Scorching the World

  For the first time since I got my tooth pulled, I slept really well last night. I even slept through Tom waking up in the night with a coughing fit. I slept until almost 6:30 am! Nice! I needed to make copies for choir, so we went a little earlier than how early I needed to go to warm up on the organ. It was hard to find someone who had a key to the library and when Tom finally did, the copy machine kept jamming up, so I gave up and went back to playing prelude. During the 2 nd hour, they had a special lesson on the “new garments”. I was sad to miss most of it but I had to get my copies made. I was so grateful that Tom helped me organize the copies and punch the holes. We caught the tail end of the lesson, which sounded like it was really good. No discussion, but a good presentation. The whole concept that the garments are being adjusted, and people think that it’s an opportunity to wear different styles of clothes really bothers me. I got set up for choir and tried ...

I totally forgot yesterday until the day was over that it was Lynn’s birthday. Happy birthday big brother! Tom left at 7:30 to join our community in a little clean up of Rolling Hills. He said about 30 people showed up. They cut, mowed, and pulled ugly, dead weeds along some of the roads. It is so nice that people are willing to work together to do that. He came home way overheated and needing to cool down. He turned the air conditioning down and turned the fan on. He did that each time he went outside to do a little catch-up on the yard. It was in the high 90’s, as it has been all week. I got to talk to Anne a little in the morning, but we didn’t have time to really get into any of the issues she has going on. The worst of them is that her air conditioning went out and it is hot! That’s manageable in the day time, but really hard to sleep through! Tom and I went to the gym in the morning. It felt really good to work out again, but I didn’t have much endurance, maybe still from...

  I woke up feeling much better, just tired. I focus so hard on not damaging my hole in my mouth during the night, that I can’t sleep relaxed. I have spent some of every night on the couch, trying to sleep in a semi-sitting-up position. But that’s fine. It’s only temporary. Tom left for work about 6am. Anne and I got on the computers to chat at 8:30am. That was fun. I wish we could talk longer; we never seem to have enough time. Tanya was supposed to come over today but said she didn’t feel well and stayed home. I worked on my temperature cross stitch project most of the day. I only have 8 rows left to do so now I can hardly stand to leave it alone. I also practiced the piano and worked on the computer. My problem is that every fun thing I have to do requires sitting. I need some vertical hobbies! In the afternoon, Tom picked some boysenberries and suggested I make a pie. I told him I would need triple what he picked, so he went back out and picked more.    I’m ...

  Last night I didn’t sleep well again just because I’m afraid of messing up my hole where my tooth used to be. I’m trying to sleep with my jaw relaxed and that isn’t easy for me. So for the 2 nd night, I spent much of the night trying to sleep on my back so I wouldn’t put pressure on the right side of my mouth where I usually sleep. I know the hole is healing well, so hopefully there won’t be too many more nights of that. But I did feel quite a bit better this morning, except for a slight headache. Actually it wasn’t so slight, so I took a pill and was able to get a short nap. I spent almost the whole day on the couch watching movies and working on my cross-stitch project. I am now officially half done! It was hot outside again today. I think it got up to 99 degrees, so Tom spent most of the day in the house, too. He went out in the morning and picked apricots and boysenberries and in the evening went to play pickleball. I miss eating exotic pastries and hiking up and dow...

  I have one tooth where a cavity grew under the crown. There isn’t enough good tooth left to fix/fill the cavity and replace the crown, so they had to pull it and later I will get a bridge. Because I’ve had a cold, I was worried I might still be sick today, but I woke up feeling mostly all better. We decided to go to the gym on the way to the dentist. We need to get this back into our schedule, but I really needed to get my nails done before getting a tooth pulled and had another errand to run, so once again, we skipped the gym. Tom left his truck with a repair guy when we left for Europe. He was supposed to fix it then drop it off at our house when it was done. But because we were gone, he didn’t work on it at all, so now Tom has no car to drive while the guy works on it. Tom decided to drive me to the dentist thinking I might not feel like driving home afterwards, so that meant he had to sit and wait while I got my nails done and then go with me for the other errand, then ...

I had hoped again to sleep in and again I woke up at 5am. Tom had been awake for a while in the night, so he slept longer. I tried to hold still so he could get the sleep he needed. It is either jetlag or just a new bad habit of taking too many naps in the day, then not being able to sleep at night, which brings the need for daytime naps. Gotta fix that. Soon. Or maybe it’s because he is still getting over the cold/cough/yuckiness and exhausting from Covid last week. I still didn’t feel great in the night but I felt much better when I woke up this morning. There is a little lingering congestion, but I feel alive again! Anyway, that was all still early morning because Tom needed to get up in time to leave for work at 6am. I got a lot done on the computer in the morning before Anne and I sat down to chat. We haven’t done zoom since May 20, so we were way behind and had a good time catching up plus discussing other fun things. I always hate to say goodbye, but Anne has places to go an...

I am struggling with a cold so I really hoped to sleep in and spend the day relaxing and recuperating. Well I woke up at 5, did 3 loads of laundry, balanced my bank accounts, got my blog up to date, and prepared things for choir. (I’m excited about leading the choir and really hope I can get some momentum going to encourage people to join.) Tom looked around the yard and was a little dismayed at how out of control it is. He picked some tomatoes, blackberries, cherry plums, trimmed some flowers, then it was time to go to pickleball. He plays 3 times/week now and loves it. I was happy to not put on makeup for the first time in a month and go nowhere. In spite of all I got accomplished, I didn’t do everything that needed to be done, and I was able to rest most of the day. (Note: When I was on the computer, I realized that if you don’t type for a month, your typing gets really rusty and clumsy. The same is even more true for playing the piano! It’s gonna take some work to remember how ...

  Only 5 days short of being gone a full month, we finally left for home this morning. We slept pretty good at Olivia’s house, although I’m clearly coming down with a head cold. I was very stuffy, with a lot of facial-sinus pain all night. I was glad to get up so it would clear up some. I think all the Sprite I drank to ease the stomach pain from eating the cherries caused it. The hardest part of traveling at our age is how much it messes up your system. The best remedy is to get home and get  back on a normal, regular schedule. It’s also hard to stay healthy while traveling because it seems that whenever I needed certain vitamins or whatever, it was either in the car or lost to me. Being home, I can take what I need to get better, take naps when needed, and generally relax and heal. I love traveling, but it’s hard to not be in a normal routine for an extended period of time. So we were up, awake, dressed, out of Olivia’s house, and on the road by 6am. Going home is the most...

This was Tom's favorite kind of day!!! I got a headache last night when we were watching movies on Matt’s big screen. I clearly need glasses for distance. By the time we went to bed, my head was really hurting, but my medication was in the car and I did not want to go outside and I didn’t want to make Tom go outside, so I just hoped it would go away.  It got worse and worse in the night until I couldn’t sleep anymore, probably around two in the morning I woke up and so Tom woke up. He volunteered to go out and search the car in the dark to find my headache pills. He was successful and I was so grateful that he was willing to do that when there was no way I would have and I was the one with a headache! It didn’t take very long to go back to sleep after I took a pill and slept well the rest of the night. When I woke up about 6 AM, Tom was missing. I looked around, but couldn’t see him anywhere so I went ahead and took a shower and started getting ready for the day . Finally, he...

We needed to leave by 8:30 and woke up at 6am so we had plenty of time to pack it up and say our goodbyes before getting out of town. I am pretty sure we didn’t forget anything this time.  Tom is on the high school reunion committee, so he had to help set up this morning at 10am. I really wanted to take that time to get my nails done since they’ve been ignored for nearly a month, but he has helped me set up and take down for activities I was in charge of countless times over the years so I really felt I owed him big time. Plenty of people showed up to help but most of the men just stood around and talked to each other. They had no clue what to do. One time I heard one of them say he sure didn’t know what to do, so I gave two of them bowls of decorations that needed to be put on the tables. They were happy to help and just needed direction. Oddly, when they finished that little chore, they didn’t come back to see what to do next. About 11 AM we were close to done, but Tom s...

We both slept very well last night and woke up at around 6, which is way better than 2:30am! A good night's sleep is a wonderful thing.  Tom felt so much better this morning that he wanted to go on a walk, so we headed up the hill. We love going uphill! But we only walked about 15 minutes when his foot started to hurt so we turned around and walked the 15 minutes back. It was a short walk, but it still felt good and it was so nice to have Tom healthy enough to want to be outside. I had a project I wanted help with. I’ve lost my digital copy of our life stories but Becky had paper copies so I wanted to scan all of the pages of both books so that I can get them back in my computer. I talked to Becky about it and she suggested taking them to the family history center where they have a big printer that can scan all of the pages really fast, even two-sided pages. so we went there and they were able to scan them within minutes. It was awesome! Then the man told me an app I could get on m...

We slept really good last night, but I woke up at 2:30am and couldn’t go back to sleep despite my best efforts. Tom slept until about 11am, then slept most of the day. He was feeling better, but still lightheaded and slightly dizzy.  I repacked again and put all the things we no longer need into the trunk of the car and I did 2 loads of wash. It is such happiness to be able to wash and dry clothes in real machines. Our whole trip, every time we showered, we washed our underwear in the shower and hung them all over the hotel room. That’s way better than keeping stinky laundry in the suitcase. But a real washing machine and clothes dryer is a blessing we normally take for granted.  Amy came over first thing in the morning with her baby and spent the whole day here. The baby is the center of attention all day long and is just too cute. She is a super smart little girl. She’s 15 months old now.  She was almost asleep when her daddy called Amy on the phone. Megan heard his voi...

We had to get up by 3:30am to be outside for the uber at 4am. I ordered the Uber last night and was really glad I figured out how to do it in advance! 3:30 is an awful hour to wake up a dm I was so worried about hearing the alarm that I hardly slept. We set alarms on both our phones just in case.  I didn’t hear Tom’s alarm so he woke me up. I figure I slept maybe 5 hours.  We finished packing and dressed quickly and I was receiving messages that the driver would be there in a few minutes when we went down the elevator. He arrived right on time and we got to the airport right on time, found where to go and walked and walked and walked to our boarding area. It was painful to be awake and trying to function.  Anyway, the first part of the trip was uneventful. They kept it quiet and dark so people who wanted to could sleep. We tried.  Amsterdam looks really green with lots of water.  We landed in Amsterdam at 8:30am, after a 2 1/2 hr flight. Our connecting flight wa...