Suffering Blog

The blog has suffered greatly.  We still have the hotspot through Verizon but we only have 2gig per month to use and have applied for an internet connection, but it will not be up and running until Thursday 11 October and it does not work well when I want to use it so I have given up but hope that this blog goes through.

It has been one adventure after another since coming home one week ago.  The kitchen sink leaks at the spigot and so we tried to fix it ourselves.  After all this is a DIY generation but a pharmacist is not a plumber and vice versa and so the plumber is coming on Thursday to fix this for us.  Of course we have to take into consideration that many trips to the hardware store have been made to get replacement parts etc. but none of them worked satisfactorily so the whole thing needs replaced.  We can use the dishwasher, which is wonderful, but we really need to use the spigot in the kitchen sink to have a fully functioning kitchen.  Everything seems to be taking place on Thursday.

I have been attending to my medical needs –  Today I saw the Retinal specialist and the news was not good.  Also went to see my gynecologist and that went ok.  To reward myself I took Bill to lunch at Applebees where we met with 3 ladies from our ward.  We had a great time conversing together – I have not seen these women for over a year – we had a lot to catch up on.  I drove Bill home and then went over to the Emmanuel Pines camp where my quilt guild is having Quilt Camp.  I got back to Az in time to attend this event, but not in time to cut out a quilt and work on it this year.  It was really great to see my friends again.  Many of them could not believe that a whole year has passed – I can assure them that it indeed has passed.

There is a new store opened in town called the Natural Grocer.  It really is a high end grocery store with loads of things I have never heard of before and I wonder how natural they really are.  We went in today and checked it out.  I guess I will have to read all the labels there to make sure that there is nothing in the contents that will upset my stomach, cause me to break out in hives or cost me more than I have in the bank to purchase.  The best part of it all is that they keep their nutmeats in a refrigerator.  I have given up buying nut meats at regular grocery stores because they are usually rancid when I get them home – you cannot tell this is the case when you get them in the store.

There is stuff that is needing to be done in the yard.  The Rosemary bush has started to take over the front yard and the ornamental cherry needs to be trimmed back as well as the Mulberry tree.  My garden is a disaster but a little at a time I expect that we will get things back up and running right.

Progression towards normalcy

We continue to have internet access problems and I can only get on the net to post the blog in a catch as catch can sort of fashion.

I have been trying to get all the stuff put away that we brought home from Maine.  Mostly it is the same stuff that we took, but I am still tired from the trip home and cannot work as fast as I would like to work.  I do have a place for it all……..it is just a matter of finding that place.  I am sure that some gremlins crept into the house while we were not here and they filled up the spaces with other stuff.

Speaking of stuff, as we drove across the nation, we drove on highways that cut through towns and neighborhoods and if I had to describe those neighborhoods it would be “Rusty”.  Most back yards seem to have a pile of stuff that is rusting away with weeds growing through it.  As we drove through farmland, there were many tractors and other farm implements rusting in the field.  Is it a problem that we have an excess of stuff or is it that we cannot bear to throw stuff away or have it carted away and dumped somewhere?  Many years ago, President Kimball when he was president of the quorum of the twelve, gave a talk in conference referring to the messiness of our environment and how we should clean up our abode and yards etc. and have presentable, and orderly appearance.  America surely has an accumulation of stuff and I plead guilty.  I came to America with one suitcase and now I am inundated.

When we got to the Mail box, we were swamped with letters and requests for handouts and advertisements for just about every service and item under the sun.  I was amazed at the amount of pieces of mail we had and it was only 10 days accumulation of mail held here in Prescott or forwarded from Maine.  It may go on for a while I suppose, but with the pile of mail we had, I fail to see how the Post Office could possibly be going broke.  Someone somewhere has to pay to have the mail delivered and that includes political ads etc.  Social Security alone sent us 4 letters……..maybe the various departments of this government office do not communicate with each other and just mail out as they wish.

We went to our general practitioner yesterday and he was not happy that I have put on weight this past year.  He proceeded to give me a lecture about it and I tried to tell him that exercise was not one of the things we were able to do  on a regular basis in Maine and he suggested that we should have had one of those sit down pedal thingys to keep our feet moving while we sat at the desk to digitize.  It was a lost cause trying to explain to him that movement while trying to keep things totally still worked against what we were doing and would give blurred images.  I guess you just had to be there to understand the ins and outs of digital capture.  They took my blood pressure and of course it was up – always is when I go to see this physician.  I had an appointment with another physician right after it, for my heart check up and my blood pressure was down to 121/85 from  145/85….and less than an hour had elapsed.  I have no explanation for this.   The heart doctor gave me a clean bill of health and said I only needed to go back to see him on an “as needed basis”.    The ablation done in August 2010 has been a success.

Last night we had to report our mission experience to the High Council.  The night before, we had to visit with the Stake President and report our mission to him and be formally released.  I really will miss the missionary mantle.

To take a break I was reading from a book by Chieko Okazaki titled “Being Enough”.  One of the chapters dealt with ‘small prayers’.  She said that these were to her “Sparrow Prayers” from the parable of our Lord about  how our Heavenly Father knows each and every one of us and not a hair of the head would be lost (how do  you explain Bill’s baldness?) and that not even a sparrow falls to the earth unless it is noted by God.  With the Sparrow being a very small bird and being counted by God as important, that even a small prayer can be answered.  I know that this is a fact because I was looking for a particular beading magazine and could not remember where I put it and a small prayer was offered and a short time later I found the magazine.  She went on to say that we often have larger requests made of our Heavenly Father and sometimes he answers yes and sometimes he answers no, but that each prayer is answered according to our needs and not our ‘wants’.  He knows our needs better than we do.

We are now home

I made some notes of things I saw coming across the nation.    I cannot find them.  I also was very tired after the two days of travel in which we did 1301 miles in two days. 

We left Lincoln around 8.30am on Monday 1^st October with the boys going off to have their teeth cleaned and Ethan to have a wart taken off his hand.  Lyla was to go to the pre school but she was unwilling to even smile for us or give us a kiss goodbye.  Jacob has invited us to attend his hooding so in December we will fly to Nebraska for the event of a lifetime.

We traveled to Trinidad Colorado and the next morning we left Trinidad to go to Prescott, Arizona.  That was well over 600 miles for the day.  Just outside Trinidad there was a lit sign above the highway telling us that there was a crash just outside Gallup, New Mexico and that we would have to take a detour.  That was at exit 36 and we were only at exit 86 so we had a way to go.  When we got to exit 36 there was no stoppage of traffic in all lanes but rather they had dragged the tractor trailer over into the median and were unloading it by hand into a new tractor trailer.  It took them 2 hours to clear the road and we did not have to stop at all.

It was interesting to note the difference in the terrain.  From Maine to Colorado we have had wonderful trees changing colors and the fall seems to be progressing well until we left Colorado and then all we saw were scrubby little desert plants and loads of vast grazing lands.  In one paddock we saw Llamas.  The hills just rolled away from us into the distance and it appeared that the Flat Earth society had a point……..the earth is flat and the road stretched out ahead of us and seemed to just drop off the edge of the world in the distance.

We arrived in Prescott around 7.30pm and we stopped at the grocery store to get some milk and bread and cereal for the morning.  We needed to eat so we looked at Subway (our subsistence food as we traveled) and settled on Taco Bell instead.  We drove home and our neighbor’s dog barked and barked and we went over to see them.  They are glad to have us home.  We looked in the fridge and found bread and milk and OJ.  We made phone calls to friends to tell them we were home and our home was amazing.  Our neighbor said that people had been in the home to do stuff – she did not know what.  But we do not have any spider webs in the house – a real blessing to be sure.  We are grateful to the folks who looked after our home while we were gone.  We found out that our friend Bobbie had been to the house and was responsible for the bread etc. and Andrea had put a pizza in the fridge and also the violet crumble bars from Australia that her friend brought over earlier this year during her visit.

We unpacked the car – no easy feat- but did not do laundry because there was no detergent etc. and so we went to bed exhausted with a pile of mail waiting for us to open and a lot of it to toss away.  It is amazing how much junk mail gets through these days. 

This morning (Wednesday) we got up early and started in on getting things sorted out.  I went off to Frys grocery store – today is Senior day and I wanted to get there early so that I would not have to deal with the congestion of people in the mart-carts etc. and the old people who run into you with their shopping carts.  Oh I am old enough to qualify for the senior discount but I do not like being run down by the carts.  I took my time and adhered to the shopping list and came away with a $400 grocery bill that allowed me 40cents off the gallon of gasoline at the pump so that was pretty good.   I really do think that the prices at the store have taken a sharp increase over this past year.  The basics are not cheap and there were no frills purchased either.

It is now nearly 9pm and I still do not have the stuff all put away due to other activities impinging on my time.  This evening we were  given our formal release as missionaries and so now we are just regular people.  The mantle of missionary is one that I really like experiencing so perhaps I will go on another mission some time later.  Who knows where or when or if – but it is a really different experience to be a missionary at this age.

We are having trouble with the hot spot and I may not get to write a blog for a day or so until we get it resolved.

Monday travels.

Oliver is a ball of love with its shoes on the wrong feet and a smile that does not quit.  He loves to play chick chick and when we got tired of that we played Jung Kem Po (rock, paper, scissors), then we played pick up sticks and then hand over hand.  All these games end up in gales of laughter.  Lyla wanted to play hand over hand but could not get the idea that she had to keep things in order.  It still ended up in loads of giggles and laughter.  It was wonderful to play these games with the children – my reward for the whole year in Augusta.

This week is spirit week for Sara’s school and she wanted to wear man’s pajamas for today at school because it is lazy day.  I braided her hair and off she went with Ethan and Oliver for a dentist appointment and then Ethan was to get a wart burned off his hand.  Lyla was unhappy that we were leaving and she would not kiss us goodbye.  We will be back there in 9 weeks for Jacob’s graduation and hooding (his PhD hood).

We drove over 600 miles today and we are now in a nice motel in Trinidad, Colorado.  They have an in-house restaurant that has wonderful food and a pool that is actually heated and is salt water and a hot tub that is actually working and hot.  Many of the hotels that we have booked with have boasted heated pools and hot tubs but when we arrive the pool is cold, sometimes out doors, and the hot tub is not in working condition or not even present working or not.

Tomorrow is the last leg of our trip to Arizona.  Then we will be released and onto new adventures….as if this mission has been lacking in adventures……………..

Our last full day in Nebraska

Sunday is church day.  We all managed to get out to the car in time but it still looked like a Chinese fire drill anyway.  We got to church on time – which was a miracle.  Our Sunday School class was really good.  It was on 3 Nephi 11 which tells about Jesus visit to the Nephites after his resurrection. 

We went home to eat lunch and then Jacob went visiting some members.  When he came home we all went over to the sunken Garden.  When we got there a couple were being married.  The bride wore a purple strapless gown and the Groom wore a purple satin long shirt (down to his knees).

The water lilies were in full bloom and the garden was filled with flowers.  At another visit to Nebraska we went to the Sunken garden and they had taken out the summer blooms and were preparing the gardens for winter.  I was there early one spring and they had just begun to put in the new plants for spring and summer.  I think that this is the first time I have been there to see full flower bloom.

We went home and made potato soup and it was wonderful.  After dinner we watched the favorite family TV show.   It is about fairy tale characters and is something that left me wondering who was what and what was happening.  Sara explained that if I took time to look at the earlier episodes I would understand what is happening.  Lyla fell asleep watching it – she was really really tired.

The kids went to bed but the boys made such a racket that they woke up Lyla.  They got put into bed without ceremony and Lyla climbed onto Sara’s lap and fell asleep.  Jacob talked more about his upcoming graduation.  He is hoping to hear from  the drug company Novatis and the job that is here in Nebraska.  They also talked about staying in this house for one more year because the rent is less than $500 per month (actually it is a house payment).  Lyla is asking for a baby to come to the house as in little brother or little sister but Jacob and Sara were quick to add – don’t get any ideas and we are not making any statement.

So at the end of this conversation we trundled up to bed to see Oliver fast asleep in our bed.  He got moved to his own bed, but at 2.30am he came back into bed with us.