Scorching the World

Our church building is getting a new roof so they have one of the 2 air conditioners off. That means only half of the building had air conditioning for Sunday meetings. They made all kinds of arrangements so that every organization would be able to have a cooled place to meet but we decided to stay home anyway because of having Pettus’ here. We watched Sacrament meeting on Zoom (It sure isn’t like being there!) and tried to watch the 5 th Sunday lesson for adults, but the sound was too bad and it was too hard to know what was going on. I think we got the gist of it, but turned it off. Tom made a wonderful breakfast of fried spuds, eggs, burritos, and Trina added watermelon and cantaloupe. Yummy! After our zoom meeting and before time to leave for Tanya’s ward, Trina, Ziona and I had time for a bunch of games of solitaire. We each chose a different deck from a different country for each game. Some were very difficult to play solitaire with, so it was fun to trade off. We got to T...

I had a very long list of things to do today before Pettus' arrived. I wasn't even sure I would be able to get all of them done with Tom's help. We woke up early again, like 3am, so we got up and worked on computers I also started a load of wash and a couple other things before Tom coaxed me back to bed around 5:30. We slept until 7am which felt really good. I told him 3am is a stupid time to be awake. So he headed to the church to help clean, and I started cleaning the house. I took all the storage bins from the laundry room outside to air out, and cleaned that bathroom and the laundry room really good. I put in the first load of wash and swept and mopped that and the kitchen. Then I went on to sweep and mop the whole house and cleaned the bathrooms. By the time I finished that an another load of wash, I was sweating pretty good. We had opened all the windows and doors and turned on the whole house fan, so the air was smelling better. But with everything I have done, the b...

As soon as we got up I opened all the windows and doors and turned on the whole house fan. The house still smelled really strong of smoke from my microwave mess-up yesterday. It puzzles me that everything is saturated in the smell of smoke even though there was no actual smoke in the air – just one small bowl of burned food. Tom left for work at 6:30, met Tanya at the place where they get the truck and did his route together. She learns super quickly, so she won’t have a problem doing it. It really helped to have the house air out for a few hours. In the meantime I washed all the towels and throw rugs from two bathrooms, put all pillows, rugs and other fabric items outside to air out until tomorrow, and put baking soda on all furniture and carpeting. Tom had already put the microwave outside, so I moved it closer to an outlet then followed instructions on getting burned smell out by putting a bowl of water with baking soda and grapefruit rinds in it, microwaving it for 2 minutes,...

The only thing I had scheduled for today was at 8pm, having our sister missionaries over. But Tom is preparing for his Monday surgery and is training Tanya to take over his job while he’s incapacitated. So we typed up the list of locations he goes to, with their address and instructions. It is just 1 page and not too complicated. Then they drove together to each location, went in, met people, and spent from 8am to after 1pm on it. Tanya learns fast and with the instructions, I’m sure she will do well except for dealing with the heat while unloading product. I didn’t have a lot of Clean Queen in the morning so while it was in the 70s, I went outside and cleaned up some areas that were bugging me. I cleaned the windows and sliding glass doors, hosed down the patio, arranged the furniture to look better, cleaned the glass top patio table, and trimmed back and cleaned up a ton of plants. There was a lot more I could have done, but by the time I did all that it was getting close to the 80...

I really didn’t sleep well last night. That meal was too heavy and too late for me. My stomach was very upset and unhappy with me, so I got up for quite a while in the middle of the night, trying to drink water and find a comfortable position. I went back to bed around 6 I think. I had an appointment to get my nails done at 10am, and I felt so rotten, I texted the lady who does my nails at 6am, canceling the appointment. But by 7am, I felt good enough, so I texted her back and uncanceled. She asked me to come at 10:30 because she had another client. That was weird, but whatever. I was just worried about getting done in time to go home and change before going to the temple. I made it in time, and we got to the temple on time. We had 6 come to help clean today. I know they all make significant sacrifices to go clean and we really appreciate it! Plus any time in the temple is wonderful. My stomach still didn’t feel good the whole day, but I made it through just fine. The next highli...

I woke up for no reason at 2 something this morning and was wide awake. I was thinking about the hymns I can’t play and other dumb stuff I can’t do anything about at 2am. I stayed in bed until after 3, then got up and did stuff on the computer. I went back to bed at 5:30 but didn’t really fall asleep. I got back up at 6am because in the middle of the night I had set an appointment with the lab at Kaiser to get the blood work done that my doctor ordered and had to be there by 6:30am. So this morning I left before Tom. Since the appointment was so early, I was in and out very quickly and back home before Clean Queen even missed me. I did all the normal things all day, but in the early afternoon, Tom and I decided to join Tanya at a Republican Women Gala. A friend of ours came down with Covid so she gave us her tickets worth $65 each! It started at 6:30pm. I wasn’t sure what to wear. Tanya said people will be dressed in red, but I don’t have anything red that I can wear in the sum...

Today was pioneer day. Not a big deal in California, but it was fun to hear what was going on in Utah from family there. I stayed busy all morning/afternoon with my usual stuff – Clean Queen, computer work, practicing, etc. Tom spent the morning taking it easy. He kept saying he was going to get outside to do yard work before it got hot, but just couldn’t get off the couch. He said he was suffering from Pre-traumatic stress disorder. He is clearly worried about his surgery next Monday. He said he has had 2 surgeries like this and both had long-time complications. I always ask Arlene Wadsworth who plans out the hymns for Sacrament meetings to give me my assigned hymns as far in advance as possible. That way I can be practicing then for a much longer time. The ones I have for August are 4 hard ones – meaning they are hard for me. I keep working on them, but not getting anywhere. So I decided to try to make a simplified version of one of them – Have I Done Any Good?. I couldn’t get ...

We can call the Sabbath a delight! It certainly delights me! Tom always helps with cleaning the church building on Saturdays and decided their cleaning cards needed an overhaul, so he volunteered to have me do it. We worked on that before leaving for Church. Church was good. The Santiago Ortega family spoke, or rather, half of the family spoke. They did really good! And Relief Society was pretty good. It is getting harder for me to sit through lessons I’ve heard hundreds of times. I get distracted and antsy. Not good. Tom and I got a good nap when we got home, then had a pre-dinner snack. We had invited our new renter, Ron Laing, to dinner and cards this evening, so as soon and he, the Knudsens, and Christian were all here, we had a taco feed. The only dessert was cantaloupe, which seemed to be fine with everyone. After dinner I put on a Come Follow Me by John Hilton III and his wife. It was really good. She is SO CUTE and sweet. I want to be like her when I grow up. Then w...

We both woke up super early, then soon after that I felt like I needed to go back to bed. I woke up realizing that I forgot to close out payroll yesterday! That is a regular Friday thing, so I can’t believe I completely forgot to do it. I’ll blame it on old age. So I got that taken care of, which wasn’t as easy as it should have been because of problems with the spreadsheet, but it eventually got all fixed and I got that done. Whew! But I could hardly hold my eyes open. They just wanted to be closed. So I listened to a conference talk while I napped off and on. When I really woke up, I started looking for Tom and couldn’t find him anywhere! I looked high and low   I looked in the bathroom and family room/kitchen     I looked in the back yard and in the area where he is building a little wood shed. see the platform?    I looked in the bedroom and in the front yard.     I looked in his shed/workshop and in the kitchen.   I looked at the si...

Same as always, Tom went to work in the morning and got home in time to change clothes, eat a little, and head to the temple with me. I had a doctor appointment this morning while Tom was gone. She went over all the tests I have had and am due for, so now I have more appointments set up. I also got the shingles and D-Tap vaccines, so I have a sore arm. At the temple we had 13 volunteers show up. It was wonderful as always! The rest of the day was spent avoiding going outside. All Church employees and service missionaries are required to do a lengthy training on work security, harassment, legal stuff, etc., We have avoided it for a couple of weeks, but since we are hold up in the house with air conditioning, we decided it was a good time to do it together. It was much easier together. This was the 2 nd day we worked on it and we spent a couple of hours, but haven’t finished yet. It will take another couple of hours tomorrow during the heat. So far, none of it applies to what we are...

We love Thursdays. It’s nice to wake up and not have to go anywhere but there were a few things to do on the list for today. First thing I got on the computer and Tom worked outside while it was cooler. (Notice I didn't say while it was cool, just cooler than it will be later!) He’s trying to clean up an area where he threw firewood during the winter. It all needed to be chopped to size and the area cleared. He wants to build a small woodshed there, so it has to be cleared out for that. He never lacks for projects to do outside. There are areas that I would like him to clean up before his surgery and other things that need cleaned or organized, but that’s totally his thing so I try to ignore it all. I worked on the computer and practicing the piano while he was outside. Our renter moved out last night and we both sighed in relief. She was a little hard to please. So we spent most of today setting the studio back up. The apartment looked clean at first glance, but we had to br...

I spent ALL morning on the computer on different things. So many computer things! Tom worked in the yard until he was completely soaked in sweat. He changed clothes and jumped in the pool for a minute then took a shower and then a nap. I had to wake him up to get him to get ready to go to the temple. We only had 2 helpers today! Wednesdays have been low ever since West Stake started cleaning but last week we thought we had turned a corner with them when we had 20 people come clean. So sad to see it go back to 2. But we’re grateful for anyone who comes! The afternoon was clean Queen, watching tv, relaxing, practicing piano, and SWIMMING! Like I said – Normal, and full of blessings.  

Everything was pretty much normal as normal can be. Tom left for work and I did Clean Queen and stuff. I finished a painting and I’m pretty sure I like it. My phone notifies me when someone is at the front door, so I looked and nobody was there. Then it did it again. I watched the videos from my Ring camera, and the 2 nd one was Tanya. I texted her to find out why she came to my front door but didn’t even say hi to me. She said she was there to steal a car. She stores one of her cars at our house, so whenever she is passing by, usually for a massage in Madera, she switches cars for that little trip. She promised to come in and see me after her massage. At 10 am I got on zoom with my sisters. That’s the most fun part! We talked and talked, but Tanya came back just as we started and I really needed to talk to her, so we kept our sister-chat short this time. It was good to visit with her. She is inspiring in so many ways! We watched Restaurant Impossible while we chatted, and she l...

Today was way overbooked, but there wasn’t anything I wanted to cancel, so that was fine. First was the temple, of course. We had 18 people come to clean and I had a hard time finding things for all of them to do. Next time I’ll have teams of 3 vacuum so that 2 of them can move furniture. That might make those jobs go faster. Then I was supposed to go out with the sister missionaries at 1:30pm and drive them. I didn’t relish the thought of being away from Clean Queen that much during the day, but I don’t want to turn down the missionaries. But last night they texted me that the appointment had canceled. I was both relieved and disappointed. That would have kept me busy until 3pm or so, then we had invited our friend, Ruthanne to bring her family over to swim at 5pm. Tom got in the pool at 4pm to cool off so he could do yard work but I didn’t want to get in before they came over, so I did indexing and watched a movie. At 6pm she called to say her husband got delayed at work,...

We love Sundays because we can go to church, partake of the Sacrament, and avoid everything having to do with the rest of the world. A day of only nice good stuff! I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke up about 3 and couldn’t go back to sleep until after 6am. But I was very nervous about playing the organ, so we left for Church super early and I had 2 full hours to practice. Between our trip to Nauvoo and my hurt finger, I haven’t practiced as much as I usually do. I was lucky that all 3 hymns were not too difficult for me, but it still made me nervous. So I practiced and practiced and practiced and the time flew for me. Tom spent the time cleaning the chapel and getting the sacrament ready for the young men. Church was good as always. We had a high council speaker who gave a really good talk on having peace and encouraged us to read President Nelson’s most recent talk from the Sunday morning session of general conference over and over and over. My first objective after gettin...

Today is the day we get ready for Sunday. Tom did some things in the yard before leaving to help clean the chapel. He loves doing that every Saturday. I spent all morning on the computer, doing Clean Queen and other stuff. We wanted to go see Mission Impossible today, but Tanya talked me out of it because it is part 1 of 4 that will come out over the next 10 years! 10 years is too long for cliffhangers! I don’t like cliffhangers because I will think about it for many, many days and in the middle of the night for a long time. We talked about waiting until the last one comes out then seeing all of them at once, but by then we may be dead! 10 years at our age is too long for cliffhangers! Anyway, we decided to go see Miracle Club. Tanya and Todd decided to join us, so that was fun. Then Janice texted me to see if Tom and I would like to join them to see Mission Impossible on Monday and go to lunch/dinner, so I guess we will see it after all! The movie was sad and funny and really ...

I spent SO MUCH time on the computer this morning. Between Clean Queen, emails, facebook, and other things I need/want to do, it takes so much time! The whole morning! Tom got home at about 11:15am so we had plenty of time to get ready before we went to the temple. Today we had a lot of helpers again, which is so nice! It was a pleasure working there. I was in a hurry to get home because we expected Tanya at 2:30, so I forgot for the 2 nd time to stop at the bank to make a deposit. After we got home I had a bunch of Clean Queen to do and was craving a nap. Tanya texted and said they would be here closer to 5pm, so we got a nap after all! Tanya and I had a bunch of fun stuff to talk about but managed to break away to get into the pool, after I took time to do Clean Queen payroll. The pool was WONDERFUL. We had a good time with the Knudsens there to swim with us. I don’t get as much exercise when others join us, but it’s more fun! After swimming, Tanya showed us Goldiemay pr...

Today we (the stake RS presidency) were in charge of feeding the missionaries at zone conference. We usually feed around 90 missionaries, but this RS presidency does it differently than the presidency I was in before. This presidency has the lunch catered! Tammy Parker goes down to Clovis and picks up all the food hot and ready from Luna’s, a really good Italian restaurant. All we have to do is set up all the tables (the old mission president used to have them eat at the study tables that were already set up), but the newer president has us set up round tables and the missionaries are studying somewhere else.  We add tablecloths, centerpieces, plasticware, napkins, butter, and water to the tables, so it is quite a bit of work for 4 old ladies. Tom and Sue’s husband, Mel always go to help us. The zone leaders usually  help set up the tables and chairs for us in advance. We eventually bring all the food out to serving tables along one side of the cultural hall while the missiona...

I had so much Clean Queen before time to go to the temple, that I hardly had time to get out of my desk chair all morning. It just went on and on. Golly! But we went to the temple on time. We have had such a poor turnout to help clean on Wednesdays that Tanya started coming to help. She has helped us several times, but today she had to do something with Kaden, so she sent Todd and Cannon! That was fun! It turned out that the 2 wards assigned made sure we had plenty of people. We ended up with 20 people! That’s the most we’ve ever had! That included 7 missionaries. I handed out all the jobs, then several other couples came, so we got to have more detailed things done. I had quite a few jobs where I had 2 people work together to get it done faster. It was great to have so many, and that means Tom and I don’t have to do a job, but it sure means I’m kept very busy the whole time. By the time we left, I had 53 Clean Queen messages and several missed calls. Fortunately, none of the m...

Tom left for work, and I did my work. After he got home, we worked on cleaning the studio more. We got everything possible cleaned as good as we could, so we hoped she would feel comfortable sleeping there tonight. Sadly, she didn’t, and said she will probably need to move out. I think she is waiting for the end of the month so she doesn’t lose all the rent she paid. Tom spent a lot of time on it while I did Clean Queen and other things in the house. At night we watched Jeopardy, then a movie called Ride with Helen Hunt. It was good enough that we weren’t disappointed after watching it.  

I got Clean Queen in order and did some computer stuff before leaving to go to the temple. Tom had a doctor’s appointment that is in preparation for his knee surgery. They didn’t give him a choice for this appointment and if he tried to change it, they would have to change the date on his surgery, so I had to go to the temple alone. We had a good crew show up again at the temple - like 17 people!, and got all the jobs done, but it was crazy trying to run it all alone. I’m a little worried about how I will manage when Tom has his knee surgery. The rest of the day we worked on our studio apartment. Our renter is dangerously allergic to something in the apartment, so we’ve been cleaning with mold killer, just in case there is some there. You have to try really hard to grow mold in Fresno with such low humidity, but she has problems, so we’re doing what we can to fix the problem. Tom washed the walls with a special spray and wiped down furniture. There was some mold staining on the w...

When you wake up before 6am, there sure is a lot of time to do things before leaving for Church. Today was the YSA ward conference, so we (the Stake RS presidency) needed to be there. This ward is newly formed from FOUR STAKES so everyone in the ward has a new calling. We wanted to give the new RS presidency a little training, so we each arranged with our YSA ward counterparts to meet with them at 11:45 before the ward conference started at 12:30pm. So Tom left for our ward at 9:30, and I stayed home to wait until 11:15 to go to the YSA ward. After 10 minutes, I decided I would rather go to 2 Sacrament meetings than sit at home until time to leave for YSA, so I surprised Tom by showing up in our ward after all. He was very pleased. The meeting was good and I was glad I went. As soon as it ended, I headed to the Stake Center for my next meeting. I had set up an appointment to meet with the 1 st counselor in the YSA Relief Society presidency at 11:45. Her name sounded familiar, bu...