Beneath the Wraps

  One day a month, Roland and I try to set up a double date with one of our boys and his wife.   At least two have suggested that we go see a play.   But we cannot just drop by a playhouse and expect to get tickets.   They have to be reserved. In March we had gone to the park for picnic with Tony and Rochelle. After we got home I looked into buying theatre tickets for the date this month.   I purchased four tickets to Desert Star’s “Into the Hoods” for yesterday afternoon.   I first approached Jeanie and Biff. Jeanie declined, as she and Biff would be celebrating their wedding anniversary – ALL DAY and Not With Us.   Okay.   If they had already made plans, no big deal.   I could call Randy and Carrie and if they couldn’t go, there’s my sister Kayla and her husband, Bill or we could go with Tony and Rochelle again – though they are notorious for NOT being on time – and that could put a damper on our plans. Rand...

There were two trees and an ungroomed and ugly hedge in front of our house when we moved in. One was a sad looking pine tree and the other was a trash tree.   Both needed to come down in my opinion.   And actually so did the hedge, but we couldn’t afford it. The trash tree was the first to go.   It was either borrow a small amount of money to take it out, or pay the neighbors an outrageous sum down the road because the roots were pushing into her driveway. We cut the hedge each week and slowly got rid of some of it.   We had the remainder taken out after mom died.   Jenna loved the pine tree.   She’d often climb the ugly thing. She begged us to keep it always.   But after the last wind, Roland noticed that it was leaning, and the short roots were lifting up.   So now we are rid of that tree.   And Jenna is sad.   But it’s not as though we were planning on taki...

My latest reading is a book written by Kathryn Fitzmaurice.   One funny thing about the book itself is that the book jacket is on upside down.   Onlookers may think I am truly weird when I laugh out loud and yet I appear to have the book upside down – but really, just the jacket is.   The library taped it down that way.   I don’t know whether mistakenly or as a symbolic gesture. Destiny, Rewritten takes us on a journey through the eyes of a  sixth grader named Emily Elizabeth Davis.   She was named after Emily Dickinson because her free spirited, English-teaching mom wants the destiny of her daughter to become a poet much like Emily Dickinson.   Only the Emily telling the story doesn’t particularly care for poetry. She does like romance novels though and will often write letters to Danielle Steel. Her mother had given her a book that she had purchased on the day before her daughter, Emily was born. It is The Complete Works of ...

      The week before we left for Oregon, I had gone to the school to pick up Jenna. I was reading a book from my own collection and not the library as the parking lot started to empty. I wondered if she was dawdling again before I realized it was Thursday and she has an after school program. So my choices were to go home and return or continue reading.  Or hey, I could just go to the library that was near her school.  I chose the latter.        I looked through a few titles before picking up: “Girl’s Best Friend” from the Maggie Brooklyn Mystery series by Leslie Margolis.  It was interesting enough, but thought it might be fun for Jenna and I to read together.  And so I continued to look for another book before I settled on “A Million Ways Home” by Diana Dorisi Winget.  I ended up reading both at the same time and proceeded to mix up the characters and plots – at least in the beginning. ...

April 14th: wind blew so hard and fierce that mountains can't be seen April 15th.  Taken from my house to street and across the way April 15th.  My back yard April 17th.  The field that leads to the school Jenna attends snow dusted fields but no trace of snow in parking lot.  Notice the sprinklers turned on laughed when I saw this on Sunny's facebook page with the caption: This is what your snow looks like when you forget your sprinklers are on. Sunny took this on April 15th also April 17th afternoon April 17th afternoon new scarf and hat worn 15th and 16th

I guess the slowed traffic I had encountered last week had been due to construction and maybe not an accident.   I hadn’t noticed all the poly cones and orange barrels set up until this morning – and so of course I returned a different way.   Construction or school zones.   What a choice. I should have figured out that there is now construction on the roads by the harmful weather that we had Tuesday and Wednesday. Foul Weather ALWAYS takes place right after UDOT (Utah Department of Transportation) sets up to do road construction.   It seems to linger for at least two weeks before UDOT can start actually fixing the roads (or at least appearing to do so) but has not been the case this year.   But we may have been hit with two weeks of bad weather all in two days. In 1862 it was decided that the working individuals in this nation (we weren’t even a United States at that time) would pay taxes to help support the efforts of the civil war (s...

         I don’t recall having seen a car accident the entire time that we were in Oregon.   That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.   I did see one patrol card on the side of the road had pulled someone over.   I saw one other police car.   But that was it.          Someone had burned down the High School in Albany the night before we arrived.   We didn’t see the High School.   We just heard about it.         Exactly one week ago , when I took Jenna to school, the sun was so bright in the morning.   I generally stay in the parking lot an additional 30 – 40 minutes allowing the sun the rise further up in the sky before I get back on the road.          There is no normal in my routine as I haven’t been driving for that long and had forgotten how I did things a year and a half ago. Ha...

I will be 60 when Jenna graduates from high school.  I have often wondered if I would actually live that long.  It’s not that I consider 60 so old as to have a foot in the grave.  It’s my raspy breathing and hacking that has made me question my state of health. I watched my father slowly die for two years – which really isn’t a long time when I consider what others have gone through.  The memory of a loved one’s death lingers with you no matter how sudden or painful. I have always wanted to move away from Utah – well, maybe not always – but definitely after I got married.  At the same time (even if we could have afforded it) it would (and will) be so hard to leave my family members – knowing I would not or will not be able to afford to return often as there will be new births, deaths, Christmas, birthdays and other celebrations.  And yet if I stay in Utah and continue to breathe this dry air, I will be miserable and my family memb...

In addition to the marvelous food that they fed us, Beth had packed a care package for us to take home.   Black corn on the cob for making popcorn, two jars of tuna that she had canned herself, and a jar of dried apples that we could munch while on the plane. I packed the corn and tuna in the large check–in suitcase.   I carried the apples and ate some while at the airport. After we got home, Jenna insisted we make the popcorn.   We have never had popcorn on the cob before.   Interesting.    I made tuna fish sandwiches and they were delicious.   I have been fussy about tuna brands.   Thanks to Beth, I will probably never eat canned tuna again.   Her tuna was marvelous!

After we left Newport, Roland had asked if I would like to get some shoes.  So as we were heading back toward McMinnville, we stopped off at a Fred Meyer’s – I don’t even know which town.  Jenna and I both ended up with rubber rain boots – which turned out weren’t necessary, as we didn’t need them for the car nor for the following morning. On our last day we looked at housing in Beaverton, Milwauke, Happy Valley and Gresham – all suburbs of Portland.  We found a Kmart in either Beaverton or Gresham and exchanged Jenna's cheetah print footies for the only other pair of footies that was available: a meduim hot pink with rubber ducks.  Fit better and she says she likes the duckys and would have chosen the pink pair over the cheetah pair - so it actually worked out great.  Nothing we looked at seemed promising as far as housing that we could afford.  Seems like the market has drawn potential buyers to the area – and they obvio...