Beneath the Wraps

            Yesterday I started two new classes in addition to a grant class I'm taking for the library.   The two classes I'm taking currently delve into personality.   I have a feeling my head will fill faster than my fingers will be able to keep up. I've taken intelligence quizzes before - even before I started taking classes online.   I see the growth in my answers.   The instructor made the suggestion to look at where we were ten years ago and where we are now emotionally.   This is what I've written - but feel that it's too long for the discussion.   Even if I reference myself, I don't have anything to put in APA form as a reference.   So I'm posting it here - although you may have read it all before.             Ten years ago I walked with my three year old daughter to the school.   We took many walks around not only our neighborhood but my mom'...

25 Random Things Created in 2009 1. I Love having caller ID 2. My faith is often waivered 3. I enjoy rediscovering things through my five-year-old’s eyes  4. I have called the authorities on suspicious people seeming to be lurking around     my neighbors’ yards. One turned out to be a meter reader. 5. Fall is my favorite season with temperatures 60 – 70 degrees  6. I speak Spanish almost as well as my husband does –     I mean Spanglish 7. I don’t care for country music, but admire many performers of country music 8. Served a mission in the Virginia Roanoke mission; my first three areas are now in     three different mission boundaries 9. I have always liked peanut butter 10 I love to scrapbook 11 More than half of my music collection is Christmas songs 12 I remember rotary phones, phonographs (or record players), and a time when all      cars didn’t have seatbelts – let alone mandatory car seats 13...

                I had made contact with different family members about my plans of sending Jenna to Utah by herself to visit family and we would pick her up in August.   It had been a thought is all.   It's not that I was trying to get rid of her during the summer.   I just know that she's been homesick for her brothers and cousins and probably a week would not be enough for her.          She did want to march in the parade at the end of last month and this month - only this month didn't work out for anybody in the group except for Jenna.   We manned the booth instead.   Jenna and I had been assigned for the very first shift, and then she got recruited to stay (see here ).   Her actions certainly helped with funds but even better (in my opinion) was that it gave her   a confidence that she has somehow kept hidden for many years.   She enjoyed doing it, and she en...

I have been trying to organize my thoughts on this post and continue to be interrupted.  I do not have permission for the pictures that I use and will remove them at the artist requests.  I will continue to keep the links on where the pictures come from so that they may still be viewed.                 When I was in my teens I remember many   people trying their hand at doing impersonations of different characters - the most popular being Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Kermit the Frog.   I didn't view it as a talent would take anyone anywhere.   Boy, was I wrong.   Fast Forward to being a mom.   Jenna and I had been watching an episode that Sesame Street had re-aired after Hurricane Katrina as the cast had experienced a similar disaster and perhaps children could better deal knowing that Big Bird had experienced the same trauma.   It wasn't until I had watched the docum...

               This morning I started a search for pics to go with the next post I had mind – which has only been written in my head and outlined on paper, but still needs to be transferred which I had planned today but things don’t always go according to plan . . . like yesterday morning seeing Riddle before the town awakens and the streets have no traffic on them whatsoever.             I did not notice any traffic as I drove to the blueberry patch this morning.  The drive seems long each time I go out there, but somehow felt even longer this morning.  I had gone a different way than I had the other 12 – 20 times I’d gone there before.  The sun shining directly over the spotty windshield did not help matters.  I felt like I had been driving for half an hour at least.             I wish I had left the house s...

Lately, when I can make the time, I have been watching reruns of "Once Upon a Time".   I see more darkness than I had the first time around, and lots of symbolism - though I don't know if that was the writers' intent. "Magic" represents a force greater than ourselves.   Most of it reminds me of addictions.   We are addicted to alcohol, drugs, tobacco, sugar, gambling, sex, pornography . . . the list seems almost endless. You've got your fairytale characters like Rumpelstiltskin and Regina (the evil queen) who have each tried to stop the consumption that has eaten away at them, but hard as they try, they each give into their weaknesses and somehow resort back to who they are. Rumplestiltskin has many names: Crocodile, the Dark One, the Beast . . . Belle sees Rumple the way God wants each of his children to see one another.   She constantly believes that there is something locked up deep inside that needs to come out, just as Snow...

          I don’t know what exactly freaks me out about driving in Roseburg.  The population is less than half of what I’m used to – but I’m also used to driving on a grid – and having streets that are numbered rather than all names.           Oregon drivers (as a whole) seem a lot more courteous than Utah drivers – not that Salt Lake accounts for all Utah drivers.  But Salt Lake County makes up for over 1/3 of Utah’s population at  1,029,655 . The entire Douglas County has a population of 107,667 with Roseburg population at only 21,181 but still the largest city in the county with the next largest city coming in at 7,810   and then Myrtle Creek at less than half of that – and the numbers go down from there.           Overall, the state of Oregon has a higher population than does the state of Utah; Oregon residence ar...