Smile Faces in the Hymn Book

          I know a post exists somewhere about how much Jenna loved the hymn book when she was younger.  Before she could speak she would treat books with respect and turn the pages.  But she never studied them quite like she would the hymn book.  Somehow the written music fascinated her.

          On Tuesday I went to the band room (which isn’t normally a part of the aide’s agenda) and the instructor drew some notes on the board and added a tie.  I smiled at the memory of Jenna, when after she was talking, asked me why there were so many smiley faces in the hymn book. 

          In Myrtle Creek, the music teacher teaches three courses at the high school and ends his day teaching three courses at the middle school.  I would assume he gets to eat lunch sometime between. 

What Are They Doing To My Street?

            I have noticed orange diamond shaped signs indicating construction.  At first I noticed them posted near unpaved streets figuring that perhaps they were being paved – although it seems to be an unrealistic thing at this time of the year now that I think about it.  But that is what I had thought initially.

            This morning I heard what sounded like power drill noises.  What the heck?  I didn’t even check my window.  90% of the time I look for a source to match a sound, I don’t see anything.

            I had a dentist appointment at 10:00.  It wasn’t until I left the house that I noticed the orange signs were on our street.  Why?  What are they doing?  Why are they making so much noise?

 

that's our house btw

taken from our driveway

It doesn’t appear that I got a member of the crew who dressed in a uniform much bulkier than what's shown in this illustration:

Morning Song

“Fairy tales can come true
It can happen to you

            if you're young at heart”

Each morning, for the last three days, that song has been playing in my head.  I don’t know why. 

I don’t know if it was part of the bizarre dream that I posted on Monday or if I came up with it after I got out of bed.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew the words to the entire song instead of the same 15 words over and over . . . though sometimes

“And if you should survive to a hundred and five”

again, just one line.  I copied all the lyrics for the song that Frank Sinatra had sung.  But I haven’t committed any of it to memory except for what I have shared in this post. 

Switching Bodies

I thought I would share some thoughts on the bizarre dream that I had this morning – though many of the details were already gone before Roland requested that I make pancakes – and then chop up some vegetables for the meatball stew . . .

“I’m not even dressed yet!” I thought.  After all I had mentioned that I had two hours before I would leave for work and that I needed to take a shower.  Thus this post has been put on the back burner.  So do I start with the dream or the cake? 

          I took pictures of the cake that we made on Saturday.  Jenna had done the entire cake part by herself and I frosted it and poured over coconut.  The intention was not for the purpose of giving the appearance of a giant snowball, but that is what I thought it looked like:

          So moving on to the dream which took place sometime between 3 and 6 this morning.  I remember it involved multiple documents – I don’t know if they were from bill collectors or court documents or what they were – but I didn’t want them.  They were wrongly given to me and I was trying to dodge them.  Granted, I am reading a mystery novel in real life and so I suppose some of my reading could have made their way into my dream but the weird part was trying to hide from it and driving to someone’s house to discuss it. 

I don’t even know whose house I had driven to except for my cousin was there and in the dream she had gone into nursing and knew the secret of body switching – which I had heard of, but was really nervous about it – yet I was willing to take the gamble in order to dodge whomever was behind the paperwork.

Now in real life I used to see my cousins often which gradually turned into perhaps twice a month and less than that after grandma died. And that was just my dad’s side.  I don’t even know my cousins on my mom’s side.  Ironically the oldest one lives in Salem just three hours away.

          So probably out of all my cousins I have spent the most time with Michelle – but Michelle was not even in this dream, but rather her sister Rose.  She is the one that suggested we switch out bodies and she taught me what I needed to do in order to make that switch.  It seemed to make sense in the dream, but doesn’t even remotely make sense as I write this.

          So I returned to Myrtle Creek and she returned to Logan (or is it Layton?  I don’t know . . . some city north of Salt Lake that starts with an L.  See how close we are?) and I am me on  the inside, but my outward appearance is Rose.  The documents stop coming and I am no longer harassed.  I am skinny.  I can wear eight layers of clothes sopping wet and still not weigh as much as Rose does in my body.  Why is it she was willing to make the switch with a heavy blob?  Is she in trouble with the law or creditors, too?

          I am able to eat several pieces of the snowball cake and my allergies haven’t bothered me.  

with banana ice cream made on MLK day

But the chin ring that Rose wears is killing me (I highly doubt that Rose has ever had a ring in her chin) and at the end of the dream I ask her when she wants to make the switch back.  She doesn’t seem anxious and I tell her I’m going to have the chin ring removed.

          I don’t know why my eyes fluttered, but I asked Roland what time it was.  He groaned as he turned to look at the clock and reported that it was six o’clock.  Jenna had forgotten to wake us again!  I woke up before Rose reacted or know if the chin ring was removed or not.  Weird

MLK Banker, Stubborn Healing and Mormon Deer

            We have not adopted a celebration tradition for Martin Luther King Jr. Day – though Jenna did have a nice suggestion:  watch Tangled because there’s that song “I have a dream” – only we couldn’t seem to find our copy of Tangled and the Myrtle Creek library doesn’t even carry anything that recent. 

            We had three bananas that were somewhere between brown and black.  I planned to purchase some vanilla ice cream to make smoothies or banana ice cream.  This would be in honor of “milk” day as my niece had initially thought MLK to be.  I had told reader’s to refer to her blog in this post, but alas, she has made it private and so no one will have that opportunity anymore (including me).

            Roland suggested we play Monopoly – and though it’s not mine nor Jenna’s favorite game, it is an opportunity to play games with Roland – and at his suggestion no less. 

            Jenna has now decided to set the timer each time monopoly is played with a two hour limit.  It was good for Roland to focus on something other than his pain.  They both dubbed me as banker which is really not a coveted role for me.  In our household, the banker makes the rules whether they really exist in Parker Brothers instruction book or not.

            All tax fees and other expenses go into the middle of the board giving free parking a purpose – to win the pile of cash that each player contributes when paying fees.  I decided that we would deal up half the properties and no other properties could be purchased or housing/hotel expenses until we had each been twice around the board.  Properties could be traded to fulfill an expense – for example, if you land on Boardwalk and have to pay 1400 but do not have that much, player can give up properties as agreed by Boardwalk owner.  Player DOES NOT have to mortgage properties in order to obtain funds.  And you don’t have to build evenly.  If you want to buy one hotel for one property and only one house on the remaining properties, with me as banker, that is allowed.

            I was out of the game after an hour and a half.  I had landed on Boardwalk.  I gave Jenna all of my unmortgaged property plus the less than 100 dollars I had in bills, but the three mortgaged properties I had were returned to the bank – plus all of the housing which is removed when the player loses and has to be repurchased by the new property owner.

            Roland landed on Boardwalk three times during the game and he was finally busted just before Alexa went off.  But Jenna wanted to continue playing forcing Roland to mortgage most of his properties and sell his houses.  But then he landed on Baltic or Mediterranean – both of which had hotels.  So he lost.  That was funny.

            During our game of Monopoly Jenna had played a variety of music on YouTube.  As we listened to Abba, she pointed out “I Have a Dream” and so after our monopoly game and ice cream making, we found some other songs on YouTube to celebrate “having a dream”  We listened to Abba, Tangled, this one, and of course, Martin Luther King, Jr (here)

            As we are down to half a driver and there is a family in my ward short a car and also providing rides for Jenna – we loaned out our second car.  As Roland planned on driving Jenna to the church this morning I wanted to make certain his back was up to it. So I had him help me move the cars so that the one to be borrowed was behind.  He moaned and groaned as he got into the car, but he is stubborn enough to make it work.

            This morning I went along for the ride when he dropped off Jenna.  We were quite near downtown when Roland started honking his horn.  Until we approached closer, I hadn’t even realized there had been a deer in the road (it was still dark and raining).

            Whenever he pulls into the lot, he has a habit of going all the way toward the grassy area before he turns around.  He likes to see how many deer are parked out on the lawn.  I told him we had already seen one deer for the morning and he shouldn’t expect the deer to be camped out in the rain. 

            I don’t know if it was him or Jenna that suggested that there was a difference between the one we saw in the road and those who “go to church”  I think it was Jenna who suggested that some of the deer get made fun of by the other deer because of their desire to be so close to the Mormon Church.  That made me laugh.

An Empty Vessel

          A vessel, by definition, is either a ship or large boat or a hallow container usually associated with holding liquid.

          I remember going to a young women’s camp as a leader.  We had an activity in which we were asked to hold onto the iron rod on our way to the tree of life.  Only in the case of our camp situation the iron rod had been represented by a rope.

          As we were making our way from one area to another, we were faced with temptations.  I can remember being enticed by chocolate chip cookies.  Huge ones.  And I LOVE chocolate chip cookies.  But I wasn’t about to let go.  I rationalized that the main ingredient may have been salt.  A chocolate chip salt lick.  Yum.

          I was going through the motions of hanging onto the rope.  I wasn’t going to let go.  I was going to reach the end because it was expected of me.  I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.  I was pressing on with the attitude of fulfilling my calling out of duty than with gratitude and service.  I wasn’t participating in the right frame of mine - possibly due to a lack of sleep (at girls' camp if you can imagine).  Even with my imperfect attitude I did successfully make it to the tree.

          The stake leader’s had taken some clear stones wrapped in wire and used the wire to hang each stone from the tree.  It represented the fruit.  We were each allowed to pick a fruit.  It was dark and I until we had returned to our campsite hadn’t noticed that the stone or “fruit” from my frame was missing.  My vessel was empty.

          Until I got married I kept that stoneless frame above my light switch as a reminder that I need the right attitude to fully enjoy the sweetness of the fruit.  I am reminded of this experience each time I read Lehi or am in a class discussion that focuses on said topic.

Help Me . . . I’m Sorry

          For the most part I turn off my phone before I go to work.  I leave it in my bag and do not carry it around with me.  I’m in class, after-all.  It’s not like I can answer it or have a conversation.  On Tuesday morning I went into Roland’s office to tell him that I was leaving to go to Canyonville.  Only he wasn’t in his office.

         

          The front door had been left open indicating to me that he must be outside.  I still couldn’t find him.  I called out his name but he did not answer.  As I pulled out of the driveway I saw him on the hill wearing a blue shirt.  He must have fallen shortly after I pulled out of the driveway – long before I got to Canyonville.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately as I did not allow myself time to freak out) I did not get his message until after I had returned home from work.  He had already been taken to the hospital by then.

          I found him in bed.  He explained what had happened – though it was very hard for him to get the words out as he was still short of breath.  Not only had he landed on his back during the fall, but had the wind knocked out of him as well.  It could have gone so much worse.  He could have hit his head on a rock or a cinder block but didn’t.  He was conscience and stubborn and determined to get up – though I don’t know what he used to pull himself up.  He had ripped out the clothesline during the fall.

          He made his way back into the house though he was in excruciating pain.  He managed to change his clothes and call me on his phone – only I didn’t answer.  He had left two verbal messages and one text message.  I got his text message first.  Could I pick up some Aleve on the way home.  I did not get the message until I walked into the house.

          I noticed a tightly packed pharmacy bag on the fireplace.  I wondered where it came from.  When I found him in bed, laying on his back, he explained that he had called our home teachers and had them take him to the veteran’s hospital in Roseburg.  He said he had felt every bump in the road.  And then I listened to his messages.   I would have driven home in a panic if I had heard them earlier as I could hear his gasping for breath between each word.

          I called another member in the ward to make arrangements for Jenna to be picked up in the morning as Roland was (and still not) in no position to drive and I cannot see in the dark.  Thus our household is down to just half a driver for now.  Like Jenna, Roland makes for a lousy patient.  He is an eternal optimist and is not in his nature to complain.  But he is still in pain and his pride hurts just as much as he does.  He is not healing quickly enough and has had to take time off work.  That has been hard for him.  Asking for assistance has been hard for him.  He has tried so hard not to complain, but he is in pain.  I know he’s in pain.  I get it.  I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to feel helpless.  He must have forgotten how often he’s waited on me.  Now the roles seem reversed somehow, and he doesn’t like it.

          On Wednesday the wind blew.  I could see the trees dancing.  And the chimes were playing their tunes.  It didn’t seem like a very huge wind – but it somehow knocked the power down – in quite a large area.  The high school still had power but the middle school was without longer than we were.  It was just a little scare.  I haven’t minded when we have lost power but knew that it would be devastating for Roland.

          I cancelled the assignment which I had accepted for Thursday.  I didn’t want Roland falling again and felt I needed to be here when he’d be on the phone with social security.  I didn’t know if he’d be able to answer all questions without running out of breath.  But he did fine.  I had assisted a little, but not much.  I went back to work yesterday.  When I returned I found him in bed again.  He was proud of himself because he’d been sleeping on his side.  He can’t sleep on his back.  He has tried sitting up.  Sometimes he will nod off, but never a deep sleep.

          He said he doesn’t know if he will make it to church tomorrow.  I had expected that he wouldn’t.  I really don’t even want him to drive right now.  If we were going to put him in the car as I passenger, we would have to take him out at least 20 minutes before we need to leave so that he would have time to walk to the car and we could load him in.  And I suspect it would take 5-10 minutes getting him out and across the parking lot of the church.

          He doesn’t wish to be dependent.  I think there’s a lesson that he needs to learn.  Perhaps many different lessons for each of us. Yesterday I had my phone with me.  I checked it between each class.