Scorching the World

  It’s a sad day to commemorate – 24 years ago that terrorists killed so many people on September 11. Many young adults hadn’t even been born yet, so it didn’t impact them personally, but it changed the world forever. On a happier note, we have peace and joy in our lives in spite of world conditions. I woke up this morning about 2am again. There is just too much on my mind. Tom got up about an hour later. We were so wide awake, we decided we might as well be productive, so we turned on the lights and got busy. We went back to sleep for about an hour around 5. Not a great way to start a very busy day. I have 4 major things I need to get done before Sunday – I have to learn 2 difficult hymns, get the dangerously unbalanced women moved into her new place, get the new hymn booklets printed and ready, and finished the dress I’m making for a friend.   First priority is practicing and the hymn booklets. I had 10 mostly complete sets of the booklet. They were all missing cer...

  My goal today was to get the new hymns booklets ready to take to the Church tonight to print and assemble. I got one master all printed out and triple checked it to be sure it had all the pages and in the right order. Then I started cutting the black plastic folders we had bought to create half-sheet size covers. I could barely stand to take breaks to write my blog and practice the piano. The tricky part was collating the hymns so that I wasn’t printing each page individually, but printing back to back in sets of 4 pages so that the first hymn on the left side was opposite the last hymn of the group on the right side with the correct 2 nd and next-to-last on the opposite sides. I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. After a lot of brain pain, I figured out a way to print them “easily” and was able to make my full set of hymns in 6 sets of 3-4 pages each. I think that will give strength to the pages. I’m trying to copy the way the booklets were put together in Trina...

  This morning Tom was wide awake at 4am and snuck out of bed ever so quietly. I woke up at 5, so before he left for work at 6, we had a good hour to discuss important things. I was really glad I slept until 5! The sky was so pretty before the sun came up! While it was cool outside, I replanted some flowers. I had Tom give me a flower pot to be outside our studio door and I didn’t like all the flowers that were in it. I pulled and tossed some and put in some from other pots he had around. I didn’t think he would miss the ones I took but he did. It’s hard to sneak anything by him in his yard! I cleaned a little bit inside and got ready to zoom. Anne and I had a good chat. I’m so glad we do that every week and am so grateful for modern technology that makes it possible! Tom got home at 9:30am while Anne and I were still chatting. He had a full day planned so he was happy to be home before it got hot outside. I worked on Cai’s baby Halloween costume. All I had to do was create...

  I was awake from 2 to 5 this morning. There is too much on my mind to get my brain to stop thinking. I got up at 6m very grateful that naps were invented! Tom wanted to help clean the temple before going to pickleball, so he left early enough for that, wearing his white cleaning clothes. But at the same time, Tanya had asked Tom to be on call from Cannon in case he needed a ride from the tire repair place to take him to pickleball. Tom hadn’t heard from Cannon, so just before going into the temple, he decided to call Cannon, and yes, he needed a ride. the temple is on the far west side of Fresno, and Cannon is on the far east side of Fresno. It's almost 20 miles but seems like much more. Tom went to the tire place on Shaw but couldn’t see Cannon, so he called him again and found out C was at the tire place on Herndon. Tom went there, picked Cannon up and they were 10 minutes late for pickleball, which is next to the temple. In other words, Tom spent nearly an hour driving...

  The Sabbath and heading home 9/7 Good thing Tom and I always wake up before everyone else so we could get dressed and out of the bathroom before anyone else needed it. As soon as we were out, Christian went in to take a shower and was still in there when we left for church. We took Trina with us and everyone else came later in two more cars. There was the “on-time” car, the “just a little late” car, and the “I missed the sacrament” car. Sacrament meeting was mostly good, with a few really good testimonies, but a couple of “doctrine of men, mingled with scriptures” testimonies. Trina and I were watching the Bishop’s face and reactions. He held a blank stare really well. Sunday School class gave a lesson from D&C 89 – the lesson from 3 weeks ago. I don’t know why so many teachers don’t understand which lesson goes which Sunday when it is listed in lessons with the actual dates they go to, but it was still a pretty good lesson with lots of participation. We just sort o...

As soon as we saw Trina in the morning i asked how it went with Trevor in the emergency room. She said he has a hairline fracture on the front of his elbow and applied a splint with instructions to go to his regular doctor on Monday to get it assessed more and treatment completed.. She had to leave for work at the same time that Ziona needed taken to the place where her little concert was so I took Ziona and dropped her off, then went to find Tom. Tom had left before finishing breakfast to play pickleball across the street at the courts at the library, so after I dropped Ziona off, i went there to see if he wanted to go see Ziona play, which he did. He just happened to be finishing up when I got there. At the elementary school we found a place to sit in the shade. we were more than half hour early but I really wanted to be sure to find a place in the shade. it was too hot in the sun! Ziona played the glockenspiel, the shaker and the snare drum and in one song she actually had a 11 meas...

Tom hoped to be home from work by noon so we could leave by 12:30, but as the morning wore on, it was obvious he wouldn't make that time. He texted me that we could plan to leave by 1:30 and said to tell Christian to come over at that time. While he was gone, I worked on a lot of things. I tried to stay focused and finish one job before starting the next, but I was doing my morning routine, packing, doing a little cleaning, practicing, and also managed to fit in some sewing. I kept jumping from one thing to another as things occurred to me that I didn’t want do before I forgot. The most fun part was sewing. A sister in my ward asked me to make a dress. She bought the fabric and pattern about a month ago. Then she was supposed to give me a sample dress so I could be sure of the sizing. She just gave me that this week and this was the first time I had to look at it. I got it cut out and the bodice started. Super fun. I love to sew, but I sure am nervous that it will be too small and ...

I woke up at 4am. ☹ Tanya has a lot of projects that she likes my help with. I love that she wants me to be with her - mostly I watch, assist, and cheer her on. Sometimes I make good suggestions that she appreciates. But it does seem silly that her boys are sitting around playing games on phones or computers while we are so busy. We could sure use their help, in my opinion. I coulda swore I already wrote this and posted it, but I don’t see it, so I’m doing it again. I left for Tanya’s at 9am. Tom was going to do some yard work, then go to help the dangerously unbalanced woman at Christian’s house. She has a ton of boxes that need put in storage. Tom wants them out of the living room. But at the same time we are looking for a place for her to rent and we found one that we could go see at 5pm. He didn’t want to make 2 trips to Madera, so he postponed moving boxes for next week. I helped Tanya with several jobs and she was glad for what we got done. I got home about noon and found him sti...

Tom was already awake and on the couch when I woke up at 4. We discussed what we need to do today, and it’s a lot! First I went over to Tanya’s to help her with her list of projects at 9am. We were able to mostly complete 3 of them, but she keeps adding things because stuff always comes up. Like she needs to put Cannon’s suitcases away that he used on his mission, but to do that, she needs to organize the garage better. Garage organizing is already on the list, but not until October. There’s no way we can be in the garage in the summer. Of course, she can’t wait until October to put Cannon’s suitcases away. We were going to switch out the light fixtures in the boys’ rooms, but when I opened the light fixture, it was the wrong kind. She was sad and frustrated about that, but that project has to be postponed until she buys the right fixtures. Our main project for today was finishing her board and batten project in her bathroom. I’m not sure what the main purpose of that décor ide...

I slept really good last night! First time in quite a few days, I felt muy good when we got up. Tom left for work at 6am and I got on my morning routine. It was cloudy and I heard thunder, so I asked Alexa what the weather was going to be today. It said partly cloudy and a high of 105. I kept seeing lightening and hearing thunder, then it was raining outside, so I asked Alexa again. It had a different report, saying there would be thunder showers. So smart. By the time Alexa reported the rain, it was pretty much over. I printed the labels to go on the new hymn booklets I’m putting together. It’s so exciting to finally have those for our building! Nora Guillen had bought the plastic folders to put the music in but she is moving to Texas tomorrow, so I needed to get them from her. Fortunately, she lives in the new housing area 7 minutes from our house, so yesterday Tom and I drove over there and picked them up. So today I printed out all the labels and put them on the folders. I wa...

  It’s September! For no good reason I couldn’t go to sleep last night. I held still until Tom was asleep, then went to the couch and listened to several conference talks before I fell asleep. I finally went back to bed around 2:30am. Some time after that, I started having nightmares and woke up with a headache. I took a Tylenol pm and went back to bed and back to sleep. I woke up about 6:30am. It’s been rocky sleeping lately. Today was a holiday, so we didn’t have to go do anything. I didn’t feel great most of the day, but did what I could. Tom pickled from 9-11am. I got a nail appointment for 10:45 and when I got home Tom was on the phone with our “dangerously unbalanced” renter at Christian’s house. She was determined not to move into the new room-for-rent that we found her. She texted and called several times during the day saying why she couldn’t live there and that she would be so upset and angry there. She said she found a better place that didn’t require a credit chec...