Somewhere Between Eden and Gethsemane

        A garden, by definition, is either a cultivated plot of ground or a gathering place such as a park which is generally adorned with plants and trees.  I guess I have never considered the definition until quite recently.  We had our Stake Conference this weekend, and one of the speakers mentioned two specific gardens found in the scriptures and discussed the symbolic differences between them.

          The Garden of Eden, as mentioned in Geneses,          is outlined as a paradise.  We see paintings of fruit and vegetation, peace and waterfalls, a beautiful place where everything is tranquil.  I guess it represents a kind of perfection.

          The Garden of Gethsemane, as portrayed by each of the gospels, does not have the same appeal.  Paintings often depict a drab setting with perhaps a few barren-looking trees, a hard rock or boulder, uncultivated dirt - it appears to be the opposite of the Garden of Eden.  There is no tranquility.  It represents hardships.  It represents trials.  There is sadness in Gethsemane and it takes faith to endure just being there.

          My youngest son seems to live in Eden for the most part.  He allows discouraging thoughts to roll off his back.   He tries to coax others to come into Eden by waving to them and showing them what the garden has to offer. Sometimes I have questioned whether he has been to  Gethsemane.  I know he's seen it. I don't know he's willing to leave his comfort zone to physically pull others out of Gethsemane.  I could be wrong.

          My middle son fluctuates between the two gardens.  He seems happy and content with one, but then something will set him off and he will mope around in the other.  And then there's my eldest who unfortunately has spent too many years in the Garden of Gethsemane and continues to delve deeper into the garden instead of trying to get out.

          Often his way of thinking (or lack thereof) remind me of John Steinbeck's character "Lennie Small" from Of Mice and Men.  Lennie is sweet for the most part, is seen as uneducated and slow-minded.  He doesn't mean to be harmful to anyone, but sometimes he gets frustrated and defensive when he is unable to communicate his thoughts to others.  I don't think that Biff is quite that far gone, but he tends to forget things he once believed. 

        Often our conversations are (and have been) like beating our heads against a brick wall.  I do believe that he would become bored with Eden in a matter of time, but I don't enjoy watching him struggling in Gethsemane, and I don't know how to help him.  Nor do I know how to comfort his mother-in-law who has visited Gethsemane more times than I have.

          I understand the need for trials.  I understand the need  for peace.  I'd like to see all of my children find their common ground between the two gardens.  I'd like that for everyone.

May This Tie You Over

There are many thought swimming in my head . . . some floating.  Few words are connecting into something I may post.  So let me share these two songs to tie you over until I am satisfied about posting what's on my mind.  Thank you TriumphRainbow and Jeffery Walsh for your contribution by posting to YouTube:

Keeping Halloween Safe

I think it's great to be able to go downtown and have the children move from business to business.  The city takes caution to reduce traffic situation at this time

I did not take as many pictures of trick or treating this year as I had the first year that we had moved to Myrtle Creek.  The library was supposed to offer a party from 2-4 before the trick or treating even started.  I couldn't understand why it had been planned so early as the majority of school kids don't even get out of school until after 3:00 (middle school are the first to go to school, and then the high schoolers and then the elementary - and returned home in the same order)

When Jenna returned home yesterday, she changed from her buttercup outfit into one that resembles Harley Quinn.  We went downtown to the annex, but the building appeared to have been abandoned for quite some time - as it had the beginning of this year.

We then went to the library to enquire about said party.  I took more pictures of Jenna and some of the library staff. 

Just some of the many volunteers that support our library

We then went to the baby park behind the library

and returned to the house to get Roland and Jenna changed her outfit into a ladybug - but did bring along her "Halloween Spirit" for when it got dark and colder.  But ended up not wearing that one at all.

Tommy's passed out little ice cream cones and the Elks Lodge offered games.  It was a fun night for her.

inside Elk's lodge

fire truck and city hall

set of footprints on Broadway as businesses were open beyond the post office

Remember the Positive

Every time your children do something wonderful, write it down.  

Whenever your children do something that makes you upset, refer to the list of actions you've admired.

Focus on the good things.  Don't dwell on the anger or sadness.

Happy Halloween!

Jenna met a friend at a second hand store yesterday.  They were searching for costumes to wear today.  There are three of them that will be dressed as the power puff girls.  I took pictures of Jenna in various costume that she thought might work for Buttercup.

This morning she left the house dressed in the 2nd outfit of the three.  One strap had broken, but she said it was because she was the tough one.  If it is cold tonight, she will be dressing up as the ghost of Christmas future.  Hot costume to wear.  I don't know what she'll wear if it is nice out.

Dr. So'n'So Needs a New Car . . . Can We Schedule You for an Appointment?

           In this post I talked about going to the doctor specifically to get a Z-pac.  I had failed to mention that as long as I was there, I mentioned a stomach rash that I hadn't noticed was there until after Labor Day.  The doctor gave me a prescription for some cream which seemed to sting at times, but did/does seem to help. 

            Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it as it became a bigger concern for her than what I was actually there for.  She said she wanted to see me within a week.  I had to postpone the appointment and perhaps should have just cancelled altogether.  I really have not been satisfied with the clinic overall.  Or this particular doctor . . . And I'm even less impressed with the pharmacy that said they'd have my order ready in less than an hour and still didn't have it when I returned SIX HOURS later . . .  and the doctor said she would put 1 refill on the Z-pack.  I guess the pharmacy didn't get the message.

            So I return to the doctor ten days after my first initial appointment.  She asked to look at my stomach rash again and said she wanted to do a biopsy but did not have time right then.  Are you kidding me?  You ask to see me next week and I can see the rash is not the bright red that it was last week and you want to charge me just to look at it today and have me come in again?  Not going to happen?  I had already told her that I am not made of money.  So she did a biopsy.

            I still itch off and on, but to tell you the truth, the only part of my stomach that hurts right now is beneath the scab of the biopsy.  I am healing.   I'm fine.  I had all the lab work done and am told that things look pretty normal.  I am ecstatic that I am not diabetic - nor was anything said that I really need to watch my sugar intake (which I KNOW but the fact that it wasn't even mentioned . . . wahoo!)  but I'm told they may need another biopsy.  I told them that I would not be available until January.  Come on!  We've got holidays coming up.  We have other expenses.  I got my Z-pack.  My smoke-caused headache is gone.  I can't afford to run to the doctor's because she may or may not need to take a biopsy for something I bet I don't even have.  So January it is . . . maybe. 

            I think what's happening really is that there is need for more fancy updated equipment for the center or something personal for the doctor like a new house or a car.  Well, I'm not paying for it - not right now anyway.  I mean, I guess I should appreciate them taking precaution and preventing a future problem.  Well, I am too - only more with my bank account's health rather than my own.  I'm fine.  I feel fine.

Park and Pics

These were taken at Evergreen

The beds are no longer dry

sad

LOVE the fall!

So Unmotivated Right Now

For the last four mods
I have had only one
assigned class
which in a way
has been nice.

I noticed with this last
week, I was never asked
to do a survey in order
to continue with my class

On Monday I start
another accounting class
This one will focus on
Taxes.  Good thing
I'm only getting one.

Taxes.  I hope that
I will understand and
stay focused.  Perhaps
one day I will
actually be able to
do my own.

Apparently Spelling Doesn't Count in that Incredibly Long Run-on Sentence

I have recently come across a pile of papers waiting to be sorted.  There were a lot of homework assignments or notes from both Jenna and me.   I copied a few of her stories to read through at a more convenient time and threw the hard copies away.  She doesn't have the best handwriting, and her spelling is atrocious. 

Turns out I copied three partial stories.  One was about Emily Rogers, a teacher who wished she had well behaved students and seemed to get her wish - but her "wish come true" turned out to be somewhat eerie.  I love Jenna's imaginative description:

it was silent like a cheetah eyeing its prey waiting for the right moment to pounce.  It was sort of creepy. 

She had also  written a story about a character named Latisha Cannon who didn't enjoy math and also made a wish not to have it anymore and how the world seemed to change when math was no longer a part of it.  Both Emily and Latisha woke up at the end of the story.

Some of her errors made me laugh, but after a while I was appalled that she hasn't been learning how to spell or use punctuation correctly.  I know that cursive was removed from the schools.  Was spelling as well?  I get that grammar can sometimes be difficult, but surely she knows  that a sentence has to come to an end eventually. 

It is certainly convenient having spell check or even Grammarly which will catch the errors that a person may have spelled correctly, but the word needed has a different spelling.  For instance she had written "loan star state" instead of "Lone Star State" in her story about Wanda - no last name, but only story title.  It was called: Wanda and the Rain Stick

She didn't wake up at the end.  Not much of a plot.

I'm happy for the opportunities I've had to further my education and understanding.

What price do we pay for the choices we make?

           Each of us has the opportunity to make choices.  We choose to leave the house, transportation, destination, what we eat and so forth.  Often we are presented with obstacles as a result of our choices.  For example, we may have a variety of ways to get from point A to point B - do we want to take the scenic route or something faster.  If we had stayed in one lane could we have avoided the car crash that happens in the next?  What about those that we encounter.  How do our choices effect them?  And what about those things we can't control like the weather or health?  Often the result of our choices makes no difference.  Other times even the smallest decision may change our entire lives.

          I think "The Mountain Between Us" gives us some great illustrations of what our choices may cost.  

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.

wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54196569

The movie opens with Alex, a journalist, at an airport in Idaho anxious to get to her fiancé in Colorado as her wedding day is near.  Ben, a neurosurgeon, is anxious to return to Baltimore as there is a ten-year-old boy in need of his service.

          All flights have been cancelled due to the weather.  Alex believes that she can overcome this obstacle by hiring a private charter flight.  She gambles on a pilot she's never met.  And while the weather is not a challenge for him personally, there is another factor that neither had even thought to consider.

          Alex, not knowing anything about Ben in addition to not knowing the pilot, asks Ben if he would like to join her on the charter plane to Colorado.  I would think if Ben is unable to get a flight to Baltimore from Idaho due to the weather, it would be likely that Colorado's weather would be similar - but whatever.  No one thinks about that.

          During the course of the movie, Ben and Alex are faced with more obstacles as they climb the snow covered hills of the Unitah Mountains in search of salvation, I thought about what the choice made had cost them - or changed them - because without the experience that only they shared - they would not have evolved from who they were prior to the movie starting to who they became afterward.

          I think the story itself was fictionalized, but I really enjoyed watching the movie and discovering another demonstration of just how much impact our choices may have not just on our lives but those around us.  I'm grateful that the unwise choice Jenna and I had made recently about crossing a fenced path didn't have such a dramatic result.  Funny thing is if we had started the other direction, I wouldn't have crossed it.

 So often when I go to Millsite, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time. 

Fall Activities and Ghost Pancakes

          Four years ago yesterday, our friends Cheryl and Miguel decided to take their niece Payton to the Cornbelly's activity at Thanksgiving Point.  They asked if they could take Jenna with them.

          Jenna and Payton got along well together.  Payton was two years older than Jenna, but shorter.  Many people who saw them together believed they were sisters.  I did not go with them, but had remembered the event as Cheryl had tagged me in several photos on facebook.  I had the opportunity of seeing them again when facebook memory page showed me the photos.  

Cheryl had taken quite a few pictures;  I

don't have permission to post the ones

she took - there were several of Jenna

and Payton.

          I thought it fitting to see the photos while thinking about Jenna and commenting about the weather I hoped wouldn't spoil yesterday's plans.  She did get to go to the corn maze after all, and rode the hayride and brought home a huge pumpkin that she had retrieved from the pumpkin patch.  It was a great day.

          Roland started breakfast/dinner early as his clock is on mountain though we live in Pacific.  After the oven was warmed up (guess we did use it after all) and had cinnamon rolls ready to go in, he looked at the clock in the kitchen and realized that the missionaries wouldn't be arriving for almost two hours.  Whoops.

          I love to watch Roland cook.  He is so thoughtful and so precise.  He made everything on the small skillet, though I had found a much larger pan to use.  He ended up using it to put all back into the oven just to keep it warm.

          Dinner was wonderful.

transferring the potatoes from Stove to oven

keeping potatoes and meats warm

ghost style pancakes with blueberry faces

scrambled eggs made last

you can't tell, but the gravy boat contains

fresh blueberry syrup 

dinner table ready to serve yourself

yum