Beneath the Wraps

Her name is Maria Garcia.   Her son attends the junior high that I have passed each day since enrolling Jenna into a dual immersion program.   Juan had taken the bus to school each morning – for a while anyway.   Maria started driving him to school when the weather turned cold and the bus rides were even longer.   Jenna and I also took the bus. About mid-December, Maria offered to drive us as well.   I thought that would end as the weather conditions got better – which they have.   We’ve had signs of spring at the end of February (I don’t recall EVER having spring so early before; seems so unfair when the nation’s capitol had to shut down due to the storms of winter.   Ouch!) Maria continues to drive us.   She won’t accept payment for gas.   It’s really not that much.   But still, not much each day and week and month add up.   And I’m not spending money on bus passes anymore and so I have offered.   The...

I have never had a branch or knife gouge through my eye, but I would imagine the pain is very similar to what I have felt each year in February since moving to this cracker-box house in West Valley.   Apparently I had posted a few posts to my blog the first year I had it.   And I know I was driving.   This year I am in such awe that I was able to do it.   Each year the pain has been worse than the last, and each year I have believed that death would be more preferable to the pain.   Because hey, once my spirit and body separate, I wouldn’t be able to experience the physical pain. That first year I felt like a drug guinea pig.   Although the first drug issued was in December, but I had not posted the traumatic effects until February when the sinus pressure built up again.   I don’t know why I am so unfortunate to have this experience EVERY YEAR.   Enough is enough already (and I have had more than enough – thank you very much) ...

I wondered which one of us (me or my brother Corey) would post about Harold first.  I came up with most of these thoughts and typed them in by 1:00 am this morning - but only drafted it as I had no title. Last year we (my sibs and I) put mom into an assisted living program as she was in need of 24/7 care.   This time last year she was trying to escape.   She wore her coat and carried her purse and would walk around the doors and windows of the facility – looking for a way out.   She wasn’t happy there – not all the time anyway. By mid April, mom had accepted her new home and was reading everything she could get her hands on.   She didn’t retain anything.   But she did read. I don’t think it was until May when she developed an attraction to Harold and soon the two became inseparable.   I find it interesting that Corey created this post on June 3.   Mom has a boyfriend.   And just one month later I created t his pos...

On 8 January 1981, prisoners on a work assignment burning trash and debris at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah , accidentally caused a major power failure when something they were burning exploded, causing a fireball that shorted out transmission lines above them. 1.5 million people lost power, in almost all of Utah, as well as parts of southeastern Idaho and southwestern Wyoming* and I believe parts of Nevada as well.      I was listening to a radio station from another county when the power first started to flicker.   The DJ had made some comment about the power going off.   “Wow.   Ours just went off, too” I thought, never imagining that the outage was created by the same source.    I remember finding a transistor radio looking for something that would give us some kind of indication as to why the power went off.   We were on a different transformer or power unit than our neighbors across the street.   U...

Jenna and I have played “Crazy Countries” a game much like Crazy 8  Of course the Africa continent deck has a lot more cards than say Oceania or South America deck and so we of course don’t play with all of the cards.  We’re not learning countries so much as continents – for I have told Jenna that whenever we use a wild card to change suit, we have to say by continent rather than color. I took Spanish in 9 th and 10 th grade.  In my first year, part of our lessons included studying  the countries in South America .  We were also assigned pen pals to correspond with in hopes that it would help us learn our Spanish and assist our pen pal with his or her English. The map of South America looks the same way I remember it looking in 1975.  It looks the same way today.  And I am impressed by the stableness of the boundaries.  It makes geography so much easier to learn (and share).   After playing “Crazy Countri...

World geography has got to be one of the most frustrating subjects as it is constantly changing.   Should Jenna ever learn about the names of countries and border locations and such, I think for the most part will be quite different from what I learned. Creating maps is an endless task – but I suppose if that’s the field of work you’ve gone into, well, then you will never be out of work.  In my sixth grade history class we were given blank maps as part of our world geography – or so I’m assuming that’s what was being taught.  I specifically remember working on a European map, but for whatever reason, our time in the classroom was cut short and so we were allowed to take the maps home and fill them out there according to our own resources as we were not allowed to take the text books home. We didn’t have the resources of today where one can go to Google and pull up a large variety of maps and find information on each country with just a click of a butt...

Ben and Khonnie Andrews are professional auctioneers – who just so happened to live in the ward where I grew up.   I remember several fund raisers featuring cakes or baked goods which Ben and Khonnie would take turns auctioning off.   It was wild.   A lot of competitiveness among certain ward members.   Some with deeper pockets than others.   I remember doing two cobblers one year – a blueberry and a cherry.   One sold for 35 and the other one sold at 5-10 dollars less.   And that was one of the lower priced items.   There were cakes that had sold for 80 dollars or more during various years.   It kind of put my second ward to shame as 25 was actually among the highest bids and the hand-picked auctioneer had little experience at auctioning. My second ward was a poorer area than my first homeward. We attended an auction for the third time in this ward.   The last two times have been fund raisers for the Young Women...

  There are at least eight states covered in snow right now.   States that don’t usually have such a tremendous amount of snow.   Many cities without power because the storms have knocked down the lines.     My blog received over 200 views two days in a row.   By those who were bored and holed up I would imagine.   There have been several who haven’t been allowed to drive anywhere as the roads were closed and cars were abandoned, traveling reduced and messed up more than I remember Utah ever being.    And I feel bad about my post titled “Killer Snow” when I would imagine those living in said states thought, “That is nothing, sister.   Not compared to us” The weather forecast keeps saying that we’ll have snow in Utah.   Every time the wind blows, a promise has been made.   But I have learned, the louder the sound of the wind, the less likely ...