Scorching the World

 Sunday 

 My mind was still on the trip so much that it was hard to mentally get ready for our Super Saturday activity in Relief Society. But I had to leave by 7:45am to help set up, so I had to force myself to get focused. Tom went outside at first light to work in the yard. I got things ready to go, was just a little late, and lots of sisters were already there preparing and setting up. I had arranged for the young men to set up all our tables and chairs, and had made sure that neither ward in our building had any activities between Wednesday and today. But somebody was in the cultural hall on Friday night to play basketball and had taken down all the chairs and tables then put them back up afterwards, just not as we they were supposed to be. So first thing we had to re-arrange them how we wanted them. Then  I helped cover each of the craft tables with paper. I was in charge of the tables to paint designs on totes. Audrey had purchased and prepared all the supplies so I just ha...

  After Tom left for work I did my usual morning routine then focused on last minute things having to do with our trip on Monday. It’s so exciting I can hardly stand it. It was a good thing I put a reminder when to leave for my nail appointment or I would have missed it because I was so focused on what I was doing. In the salon they have all the televisions tuned to a channel that shows a young woman preparing, cooking, serving. and eating Vietnamese food in the old style, meaning she is out in the countryside. She cooks on a fire, cuts down bamboo to cook in and on, gets water from a stream, etc. It looks pretty zen, but most of the time I have no idea what the food is or what she is making. I have a new favorite person to do my nails. She is a little older than most of the girls who work there. Her name is  Thu, pronounced to. Unlike most Vietnamese people who do nails, she speaks pretty good English and is friendly, so we talk.. She was fascinated that Tom and I are g...

  I liked being 80. It’s very respectable number for an age! 81 is ok, but not as cool as being an octogenarian. I got lots of wonderful birthday wishes today from lots of wonderful people and lots of different sources. Not to minimize any of them, but the coolest message was from Ravenna who said  “You've got a lot of power-  9²  3 ⁴   1.73205080756887729 ⁸ I laughed a long time! I also had to have Cannon explain it to me fully. Sometimes I think Venna’s brain is on another level completely! she said she didn't want to call me a square. Tom and I scheduled lunch with Tanya and Cannon, a movie and a gym session for today. Tanya had a meeting later, so we met for lunch at a very fancy place at 12:30. I was disappointed in almost everything I had but Tom’s pork chops were delicious- the best I've ever tasted. We had beignets for dessert, and they were yummy. Tom pulled into a church parking lot for a little nap before we went to see The Senior. It was ...

  Today is my birthday eve! It’s a big deal to me because I think after turning 80 or even 70 each year you successfully complete without dying is a major accomplishment! Last night disaster struck. I’m trying to make a purse but the layers are so thick that I broke a couple of needles before the machine went out of alignment and I was unable to finish the purse. I hoped last night that after my Bernina sat overnight, it might reconsider and decide to work again,   but this morning the needle wouldn’t go down. So sad! So when Tom went to pickleball, I went to the sewing machine repair store. It’s going to cost $300 to do a complete service on it. I asked if they had less than a whole complete service, and the suggested considering the age of the machine, I talk to one of the salespeople about a new machine. I decided $300 is way better than the price of a new one. And it won’t be done for a couple of weeks so I guess I’m done sewing my pre-trip projects. ☹ I was having s...

  I have a purse pattern that I’m pretty excited about and hoped and planned to spend the day sewing so I could get it done before we head to Chile on Monday. But it was not to be. I got quite a bit of sewing on it before getting on Zoom with Anne, but there are things that are confusing in the pattern so I spent quite a bit of time puzzling over them. I still didn’t have them figured out before Anne and I started chatting. It just didn’t make sense. I discussed it with Anne and sent her the pattern to see if she could figure it out. She was pretty busy, though, and going to FanEx tomorrow, so I didn’t wait to hear from her. I was working on it when Tom got home from work. We had some lunch and a nap then he suggested we go paint Ruth Ann’s bedrooms. Ruth Ann is our friend who we helped move to Utah. She is selling her house here and she is afraid it won’t sell with some of the walls in 2 of the bedrooms looking really bad. On Sunday Tom volunteered to go paint them. He offer...

I had places to go and things to do while Tom played pickleball. One of them was supposed to be going to the gym, but it is hard to talk myself into it when Tom isn’t with me. I had a package of pillowcases to mail to someone who lives near Sacramento. The deal was I find out how much shipping would cost and she would send me the money on Venmo. That works well because it is instant and almost completely non-retrievable. I did my part, then texted her the total and waited. And waited. I actually only waited about 5 minutes, then I went to do my other errand. I went to Hobby Lobby to get supplies to make a new purse. I’ve made 4 or 5 already, but I found what I think will be the perfect pattern and worth buying fabric instead of using scraps. I had fun in that store. I sure could spend a lot of money there. Then I got a text from the lady buying the pillowcases. She hadn’t answered because she was in a doctor’s office. But she sent the money, so I went back to the post office and ...

  We needed to be at the Church by 9:30 for the choir to run through our number before Sacrament meeting, so we left a little after 9am. That gave us a long morning to get ready.  I might have forgotten to go then, but when we were cleaning the church yesterday, one brother from choir said, “see you at 9:30 tomorrow!” I asked Tom, “why will we see him at 9:30?” It would have been awful if I had forgotten the choir warm-up/last run through before Church! So first thing in the morning I texted all my choir people to remind them to be at the church by 9:30am. Most of them got there for the run-through, and it sounded really good so we only went through it once. Sacrament meeting was quite good. Instead of a high council speaker, we had the Stake Relief Society president speak. We thought that was pretty cool. Tom said it was a wonderful talk but I’m afraid I was distracted   with preparing for choir practice and what I needed to do first. I need to learn to prepare mor...

  I had actually signed up to help clean the church today, so I went with Tom instead of him going alone without signing up. I helped clean up the chapel a little then went into the library to start making copies of the new hymns.  (We borrowed library keys on the way to the church) I gathered all of the booklets from the chapel. I made a few individual copies to make sure they were copying correctly, then made a batch of 10. The copy machine messed up a couple of times, and as I folded them found one sheet in each copy where the print was way over too far on the left side. I had to take those pages out of each set. It’s confusing to fold, punch, and organize them into the binders in the library, so after less than 2 hours I was ready to get out of there. We had decided to go see Downton Abby at 12:30 and weren’t ready for lunch yet, so we went back home and got a half hour nap and bot back in time for the movie. I LOVED IT SO MUCH! I hate that it is ending. The actors...

  I woke up about midnight and listened to conference talks until about 2am, then went back to bed. Conference talks are really good! I wish I could memorize all the things I think are important from them. Anyway, I was very sound asleep when Tom got up to go to work at 6am, but couldn’t go back to sleep after he left. Good thing for afternoon naps. I sewed while he was gone. It was lots of fun. I made a wallet and watched tv while I did it. It turned out ok, but I want to try again. We did get a really good nap then spent the rest of the day looking up and booking hotels and car rentals. This trip to Chile is going to be fun because it is all pretty much just free play time. At night we watched a movie (Hollis Wood Pictures) I had seen before, but Tom hadn’t. It was good and he stayed awake through the whole thing! Thought for the day:  While we were in the temple Tuesday, it occurred to me more obviously than I’ve ever thought about, that the reason for commandments,...

  Today is Chile Independence Day! We wish we were there for all the festivities, but we’ll be there soon! Tom did some yard work at first sunlight. Wednesday is a day he tries to get a lot of pruning/weeding and yard clean up done because the neighborhood dumpsters get emptied on Thursday mornings. So he filled a garbage can and dumped it into a friend’s dumpster that was still empty. Then he went to Christian’s house to finish cleaning up the back yard. The dangerously unbalanced ex-renter there had left a some empty boxes and had mail to pick up. She told Christian that she would be by to pick all that   up as soon as she could find a ride. Nobody wanted her to go there again, so Tom volunteered to take that stuff to her new place of abode "on his way" home. When he got there, she yelled at him and slammed the door on him. He left the stuff in the hall and walked away. I think he was really bothered by her reaction to seeing him because he kept mentioning it the re...

  Happy birthday to Laelle yesterday and Ziona today! Tom went to play pickleball and I stayed home and sewed. I finished the dress for a friend but she didn’t feel well enough today to come get it. I sure hope she likes it. Then I started sewing for fun. I love to sew. No idea what I’m going to do with these things, but it’s fun. At some point, I’ll have some fun gifts to give people. I fought some more with my printer. My computer says there is no driver for it. I’ve tried reinstalling a printer, but it doesn’t work. I’m giving up. Tom really hoped to get h is computer (my old computer) back from the Geek Squad today. He has Synergy work he can only do on the computer so he needs it back. Our front door lock quit working. Tom took it apart earlier and replaced the battery, but that didn’t fix it. He looked closely and found some wires were broken – it’s a keyless entry – so he called neighbors to find someone with a soldering gun. Then he took it to one and got it fix...

I slept well again except that Tom woke up about 4am again and got up for about an hour. That always wakes me up, but I managed to go back to sleep quickly and easily. After he left for work I did my morning routine, then took a shower, Then before getting on zoom with Anne I worked on getting my printer to work again. My computer hasn’t been recognizing the printer – it can’t find the driver, it holds print jobs and won’t print or cancel them, etc. I’ve tried removing the printer and reinstalling it, but the computer doesn’t recognize that there is a printer sitting right next to it. It’s been giving me problems for several days. When the missionaries were here I was trying to print a paper for them, and it wasn’t working so they looked at it and got the document to print as a pdf, but nothing else would print. Then this morning I needed to print name to take to the temple tonight. I went through all the same things of trying to reinstall it, etc., and it finally printed the 2 names...

  I slept very well even though I didn’t think I was tired enough when Tom was ready for bed last night. So nice to wake up feeling better! I took care of my morning routine, then focused on cleaning the house to have missionaries over for dinner. I’ve had 4 major projects happening all over our little studio and it looks like it! The hardest part is moving all my sewing out of sight.   I finished the dress I have been making, but I think the back neck is going to be too big, so I want to take that part apart and redo it before I give it to Mary Flores. But also, all the music binders and copies that need folded, punched, and put in the covers were all over the place so I had to find places to hide all that. Tom went to pickleball 9-11, then ran some errands on the way home I could hardly wait for him to get home to take a nap. It was going on 2pm before we got to take a nap but it sure felt good! We started dinner at 3:30 to feed the elders at 5. When I signed up, t...

  This month is almost half over! The whole past week was extremely hard – very busy and stressful, so I was totally ready for a day of rest. Three of the things that were causing me the most stress ended today, with great relief. The first was getting the dangerously unbalanced woman into a house, which we finished last night. It left me so very tired but grateful it’s done. The 2 nd   was having the new hymn booklets finished and in the chapel. We only got about 50 done, but we had low attendance in Sacrament meeting this week, so that worked out fine. I was so glad we got some done, but I’m frustrated that many of them aren’t good copies. I secretly plan to replace the really bad ones a little at a time as new hymns come out. The 3rd big one for today was playing difficult hymns on the organ. I practiced like crazy all week – usually 2-3 times throughout the day instead of just once. When we got home last night so very tired, I ran through them again and when I g...

  I wanted to be at the Church by 8am when people go to clean and the building is unlocked to finish making copies of the new hymnbook, but we still needed the key to the library. Tom made arrangements to pick that up from Brent Thompson on the way to the church. We spent from about 8am to 1:30 working on the booklets. I did the copies and folded them and Tom punched holes. Before he started, he took the load in the truck to Susan’s new place and unloaded it. Then he went to Best Buy where I thought I had an appointment to get his dead computer stuff transferred to my laptop. I had the time wrong. The appointment was for 12:20, not 10:20, but they took him in anyway. He had to call me to explain to the techie what needed done. I was glad he did that because they would have wiped my laptop clean before installing his stuff on it. I would have lost everything I have on my laptop! I had him pick up some whiteout tape before coming back to the church. By the time he got here, the...

Not surprisingly, I got a headache in the night. Actually towards the end of the day yesterday, I started feeling unwell, but didn’t realize it was the beginning of a headache. When I woke up in the night with pain, it took me a little while to realize I could take a pain pill, which I did and eventually went back to sleep. When Tom left for work at 6, I stayed asleep until about 7am. That felt good. Later, when I was trying to be productive without being able to open my eyes very wide, I took another pain pill and the pain eased off enough to get things done and eventually went away. I had deadlines that I couldn’t ignore today. In the night I started thinking about what a monumental job it was going to be to print and fold 78 copies of 41 pages, then punch holes in them, then assemble them into the covers and add 2 binder rings to each. I started thinking about how and who I could recruit to help get that done. I will definitely need help with all that. I got the Geek Squad w...

  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...