A blog-post for Kindy

I was talking to Kindy last night. She had already spent over an hour trying to get home (there was an overturned semi, I remembered later). She was literally stuck on the road - not moving anywhere, so she called to let me help her pass away the time.

I told her that I thought she should start a blog. And that Tressa, Jaron, Kryn, and Gregan should, too!

For one thing, Folks, if you were to have a blog, the thing I ask you to do for Christmas would be DONE!! Since you can copy and paste whatever you write in a blog to Microsoft Word, it would be the easiest thing in the world to edit, add, delete and have it to me ON TIME. Which, this year will need to be a Thanksgiving deadline, on account of needing to have it done in time to mail to Brazil...

More discussion on that point later... But IF Kindy had a blog, this might be a story she would have shared...

You may know that she has a new boyfriend. We'll call him Jake, since that's really his name. She told me one day that she can't wait for the family to meet Jake (which for most of us will be at the Anderson Family reunion and for Salem Days. He actually volunteered to come, and he's even looking forward to it!) She's especially excited because she believes her brothers will be proud of her for finally having a boyfriend that's "normal." (She says his family is soooo much like ours. I ask you, IS that NORMAL?) :)

Well, aside from loving to laugh and play games and stuff and stuff, I've learned that Jake shares at least a couple of other qualities with some of her brothers. For one thing, he cuts his own hair, AND he has a propensity for damaging and/or losing cell phones.

Sunday afternoon I got a tearful phone call from Kindy saying that Jake was AWOL. She is so absolutely assured that he wouldn't go missing without a really serious reason, she started fearing the absolute worst on Saturday night when he didn't come to her place after work. Or at least call her - UNLESS there was a problem with his phone. He didn't know her phone number, OR her e-mail address - except for the one at work.

Evidently, the plans for Saturday were tentative enough that Jake didn't want to drive all the way to her place without knowing for sure that she would be there. Kindy checked her work e-mail address on Sunday morning at 10:30, just in case he would have thought about that. Well, he did -- at 10:40! So Kindy told her bishop, her visiting teacher, her home teacher, and her mom that she feared he'd been in a terrible accident. Of course, his family wouldn't know how to contact her. She had called the 2 major hospitals in Salt Lake to see if he were there...

I offered to drive to Orem (where his parents live) to see if they knew where Jake was. Kindy decided to give it one more day...

At 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, she was still beside herself. Had watched movies and puttered in her garden, trying not to think about it. By then she was resigned to waiting until Monday morning when she could learn something at the hospital where they both work. I don't remember how she finally discovered that he had left a message at her work e-mail address - maybe she just checked it again. But at 8:30 p.m. she finally called me. Ohhhh the relief! She was laughing and crying and saying that she "was going to kill him" now that she'd found out he wasn't dead! :)

(She says the worst of it all, is that she is BECOMING HER MOTHER! She has always vowed to NOT worry about someone's whereabouts like I did during her teen-age years. But she does, and ALL of you WILL, when one of YOURS goes missing...)

It turns out that this is not the first time Jake has lost his phone or that it got damaged in the 3 1/2 weeks that they have been dating. Does that remind any of the rest of you of someone in our family that we love?

I like Jake already... 'Can't wait to meet him and his little 2-year-old boy, Jackson, next weekend.

Florida day lilies

Amy, for the past couple of years, I wondered if the day lilies your dad gave to us would ever thrive. I thought maybe this Utah dessert just wasn't the right climate. Well, we had a little trouble getting our sprinkler system reset this summer. Devon and Gregan both worked on it. It was a few days after Gregan had "fixed" it, that I realized that the sprinklers were running every 12 hours every day! It was just the jump start the day lilies needed. They are beautiful! The pictures don't really do them justice.

Anyway, I think of Billy often when I look at them. 'Makes me feel like you guys are all just a little bit closer! :)

Taking On City Hall

When Devon and Alicia were here a couple of days ago, he read a little blurp in the Spanish Fork Press that he assumed I would put in my blog. I hadn't thought I would, but this issue HAS been heavy on my mind in the past few weeks as I wrote a letter to the mayor and prepared a presentation for our most recent Salem City Council. Says the reporter in her article:

"The council decided to add work session discussion for Community Center rates which they nearly had set. A citizen complained heatedly about the cost of putting on her piano recitals under the proposed rate system. Council members who heretofore had stood firm on the center rates, decided to discuss the rate structure again in a work session."

I take exception to the word "heatedly." I did say in summary that I thought it was "crazy" that the council couldn't (1) Clearly outline a policy for renting the Center (using the rates that our citizen task force recommended 15 months ago!), (2) State what the penalties are for violations of the contract agreement, and (3) Enforce the terms of the agreement. :)

The bottom line is that there will be "changes" to the increased fees decided upon a month ago, AND the mayor already assured me that they will lift the Thursday restriction for events like piano recitals... I (and whoever I can get to go with me) will meet with the council during their work session on August 20 to hammer out details that maybe we can all agree with...

THANKS for getting your tributes for the gramma in! They were all wonderful! I added photos to those who didn't have them. I'm sure Grandma will read and reread them many times.

Please let me know if you are keeping in the loop with this blog. 'Still trying to decide what to do with the "Thoughts of the Week" section. I'll probably start deleting the old ones now...

The Church is still true!

Sibling get-together

I enjoyed very much my visit with 4 of my siblings. Buzz and Betty's granddaughter had a baby last week. They knew ahead of time that the baby wasn't developing normally, and she was born very early and lived only 27 minutes. The funeral for this little great granddaughter was Friday, and Buzz had taken that day off work. Since the other driver was on vacation this week, Buzz couldn't get off work to spend the day with us.

So Dal, Jane and I got to Howard and Gloria's in Jerome around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday. We visited and laughed until late. The next morning we met Edith, Al, and Elaine at the Twin Falls temple for the open house. It's an interesting temple! The main floor is designated for the youth and baptisms. They go right beyond the recommend desk to go to the baptistry. The other dressing rooms and endowment rooms are all on the 2nd floor. It's a very small temple, but it has the largest sealing room of any other temple.

No one is sure what is happening with Elaine. There's a new dark shadow on her right lung. Not sure if it's cancer or not. She has a PET scan every 4 weeks to watch it. She's on oxygen all the time. But she's doing much better at the lower altitude (moved from Denver).

Edith is also on oxygen most of the time. And Howard had surgery on his foot (to remove a bone spur from his heel) 3 weeks ago. So the able-bodied pushed and helped along the non-abled bodies. It was quite a sight... :)

After we went to the temple open house, we ate at a Golden Corral restaurant, and visited there and at "home" for the rest of the afternoon. We hope to make this an annual event. Maybe Elaine will even still be here for the next one. (Howard told me that he wanted to challenge her to make a goal to receive her endowment when we meet again next summer, but didn't do it on Monday. I wouldn't be surprised if he does it at some point, though.)

Howard's the stake Young Men's president. They (and all of the 14 stakes in the region) have worked very hard for the past year to prepare for this temple open house and for the cultural program the youth will do for the dedication. However, President Monson has decided this will be the last of that kind of event. Too much money and time required for a very huge number of people. It was a President Hinckley kind of event... :)

End of Life Stuff...

What a depressing heading so early in this blog... But today I travel to Burley to have a get-together with my 5 siblings. My sister Elaine is dying of lung cancer. We haven't all been together since our mom died in October of 2004. So I think it possible that we won't be together again before this disease takes her...

I also had a very long night nursing the family pet. We've been careful not to let Spiche run around too much. She's confined to the house and the back yard. As Kryn observed, she's the "only animal on the planet that doesn't learn 'cause and effect.'" According to X-rays taken earlier this year, her hip sockets are no more - just bone on bone. In spite of costly medications, she is too lame some days to make it up just a step or two. I've started lifting her hind quarters to help her get her legs under her, but it's still hard for her to maneuver stairs, and even on level ground, she often drags herself to move even short distances. At other times of the day, she moves pretty normally.

Last night I told her it was time to go to bed. She seemed especially stiff and I couldn't bear to watch her struggle, so I got myself ready for bed and then came back to the family room to see what progress she'd made. Not much. I lifted her back end and finally she hobbled to the top of the stairs. She looked at me so mournfully...but I can't lift Spiche's whole body. So again I left her for a few minutes so she could figure things out the best she could. I knew from the thud, that the last 2-3 steps had not been pretty. I sat on the bottom step and had a conversation with her.

She's been having a LOT of accidents in the house. I told her we needed to go out to go potty. Let's go out the front door. I opened the door, and she just looked at me... I asked her if she could make it to the basement. I lifted her back end again... but she just flopped back down. We both had tears, I believe.

I brought her pillow up to the landing and told her it was okay to sleep there...really it was! When I've tried this before (in the upstairs family room), she heads to the basement as soon as I turn out the lights. So last night I left the light on in the basement hallway. And I barricaded the steps going UP with two folding chairs (again so we wouldn't have more accidents on the carpet upstairs during the night). By now it was nearly 1:00 a.m. I went to bed and heard her whimper. About 10 minutes later, the folding chairs crashed... I finally coaxed her outside to do "her business." And then she hobbled back inside. I took her pillow back down to "her room."

She finally made it downstairs and even got on her pillow. (A couple of weeks ago, after a pretty vigorous day, she took another agonizingly long time to get down the stairs. The next morning, I found that only her head had made it to her pillow. She was still there when I went down to open the door).

For all my tough talk about "The Dog," I can't imagine making the decision that "this is the day" that she'll be helped to go to sleep for the last time. But I really feel that that day is coming sooner than we might have guessed. And I hope we ALL can accept it and to let it happen without making this faithful friend hurt too much and too long...

Well, I'm going to go blow my nose and "fix" my face...

I need to pack and get ready to go to Dal and Jane's. They live in American Fork now. I'll ride with them to Burley.

Maybe I'll come back and leave a cheerier note before I leave.

Testing, 1,2,3..

Alicia is coming over with Devon in a few minutes to help me figure this out. I'm just curious if I've done anything right yet... :)

Maiden Voyage

I'm ready to give this the good ole' college try! I expect this will replace my weekly e-mail (boooring...) to my kiddies. Maybe they'll even read it!! (AND respond?!?!?) :)