because I’m training a new person to take my place. again. This is the 4 th person I’ve trained. But I really hope this one learns quickly and stays! She also cleans, so she was actually working with a team today and couldn’t do any training until they finished all the houses. I showed her a few things before we ran out of time. I hope she works out!

We are getting better at knowing how to smoothly run the temple cleaning, but still, it helps if we have people come to help. Today we only had 2 people show up. They were happy to do 2 jobs each and did a great job, so Tom and I each did 2-3 jobs, so within less than an hour, it was all clean again! I tried to get an appointment for us to do a session today, but the time slot I needed was all booked. I’m glad the temple is busy enough to have some fully-booked sessions! I later found out that the mission president has had missionaries attending all week – all the missionaries in the mission got to come to the temple this week! Wonderful!

I am spending more time every day practicing the organ this week because I have to play in 2 weeks and I know I won’t practice much while Mike and Becky are here. So I make sure I go over the hymns until I can mostly play them, at least 3 times each day. I also have been knitting hot pads and crocheting scrubbies for washing dishes. Caeli came over in the early afternoon. Usually she comes on Wednesdays but forgot last week and was free today, so she came. That was a fun surprise, and this time she was not in a hurry. Usually she has to go see friends or something but this time she had all evening. She watched some So You Think You Can Dance, which is fun to watch with her, and then we put on The Fugitive. I was surprised she hadn’t seen it. It was fun to watch that with her. Then we watched Jeopardy and another SYTYCD. She finally left about 10:30pm. So we didn’t get to swim today, but it was fun hanging out with Caeli.

We like cleaning in the temple on Mondays best because we can go to the temple at 9am instead in the middle of the afternoon. The other reason is that since there is nothing else happening in the temple on Mondays, we can start right away instead of waiting for everyone to be gone, and we can move about much more freely and get more done. Fun stuff. Sadly, we only had 2 people show up today. I think one of the wards was told the temple would be closed today because of Pioneer Day, so nobody came from that ward. I don’t know what happened with the other 2 wards. So those two people worked faithfully, and Tom and I did some of the jobs. It is amazing to me that it really isn’t hard to get a whole lot of work done in the temple in a very short amount of time. It is a beautiful place to clean! At the end of the day today, Tom said, “we really didn’t do anything today except clean the temple.” I said “I practiced the organ, did payroll for Clean Queen, crocheted a scrubbie, finished kni...

Tom and I were scheduled to speak this morning in church. We each worked on finalizing our talks for a while before heading to church. I still wanted to go early so I could play on the organ for a while, but I didn’t want to play the whole time until the real organist arrived because Tom and I wanted to find a quiet place to have a prayer together. We got snagged by several people on the way and only barely had time for a short prayer about 5 minutes before the meeting started, but it felt good to pray together before the meeting started. I spoke after the youth speaker and before Tom. I felt like both of our talks went well. Mine went a little longer than it should have because I thought I was ending too soon so I added a little, which took too much of Tom’s time, but it all turned out fine, anyway. We are both glad it is over. In Relief Society, we had our teacher who used to teach Sunday School. Her method of teaching is to ask maybe 2 or 3 questions and let people talk unti...

I managed to get an appointment with Ryan for a good massage to see if he can help my back pain. We woke up early, as usual, then needed a nap before we could hit the road. We were on our way before noon and the appointment was a 3 so we thought we had plenty of time. But with unpredictable traffic, we barely made it in time. We were happy to see that Anitta had joined us there so we got to visit with her some and discuss our upcoming trip to Prague. We’re so excited! Ryan does not give a gentle massage. Some parts of it felt really good and others were so painful I wanted to scream and cry. At the same time. But he sure is good! My back is much improved. And he gave me suggestions for what I needed to do to help strengthen my back. Anitta, who is studying acupuncture, also gave me suggestions for tinnitus. I’m excited about that! After Ryan gave Tom a neck adjustment, we went out to eat. We went to a Japanese restaurant that they love and the food sure was good! It was so good to ...

Tom left for work at 5:30 again, and I got up and got busy. I spent a lot of time working on my talk for Sunday and almost completely re-wrote it. I’m still not confidant about it so I hope get more inspired tomorrow! There were some things that needed fixed in the Clean Queen payroll calculator, so I was on the phone with Peseta and Jeramey for a LONG time while they worked through how to fix it. I’m sure they didn’t need me through all the workings of it, but it was fascinating to watch Peseta put in extremely complicated formulas to fix things. He was fixing it so that if we had multiple people at one job, who all needed compensated for driving, and who arrived and/or left at different times, and then to see how many total hours that added up to be each and as a group. It was crazy complicated and Peseta created formulas so that all that can be calculated automatically. He is amazing with programing! Suddenly I realized it was time to leave for the temple! The morning went so fa...

Tom and I accomplished some things before he left at 9am to go to the Bay Area to have Ryan do an adjustment. These weekly trips are getting expensive with the cost of gas and we hope Ryan will be done with Tom soon! He’s just trying to get enough hours logged to actually graduate. He (Tom) watered and worked in the yard and picked another batch of oranges and made juice to take to share with Ryan and Anitta. He loves sharing! I worked on various things while he was gone. One of them was gathering and sending more documents for the HELOC we are trying to get. I hope I sent all the right things so it can finally move forward. They said it would take 4-6 weeks to go through! That’s crazy slow in my opinion! One fun thing today was talking to Anne while we both exercised. The time goes so much faster and is more pleasant while talking than it would have been and I went longer than I would have if we hadn’t been talking. It also made my back feel much better. I think I will keep that...

Tom took advantage of the morning air to work in the yard until time to leave for the temple. I practiced and did other various things. The person who took my place with Clean Queen is stepping up in her role so I haven’t had hardly any Clean Queen this week. But I have three hard hymns to play on the 29 th , so I’m spending more time than usual practicing. I’m not sure I will be able to play them and am quite nervous about it. We had a good group at the temple for cleaning today. There are always 3 wards assigned. One is a Spanish ward, one regular ward, and one single-adult ward. Nobody ever comes from the single ward, and a couple of people always come from the regular ward, but most of our workers come from the Spanish ward! They are the most faithful and are great workers. I'm glad I got the job cards printed in Spanish! It was quite hot today so Tom didn’t work outside at all after we got back from the temple. I spent some time working on my talk and timing it out but we ...

I woke up about 2am because my head was still hurting. I took a Tylenol and tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, so I got up. It wasn’t a terrible headache, just enough that I couldn’t sleep through it. So I balanced the checkbook and worked on my talk for Sunday. Good productive time. I went back to bed just before Tom needed to get up to go to work. He leaves at 5:30am. I slept in some and didn’t bother making the bed when I got up because I planned to go back to it soon. I actually did go back to bed a couple of times through the morning and slept a little each time. The rest of the day I felt blah but I still did a couple loads of laundry, practiced, did a little Clean Queen, and other such thing. Even after Tom got home I spent most of the day lying down. My back hurt again so I did the stretches a couple of times. The good part of the day was talking to my sisters. That was really fun. I love that we love to talk to each other and spend that time together. Carma is pre...

I woke up with my back hurting more than this whole past week. I thought it was getting better! It was loosening up a bit, but still hurting through the day. We went to the temple at 8:30 for the cleaning and only had 5 show up, but they got all the most important things done. Typically now Tom takes on the jobs that nobody else does while I supervise the crew. I do sneak in a couple of jobs while nobody is looking. We are getting it down to a manageable system now. The funny thing is we haven’t actually been called yet. We were told to go, were trained by Scott Smith, the Church employee who does maintenance at the temple. Finally last week the email came with the form to fill out. Now we wait for the call, setting apart, and getting our name tags. We signed up for a year, but we will have been working several months before that year begins. Funny. Tanya has been going to a massage therapist for a couple of years in Madera. That’s a long way from Clovis. It probably takes her 45 m...

We were expecting Marc and Alissa today, so we made sure dinner was ready to prepare when we got back, and left the house clean. I was playing organ so we left early enough to be there by 8:45 and I got to practice for a good, long time. I never feel all the way prepared. But it went fine. The talks were good and I didn’t die while playing the organ, so I was happy. I was just so COLD in sacrament meeting! I as glad to get outside to the 100 degree weather to warm up! We skipped out on Sunday School so we could be ready when M&A got here. They said they would be here at noon. But before we could leave, Tomas Pena asked us to come and participate in his being ordained an Elder. We’re so excited for him to go on his mission and were happy to watch him get ordained. He asked Tom to join the circle. That was special! So at home we got the tacos almost completely ready before they got here. We were so surprised when Marc, Alissa, and the kids arrived, to also have Tami, Phil, and ...

I had signed up to help clean the chapel today. Tom goes every week, but I sign up about once a month and only go when I sign up. I tell Tom I like to leave some blessings for other people. He thinks that’s silly. We got there before the people with keys, so we waited Tom went around the parking lot picking up garbage while. I sat in the car to stay cool. There are certain assignments I like more than others so I pulled those cards before anyone else got a chance. We go in each classroom to clean the chalkboard, empty the garbage, and vacuum if needed. Then we vacuum the chapel and pick up garbage.   It goes fast and is easy. While we were vacuuming and picking up in the chapel, 2 other groups went in there and vacuumed. I guess they didn’t know you only do it if you have the card with the assignment. So the chapel is cleaner than clean this week. When we got home I had clean queen work to do, so after breakfast waited for his nap until I was done. I was finalizing and confir...

My back hurt a little when I got up, but then it eased up the rest of the day. There was always tenderness so I had to be careful, but it was never as bad as yesterday. Tom left for work at 5:30 so I got up. I was productive from the beginning and had no interruptions, so I sure got a lot done! There is something about knowing you will have visitors that suddenly you see all the places that need cleaned that I was so good at ignoring before! I cleaned the office – it was a mess with several projects that I’m in the middle of. It also helped to get all the pieces of those projects out of the family room. I cleaned the kitchen counter, stove top, drawer fronts, and the tile behind the stove. It was so dirty! It felt good to get all that done!  And I practiced. I’m playing this Sunday, so I’m already nervous. Tom’s work had no hang-ups today so he got home half hour before time to leave for the temple! MIRACLE. It really was a miracle because there were things that could have de...

My back woke up hurting and kept hurting more and more through the day. I had things I needed to do on the computer, and couldn’t find a comfortable place to do it. Tanya arranged for me to go with her to get a massage from a student therapist to see if that would help. She came over before we went there, so she could show us what she has learned about banks. She is still doing all the work on figuring out the best one to re-do our mortgage. She enjoys doing it but I still feel bad that we aren’t any help. It’s way over our heads. So I hobbled to the massage. Most of what she did felt good, but didn’t help. It hurt to lie on the massage table, but I could tolerate it. When she was done I still could hardly walk out of there. I was near tears and my back spasmed several times on the way home. When I got almost home, Tom texted me to meet him at our mailbox. He needed me to take him to go pick up the company van that he has taken charge of for getting it smogged and repaired. I dro...

 This is the day of the week when Tom doesn’t have to go to another job before we go to the temple so we just do our own things until time to get ready to go. We had a good group today. This is the 3 rd time for this ward to come clean, so most of them already know what jobs they want to do and how to do them. It gets easier as the new groups learn. We get a new group every month. There were some there this time who appreciated my Spanish cards, so I was happy I did that! We stopped to run 3 errands on the way home. My back was hurting, so I stayed in the car for 2 of them. We got a nap, then continued with our normal day of me working in the house and Tom working outside as soon as it cooled off a little. We swam again, and I tried to stretch my back. It is much less painful to stretch and move in the water!

Tom left for work at 5:30am. I was already up and mostly awake so I just kept on doing stuff. We thought Tanya was going to come over today to discuss our mortgages since we did not need to go to the temple today, but they never came. Today is the day I get to chat with my sisters, but I accidentally scheduled a zoom meeting for a “tour” of a prospective booking app at the same time, so I postponed Anne and Carma. While Jeramey and I were in the middle of the “tour” zoom meeting, I got a call from the repair guy that we had go look at the microwave in Christian’s house. I had to step away from my own meeting to talk to him and help him figure out how to talk to Christian about paying him. The zoom meeting was a bust. The company/app won’t work for us and we spent 45 minutes on it. As soon as it ended I got Carma and Anne on a zoom so we could talk. I got mixed up with the times today. I thought my zoom tour was at noon, but it as actually at 11. The confirmation email said 12, ...

I woke up at 3am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got up and balanced the checkbook and checked a few other things. By 5:30, Tom was up but I was ready to go back to bed. He went with me and I slept a little but I woke up suddenly remembering what I needed to do before I could go to the temple. I’m doing more and more with Clean Queen now and first thing in the morning there was a major mess-up that required some time. I also remembered that I was in the middle of making a Spanish version of the cleaning cards for the temple and still needed to make a few changes and print them out. Things were messed up enough with Clean Queen that I considered not going with Tom to the temple. I thought, “Do I have faith and go? or do I play it safe and let Tom go alone?” Tom said I should have faith. So I got dressed and ready just in case I could get everything worked out. Sure enough, everything got worked out in time to leave. I kept my phone on me while we cleaned, but no emergencies came ...

Tom and I went to church in separate cars because I needed to visit Woodward Park ward Relief Society today. It started 40 minutes after our meetings ended, so I needed to leave directly from church. I like to go early to church to practice the organ for an hour before church, but for some reason I had a lot I was trying to do before we left, so we left so late that I only got to practice about 10 minutes before the real organist arrived. All the meetings were really good. I don’t remember if I loved going to church as much when I was young, but I now I really love going to church, being in church, participating and everything about it. It is joyful to be in church. Woodward Park ward is one of my favorites to visit. But that is like saying I have a favorite child. All the wards are wonderful, but the lesson in Relief Society today was really good. Just really good. I love it when the teacher can get to the heart of the lesson so everyone gets the point. Tom had dinner ready wh...

Bre, the person who took my place with Clean Queen stopped responding to any texts or calls in the afternoon yesterday, so I took over answering calls, texts and emails. She had not set up the schedule for next week, so with Jeramey’s help, I got Monday through Thursday set up. It is pretty complicated with 4 teams who specialize in different areas and have different days and hours they are available. It took all morning, and then off and on the rest of the day. It felt good when I got it looking good. Tom stayed inside with me and felt like he didn’t do anything and was a lazy bum all day. He considered himself a lazy bum, but I thought it was nice to be together. We spent all afternoon studying the stuff to restructure our mortgage. There sure is a lot to know and most of it is super boring. We finally gave up at 10:30pm with another hour or more left to listen to. Then we have to collect all of our loan documents before we can actually begin to work on the actual mortgage process....

Tom left early for work. On Fridays he always hopes for an easy, light day of deliveries. He even left 15 minutes early in hopes of getting an early start so he could make it to the temple on time. As soon as he got to work, he texted me that the guy who is supposed to load his truck wasn’t even there yet.  He waited an hour before he could even begin his day. I got up early to help with Clean Queen. I’m helping more and more with Clean Queen these days and it sounds like I may be taking back my former position soon. I didn’t hear from Tom again so I assumed he would not make it to the temple to help and I was on my own. Again. It made me wonder whether we can really do this calling. If I’m taking back my job with Clean Queen, I can’t really be out of reach for 3 hours 3 times a week. Anyway, I got a lot done in the morning and things seemed to be resolved at the last minute when I took my last phone call as I drove out of the driveway. The temple is always nice, pleasant, ...

I didn’t have any appointments but Tom went to see Ryan for an adjustment. We can’t wait for Ryan to finish his school requirements so Tom can quit going up all the time. It is expensive to drive there and back, but I just count it as a cheap chiropractic adjustment because it is still less expensive than any chiropractor would charge. But it sure kills Tom’s whole day every week! I always get a lot done when Tom is gone. Today I mostly did Clean Queen, but I also cleaned, did several loads of laundry, practiced the piano, etc. When Tom got home we watched videos for the new mortgage thing we are working on getting. There sure is a lot to learn.

I hate it when I forget to write down what happened. I got several days behind, now I’m trying to remember if I did anything that day. I did some Clean Queen. These days I’m sort of a back up to be sure messages are answered and things are done. We worked in the temple at noon. We had a group of 5 again. Such a small group makes it hard to get 22 jobs done, but people are almost always willing to do more than one job and we still finish in less than an hour. Tanya bought some good tamales from somewhere and came over here with her whole family to share them. They ere still warm when they got here. So delicious! She had told us in advance, so we stopped on the way home from the temple to buy sour cream. Tanya, Todd, Tom and I talked a lot about the new structuring of mortgage that we are working on doing. Hopefully it comes through. We have had beautiful weather this week. It has been too cool to swim but cool enough to have the doors/windows open most of the day. I can't re...

Tom left at 5:30 to get to his Tuesday/Friday job by 6am. When he got there, they asked him what he was doing there. They forgot to tell him that those who make the sausage didn’t work yesterday because it was a holiday, so there was nothing to deliver today. So he was back home within an hour. Because the temple was closed on Monday for the 4 th of July, we had to clean today, even though we will be cleaning again tomorrow. So we did all our usual things today – I worked on my computer, practiced, and stuff like that, and Tom worked in the yard. It has been cooler this week, which makes it nicer for him to work in the yard longer. Being at the temple for whatever reason is nice, and we do enjoy helping with the cleaning. We had a very small team show up, but they each did 2 jobs quickly and happily, so we got the important things done in less than an hour. The best part was talking with my sisters. We always talk on Tuesdays and we all look forward to it. Today was complicated by us ...

Tom and I wake up before anyone else, so this morning we left about 6am to go to Lowe’s to get a repair for Trina’s downstairs toilet flapper and anchors for the towel rack. We were back and the repairs done and the dishes from yesterday all washed before anyone else got up. We feel smart and sneaky. When Trina got up Tom cut up all the watermelon to take to the pancake breakfast at her ward. Trina managed to get all the kids to go. It was a fun thing they had set up. Besides plain, blueberry, and chocolate chip pancakes, they had those same options in gluten free pancakes. They had sausage, whipped cream and lots of fruit salad. Tom had the idea to take homemade hot syrup and bananas, which enhanced the pancakes a lot. Besides breakfast and cool decorations, they had corn hole, frisbee with targets, and ping pong. It was so good. After breakfast they had a bike parade. Trina asked Ziona before we left if she wanted to decorate her bike and take it, but she flatly refused. But once s...