Scorching the World

Tom went to help clean the chapel this morning after making sure the plants in our yard was properly watered. He said I didn’t have to go, so I was happy. After scripture study, I cleaned a little then worked on my craft projects. It’s so fun to have time to do that and I spent pretty much all day on them. Fun stuff.   I find it a great privilege and rare blessing when I don’t have to put on make up or dress up at all for a whole day, so every time Tom wanted to go somewhere and asked if I wanted to go for a ride, I declined so I could enjoy a whole day at home. It was so nice!   We finished eating the very delicious watermelon and corn on the cob we bought Thursday. So delicious. We have to go back and get more next week!   Then in the evening when we swam, I just felt like we must be the most blessed people in the world. What a wonderful life.

Tom left for work, and I went to Kaiser to get a blood test done after studying scriptures. It took almost an hour for my turn, then took the person about 10 seconds to draw 3 vials of blood. She was FAST. I was impressed!   I thought about running other errands afterwards, but decided not to and just went home and did my stuff.   I’m “working on” a couple of different craft projects that are really fun, so time goes really fast. I hate to be interrupted when I’m in the middle of it, but life goes on. I think it is funny we say "working on" when what I'm really doing in playing on my sewing machine. It can't really be called working.   Tom texted me to cook an omelet for him before he got home just about noon, then we quickly got ready to go to the temple.   We had 11 people come to help clean, including Tanya and Todd. It’s so nice that they are willing to stay and help after they do a session. We are so grateful for all the people who come to help cle...

Tom got a whole lot done outside before we left for the gym. I did my scripture study and other various things. At the gym, Avery worked us pretty hard, as usual, but this time he added in some balance elements to the workout which didn’t seem to bother Tom but made it way harder for me. We had to put one foot in front of the other while working with the ropes and other things. I had to focus really hard to not keep falling over. It was a great workout and I was sweating hard by the time we left. Our workout with him is only half hour, then we do some general things like treadmill or something for the next half hour. We stopped for some groceries on the way home. The most exciting was going to the Fresno State produce store called Gibson Market (I don’t know why) where we got a wonderful watermelon, some beautiful large tomatoes, nectarines, apricots, and best of all, their corn. Everything is grown by the university and is outstanding!   We were having the sister missionarie...

What a blessed life we live! I feel bad/sort of guilty that our life is so wonderful! I can't think of a better day than temple, gym, and swim! I scheduled a temple session before we cleaned, so we had to leave by 10:20am. Tom got stuff done outside, then had to shower before going to the temple because it was already hot outside.   When we do a session, we are going to Fresno for 3 different activities that require 3 different changes of clothing, so we have to take a whole lot of bags. It seems so silly, but I don’t see any other way to do it.   The session was wonderful, as usual. I was getting a lot out of it, but then my mind started to wander and I had a hard time staying focused the rest of the time. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. It’s hard to take all of it in at once. But it was very nice.   We had 11 people come to clean today and it all worked our really well. They worked good and finished quickly. Good people! I love that we are getting to ...

We slept better last night and woke up about 5am. Tom watered outside before he left for work. I had to leave by 7am for  a nail appointment , so I didn’t have time for scripture study, then later never got back to it! I can’t believe how easy it is to skip it! I had a record for consistent days in a row of study; now I have to start over and try not to miss.   Anyway, it was so nice to get my nails done and Ashley is always fun to talk to.   I stopped at Hobby Lobby on the way home to get a few supplies for another craft I want to try, but didn’t even really have time to work on it today.   When Tom got home we had a quick nap, breakfast/lunch, then he went with me to my haircut appointment so we could go to the gym afterwards. I love having Lisa cut my hair. It feels like a head massage, and she talks the whole time. She just got back from a trip to Europe, so it was really fun to hear all about that!   We had good workout at the gym, but the...

We slept in until almost 7am and it felt so good! I wasn’t feeling so good. I’ve had a slight sore throat for the last week+, with some congestion. I also have about 25 mosquito bites that drive me crazy day and night, and I woke up with a headache. I actually woke up at 3am feeling too hot besides all that and got up for a few hours. So sleeping in felt pretty good. But it made my morning really short. I was taking care of a couple of things on the computer when Tom came and said, “Are you ready to go?” I was still in my pajamas and hadn’t realized an hour had already passed and we needed to leave in about 10 minutes! So I got ready super fast and we made it to the temple on time.   We had a really good group come this time! I think we had 12 people! That’s the most we’ve ever had with this stake’s turn. Most people worked quickly, finished and left, but 2 brothers were vacuuming together (one to move the furniture) and took a really long time. I did everything I could to fi...

There is a missionary in the Echo (Spanish) ward who plays the piano really well, so I have been trying to get him to the organ so I could see if he would like to try playing it instead of me going to that ward to play. He as supposed to meet with me last week but he kept talking to other people until it was late enough that I couldn’t wait any longer. So we set up to meet this morning at 9:15am at the organ. He didn’t get there until 9”30 so I was getting worried, but as soon as he got there, I explained a couple of basic things, he sat down at the organ and played like as if he has played it forever. He was really excited, too because he didn’t know it could be so easy. Obviously he doesn’t play the pedals, he just plays as if it were a piano without a sustain pedal. He played so well, that I left him in charge of playing today, left him my hymnbook and Tom and I left for our ward. I was so excited! That turned out way better than I had imagined.   We got to our ward with t...

Today's gifts from Tom's garden: A friend from the Echo ward died on Father’s Day and his funeral was today. It was held in the stake center because there was so much family, they couldn’t all it in their own building. They reserved almost all of the center section of the chapel for family, leaving only the sides and the overflow rows for other people to sit.   They had all of the sons and daughters speak, then the wife. I was impressed they all could speak with minimal tears, but he has been slowly dying of cancer for 6 years so it was not a surprise. It was a nice funeral – a little long, but good. Most of it sounded like they were talking about Tom because the guy loved jokes and joking around, and loved to do service and was always serving others.   We stopped at a couple of stores to get mosquito repellant and anti-itch cream because I’m being eaten up by mosquitoes lately. They are so tiny I never hear or see them while they suck my blood. I don’t have a testimon...

Tom left for work early and I got busy. I’m trying a new pattern for little dolls. These are made out of children’s socks. I just want to see if they bring joy as I make them like the knitted dolls do. I got about halfway through but I see that I need different colors and patterns of socks and have to plan it better. We’ll see, but it was fun. I was about to jump in the shower at 11:30 when Tom asked if I could put on some bacon. So I got some of it cooking and hoped I could shower fast enough before it burned. It takes a while for the burners to heat up, so the race was on. The bacon was burning when Tom got home and took over the cooking. Ack!   We had 9 people come to clean this afternoon. That’s a pretty good group and some of them worked very quickly and did 2 jobs. One sister arrived 40 minutes late because she misunderstood the instructions. She really wanted to stay and help, but we were nearly done. I felt bad turning her away but promised to write down her name so s...

Tom and I slept well last night and even slept in a bit. It felt so good! As a matter of fact, we were barely waking up when I got a text from Tanya saying she was on her way over here to take her car to the shop. We reminded her that the shop doesn’t open until 9am, but she had just dropped Kaden of at camp and didn’t want to go back home yet because the dogs would bark and wake everyone up. So she came here and fell back to sleep on the couch while I did my scripture study and Tom watered plants outside. After her little nap, we got time to chat a little. It’s always fun to have her here, even when she’s sleeping.   At 9 I we went to Unique Auto where she dropped off a car, I brought her back here, and she took her other car home.   The Miata window stopped rolling all he way down again, so we dropped it off at American Glass on our way to exercise. Today was our day with our trainer, Avery. We were about half hour early, so we warmed up until 11. He always gives u...

Today is the day that we get a $3 bag of food. Once a month Is brown bag day. It’s food that I think is donated to the Senior Center in Madera Ranchos. Considering the price, we get quite a bit of food. Much of it is stuff we would never buy so we give it to others, but we always get at least 1 thing that is worth more than $3. Today what we kept was a block of cheddar cheese, a package of 3 bell peppers, a quart of Simply Orange, 3 baskets of fresh strawberries, and a small jar of peanut butter. What we’re not keeping is top ramen, Mac n Cheese, and 2 cans of sardines! So we picked up the bag of food at 11:30 in Madera, then we went to the temple at 12:30 in Fresno.  Opposite directions. We only had 2 people show up to clean today! Fortunately, Tanya and Todd go to the 11am session on Wednesdays, and they stayed to see if we had enough people. Last week they changed into white because there weren’t enough. Then lots of people showed up at the last minute, so they changed back out ...

Tom left for work early this morning and I did my scripture study, then got on the computer. I was on the computer pretty much all morning until Tom got home. I got budgeting done and a bunch of other things I’ve been putting off. One of the things I worked on was changing passwords so they are better, and deleting old accounts that I don’t use anymore on my password list. I spent some time on it, but wasn’t able to delete very many accounts. The list looks pretty much the same as it did before I started. That’s been on my to do list for a long time, and it didn’t even make much of a difference. Lol   The rest of the day we were just home and doing stuff. I practiced the piano, worked on a new prayer rug and finished up some sewing projects. I also sent about 40 text messages to sisters in our ward to remind them of our activity on Thursday. I got a lot of responses and really hope it will help increase our attendance! It was fun getting lots of answers to my messages. ...

First thing this morning, Tom picked about 6 apricots from his tree in the front yard. I had one and it was so delicious! I don’t know why the tree isn’t producing more, but my one apricot was very, very good. Thank you tree. We woke up about 5 this morning. No reason, but that gave us 3 hours before we needed to get ready to go to the temple, so we got a lot done! I did a load and laundry, sewed, cleaned and suddenly it was time to leave! It seems the more we need to do, the harder it is to get there on time. We were surprised when we got to the temple that there wasn’t anybody there waiting to help clean. When it was time to start, there were only 3 people! Yikes! But we started with our video, spiritual thought, and prayer, and several others arrived during that. Then at the last minute, 4 missionaries arrived! Score! We ended up with 11 helpers and got almost all the Monday jobs done. We just never know but we sure appreciate the people who are so faithful to the Lord that they...

For breakfast I made Tom some sausage, eggs and toast. He was very happy about that. He is such a good cook, and I don’t love cooking, so he does most of the cooking. But I think he would sure enjoy if I did my share. I gave him his Father's Day presents at breakfast. He was pretty happy to get little knitted dolls of us, the prayer rug and some new workout clothes!   I played organ in Echo ward again and we went an hour early so I could practice and warm up. It went pretty good, but sometimes my fingers just don’t remember how to hit the right notes! Sometimes my fingers go spastic.   I was trying to speak with a missionary there who plays piano really well to see if I could convince him to play the organ, but he just never made himself available. He said he just needed a couple of minutes, but we finally just had to leave to get to our ward so he gave me his phone number so I can talk to him on the phone. I had wanted to show him how to work the organ and get him set up to p...

We got to sleep in until we were ready to wake up, which is always the best. Tom had 2 things he wanted to do this morning. I had one. There was a little community clean up that he wanted to join, and he had also invited our neighbors over for breakfast. Only 1 family was able to come, but that didn’t matter. So while he was doing the cleanup, I spent almost the whole time getting the house and stuff ready to have people over for breakfast at 10:30. I cooked the bacon, prepared the strawberries, set the table, cleaned the house, etc., etc. It took the whole 2 ½ hours he was gone. When he got home he took over with the breakfast prep and I secretly worked on his father’s day gift.   The Whites came over with one of their 2 children. Their daughter, Daisy, was at a Father’s Day camp in Santa Cruz without her father because he coaches soccer for their son. She went with her grandfather instead.   We had fried spuds, scrambled eggs, fresh orange juice, cantaloupe, honeyd...

Tom left for work earlier than usual so he could be sure to be finished in time for the temple. They sent a guy to work with him to get trained in case we go on vacation again. I worked on my Father’s Day gift and got it half done. I have to go to the store before I can finish. We got good news on Carma today – she is sitting up for short periods and standing for up to 5 minutes (while holding on to a wheelchair).   Tom made it home with almost 30 minutes to spare. He’s amazing. We only had 6 come to clean today. Tom and I did a couple of jobs each. Well, mostly Tom. I did part of two jobs. My job is pretty much full time in the custodial closet helping run things.   From the temple we went to the gym.   I was really running out of steam. I wanted a nap really bad and was pretty hungry. I realized it had been almost 7 hours since I ate. But we worked out for an hour and it felt good! Once you get your body moving, you can forget how tired you were.   ...

We only had two things scheduled for today. That’s why I like Thursdays. The first is a standing appointment with our trainer on Thursdays at 11am. Meeting with Avery at 11 gives Tom time to water and do other yard work before it gets too hot outside. It gives me a leisurely morning before I have to get dressed and busy. Once again, it was a good, hard breathing, heavy sweating exercise. I had sweat dripping off my head for half hour after we finished. It is only a 30minute workout but it sure feels good. We did stuff inside until 5pm, then went to swim. It feels so good!   The only other thing on our schedule on Thursdays is Tom going to play pickleball with other people in the stake. Every week he tells me he wishes I would go because it is so much fun. I really have no desire to learn pickleball. I like having Tom go without me to 1 thing and I like the time to myself to do secret things that I don’t want him to know about. Hahaha   So while he was gone, I worke...

Today was a busy day and it was super hot outside. We did our scripture study first thing. I love this new habit that I should have started 70 years ago! It’s like I’m cramming for the final now.   Getting ready to go to the temple before our cleaning is a little crazy, but it still seems like the best way to fit in a session every week. We went to the temple in our cleaning clothes, went into the dressing room for temple workers, put on our temple clothes, then went to the session. Tanya and Todd met us there. It was beautiful and wonderful to be in the temple, especially with them! Then we went back to the temple worker’s locker room to change back into our temple cleaning clothes. Some of the temple workers were scheduled to help clean, so they were changing into the cleaning clothes the same time I was. That was cute. We never know how many will come to clean, so Tanya and Todd volunteered to stay and help. By the time we were ready to start, we saw we had plenty withou...