Scorching the World

Trina’s ward starts at 9am, which was way easier to get ready for than 7:30 at the temple an hour away. Tom and I woke up about 6 and tried to be very quiet while we got ready and folding up the air mattress. We got most of our things packed and ready to go to the car. Church was good. Since General Conference is next week, Trina wasn’t sure whether today would be fast Sunday. I suggested she look on her stake calendar which said it was. We nobody had breakfast. Trina said the kids rarely ever eat breakfast anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal. However, the stake calendar also said today was ward conference, so that made us wonder. It turned out it was Ward Conference and it was not fast Sunday. The meeting was good with good talks from the Bishop and the Stake President. Trina teaches primary and had a handout she needed help with cutting out before church. Ziona and I barely got them done before we left for Church. Anyway, I went to Relief Society without her, which was fine. Peop...

We had to get up at 6 AM which was tricky after going to bed so late last night. We left by 6:30 AM to be at the 7:30 am session. When we left, the GPS said we would get there at 7:30 which was not acceptable. Even after Taking one wrong turn, Tom was able to beat the GPS time by more than 15 minutes so we made it in time to get in the session. What a blessing! Especially with morning traffic. Being in the temple was wonderful! The LA temple is so beautiful and so huge! It's just wonderful to be in the Temple and it is especially wonderful to be in the temple with our wonderful daughter!    After the temple, we couldn't linger in there very long because Trina has to be at work by 9 AM. It was another great blessing that we did not have heavy traffic going back to her house so she was able to quickly change and get to work on time Trina asked me to help Ziona move her desk from one wall that had the back facing the sliding glass doors so she always had a glare on her computer, ...

I got up when Tom left for work and I got a whole lot of stuff done before Tanya came over. She met me at my house so that we could go to yoga together because my house is on the way to the park where Ginger teaches yoga. It was a beautiful morning! It was still in the 50s, but as the sun came out it warmed up quickly and as we worked hard, we removed sweaters. The birds were singing so beautifully, and the sun was shining and there was a cool breeze. It’s a beautiful place to do yoga. Yoga is hard, but it feels so good! After we got home, Tanya started watching some episodes of shows that she had not seen yet, mostly the Amazing Race. I enjoy watching it again a second time, but I didn’t sit down to watch because I was busy packing and getting things ready to go. Tom surprised me by coming home from work by 11 AM! Usually on Fridays, he doesn’t get home until 12 or 12:30 PM. So we finished packing and were all ready to go by the time Christian got to our house. We hit the road by 12:3...

  Cannon’s birthday is in 4 days and the BOM socks I ordered for him didn’t get here yet. So I asked Tanya if cookies would be good enough to send to him until the socks get here. I also ordered a book that our missionaries highly recommended, but Tanya found out from Cannon that they are not allowed to read anything except scriptures, conference talks and the missionary handbook, Preach My Gospel. So I guess I’ll keep that book for myself. Anyway, Tanya volunteered to come over and help make the cookies. We got 1 batch of 2 different kinds of cookies made and there were enough to fill the shoe box Tanya brought plus plenty to take to Pettus’ when Tom and I go tomorrow. We did manage to watch 3 episodes of Tracker while cookies were baking. Tom had a zoom meeting with his high school reunion committee at 1pm, but when he tried to get on, nobody was there. He finally found that they had posted 2 different times and it really didn’t start until 2pm our time. While he was on t...

  I had arranged with Tanya to go to her house at 7am to help her with décor and paperwork. Somehow, she’s been so busy that she hasn’t had time to get to it for a long time. When her mother-in-law died a few months ago, they brought home a whole lot of Roma’s décor items and furniture, and she hasn’t figured out where to put it all and she wanted help with decisions. So I got up earlier than usual, showered, and was ready to leave at 6:30. Tom surprised me when he volunteered to go help too! We spent from 7 to 11:30am hanging pictures, towel rods, mirrors, and arranging stuff. We also tackled a mountain/two mountains of paperwork that needed organized and filed, and her files moved from one desk to another. We also freed up her auto vacuum, Bruce, so it could get around, which it hasn’t done since they got back from getting all the “new” furniture! She said we were a huge help to her. It was pretty fun doing all those things and fun to spend time with Tanya. She thinks we can ...

  After Tom left for work, I worked on the computer and stuff, but decided before getting on a long video chat with Anne, I needed to take a break from the desk. So I cleaned the apartment some and did things that required standing up and moving. Anne and I had a good visit. I love that technology genius’s invented this platform. We love keeping up on each other’s lives, helping each other through difficult things and sharing ideas and hints. we sure miss Carma, though :(   Tom had a bunch of errands to run after work, but skipped them to come home to take me with him to do them. I still had a very long list of things to do, so I convinced him to go ahead without me. After he got back, our renter at Trina’s house in Madera called to see if we could help her pack boxes. We have offered several times, so we jumped at the chance. Tom had a whole lot of things he needed to do before we left, so we got there a little after 6:30pm and helped pack or repack boxes for a c...

  We wanted to go work out first thing in the morning. It feels good to get moving first thing and is a great way to start the day. However, we didn’t think it out and started our day a little too early. We planned to go shoe shopping for Tom after working out. I had looked up DSW and found they opened at 9am, and he had looked to make sure they had the shoes he wanted. We finished working out at 8:30, so we got some groceries before going to the shoe store. But when we got there at 8:55am, it was still all dark inside. At 9am, after they turned on lights, we went to the door and found that they don’t open till 10am. Waze was the one that told me 9am. So we went back home without shoes. I spent the day being very productive inside, and Tom was very productive outside. It was such a beautiful day that I had the windows and the door open a long time. It was fabulous. But it got into the 80’s outside today, so he came in a few times to cool down and rest. I’ve been looking for...

  I was playing organ in Sacrament meeting today so I wanted to be at the church by 8:45am to be able to warm up and practice on that organ. I wasn’t too worried about the hymns I was playing because they were all ones I’ve been able to play for years. And yet, I made mistakes on all of them. I don’t know what I have to do to be able to play without mistakes, but I’m going to keep working at it.  Part of what keeps me working on playing better is that the sister who leads the music keeps telling me I am her favorite of all the other organists because I follow her. She is always super happy when she sees I’m the one at the organ on Sunday mornings. Sacrament meeting was really good. A couple spoke who gave excellent talks. The husband was from Malaysia/Borneo but has been in the USA since he was a teenager. Anyway, good talks. I got one set of the new hymns printed out and ready to copy, so I went to the library after Sacrament meeting and made 3 copies. We have a really ...

  We didn’t have anything scheduled for today, which is a really nice feeling. Tanya texted that she would be coming over in the morning on the way home from her massage in Madera. It’s always fun to have her come over, so we were looking forward to that. Before she came, we got stuff done on the computers and regular morning stuff. We had lots to talk about with Tanya, and she watched episodes of Elsbeth and Tracker. I love watching them with her, even though I’ve already seen them, because she sees things I didn’t and we can share in the funny parts and plot twists. While she was here, we arranged for us to go to her house in the evening for dinner and to help her rearrange furniture. Fun stuff! I love rearranging furniture! Tom and I got a nap and got other stuff done in preparation for the sabbath tomorrow. I texted Christian that we would be eating at Tanya’s and to meet us here at 4:30 so we could go together, which he did. Tanya and Kaden had made shepherd pie an...

  The stupid thing is that after we went to bed last night, even though I was so tired, I just couldn’t go to sleep! It was close to 1am by the time I went to sleep and still didn’t sleep well. I remembered in the middle of the night that we had planned to go to L.A. this weekend so we can go to the temple, but I’m playing organ on Sunday and can’t be gone. That kept me awake a long time because I wanted to tell Tom. I was partly awake and Tom woke up when it was time to get up. For some reason he can’t explain, the alarm didn’t go off, so it was a miracle he woke up on his own. After he left for work I got dressed and did a bunch of stuff on the computer before leaving for yoga with Ginger. I’m trying to transcribe all the text messages from our phones to the computer. It’s stupid that there is no easy way to send them to the computer, but I tried everything I found from googling it and eventually ended up sending some via email but had to type most of it. I also decided t...

  I was scheduled to help decorate at 9am for the Relief Society activity tonight and Tom planned to go with me so he could clean the chapel while we decorated. We planned to go work out before going there. But last night we were both wide awake for a number of hours in the middle of the night so there was no way we could wake up and get out of the house by 7:30am. Instead, we barely left in time to get to the church at 9am. Tom has spent the last 3 days trying to drain a “lake” in front of a neighbor’s house, running a small pump and checking it every few hours, so we stopped there again on the way to the church. I was afraid that would make us late, but we were fine. It took us 2 hours to decorate. Nobody had a real plan, but a couple of people brought pretty things from home to use and we just kind of collaborated to figure out how to use it all. What I learned is that if you spend more money on pretty decorations for celebrations at home, you can reuse them year after y...

  I spent the day like all the others – doing computer stuff, knitting, crocheting, and cooked some beans for Tom. Oh and I printed a clean set of the new hymns. I'm hoping I can help make sets for our chapel. I've been talking to everyone about getting that done and it feels like if I don't push it, it isn't going to happen. Tom worked in the yard until noon, then went to help Tanya finish her island project, then ran errands. He bought 4 new blueberry bushes and got our new orange tree planted. Later he picked a grocery bag’s worth of grapefruit and lemons to take to our Bishop who loves them. We watched another really good podcast about Emma Smith. Now I feel like I have a pretty good feel for what her life was like and her faithfulness. Talking Scripture is still the one who gave the most depth to section 25. In my personal study, I’ve been going through sections 23, 24, and 26 that none of the podcasts have talked about. They have really good stuff too.

  I was so sound asleep when Tom’s alarm went off at 5:55am that it became part of my dream right then. But then I was wide awake so I got up when he did. I did a whole lot of computer stuff before it was time to chat with Anne. She had an appointment that meant we could “only” chat for 1 ½ hours. I love talking to her and would be happy if we lived next door to each other and could just talk all the time. It was a very nice day today – a little cloudy, but in the mid 60’s and so nice. All the fruit trees are blossoming and the jasmine is begging to get buds. It will smell fabulous soon. I spent the rest of the day knitting and crocheting. It was so fun. I told Tom I’ve looked forward all my life to a time when I could just knit my heart away. He said it is definitely an ‘old lady’ thing to do. I said that’s because before you get old you just don’t have time to sit and knit all day. Right now I’m in the middle of 3 projects – 2 baby blankets, my temperature blanket, some m...

Happy St Patrick’s Day. We don’t celebrate it at all. Nothing green - no green milk, and no green mashed potatoes and no pinching. I had a headache last night. It was gone this morning, but I always feel a little beat up afterwards. We went to work out but I did a very light workout this time. Back at home I took it easy, not feeling like doing much.  On Saturday we ordered a new washer/dryer stacked unit and it was to be delivered today between 3pm and 8pm. We got a call at 1pm saying they were on their way! Score! They got it all installed and the old ones taken out within half-hour. The new one is so beautiful. We like it because the controls for both units are in the middle where we (and future tiny renters) can reach them. Happy days! We have a neighbor a few blocks away who Tom is the ministering brother to, who has a lot of water puddling in front of her house whenever we get a lot of rain. We’ve had enough rain in the past week that she has to drive to her mailbox...

  I wasn’t playing organ in church today, so we had a leisurely morning before going to church at 10am. There were very good talks and Sunday school was good, too. Nice meetings! At home we had lunch, a little nap, and spent the rest of the day watching uplifting stuff – all by ourselves – in our comfortable little apartment. Sweet! The only thing that disrupted our nice, quiet evening was that I started to get an ocular migraine so I rested with my eyes closed for a while and it went away. But later it came back and stayed. I didn’t have a lot of head pain – I just couldn’t bear to open my eyes. I took a migraine pill before going to bed.

  We slept in so well that I had to force myself to get out of bed in time to get ready so we would be at the church at 8am to help with the cleaning. Bed felt so good. Tom and I both did 2 jobs even though there were others who did one job then left. Tom doesn’t believe in leaving until everything is done. Everything. 1 ½ hours later, the ones in charge told us he was “shutting it down”, meaning we had to quit and leave. From there we went to the gym, even though I felt like we had just worked out. Working out in the gym felt good. I found yet another way to make the elliptical harder so that I get a better workout on it before starting the other machines. I think we stopped for some groceries for dinner with the Knudsens and Christian tonight on the way home. I’ve been frustrated with our washer and dryer ever since we moved into the apartment. After we got home from the gym I was looking at w & d online and found one that is one unit and the controls are in the cen...

  This is the pie my friend, Sue Davis, made I was already awake and feeling good when Tom’s alarm went off at 5:55am but I still stayed in bed for a little while after he left. It just felt too good. I wanted to go to the shed to sew, but it was too cold. I thought about bringing my sewing machine, ironing board and everything else I would need inside, but it was raining pretty hard and I really didn’t want to make a lot of trips in it. So I worked on the computer (blog, scriptures, etc., practiced, cleaned and stuff like that) all morning. It was nice being inside a nice warm apartment while it was raining and so cold outside. We decided to go see The Chosen in the theater, but when it started, it was obvious it wasn’t The Chosen. It was another movie from another company, called The Last Supper. The acting was good and the story was accurate, mostly, but it was a much darker feeling than The Chosen. I mentioned to Tom that I wasn’t loving it. Halfway through he asked me if...

When I say missionaries for dinner, that means we hosted them; not that we ate them. Saying it in Spanish would be much clearer We didn’t have anything scheduled today at all. I was sure I had signed up to have the missionaries over for dinner, but usually they send a text confirming before the day comes and I hadn’t heard from them at all. Finally around noon I texted the sisters and they confirmed and said they could come at 5:45pm. Then I texted the Elders and they said they were planning on the same time. Good thing I asked or they might have come and we might have been in pajamas with no food. It was a pajama kind of day. Thunderstorms were predicted and even though we didn’t ever hear any thunder, we sure got a lot of rain. The renter’s car in front was in our moat almost up to its doors. I thought I would go out to the shed and do some sewing. It’s fun to hear the rain on the roof of the shed. But it was so cold out there that I froze just mending one blouse, so I came b...

  First thing this morning I started putting the new doorknob and deadlock on our front door. Tom was about to go outside for yardwork, but knew I would need his help so he joined me. It took us 2 hours to get it on, but now we can enter with just a code and when we have renters, we can give them a code, then cancel it when they leave. Then Tom worked outside and I worked inside until it was time to leave for my hearing aid appointment. The girl who helps me is really good; we have a good rapport. She made adjustments and asked a lot of questions. She asked what problems I was having and I told her 3 things. One was that when I work out, the speakers in the hearing aids cut out occasionally. She said that was a blue tooth problem and she couldn’t fix it. I also told her I was getting overtones or feedback whenever I played the organ and that in a noisy room I could hear my own voice too loud. She was able to make adjustments and solved those problems, then showed me how to chan...

  Tom went to work at 6:30 and I left for a nail appointment at 7am. The lady who does my nails only works 2 days/week, out of her home, but on those 2 days, she works from early to late. It’s nice she can do it at home where her teenage kids can always check in with her. I stopped at Target on the way home to get a power strip to set up a charging station at home. Then I worked on my blog, scriptures, practicing, etc. We had scheduled to go to dinner with some friends, Melanie and Doug Vaughn, at 4pm. I remembered she is a good friend of Tanya’s so I texted her and invited her to join us. We ate at a place called Noah’s Ark. It has a bit wooden ark built on one wall, and all the interior walls are as if we are inside the ark. The food is Mediterranean and was quite good. Just a little too much garlic and onion for us, but it was good food and the conversation was fun. They are a fun couple. We had 2 hours after we left the restaurant before our appointment with the stake...

                                                                      Vivian at 2 weeks! On Mondays we are scheduled with a personal trainer at 9:30am. We tried to cancel these sessions at the beginning of March but were told that it was too late to stop and that they needed 3 week’s notice. But just before we were to leave for the gym, we got a call from the gym manager, Brooks, who said that it was cancelled after all. We had already received one session with the trainer on the new month, so he said that was just going to be a complimentary session – we didn’t have to pay for it. We were greatly relieved because after the garage door broke, that repair made money tight and we couldn’t afford the trainer this month or next to make up for that. We have 3 friends we see occasionally at the gym. That’s pretty fun. ...