Scorching the World

  We’ve been both looking forward to and dreading this day for 3 weeks. It was December 10 when Tom gagged and choked and couldn’t swallow anything and went to the hospital. The procedure they did on him then took him out for several days, needing to rest and recuperate. The surgery today was to fix that problem. I was pretty sure it would be more trauma to him than the first because they were actually doing something to his throat instead of just taking food out. The surgery was scheduled for 11am, but they changed it last night to 11:30. First thing in the morning he went to get the oil changed on my car. While he was gone I got to chat with Anne. There is so much going on in both our lives, but especially in hers that there was a lot to talk about. When Tom walked in, he had just missed a call from Kaiser. When he called them back, they asked him to come in immediately. So Anne and I said goodbye without finishing our conversations, we grabbed our stuff and took off. I too...

I wanted to help Trina finish the invoicing before we left for home. There is no point in leaving first thing in the morning anyway, because the traffic is horrific. So I went with Trina to the office and Tom went to play pickleball. There are courts in a park very near where Trina used to live and LOTS of people go there to play. He loved it so much he went twice while I was working with Trina. We spent all morning and part of the afternoon entering invoices. Trina helped when she could, but every time people come into the office, she has to quit and go help Chris. After we finished entering invoices, she had some other projects like preparing receipts to give p0eople when they pay cash, and filing two huge stacks of invoices and check stubs. We worked until 5pm. I hadn’t planned to stay that long, but clearly Trina needs help. She and I went back to their house at 5pm and left Chris to close the office at 6. Tom had come from pickleball and was taking a nap in the back room. We...

Church starts at 9am so it is always tricky getting the teenagers up and dressed in time, but the first car with Trina, Tom, Trevor, Kaden and me. Chris brought the rest when he came. They got there about 5 minutes after the meeting started. Kaden hadn’t taken any Sunday clothes to the Pettus’ house so Trina scrambled to find him some of Trevor’s clothes that fit. He sure looked good in Trevor’s blue shirt! Sacrament meeting was good. A whole lot of young women were out of town, so the two that were in town joined Relief Society meeting. Trina serves in YW so for the first time in her ward, I didn’t have to go to Relief Society alone. The meetings were good. She has a cool ward. It was a low-key afternoon and evening. We watched a couple of Come Follow Me videos and played more games. Trina has Judgy Fish which we played a long time. Games are way more fun when there are plenty of fun people to play with. I don’t know what else I can say about Sunday except it was relaxing an...

  Happy birthday to my big sister!!! She has always been my example! Tom and I woke up before anyone. I got up, got dressed, and started putting on make-up when suddenly Tom knocked on the bathroom door and said it was time to go. Spencer needed taken to the Long Beach airport and Tom and I wanted to go with Trina. Sad to have him leave but it was fun while he was here. He had a good time visiting friends and a certain girl in the week he was at Trina’s. Then we went back to Trina’s house to pick up Trevor and go help clean the church building. She said it wasn’t her turn but hardly anyone signed up so she decided to help. She certainly takes after her dad! Trevor likes to go with her and help, which is so nice. She always buys him breakfast as a reward afterwards. Tom and I cleaned the chapel. Her ward meets in the stake center, so it is a really big building. Tom left after half hour to go play pickleball. Trina and Trevor cleaned for a very long time so we were there more than a...

  We wanted to leave by 7am and were ready to go but at 7:20 when we texted then called Christian if he was close, he said he was on his way but really meant that the call woke him up ad he would hurry over. I had told Kaden we would pick him up at his house, but when we knew Christian would be late, I told Tanya to please have Kaden drive over to save us some time.  Kaden and Christian got here at the same time and we took off by 8am. The trip was nice and smooth without any slowdowns or major traffic. We got to Trina’s work at 12:30pm but their office was closed. She told me that but I didn’t see her text before we went there. So when we got to their house, the whole family was there, including Ravenna and Spencer. So fun for them to have the whole family together! We hung out and played games for quite a few hours before Trina made some dinner. After dinner we played Swoop, our new Monopoly card game, and solitaire. For some reason I suggested the game would be better ...

  It just didn’t “feel” like Christmas to me but I pretended until it became a reality. Tom slept through the night pretty much. He began coughing about 5am and was up for a while and when he went back to bed I was ready to get up. I was a bit dizzy for a while after getting up so after we were dressed for the day, it felt really good to lie back down and we took a little nap. We opened our own present, which was fun. We had agreed not to get each other gifts but instead get one thing for both of us, but neither of us stuck to that, which is a little funny. We finally left for Tanya’s about 12:30. We opened each other’s gifts, then Tanya and Todd finished getting dinner ready. We had almost finished eating their wonderful mean of turkey, mashed spuds, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and Hawaiian rolls when Ryan and Anitta arrived. They ate and then we went into the living room so we could exchange gifts with them. That was fun, too. They brought fun stuff and they were happy wi...

  Tom got up with coughing and drank some cough syrup, then came back to bed about 5:30am. I was wide awake then and tried to get up but Tom was cuddling so nice, it took me half hour to get out of bed. As soon as I got up, the power went off. It was really dark in the room. It was still dark outside, so that didn’t help. I realized we don’t have any emergency candles in our room; just one scented candle and it didn’t light up much. We decided since there was nothing we could do at home we might as well go work out. It was tricky putting makeup on and doing my hair with only a flashlight, but we went. It had rained really hard all night so there was a lot of flooding. We have a nice lake in front of the house with the renter’s car in the middle of it. I hope she doesn’t have to go anywhere for a few days. We had a good workout. We went in separate cars so Tom could go pickle afterwards. I decided to buy some sandbags on the   way home. When I got home I put them in f...

                                                                                    It is Christmas Eve Eve, or the Eve of Christmas Eve, or as Tom puts it, Christmas Adam. Such excitement! Tom is still coughing whenever the cough syrup wears off. I felt good, though and finally had energy to do something. While Tom was at work I did my usual stuff. After he got back and we had lunch and a nap, I decided to make goodie plate to take to his ministering families. He has 12 families/households. I decided to make brownies, cupcakes, and cookies. The recipe I found for the cake was apple cider donut cake and the cookies were brown sugar pecan cookies. Delicious. It all turned out good, but it took many hours to make and back all that. We finally left to go deliver the plates of goodi...

  His cough is out of control. This morning he woke up after sleeping very well with almost no coughing, but as soon as he woke up he started to cough again. We usually don’t use cough suppressants because we believe the cough is the body’s decongestant and cough medicine suppresses the urge to cough but doesn’t get rid of the congestion. So he takes vitamin C and does most of the other things that we do for coughs, including squizzelguzzelruderpokeberry. He felt good enough to go play pickleball first thing in the morning, Actually, we woke up early enough to clean the house – sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, washing dishes, etc., etc before he left. While he was gone I did my morning routine, including practicing. I have been assigned If You Could Hie to Kolob and it is HARD for me. I decided to re-write it in Noteflight to put the higher and lower notes on the hand that will play them. Hopefully that will help me learn to play it. I’ll give it a week before asking to have the hy...

  Tom still did not feel good all day yesterday and had a rough night with all the coughing and the exhaustion that brings, but he was determined to not miss Sacrament Meeting. I was playing the organ plus our choir had a warmup at 9:30, so I wanted to be there by 8:30am. He always finds plenty of things to keep himself busy while I practice and warm up. This morning when I turned on the organ and pushed a preset button, it started playing notes from the pedal stops. There was no way to stop them, so I couldn’t use the presets. On our new organ I haven’t figured out other settings because the presets are good, so I had to take some time to figure out what stops to use in lieu of the presets. That was a bit disconcerting. The choir run-through was quick except that almost half of our small group arrived when we were almost finished so we re-rehearsed the first one before I moved to the organ to begin to play prelude. We had arranged for one choir number to be right before th...

  Tom was up much of the night coughing and coughing. His coughs don’t sound very productive and just go on and on. I hate it when he’s sick. We slept until after 6:30. I got up and showered and tried to leave him sleeping, but he got up and got busy. He went to help clean the church. He also needed to retrieve our Christmas tree that has been in the Relief Society room all of December. I spent most of the day working on Trina’s year end bookkeeping. It was fun and then suddenly I was done. So I spent some time creating sample invoices for her to choose from. I’m not crazy about the invoice form they use. That was fun. I put on a pot of water to boil all day, as a humidifier. I think it really helped Tom; he hardly coughed as long as he was in the room. We put up Christmas lights 2 years ago that were brand new. They are tiny little sparkling lights that we loved. Since they are so small, Tom’s plan was to leave them up year-round. Sadly, the tiny wires couldn’t handle Fres...

  It seems that every winter Tom gets a cough that is hard to get rid of. this year he caught my cough. I tried not to share, but he is hard to not share with. He isn’t very faithful with taking vitamin C or any other remedy I suggest so it always hangs on for a long time. The funny thing yesterday was that both of us were coughing in the morning a lot but when we went to the doctor, neither of us coughed once! And while we were at the mall in the evening, we hardly coughed. Makes me think it is our apartment that triggers the coughing. Anyway, he was up a lot last night coughing so much it sounded like he couldn’t catch his breath. It was concerning. He tries to hide in the  bathroom so I can't hear him as well while he coughs, but I'm still awake when he is. After he left for work, I got on the computer, did several loads of wash, and practiced the piano. Those were the urgent things for today. I spent most of the day working on Trina’s year-end billing. I hope what I’...

  Today was Tami’s and Ivon’s birthday. My 2 nd daughter who has always delighted and blessed me in so many ways and probably has the greatest struggles – how I love her! I wanted to get a lot of Trina’s spreadsheets done, so I worked on that a lot. I also practiced a couple of times. Today is Thursday and I still can’t play any of the 3 hymns all the way through without mistakes even though I do love playing all of them. I’ve had to call on jury duty every day this week. I was afraid today I would have to go in, but when I checked online last night, it said I was excused! Hooray! Tom is coughing and coughing. He had a follow-up appointment with his regular doctor this morning – follow-up from the surgery last week. We decided to finally go to the gym on the way to the appointment. I haven’t been outside at all for a couple of weeks, so it felt like a real adventure to get outside, go somewhere in the car, and to work out! I have lost so much muscle while sitting around ...

  My headache continued from yesterday. It wasn’t a terrible headache as migraines go – it actually only hurt when I coughed but in the night I had to take a Tylenol to sleep through it and then I slept until 6:30am. Tom has been coughing a lot and got up and went in the bathroom so the coughing wouldn’t wake me up. That worked but having him not in bed woke me up. I reminded him to take his 6am medications. While he was doing that, I got up and started making some squizguzzlerudderpokeberry for him and he went back to bed. I got on my computer and got stuff done. He slept until about 7 feeling a bit better by then. I am pretty much all better from whatever I had but Tom seems to have taken it from me. As I improve, he is daily worse – no fever, but lots of coughing. He went to play pickleball and I did home stuff. I’ve had so much home stuff, I should be all caught up, but not so. I have been helping Trina with year end bookkeeping stuff. She needs forms created for every cl...

I slept well except for a headache. I had very vivid dreams all night, which has been the case for quite a few days, which is strange. I was still sound asleep when Tom’s alarm went off. It took him a while to turn it off because he was already awake sitting on the couch and the phone was by the bed. Anyway, I got up and showered and got busy as soon as he left. I soon realized he forgot to take his medication before leaving. If these medications help him at all, it will be a miracle because he keeps forgetting before leaving the house. Lol My favorite part of the day was chatting with Anne. She is having such an adventure with Acell’s dementia. Some people would crumble in the circumstances; some people would complain about everything that is being added to her load; some people would get angry at the person with dementia or angry at the illness and all the problems it causes; some people would feel inconvenienced. Anne rolls with the punches and is always looking for ways to ma...

Tom went to play pickleball this morning. He was supposed to be able to use Cannon’s car which has been repaired and is waiting for Tanya to sell, but the battery was dead. Again. So I was left without a car. Again. I had planned to run all kinds of errands while he was gone, then we were going to meet at the gym. But once again I woke up coughing so I told Tom no gym today. Again. I’m really tired of coughing. I feel all better except for the phlegm in my throat. I decided I was desperate enough to start taking squizzelguzzlerudderpokeberry! So I asked Tom to go to the store to buy the ingredients plus a few other things on his way home. He managed to play pickleball, but when he got home he was cold and needed to rest so we cuddled in and watched some Hallmark movies. I got some laundry done, some deskwork done, and boring stuff like that during the day. As I drank the Squiz, I felt better and better and coughed less and less. By the time we went to bed, I couldn’t feel any...

  Tom and I slept through the night again, except for sometimes waking up with coughing fits and using the restroom. I got up at 6; he slept until almost 7. I had hoped to go to church today to at least lead the choir warm-up before church, lead the choir during Sacrament meeting, and lead choir practice after church without talking, but I’m just coughing too much. The truth is, I love to go to Church and it is very sad to me if I have to miss for any reason. I asked Ginger to lead the choir for me. She has a lot going on today with the program tonight that she is in charge of, but leading the choir is nothing for her and since she sings in the choir, it wasn’t adding anything to her day. Together we decided to cancel choir practice after church. I sent a message to all the choir members letting them know, sent a message to the bulletin person regarding choir for the rest of the year, and asked the Bishop to announce that there would be no choir practice after church. With th...

  We both slept through the night except for waking up to cough and going to the bathroom. This was the first time in a long time that Tom didn’t get up and read at 4am. I got up about 5:30 but Tom stayed in bed and went back to sleep even though I wasn’t trying to be quiet, about 8am. I promised peanut butter cookies to Ginger’s kids if they would cooperate so she could get out of the house on time to warm up with the choir before Church tomorrow, so I made a batch that Tom and I couldn’t even taste. (I did lick my fingers though, and I ate 1 cookie after they were baked to be sure they were ok.) Later in the day our cute little neighbors brought over some Ceviche (pronounced sehveechay) with chips. The kids help make everything they bring over so we were impressed they made that! https://www.feastingathome.com/easy-ceviche-recipe/ So I sacrificed and ate most of it. It does have a lot of onions, so I tried to just pick out and eat the avocados, shrimp, tomatoes, and zucchin...

  When Tom was in the hospital, Tanya took the initiative to let his boss (the one he drives for on Tuesdays and Fridays) know what was going on and that he might not be at work today. But as soon as Tom was fully back to normal and thinking clearly, he let his boss know that he would be fine by this morning and to expect him. So even though he was tired from the day before, he got up and went to work. I was happy to stay home and rest. I focused on taking lots of vitamin C, drinking tea, drinking lots of water, doing computer stuff, practicing, and cleaning up the house a little. When I was just about to lie down and relax in front of the tv and maybe sleep, Tanya texted asking if she could lie on our little couch all day. She still isn’t feeling well and just wanted to relax. I warned her I might still be contagious, and she was fine with that. I think she got here about 11am. I had also warned her that we wouldn’t be feeding her since we are both doing the liquid diet. Tha...

(sorry this is so long)   I didn’t feel good all night. I woke up every hour, expecting Tom to cuddle with me, but then would remember he wasn’t there. I could tell my fever was high but was comfortable in bed with an electric blanket on high. And I kept coughing. My cough yesterday was a tickle in my throat. Now the cough felt like it came from my lungs. I got up about 4am and texted Tom. I knew he would be awake. He just got back from the bathroom and was ready to go back to sleep. He said all his vitals are back to normal and he felt good! Hooray! I got on the computer for a little while, catching up on my blog and stuff, then went back to bed and slept a good hour. At 7 I got up and left for the hospital as quick as I could get ready. I got to the hospital about 8:20 but couldn’t find where to park. Whenever we go to Kaiser, we always go to the medical offices. I had taken him to emergency so I knew where to park for that, but I didn’t know where to park for the actual ...