Scorching the World

Tom and I got a few things done before the first session of Conference started, then enjoyed watching it very much. I take notes of the things that stand out to me and try to guess the title of each talk. I get way more out of them when I take notes. Christian joined us before the 2 nd session. We had some leftover breakfast ready for him which he was happy to have. Between sessions we made some leftovers into lunch. I don’t think Christian was very excited about any of it, but that’s all we had available. Both sessions were so good, but I noticed that by the time the evening session was on, I had a hard time focusing. I felt bad and hope to read and study them more later when I’m more alert. I do love Conference weekend and try hard to listen with my heart to find direction and inspiration. I’m grateful for living prophets to guide us!  

Tom left for work early. He was sure he would be back within a couple of hours because he no longer has to drive all the way to Merced. Then he called around 11:30 saying he kept getting delayed and really hoped to be home in time to change clothes. If he didn’t, I would have to take his clothes to the temple and he would meet me there. He did make it home in time to change but that was all he had time to do. We had a really good group today. East stake has not disappointed at all in their service in the temple! I wanted to stop on the way home to look at fabric to make Cai’s Wednesday Adams dress. I decided to buy swatches of each fabric and send them to her and let her decide. It’s her money and I sure don’t want to buy something she wouldn’t have wanted. It took a long time but it helped to have Tom with me. Then, since it’s in the same parking lot, we got a sandwich from Chick Fil-A and ate it on the way home. It was delicious. As soon as I got home I cut pieces of the fabr...

Today was Marc’s birthday! My middle son who has made me very proud! He is a great man who I sure wish I could spend more time with! I wanted to get the 2 crafts I’m in the middle of done today so I can get the messes cleaned up. I got 6 nativities done but haven’t finished the notebooks yet. Not sure what I’m giving to whom, but I never have enough gifts at Christmas. It was fun working on them. I watched Conference while working on them. Tom has reminded Caeli that she used to visit us every week, so they got that going again. I think the visits are good for her, to get our out of bed and doing something with her grandparents, and it is definitely good for us. We love having her come. Tom went to physical therapy and came home aching. He didn’t do a whole lot more exercising the rest of the day and did take a very long nap. We see progress every day, but if he isn’t real faithful at working the knee to pain, his progress definitely declines. It’s hard, painful work and he has t...

Tom is sleeping better now that his leg doesn’t hurt as much, so I’m sleeping better, too. So nice! I woke up around 5 and was ready to get up, but I don’t want to be out where Ron our renter can see me when he goes to work, because I’m still in pajamas with bedhead. However, I also don’t want to be awake in the bedroom where Tom is trying to sleep. It’s a little less convenient when we have a renter in the house, but it’s only temporary, so we will survive. Ron leaves by 7am and hasn’t been coming home until nearly 8:30pm so we have plenty of privacy anyway. My Clean Queen phone was mysteriously quiet today so I got a lot done. I finished a painting which I quite like, and I practiced the piano a couple of times. It was nice to have such a free morning. We had a great turnout for the temple today – plenty of people to get all the jobs done. People are always surprised that it doesn’t take longer and are happy when they can go home so soon. The only drawback today was that there ...

Tom prepared last night to go back to work today. He moved his truck from the driveway to the front of the house so it wouldn’t wake up our renter when he started it at 6:30am. He also got all of his clothes ready and a snack so he could dress quietly and sneak out the front door. The only thing he couldn’t do was silence the ring doorbell that notifies me on my phone when someone is on our front porch. While he was gone I got lots of Clean Queen, practicing, and painting done. It was fun. Anne, Carma, and I got on zoom at our “regular” time. It’s the first time we’ve been at our regular time for quite a while because we each keep having things come up during that time and we have to adjust to another time or day. It was fun talking and we sure had a lot to talk about with Anne’s move over the weekend, and things happening with Carma and her family. I love that we stay in touch with video chats! I wanted to continue celebrating my birthday today, and there were a couple of things...

I can’t believe I’m 79 years old! I mean who does that? Almost nobody I know! We slept really well. Tom has had 2 nights of decent sleep. Happy days! I did as much Clean Queen as I could before we left for the temple. Because it is my birthday I wanted to take donuts to all those who came to clean, so we stopped there on the way. We had a good group today to help clean. Great workers, so happy and so fun. I love working with people who love to serve! On the way home, Tom took me to get a sandwich at a place where he delivers sausage. He has told me so many times how nice the people are and he has always wanted to take me there. We got a sandwich which we shared for breakfast on the way home. I went back to doing Clean Queen and Tom did his things. My friend Renee called and we talked for a long time! It was wonderful to talk to her. Later Tom left to go show the room for rent in Christian’s house again and I stayed home to practice and get other things done. The rest was ...

I like Church at 8:30am! We just get up and go, but everyone else I know grumbles about the early time and can't wait to get back to our own building. Church was good – good talks and good lessons. When I was getting ready in the morning, I stubbed my pinky toe on the bathroom counter when I attempted to put my foot on the counter. It hurt so bad I almost passed out – had to put my head down below my knees. Anyway, it hurt all day! It hurt to have a shoe on and it hurt to walk, but both of those are required on a Sunday. So it hurt all through Church. When Tom and I took a little nap after Church, I got a text reminding me of the missionary committee meeting at 3pm. But even then, it was only about 11am, so there was still plenty of time. For lunch Tom and I had leftovers from Cheesecake Factory. The food seems expensive, but if one dish is 3 meals, it isn’t so expensive after all. And it was so good. Sadly, my salad did not turn out good as leftovers, so we ate Tom’s chi...

We are getting a new renter this afternoon, so Ron moved out yesterday morning and put a few things in our guest room where he will stay for a couple of weeks. Then he took off for the weekend to visit his daughter. So first thing this morning, Tom went to the studio and started cleaning. I joined him and we spent a couple of hours deep cleaning and getting it ready. It wasn’t very dirty, but every now and then you just have to wipe out the cabinets, drawers, and sweep cobwebs from high corners. Then Tom left to go to a neighborhood watch meeting and he sent me to do some shopping. There were several things that needed replaced in the studio and I had my own list of things I wanted. I went to Walmart and just kind of strolled around finding fun things and buying them just because it’s my birthday weekend and it was fun to do! Then I went to Lowe’s because I couldn’t find some of the things I needed at Walmart. Then I asked Tom what else he needed me to pick up and he said to just...

I supposed from getting shot yesterday (my shingles shot) I had a slight reaction and didn't feel great today all day. I had chills last night and used 2 blankets while Tom only needed a sheet, then had a slight headache and chills all day. I decided to go to the temple anyway. Actually I had completely forgotten about the temple when Tom came to me and asked if I thought he needed to shave. I asked why he would need to shave! But I had lots of reminders on my phone, so I wouldn't have completely missed it anyway, it just shook me up a bit that I had completely forgotten. I almost didn't go because I was so cold and not feeling great, but I was good enough for what we need to do. and it was fine. We thought we only had 3, but several others showed up and we ended up with a happy group of about 6 or so. They got everything done quickly and we finished in less than an hour. Back at home I just spent the rest of the day taking it easy. Seems like I do that a lot. I tell myself...

This morning was the 2 nd of the shingles shot, so I had to get out and to kaiser pretty early. I did as much Clean Queen as I could before leaving. The shot is fairly painless and quick, but afterwards it gets red and sore. By the middle of the night I was freezing and aching all over. That’s ok, though as long as it keeps me from having shingles again. I never want to go through that again. Our Stake RS presidency had scheduled a luncheon at Cheesecake Factory for 11am, so I did Clean Queen and a few other things until time to go again. When I got there, nobody was there so I double checked the text messages and found that it was supposed to be at 11:30. So I sat in my car with my phone charging and did what Clean Queen I could. It was a good thing it has been much cooler weather these last couple of weeks! It was quite a nice day to be sitting around doing nothing. We had a nice lunch; I ordered a dinner-size meal and took 2/3 of it home to share with Tom. It was so delicious...

Again we didn’t sleep well and then slept in as long as we could. I had a bunch of Clean Queen to do before getting ready for the temple at noon. Tom has been spending a lot of time on the computer trying to finalize a renter for our studio and searching for a renter for Christian’s spare room. It takes looking at and eliminating a lot of bad choices in order to find one good one. After the temple, we both went back to doing more of the same until time for Relief Society. We normally have a “super Saturday” before Christmas where we get to make some fun Christmas gifts or decorations, but since our building is being repaired, we have to meet in the stake center and there is no time available in that building for us to do a super Saturday. So they broke the activity into 3 Wednesday evenings and the first was tonight. They had everything there to make decorated notebooks. They had fancy scrapbook paper, glue sticks, double sided sticky corners, scissors, paper cutters, flowers and b...

  We were both awake several hours in the night, so we slept in until almost 8am! It was such a luxury to be able to sleep in. I finally woke up when my phone got 9 messages in a row from Clean Queen. It was a very nice day that neither of us had anywhere we had to go. Next Tuesday he has to go back to his Tuesday/Friday job, so he's enjoying staying home while he can. My sisters and I had agreed to chat today at 8:30am California time instead of later, but when it was that time, I was all alone on zoom, staring at myself. Eventually the others joined, but I don’t think either realized how early 9:30 is for them. Lol   But we had a wonderful couple of hours of non-stop talking and sharing. Each of us has things going on – some way more difficult than others. I hope we can each work through our stuff and come out triumphant! I love talking with my sisters! I spent the rest of the day doing my stuff – clean queen, practicing, and a little bit of painting. So fun! Tom con...

 Tom is doing much better in his progress of healing but he still doesn't sleep well. I slept pretty good but not as good without him. So when it was time to wake up, he had to remind me it was time to get ready to go. I also had some Clean Queen to take care  of first, but we made it on time to the temple at 8:30am. Twice a year they have the Visalia stake send people to help do the deep cleaning, so when people started arriving, we had to ask everyone over and over whether they were from East Stake or Visalia. We only had about 4 show up, so Scott let us use the Visalia people to help us.  It was a joyful mass confusion that morning. There were probably 30 or so people working so busily. Our people would be trying to vacuum while the Visalia people were on ladders cleaning light fixtures or vacuuming air vents. Then our vacuumers would have to go back to re-vacuum after the air vent dropped a bunch of dust on the newly vacuumed carpet. Because there were so many people ...

 Sundays start early now that we are meeting in the stake center instead of our own building, Our building is still under construction and nobody in charge wants to say when or if they will ever finish in this lifetime. I don't mind meeting at 8:30am at all but most other people are grumbling about it a lot. The other inconvenience is that we don't really fit in that building - there isn't a good time for our Relief Society activities, Sunday School has to meet in the Relief Society room which is too small for it, etc. But I don't mind. The fun part for me is that the Stake Center has a brand new organ and it's way fun to try  to learn to play it! Today was my first turn to play it for Sacrament meeting. I had a major headache last night. It started when we went to bed, so I took a Tylenol PM, but it never went away and did get worse. It hurt all night and made me sick to my stomach. I had very strange dreams but was awake enough to think about not being able to pla...

Tom’s knee is doing so much better this week than last week. Last week we really couldn’t see any change/improvement in movement, but this week he is able to actually kneel to pray and can almost straighten it all the way. It is amazing how the scar is beginning to vanish! But he still can’t sleep, He is restless and uncomfortable. Not in serious pain at all, but just not comfortable anywhere. He slept in bed, then went to the sofa, then came back to bed, then back to the sofa. I told him he should just put a mattress in the hallway to minimize the travel all night. But he had to get going this morning because he had set up an appointment with a woman to see the bedroom at Christian’s house and possibly sign a rental agreement. He worked really hard to find a renter there and for our studio. He’s amazing. I was tired this morning and didn’t do too much, but needed to check with April Semper who we’ve been helping pack. I finally talked to her and she said she could use our help a...

I had a headache all night. No idea why, but I even took a Tylenol PM and it didn’t go away. So waking up was slow. I managed to do some work in spite of the headache, and tried to get it to go away until about 10am. Then I took another pill so it would be gone in time to serve in the temple. Within an hour I felt much better. Tom and I went in separate cars again to the temple so I could go help April Semper pack again. We only had 3 show up to clean, so we all did everything we could. Everyone was done by 1:45 when another sister showed up to clean. The first words out of her mouth were, “I forgot my recommend.” I asked her if she was there for cleaning then informed her we were done but she could still get all the blessings just for driving all the way there and for even showing up! From there, Tom went home and I went to April’s house. I helped her get one room packed. Or rather I helped her get some of the things in one room packed. I think we filled 2 boxes in 2 hours. And ...

I got up first thing and baked and frosted the cookies. I really tried hard with each cookie to make them look lovely, but I never got any better at it. They looked amateur, but oh well. I did lots of stuff to stay busy all day. I tried twice to get a nap, but got continuous texts and phone calls both times. The 2 nd time I slept enough to make it through the rest of the day at least. I left to be there by 5pm and it was to start at 6pm. We do all of the roundtables at Tammy Parker’s house. It’s really big and works perfectly for hosting a large dinner group. Plus she has all the beautiful serving dishes, centerpieces, tablecloths, etc., to set a beautiful table. Sue and Janice were already there making dinner. Janice made an Italian meal with chicken, pasta and a tossed salad and Tammy picked up bread sticks from Olive Garden. We also had gelato from someplace fancy to go with my angel cookies. Everyone arrived by 6pm. Each Ward RS president was there except the YSA president...

I woke up to my phone receiving messages over and over about 6:15 am. Tom was already up, so I got to the computer and had continual messages for a couple of hours before I finally broke for breakfast, shower, and getting ready for the day. Tom had a physical therapy appointment at 11am, so he left at 10:30 and I drove my own car to the temple at 12:30pm. He waited in his car for me to arrive so we could go in together. The PT had really worked his knee, so he was very sore and hurting. I tried to get him to not walk so much, but he can’t be stopped. About halfway through the cleaning I sent him home to get off his leg and put ice on it. I got a message a while later that he had stopped at the grocery store and wanted to know if I wanted anything. He didn’t want to ask me to stop at the store, so with an achy leg, he did the shopping! After cleaning the temple, I had arranged for the sister missionaries to help April Semper pack. She is a sister about my age who is moving to Utah...

I had a lot of Clean Queen today and worked on that plus other computer stuff. Tom has been trying his best to find a new renter for when our current renter moves out. And then we found out that one of Trina’s renters is moving out of the house where Christian lives, so he’s also trying to find someone for there. He spent WAY too long at the computer instead of having his leg elevated. Tanya had a massage appointment, so she came by to pick up the other car they have stored here, drive it to Madera, then she stopped back here after the massage to visit a little while. There are always things to catch up on whenever we see her. Besides that, she’s fun to be around! When Tom finally got off the computer he had some lunch and then took care of his leg. Anne is in the middle of moving to their new house in Spanish Fork, so she had a very complicated day. We tried all day to find a time when she could sit down and chat, which we finally did in the afternoon. I managed to grab a 10 min...

Today was this group’s first time on a Monday to clean the temple. When it was time to start there were 4, then quickly it went up to 10! We were astounded, especially the fact that all of them were young mothers and able to do everything! Usually the old people come back from 45 minutes of vacuuming and are huffing and puffing and sweating profusely. These women looked like they had done nothing and could have gone on forever!   Youth is a wonderful thing! Especially on Mondays when we move furniture and do more. After the temple we went right back home. Tom was really aching from having done too much yesterday and then doing so much walking in the temple. He really needed to get his leg elevated. We did all our regular stuff until 3:30. I had signed up to have the sister missionaries come over for dinner. They texted to see if they could come at 4 since they had a 5:30 appointment at the other end of Fresno. Instead of making them drive that far to come to us, we told them we...

Our Church building is under construction. It needed the air conditioner replaced, which was supposed to take 2 weeks. There was also some roof issues that had caused ceiling issues in some of the classrooms to the point that we couldn’t use them last winter. However, while repairing the roof and replacing the air conditioner there was a heavy rainstorm that did all kinds of damage that then had to be repaired. The building is unusable while being repaired, so we have to go to the stake center for our meetings. We met 2 weeks with 5 th ward, then had 1 week that was stake conference, but for this week and going forward, they decided to have our meetings at 8:30am instead of combining with 5 th ward. They announced that we would be meeting at 8:30am in the Stake Center through the unforeseeable future. Such fun. I wanted to go a little early in the hopes that I could pay a little on the organ, but by the time we got there, the other organist was already warming up. The bishop was re...

We woke up this morning to long, rolling thunder! So unusual for September in Fresno. It’s actually unusual to have thunder at all, much less in September! Tom asked his phone what the weather was and it said, “Looks like rain.” But it didn’t ever rain, There were a few drops I saw in the pool, but nothing that could called rain, for sure. The rest of the day was warm and lovely. I had set an appointment to get my nails done at 10, so I did Clean Queen and stuff till then. Tom did his exercises. So painful! Saturday is a good day to get stuff done because I don’t have to be glued to the computer all day. So we got stuff done, much like every other day. In the evening we decided to go see the Barbie movie. We enjoyed it but apparently not as much as everyone else seems to. I thought it was cute but pretty dumb. There were things that made us laugh out loud, though.

Tom woke up about 1am, so I woke up. He went back to bed around 2 something but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I got back up and listened to General Conference talks with my eyes closed until I was finally falling asleep around 4:30am when I went back to bed and slept until about 7:30am. What a painful night. I do love listening to those talks again, though. Such gems of inspiration! Tom had his first appointment with physical therapy at Kaiser today. He got up and left before I was all the way awake. It was nice that he could drive himself! I had a bunch of CleanQueen and other computer stuff that kept me busy all morning until I suddenly realized it was time to get a shower and dress for the temple. Tom said in pt the therapist just went over the exercises he has been doing and gave him some new ones. Then Tom stopped on the way home to pick up some groceries. By the time he got home he was really aching. He took a little nap until time to leave for the temple. I tried to convinc...

I t seems that day after day goes by and Tom’s knee doesn’t change at all. He works diligently on stretching and exercising it all day long and everything appears the same day after day. I’m sure he’s doing well, we just can’t see it. Fortunately, he is the kind of determined person to just keep doing what he’s supposed to day after day without obvious rewards and through significant pain. What a guy! I managed to get quite a few things done today that I’ve put off. There was one picture that I didn’t like but didn’t know why, so I did some touch ups on it until I liked it better. Then I sent a picture of it to my friend Janice, and she gave me some recommendations and I worked on it more, but it needs more. I’m not good at painting distance. That’s my biggest weakness, in my opinion. I’ll work on it more tomorrow or whenever, but it was fun. Then I moved the painting stuff aside and did all the sewing/mending I had sitting by the sewing machine. That was fun to get those taken care ...