21 April to April 26

I am trying to get all the loose ends tied up before I leave for Nebraska.  I have the Johnny Depp version of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate factory on the Video.  I really rather the version with  Gene Wilder.
On the 21 April we had the Primary teachers inservice meeting.  I do not know what they put in the bean dish, but it put my lights out and I could not stay awake.  It was pretty boring and that contributed to my sleepiness I suppose.
We had community quilts at Las Fuentes on Monday.  I went from start to the end because I have to learn how it works since I am in charge of this activity next year.  At community quilts we make quilts from the fabric that has been donated to the guild from private fabric stash collections that people are no longer interested in keeping because they have moved on, and also, there are fabrics from  quilters estates after they pass away.  We are loaded with fabrics.  It represents thousands of dollars spent on fabric but we must keep in mind that shopping for fabric is at times a sporting event and it can be a quest with no end, or it can be very comforting to just walk through the Quilt fabric shop touching each bolt and enjoying the color and textures there.  It was quite an experience to work with the ladies at the community quilts - quilts that are given to hospice, women's shelters and court adoptions etc.
On  Tuesday 23 April I had my 6month checkup with the skin specialist.  He loves to shoot Nitrogen onto people to burn off skin lesions - and I am convinced that he finds lesions when there are none to be found - he has to make some show so that he can charge Medicare a packet.
At 11am I met Lorraine, a lady from Richfield, Utah, who is some distant relative that I met on My Heritage.com.  She is form Australia and we had a grand old chat at Chipotle, over lunch.  I was very happy to meet her and it was like we had known each other for years.
On Wednesday 24th April I went to lunch at the Resort with Wendy Wolf and her friend Portia.  I met these two ladies some years ago at the YMCA - we took Tai Chi together.  She re-introduced herself to me at the Quilt Show at Sharlot Hall Museum and invited me to have lunch - eventually we were able to settle on a date.  It turned out to be a luncheon of the ladies from Yavapai Hills development.  ON the table was a folder from Wells FArgo Bank and we were afraid that we would be given a big push to talk to the presenter about financial investments.  That did not happen,   Instead he had some sort of name in the hat game and t hey handed out prizes.  The last name they pulled out was mine and I won the extra meal that had been paid for by the promoter, but the restaurant could not take it back, or sell it to someone else, and it was extra because someone did not come.  I had a wonderful time visiting with Wendy and Portia.  At the end of the meal a lady of Japanese descent stopped by to talk and we began in Japanese and it was really fun.
We got some sad news this afternoon.  Our friend Elllis Clark died suddently.
Thursday evening we had a Relief Society meeting  where they planned to play pickle ball over at Andrea's house.  Well we started with the hors duevers (spelling?) and by the time they had been demolished they were supposed to go outside to play pickle ball but it was very dark, so we played some other games that they had.  It was a good time for the ladies to just kick back and relax.

April 5 - 19, 2013

Friday April 5.

Spring has bloomed all over Prescott.  Every tree that can bloom has been doing it in style.  My fruit trees, peach and nectarine, are in full swing and if there is a piece of fruit for each flower, we will be overloaded for sure. However, the nectarine tree has been growing here now for 13 years and we have only seen one shriveled  nectarine on it.  I have fertilized it and taken care of it but it seems to be of no use. This year I put a different fertilizer on it and on very VERY close  inspection, I see miniscule nectarines poking through whatever is left of the ( now fading) flowers.  Hopefully we will see some fruit as a result of the different fertilizer.  Keeping these trees watered is the trick because I have no idea how much water they need and do not know if they are drought resistant.  The big problem is the wind.  The trees grow between our neighbor's home and ours and the wind just seems to roar between these two houses and blows everything into oblivion.  We do have a lot of wind 'storms' here and this year it has been particularly bad with trees being blown down onto houses and cars parked in driveways etc.  It also blew the blossoms off the trees and it looked like it was snowing blossoms on Rosser Sreet.

Our watering system has been broken for some time.  David came up to visit before we went on our mission to Maine, and he did his best to get it going for us.  It worked for a while but it is a very old system.  So Bill decided to have a man come to work on it.  He lives in Paulden and it is a distance to come but he used to work for the people who last trimmed our trees and so Bill asked him to be here to work on the system.  My friend Bobbie was here and we just talked instead of doing Paper boxes etc. while the man worked on the system.  He was able to get it going the right way round and now our sprinkler system works and the lawn has changed from dead brown grass to a bright spring green and the Robins are having a picnic every day with the worms providing their supper.  We also fixed the bare patches - but fixed them so that they will produce grass once more is another question.  Bill did not think it was necessary to purchase new grass seed, so we used the seed that has been in our garage for years and we do not know if it is viable or not.  Only time will tell.  My best guess is that it is not viable.

The High School put on the play "Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat" and we went to see it.  The kids did a wonderful job.  When we lived in Mesa, we went over to Phoenix to see it performed at the Orpheum with Donny Osmond in the lead role.  I asked my neighbor if she went to see it and she said that she debated whether to go because she thought it might be to "Bible-ly" and that did not appeal to her but she went at the last moment and was very pleased to see the kids perform.

Saturday 6th April.

Today was General Conference from Salt Lake.  We stayed home and watched on our TV.  We had hoped that David would come up to visit us so that he would get to watch conference but he declined.  He gets no support for his church activities from the people he is living with right now.  When Bill went to Priesthood session, Margo Roberts and I went out to dinner at the Chipotle Grill.  When we lived in Johnstown, while the men went to the Priesthood session, Sara, David and I along with other women of the ward there went to Chi Chi's or to a Pizza place to eat.  It was a lot of fun for us to be out together.

Sunday 7th April

We watched Conference all day and at 4pm, we went to the Yavapai Community College for the Holocaust Remembrance program.  The speaker is from Phoenix, and is a survivor of the Holocaust.  He is 100 years old and funny.  He had us laughing at all the things he did to avoid being killed by the Germans.  He talked about Adolf Eichmann and other officers of the Reich who carried out the killing and the deplorable treatment the Jews received at the hands of these men.  He talked about Raoul Wallenberg who was instrumental in saving him and other Jews through shrewd maneuvers right under the noses of the Germans.

Monday 8th April.

I had an 8am appointment with the dental hygienist.  They have a new one down at Dr. Mangum's office and she did a good job for me.  I asked Dr. Mangum how much he would charge to do a bridge to put a tooth in where it has been missing for 38 years.  He was the one who suggested that I get the bridge put in and so he said $2,500. I went then to get a haircut.  I looked like a shaggy dog because it has been some time since the last haircut.  I missed Zumba class altogether due to the appointments but I went walking instead. 

Tuesday 9th April

The Lunch Bunch met at the Golden Corral and there were 4 of us there.  Georgia talked about her trials with Chemo for her breast Cancer.  Betty Anne has been taken off her meds and they are trying to decide if they want to put in a stent to help drain her dead kidney that is accumulating fluid and the recurrent infections that she suffers from as a result.  Jeannine talked about her  children and their trials and I told them about David and his new digs.  At 1.30pm I had an appointment with Dr. Gladhart.  Sometimes I think he just wants us to go in so that he can charge Medicare a bundle.   He read off the results of the last blood test and all the numbers came back normal.  In a recent phone call to Pam in Australia, she was sure that I suffer from Diabetes - it runs in the family.  The test results show that I do not have diabetes and I am glad that I dodged that bullet.

Wednesday 10th April

I ditched the water aerobics.  The Wednesday morning class leader is rather colorless in her exercises and I do not respond well to that, so I went walking instead.  Beading was at 1pm at Jeanine's house out in Prescott Valley.  That gave me the chance to go to Hobby Lobby and check out what they have in stock to help with the paper activities.  Found a couple of really cute rubber stamps.  There are two major chains in Prescott that serve the crafty population - Michaels and Hobby Lobby.  While they seem to have similar stuff, they are also quite different in many aspects.  Of course they are not cutting edge like the offerings on the internet, but wait a few months and they catch up.

In the evening we watched a program on Nova - PBS that talked about the early rock formations etc. in Australia.  Seems like Australia possesses the oldest rocks in the world.  They were searching out in Western Australia.  The program was quite interesting and it showed just how desolate the landscape is in Australia - a lot like Arizona.

Thursday 11th April

Went to Golden Corral for Breakfast with Andrea and Juli was supposed to be there too, but she said she slept in.  That is so unusual for her to sleep in.  We had a great breakfast and a good conversation.  Andrea and I used to go walking together before I went to Maine, but now she has Plantar Fasciitis and cannot walk any distance at all.  I miss not walking with her.  After breakfast I went to Zumba Class and had a great time there.  Had to go to the "Love it Again" fabric store.  This is a store where people take in their "not so loved any more " fabric and the owner buys it for a small amount and then sells the fabrics at a small margin - and I do not mind paying $5 per yard there whereas fabric off the bolt is now up to $10 or $12 per yard.  OUCH!  And I thought it was highway robbery when we had to pay $6 per yard in the 1980's.

In the afternoon we went to the Family History Center for our shift.  Bill came home late from work and so we were late for the FHC.  I have tried to tell him that it is not funny or even amusing to be late for FHC but it falls on deaf ears.  I am glad that he even goes but he sits with his computer and does not yet help the patrons.  He has to learn a lot more about the sites on the internet and how to mine the 'net for information.

Friday 12th April

Bill worked the afternoon shift at Prescott Valley.  I went to water exercise.  Tiger does the Water Zumba class on Fridays and she keeps us moving.  Of the three instructors she is the best.  When Bill left for work, I went over to Georgia's home to help her with her genealogy.  She does not know how to use Roots Magic and so I spent the afternoon helping her.  She was not wearing her wig and her hair is just starting to grow in and it looks weird to see her bald.  We talked a lot and laughed a lot about how her genealogy needs help.  Her son has been married 3 times and she wanted to get that straight on the program.  I think we were successful.

Monday 15th April.

Today was the fun day at Mt. Top Quilters.  I was on the agenda to try to get the rest of the positions filled for the incoming board.  I held a bunch of 50% off coupons from JoAnn Fabrics as an incentive to get people to be on the board but no one rose to the bait.  They all have a fist full of JoAnn coupons that they have been hoarding............but managed to get the positions filled and so everyone is happy.  The program today at guild was the bi-annual garage sale.  Cleaned out a lot of stuff from my sewing room and took it over to guild to have people buy it ..............saw the Granny Nanny paper piecing papers that I took two years ago to the garage sale - someone had brought them back - they got purchased again.  It made me laugh to see them re-surface.

I was slated to be at Kitty's house at 1.30pm and went over there only to find her in a dither and really worried over what was on the TV.  Someone had set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon.  People were killed and maimed and it was a national tragedy.  All afternoon and well into the evening the TV showed the video's of the event over and over and the talking heads on CNN and other channels were putting forth their theories of who did it and questioned why.  some even wondered if we were looking at an event of the same scope and proportions as the World Trade Towers in New York in 2001.

Tuesday 16th April

Still no one found who was to blame for the bombing in Boston....but the news is filled with stories of the wounded and dead.

It was the MTQG Fun day and I had signed up to be a part of it.  We made a mystery quilt top and because they got such a wonderful deal on the fabrics, we each received a gift card for $25 as a refund on the money we paid back in October last year.  I lost my 1/4 inch machine foot at the class.

Kathy Dunn, the sitting president of the guild asked me a lot about genealogy and asked if I could help her.  I told her to come to the FHC on Thursdays between 2 and 6pm and I would help her.

Lee called up and said that he was sick and could not be at the Roots Magic Users Group.  I was really worried about this class because I was to do a presentation on what I learned at Rootstech conference in Salt Lake City.  I sent out the notices by email to all the people on our list and worried about the event.  When I got to the FHC at 6pm we set up the chairs and the projector and waited.  only two people showed up other than the director. I was really disappointed.  The end result is that due to lack of support from the FHC and from the Northern Arizona Genealogical Society membership, and the community at large, we have decided to quit the Prescott branch of the Roots Magic Users group.  It makes me sad, but we do not get support and it is futile to show up each month , prepared to share tips etc about Roots Magic and no one shows up. We gave it two and a half years.  Lee wrote to the Roots Magic people and asked them to take our users group off their list and I wrote to the FHC director and the newspaper and announced that we were quitting.  It is a sad day.  However, the Family Search website has been updated and changed and now they want us to put pictures up on the site as well as write family history stories about our ancestors on the site and because it does not cost to do so, many people are opting to go this route.  They do not understand that it is more efficient to have a program like Roots Magic to keep track of their genealogy information and research notes etc. than to have boxes full of papers here and there through the house and no place on Familysearch Family Tree to keep such pieces of information.  It is very frustrating to see this happen.  It is ironic to note that people think nothing of paying thousands for a boat and water ski's or hunting paraphernalia or buying a newer and bigger home or car but cannot see their way clear to purchase a genealogy program for $29.95 so that they can keep track of their research and family information.  It just boggles my mind - but then I guess they have their reasons but to not have your family history and family information corrected and in a orderly manner will have eternal consequences and that seems to have been lost in the scramble of life.

Wednesday 17th April.

I went walking while Bill went to the YMCA.  I just did not want to put my body in cool water for class today.

At 11am I went to see Jane Kohner and this is my second meeting with her. She changed some of my supplements but was very pleased with the results of my trying to keep to the regimen she set up at our first meeting.  The supplements are expensive, but I can see results.  I  no longer cough incessantly, (have been coughing for 13 or more years), do not have post nasal drip, (that has been a constant and also had a stuffy nose most of the time)did not suffer with  allergies this spring,(sometimes I had to just keep kleenex tissues stuffed in my nose to mop up the fluid that was coming out of it due to allergies), can use regular shampoo on my hair and do not suffer with constant itchy scalp (I have had to use medicated shampoo to counteract the itching and if I ever used regular shampoo, I was so itchy that I tore the scalp scratching).

The news is still full of stories about the bombing in Boston.  They now have put pictures of the suspects that they caught on surveillance cameras on the front of buildings that lined the route.

I went visiting teaching at 5.30pm till 7.30pm.  today was a crazy day with all the activities.

Thursday 18th April

Juli did not come to breakfast.  We set this up specifically for her benefit but she has not kept the appointment we set up to eat together.  I went from breakfast to Dr. Mangum to have a tooth filling repaired.  I asked again for a quote for getting my bridge put in and Dr. Mangum looked at it and said, oh around $2,700 or $2,800.  I asked him if he would mind if I got a second opinion and he said that was ok and he gave me a copy of the full mouth xray that they took in October last year.  There is a dental group down in the Phoenix valley who have set fees and the bridge is quoted there as being $1,500.  We are going down there next week to get the second opinion....but $1,500 beats almost $3,000 any day.  I have a second bridge that needs to be put in and can get both done for around $3,000 whereas with Dr. Mangum I am looking at the best part of $6,000.  I guess he wants new snow tires on his vehicles this year and a trip round the world or something on my dime.

On the news, there was a shootout between police and the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and one of them is dead and the other on the run.

We filled our shift at the FHC.  A man came in who claims to be an American Indian or Native American whichever is the most politically correct these days.  He comes in regularly and has a real story to tell but I do not know the veracity of his tales.

Friday 19th April

I went to Water Exercise and it was pretty good.  There was a lot of things to keep us busy.  One thing that helped ease the anxiety over the Boston Bombing, was the sight of the Swifts as they flew in and out of their nests in the eaves of the YMCA.  It reminded me that no matter what crazy things are going on in the world, these birds were obedient to their natural instincts and they were taking care of their young in the mud nests that they had built in the eaves high up and away from cats and other predators.

Nature has a way of bringing us back to ground and helping allay fears and anxieties.  Constancy amid the chaos has a calming effect.  The birds were scrambling to get up to their nests and then all of a sudden they flew out of the nests in unison and it looked like a feathery waterfall as they swooped down to gather more bugs to  take back to their young.  I was waiting for their wings to get tangled together but that never happened.  They navigate well.

Jeannine from the beading group had sold us tickets to the Lydia Circle Luncheon at the Methodist Church in town.  It was a very nice affair.  I have been to it before and they had a program today of a couple who sang songs for us.  It was a very elegant affair.  They had two quilts that they auctioned off.  One of them was not well done or interesting and was also sun damaged and faded but it sold for $350.  The other quilt was a Texas Star that someone said they had purchased in Amish Country in Pennsylvania.  It was a much more interesting quilt than the strip pieced one but I looked closely and a lot of the points did not match and so I wondered if it was an authentic Amish produced quilt.  They are very precise with their piecing but the quilting was not so close as the Amish usually do so I really wondered if it was a bona fide Amish Quilt.  Perhaps it was one they knocked out for the tourist trade.  I have seen wonderful Amish Quilts when I lived in Pa. that were spectacular in workmanship and color choice.  This one was not in traditional Amish colors either.

After the luncheon I went up to the Prescott Resort to the bead show there.  They have this event at least twice a year and I like to go.  Oh yes, the beads are a little more expensive than most places, but they are all in one place and I do not have to drive from store to store to get to look at what is offering.

On the news tonight they caught the other suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombing.  He had eluded the authorities and had cut his way into a boat cover in someone's back yard and had crawled into the boat to hide and was too weak from loss of blood to fight any more.  I was interested to see the plastic boat cover that the owner of the boat had used to winterize his boat. Saw a lot of this kind of practice in Maine where people put this shrink wrap plastic thingy over boats to protect them from collecting snowfall over the winter.

We are still living in a Blender - stuff never stops happening.

The two weeks folloing Rootstech

I am glad that Bill did not have to go to work on March 25.  We actually slept in till about 8am.  I found out that my friend Betty Ann is in the hospital again.  Her dead kidney keeps filling with fluid and she gets really really sick and has to to into the hospital till they can straighten it out.  She always wants to go home and they let her go only to welcome her back the following week.  Now they tell her that they want to put a stent in to help the fluid to get released...........I have no idea how that will come about because she is around 400 pounds and is not a good candidate for surgery of any kind.  Her heart will not stand for any kind of anaesthetic so I wonder how they hope to accomplish this.  The second and most ambitious approach is for them to put a tube in her abdomen, and vacuum the dead tissue out.  I told her they might just put in a tiny vacuum cleaner to suck it out.  She thought that was outrageous but I thought it was a creative solution to the problem.
On Tuesday 26th March I gave up on Zumba class and went to visit Betty Ann in the hospital and she looked like death warmed over and was wanting to go home.  I was only there a few minutes when the nurse asked me to leave because they needed to do something with her.
I left and went over to Dorothy's home for Hidden Sitches applique group.  Not too many of us do applique but we have a good time talking.  Julie has a computer that died and she was wanting to know if it was possible for someone to retrieve her genealogy for her.  She has not kept a backup because she says that the thumb drives are too expensive.  Well, she just may have lost all her genealogy as a result.  Perhaps some guru somewhere will be able to come up with a solution for her but it is beyond me.
When I went out to start the car to go home it would not start.  So I went back into the house to tell the ladies of my plight and to call Bill , who was at work, to ask him what to do.  I called AAA and they said that Bill had to be present to sign the papers for the roadside service because my name was not on the contract.  Well, to put my name on the contract will cost a bundle so that was out.  So I called the Ameriprise people who are the insurers of the car and who offer roadside service.  In the end, the tow truck came and he put a little gadget on the battery and the car started right off - the battery had died.  Well I got to ride in the cab of the big tow truck with our little car looking a sorry sight on the back - chained down like a criminal and there certainly was no way it was going to bolt from the back of that tow truck.  We drove over to the Nissan dealership and they put in a new battery to the tune of $135 (I think Bill must have been bleeding from every pore - he usually goes to Walmart and buys a cheap battery - certainly not the $135 variety).  So the car started up right away and I went home.
On Wed March 27 I went walking in the morning.  I  do not like the wimpy teacher they have at the YMCA water aerobics class on Wednesday.  She does not put her heart and soul into teaching or leading the group and so I do not feel like I get much challenge out of the class.
At 10.15am I was interviewed for 2 hours by a student from Northern Arizona University for her journalism class.  She first asked me if I would be willing to be interviewed about my quilt that is on display at the Sharlot Hall Museum and I said yes.  Turns out, she is the daughter of the lady who lives on Barmar Street who walks the massive Great Dane around our neighborhood.
At 1pm I went to Beading group and then after dinner, we left for Yavapai College Performance hall to see Fiddler on the Roof.  It was a wonderful performance.
Thursday 28th March, Bill was working 9-5 at Prescott Valley Store and I went to breakfast with Juli and Andrea at Golden Corral.  I made it to Zumba class at 9.30am and then went to have a Lymphatic Massage - designed to help me feel better.  Cina is my massage therapist and she does a wonderful job.  At 5pm I went visiting teaching to all the ladies on the list.  My companion works as a nurse and we can only go when she is off work (of course that follows suit doesn't it?).  this time she had two of her little boys with her. At one house the youngest found the two pug dogs in their cages and they barked at him.  He got a little frightened - he is about 18 months old.  Just before we left this house, his mother wanted to see the dogs so she went into the room and he toddled after her.  I was just behind him and the dogs barked and barked and he put his hands up for me to pick him up.  Normally he will not go to anyone but his mother so I am privileged.
On Good Friday I went to Zumba class then did some shopping for food.  In the afternoon we took the car over to Bealls for them to put the interior mud guard on the passenger side front wheel well.  This cover came loose as we were on our way to rootstech and it flapped so bad that it fell off and is on the side of the road somewhere.
Saturday 30th March I went to Zumba class but did not stay the whole time.  There was a substitute teacher and she does Hip Hop and I just don't do that.  It is a ZUMBA class after all - you know? Spanish Music and all that stuff.  So I went home and worked on my Sunday School lesson for my little kids.
Sunday 31st March I got up early and made resurrection rolls for the kids snack in Primary.  You take refrigerator rolls, open them out and put a big marshmallow in the middle (representing Christ laid in the tomb) and then bake them and the marshmallow disappears signifying that there is no body in the tomb because Christ was resurrected.  I made 16 rolls because I was not sure how many extra kids we might have over the holiday, visiting family here.  No extra's came so the kids had a field day polishing off the Resurrection rolls.  Jacob ate 5 - his and some other child's rolls.
We called Pam in Australia to wish her happy Easter and to tell her that we are planning on going to Australia next year for her 80th Birthday.  I also called Uncle Ivan to wish him happy birthday - I really thought it was 2nd April but it is 15th April so I told him that this was his happy birthday phone call anyway.
Monday 1st April Bill had to work in Prescott Valley Safeway.  I went and had a blood test ready for my doctor visit next week.  On the internet Alex Anderson, a national quilt teacher, played an April Fools day joke on us.  She demonstrated a "Quilt Stitch UnStitcher " program that she said was an app for Iphone.  she even had a techhie person explain how the program worked.  She stitched a pattern and then did the UnStitcher program and at the end she said it was a marvelous tool and then the banner popped up "April Fools".  It was funny to see.  I spent most of the day cleaning up the house.
Tuesday 2nd April Bill was called in to work in Cottonwood and he went very early in the morning and did not come home until after 11pm.  So before and after Zumba class I was chained to the computer doing the matching that comes from My Heritage.com.  I find that I have 29,000 matches to inspect.....the crazy thing about it is that I only have 18,000 or so people in my database.  The reason there are so many matches to be made is that there is a lot of overlap and a lot of people are researching the same names so there is a lot of duplication as I go through and check the names etc.  I have been able to correct a lot of people's work.  One lady who is also tracking TROST names has them from Pinnow in the Pfalz district when in fact they are from the opposite side of the country.  It seems that in Germany there are a number of towns named Pinnow and so she just glommed onto one and put it in her record...................I guess she never obtained any certificates or checked any records.
Wednesday morning I went walking on the Rails to Trail at the Peavine Trail.  The lake is FULL - they have not released the lake water into the Recharge area for the aquifer so there is lots of water in the lake and lots of waterfowl.  I took my camera and took lots of pictures and I took our little binoculars and watched the birds.  I am not a birdwatcher by any stroke of the imagination, but I do like to see the birds up close and our little gadget allows just that.  There were a few 'serious' birdwatchers out and really SERIOUS photographers out taking pictures of the birds on the lake.  I was hoping to see the Blue Heron that sometimes is in the shallows but it was not there while I was walking.  Lots of joggers, dog walkers and others ambling along the trail.  Wednesday is the FREE day - the other days you have to pay $2 to go walking on the trail. I think we pay enough in taxes already so I only go walking on the Peavine on Wednesdays.
Today is Thursday 4th April 2013 and I went to breakfast with Juli and Andrea.  We talk of all sorts of things and share news of our families and their doings.  After breakfast, I went to the health food store and bought some Xylitol since I cannot have sugar at all and I just cannot bring myself to eat oatmeal plain..............ugh.  I went over to Zumba and it was a good class today.  When I came home I saw that the Spring Clean up people had not been by to pick up the junk I put in front of our house for cleanup day.  A few things have been taken by the scavengers and that makes it less for the spring clean up people to load into the truck and haul away.
I decided to take the rest of the stuff from the shed by the side of the house and get rid of it.  Some things have been there since we moved here in Sept. of 1999 and I guess if we have not made use of it by now, it will not be needed in the next 24 hours either.  I had to move the 'grow boxes' that I use for growing the tomatoes etc. and so I thought I would take them and put them in the raised bed ready to be filled with potting soil. 
Now here comes the story .........................
Some time ago I heard some sort of animal chewing up our house.  We had a similar thing happen in Pennsylvania and had the exterminator come in and it did no good - they were still getting in and chewing up the house. We moved!  to Arizona!  and now I hear someone chewing our house.  How did they find us here?  did it take the animal all these years to make the trek across the country to come and bother us?
Well, last week I asked the workers next door what to do about a pack rat and they suggested some sort of poison to be put out so I went and purchased that.  I put one pack out and it was gone the next day - guess it tasted good.  This pack rat had chewed up my mop and we found the shredded mop pieces under the side of the house where it had chewed the wall.  We removed the sorry pieces of mop and put them in the trash.  Just for good measure I put down another bait tray but it did not get eaten as I had expected - did not know how many pack rats we were catering for!  the chewing stopped and I was happy, that is, I was happy until this day around lunch time after I came home from Zumba.
I cleaned out the shed area and took the junk to the curb and then decided to put out my grow boxes.  I took out the extraneous stuff that had collected in the top one and discovered to my horror that some animal had chewed up the inner earth holder.  I picked up the first grow box and saw that the critter had eaten a hole right through the bottom of the box, thus making it useless to me.  The box when set up holds 4 gallons of water in the reservoir and you only have to water the plants every other day.  So I pulled out the first box and saw that the second box also had evidence of being chewed through both the inner screen and the bottom, making it also useless to me.  I pulled out the second box and to my amazement, there was the pack rat - dead as a doornail and a lot of the poison pellets in the bottom of the third grow box and evidence that he had chewed through both parts of that box as well.  So I went inside and got two plastic shopping bags and put my hand inside and used the outside to grasp the dead creature and put him in the trash.  What an ignominious way to die?  He had been greedy and eaten quite a bit of the bait and was storing the rest of it in the bottom of the grow box.  Perhaps he hoped to eat the rest later?  There was no LATER! So I put the damaged grow boxes out on the curb
 and they are now in the landfill somewhere.
So all told this pack rat cost me $4.98 for bait and $105 to replace the three grow boxes he chewed up.
After lunch, I went to  see Dr. Ham and he said he could do the laser surgery for me to help me see better out of my left eye so it will be done on April 30.  I walked over to the Family History Center and spent from  2 pm to 6pm in the center - Bill and I are on the staff again.

March 2013 - surely life in a Blender

David came to visit 7-10 March.  Seems like his ‘keepers’ had other stuff to do so they paid his way round trip to come and visit us.  In essence, we became his babysitters and our wage was paid by way of the round trip ticket.  How do you like them apples?  He was supposed to come on the 2.15pm bus but apparently Jim put him off at the Greyhound very early and so David found himself on the 1.15pm bus instead.  We took him to the Chinese Restaurant to eat dinner but it was not too good tonight.  They did not have the temperature up sufficiently high to keep the food at a safe temperature.  David helped himself to the Mongollian Barbecue and he was in hog heaven as a result.  Saw a lady there with a smashingly wonderful coat and remarked to her how wonderful I thought it was, and she gave me her business card.  Apparently she runs a boutique downtown and would really like to have me go visit.  Well, the boutiques here in Prescott think they are in Scottsdale with their prices so I doubt if I will go visit her shop.

On Friday 8^th March, the weather turned nasty.  Bill had to work all day in Prescott Valley, so I took David shopping.   He had on a pair of ‘finished forever’ jeans and wanted me to sew them together but the fabric was too far gone so I opted to take him to Good Will to shop – these are only work pants and he just crawls around in the dirt fixing water systems so they do not have to be top flight pants for that.  Well, I left him to shop and he came to me with two pair of fairly nice looking jeans.  I thought we were ready to go out to other places to shop and he got away from me.  He does that.  I spent time looking for him and was going to the front of the store to have him paged, when I saw him standing there with two HUGE bags of stuff.  I did not think that the two pair of pants should have taken that much space as to fill two large bags, but when I asked him what he had purchased, he said, Well, there are the pants and then they had some video’s that I have not seen before and I just had to buy them.  I did not ask what else he purchased – I did not want to know.

He said he wanted to go to Wal Mart and we went there and he withdrew $20 from his debit card and handed it to me to hold for him.  He wanted to purchase some vitamins from Safeway that he thought he needed.  He takes so much stuff now that I wonder which are at cross purposes in his body.  While we were at Safeway, he insisted on going to the Red Box and getting a video.  We have a pile of video’s here and I could see no reason to rent another one.  He rented Puss in Boots – a recent make over of the famous tale.  After dinner, David, Bill and I sat and watched the video – it was quite entertaining.  Outside it was snowing quite heavily.  When we woke up on Saturday morning, the world was absolutely stunning with white powdery snow on everything.

Bob Logan passed away this past Monday, and so the funeral was Saturday 9^th March.  Bill was asked to help play the prelude for the service as well as the postlude.  The service was ok – not a spiritual uplift of the sort we have come to expect.  There was no talk of his spirituality but rather of the misfortunes of his life as well as the heights to which his electronic acumen had arrived.  We had helped with the meal that followed on and so we stayed to help clean up afterwards.  We came home to rest a while and then after dinner, we went to Prescott Valley Stake to attend their Saturday evening session of Stake Conference.  I was there to meet the visiting church authority, Elder Walker.  His sister is married to an elder who was in Japan the same time I was.  Elder Walker had asked that I go to Prescott Valley Stake to meet him.  He told a story of a man he had met who was a war hero.  Apparently the airman was with his crew above Germany somewhere when their plane was hit and was on fire.  The crew could still fly the plane but there arose a discussion as to what should be done.  The airman was the only member of the church on the plane and the only one who knew how to pray (according to the crew). So they asked him to pray and ask what they should do.  He noted in his journal that he heard a voice tell him to get the plane back to England.  The airman thought this strange, because there was a fire on the plane.  The crew decided that someone had to go outside the plane and use a fire extinguisher.  As I sat there I was trying to imagine this taking place but apparently they tied a rope to him and he inched out onto the wing with two fire extinguishers, one of which did not work.  In any case, he managed to extinguish most of the fire and the plane did make it back to England.  For his bravery , King George presented him with a medal for bravery.  The point of the story is that God does hear and answer prayers and that we should keep a journal entry for each and every incident that supports our faith and belief.

On Sunday, we took David to church.  This is the only time he goes to church – when he comes home to visit us.  We really wish that he would go to church in his own congregation in the Phoenix Valley.  At church, Thomas Jarman was asked to bear his testimony.  He and his family were here for the Logan Funeral.  Thomas is going out as a missionary just after he graduates from high school.  They recently moved to Texas for his father’s work.  His mother Wendie arranged for a number of us to go to lunch on Monday, just to catch up on all that has happened since they moved.  She told us that her sons would be coming back to Prescott to attend the Prescott High School Prom.  Seems a long way for two boys to come to attend a prom since they moved to Texas one would think that they would not be back for Prom here.  But then Thomas is a Senior and I guess it is a really really big deal.  I remember what we went through when Sara went to Prom at Dobson High.

On Tuesday 12, Bill worked in Prescott Valley Safeway Store and I went to Zumba at the YMCA.  The lunch bunch had a luncheon at JB’s restaurant.  Our friend Betty Anne is very ill and refuses to believe that she is ill.  She looked like death warmed over and she could not follow the conversation either.  She is usually the life of the party.  A day or so later she was back in the Hospital for the second time in two weeks.

On Wednesday 13 March, I went to Kokopelli Eye institute to see Dr. Ham.  He examined my eye and said that I needed to have some scar tissue removed by laser surgery and that we could do it next week.  Well next week I will be in Utah……………so I guess it will be in April.  At 1pm I went to beading with the weaving group and I was able to see pretty well.

ON Thursday 14 March, I went to breakfast with Juli and Andrea and then went to Zumba at the Y.  This week is spring break for the schools and so our regular teacher was not there.  She had arranged for a substitute and instead of one, we had 4 of them.  One very tall black man, two very stout white ladies and one super skinny white lady; They were doing hip hop stuff and I do not do hip hop.  I was there for Zumba, so I left after 20 minutes.  In the late afternoon we left for Flagstaff and we stayed in a motel overnight.  Bill had an all day work shift at Safeway on Friday.

We had trouble finding the Safeway store – we are not familiar with Flagstaff.  But we found it and I was so shaken up that I decided that I was not going to drive the car.  So I set out on foot to find the down town area.  I walked and walked and saw wonderful things – particularly the San Fancisco Peaks up close.  I think it was about 3 or 4 miles to down town but I took my time and looked at wonderful stuff on the way.  I wandered into an antique store – now that was a walk down memory lane.  I found the bead shop but it has turned mostly into a metaphysical store with all kinds of strange items for sale.  I bought some beads and walked back the way I came but found that the bus was coming so I hopped on the bus and it drove me back to the outskirts Safeway Store.  We drove home that night after 8pm.

Saturday 16^th March was cold because we had some snow the night before.  I drove out to Emmanuel Pines church Camp to see the quilters from  Mesa who come out each year at the same time to quilt.  The Crystal church of California was also there – they come each year for their women’s retreat.  I was glad to see my quilting friends again.  This is the same weekend as the AQG quilt show in Phoenix.

Sunday 17^th was St. Patricks Day and Jacob (6yr old) came up to me and gave me a big hug for St. Patricks day.  His little brother did not want to be left out so he came over too and gave me a big hug.

Monday 18^th March was quilt guild day.  We had been working to try to staff the board for the new year and I was head of the nominating committee.  When I stood up to ask for volunteers I was met with a stony silence.  NO one wants to serve and I think that is sad.  However, I told them that I was not going to sit down until we got two volunteers….and we did.  So it was a successful day.

Tuesday 19^th March, we started on our journey to  go to Salt Lake City for the Rootstech Conference at the Salt Palace Convention center.  On the way there we stopped at Monument Valley in Southern Utah close to the Arizona border.  It is a desolate place with massive monoliths rising from the valley floor.  We saw a dust devil meander across the valley.  In Australia we called them Whirly Winds.  We drove on to Montecello, Utah to stay for the night.  At the motel in Montecello, we asked for directions to get to the Natural Bridge National Park and were directed to take a certain road.  In front of us was a massive precipice that rose right out of the valley floor.  I could not see any way around this and the road kept going towards the precipice.  Then we saw a sign that said “switchbacks ahead” and we became acutely aware that we were about to take the ride of a life time.  The road began at the bottom of the precipice and then the switchbacks began up the face of this sheer wall.  I was terrified.  There were no guide rails on the sheer cliff side and there was barely enough room for one car let alone two.  We met a truck hauling a massive load of hay coming towards us and I thought that we were finished.  Both vehicles inched towards each other and eventually passed….us going up and him coming down.  I do not ever want to go on this road again…..I think I aged 20 years.  Eventually we reached the natural Bridge National Park – arrived there in time to see the attendant leave for the day.  However, he told us we could go on through the park and we did.  Our next stop was to be at Arches National Park.  One fragile arch is the symbol that Utah uses on its automobile license plates.  We got to drive around in this park and it was spectacular.  We left there and made our way to Salt Lake City.  We found the Salt Palace and we registered for Rootstech – translated that means we received a shoulder bag filled with goodies (read that advertisements from the vendors) and a tag that we hung around our necks. 

Having registered, we wandered over to the new spectacular City Creek Mall and had dinner.  We then went over to the LDS Hospital to see Ana and Tracy Hansen.  Tracy has leukemia and has been in the hospital now for 130 days.  His most recent biopsy shows that he does not have cancer any more, but he has been to this point before.  They are going to do another bone marrow transplant in the near future and the hope is that he will be completely free of Cancer.

It had begun snowing and so we left the hospital and went off to the motel out near the airport.  We found it – after much difficulty – and fell into bed.  We are exhausted.

We got up early on Thursday morning and found about 3 inches of snow on the ground and decorating our car.  We got in and drove off for the Salt Palace and took a wrong turn so we missed most of the opening remarks and keynote speaker.  There were 7,500 attendees at this Rootstech conference.  We attended many classes on all kinds of Genealogy connected subjects for 3 days.  It was both hectic and frantic as we left one class to go to another etc.etc.  I was amazed to observe the number of people who had laptops, I-pads, I-phones, cell phones, readers and just about any and every electronic device available.  I also wondered how many miles of cables and electric wires, plus Wi-Fi points there were throughout the building.  The whole building was one big electronic field.  I wondered about the people who have pacemakers – how did they fare?

Our last class ended at 4pm on Saturday and so we went to our car and drove to Cedar City to stay the night.  Cedar city is where Sara went to College.  The next day we attended church in Cedar City and then we drove to St. George for lunch.  I drove from there through Las Vegas and then on to Hoover Dam.  In years past it took no less than an hour to navigate the road across the dam, but now they have this engineering marvel of a bridge that spans the Colorado River down from the Dam breastwork and we are driving in the sky.  It took forever for us to get onto the road to the Dam at Boulder city, Nevada, and then at Kingman, Arizona, it took forever to get through it as well – both places were really congested with traffic.  Finally we got back to Prescott  around 8pm Sunday Night and we were grateful to go to bed in our own bed.

Today, I went to do shopping for food and I am very glad to see that the temperature is around 65degrees – a lot better than the 20 – 30 degrees of Salt Lake City.

Progress report

It is now 3 weeks since the surgery.  My Sunday School class of 5yr olds were very curious about my surgery.  One asked if they took my eye completely out to work on it while another wanted to know if they cut it up so that they could work on it.
I tried to explain in simple terms that there was a tissue growing inside my eye that had to be removed.  One little boy asked in an incredulous voice ,"So you are growing Kleenex in your eye?"
Had to change the word tissue to membrane............and he still was not satisfied.
A little girl asked if I was OLD?  I said  Yes, I am old and then she said "Well, why don't you have gray hair?"  I said, I do have some gray hairs - just look.  So all of them gathered around and started inspecting my hair for gray hairs.  They said, we cannot find any of them, so I showed them the grays at my temples. 
I guess if you are old, you need to have completely gray hair.
Sara just called me on facetime and she had her ultrasound today and they are going to have another little boy.  Lyla is thrilled.  She told me that she gets to sleep with one more boy now!  I guess she cannot visualize that the baby is really tiny and not the same size as her big brothers.  She is thrilled that she gets to be a big sister.
I guess that means that I have to make a boy-color quilt for the new baby.  I really was hoping for a little granddaughter but as long as the baby is healthy all will be well.