You Can Call Me Dad

          When Roland's ex was a part of our lives, I remember her sending a "friend" of hers with the girls so that she could keep an "eye on us".  I don't believe she and Karen were good friends.  In fact, I now believe that Karen didn't actually know Roland's ex all that well and was not aware that she was mentally disturbed and has a history of using people.  Karen was with us for only two visitations before she told Roland's ex that she wasn't happy about spying on us.  I don't know the conversation except that she had realized that she must have liked us better than Maleficent. 

          Karen had a daughter named Alexis.  I believe she went to the same school as Pamprin and Francis, and that is how they knew one another.  Alexis took a shine to Roland.  She loved him.  She played with him along with his girls and he treated her just as he had the other too.  Karen could sense that Alexis loved Roland.  He wasn't the monster that Maleficent had wanted her to believe. 

          Our second meeting was at a park where Ooki was to meet a group of foreign exchange students.  They were carving and painting pumpkins.  Frances joined in the festivities, as the art aspect appealed to her a lot more than the playground did.  Roland had escorted Pamprin and Alex to  the playground and Karen and I visited a table near the pumpkins and exchange students.  I laughed to myself as Maleficent had sent her to keep an eye on Roland and wasn't watching either him or Alex - which was fine.  I had enjoyed her company and had hoped that perhaps maybe one day we would be friends.

          When the foreign exchange students had finished their pumpkins, the supervisor of the program asked that they all stand together to have their picture taken.  Francis stood with them and refused to budge.  When it was time to go, Roland called to Frances for a hug.  Alexis came to show her mom something, and Pamprin lagged behind and we all walked to the direction of our cars.  After we Karen and Alex started to walk in the opposite direction of where we were parked, Alexis broke free of Karen and ran behind Roland to give him a powerful hug that had more meaning than Francis' and Pamprin's hugs together.  She needed a positive male role model and Roland was it.  He is a child magnet.  Children love him.  Alex was no exception.  It was the last time we ever saw Alex or Karen.  It may have been the last time Maleficent saw her civilly as well.  Alex, Francis and Pamprin are all adults now.  Physically anyway.

         Flash forward to 2015 - our first year in Oregon.  I had taken Jenna to a birthday party that she had been invited to.  It was the first time that I ever dropped Jenna off without having met the parents - or parent rather.  Shelly lives with her mom, Marva. Whenever Jenna would bring Shelly home - which wasn't often, but there have been some encounters - Shelly would often spend more time talking to Roland than hanging with Jenna.  She would call him "Mr." She loves the attention that Roland gives her. 

          We had invited Shelly and Marva over for Christmas dinner last year and may do so again this year.  They have both been here a lot more lately.  Roland had invited Shelly to have a sleepover last night with Jenna and would take the two of them to the movies today.  However he failed to consult Jenna about his plans and she had made plans of her own. She had planned to support another one of her friends who is having a birthday party - or rather a birthday "hang".  There are several people who love and admire Jenna.  She is accepted by a wide circle of friends - however not all circles will welcome her other friends - such is the case today.  Jenna is well aware that there is already a negative issue between Shelly and the birthday girl.

          Roland's not trying to replace Jenna, nor does Jenna feel threatened, but he has been giving Shelly the attention that she craves just as Alexis had.  He and Shelly fixed breakfast for us this morning.  He had purchased three art pads so that he, Shelly and Jenna could draw - which I know Jenna likes to do - but preferably without his supervision.  He is now out the door on his way to Roseburg to take Shelly to the movie.  She is so in her glory with his personal attention.  In an hour I will be dropping Jenna off at her friend's house and continue on to the Annex to hopefully sell some books and do some homework.  In less than five hours, Roland and I will returning to Roseburg for stake conference.

Part of the Elite

            During my entire lifetme, I don't recall having been invited into someone's circle to hang out because they really wanted me to.  Oh, there was the time when Crystal and Jennifer had invited me to hang out after elementary school - and seemed genuine about their request.  I couldn't imagine why they would invite me. But it was just the one time.  It never went anywhere.

       For the first time that I can recall, I am now a part of a intimate circle of four.  They have requested my presence.  They would invite me even before they got to know Jenna - whom everybody loves.  They admire her.  She's fun and somehow I seemed to have made that reputation for myself  - that I, too, am fun to hang with.

       Perhaps it's the state.  I was raised in Utah - small town that somehow grew bigger with every passing year.  When my mom had first moved to the neighborhood, she felt as though she were living in "no man's land" because it felt so barren.  Well, yes.  She was raised in San Francisco.  I'm sure the entire Salt Lake county seems dense compared to San Francisco.

       I remember having to be driven everywhere when I younger.  There was a gas station over on the next street over, but he did not offer a convenient store of any kind.  There was a 7-11 on the other side of State Street that we would sometimes walk to.  Traffic wasn't near as heavy as what it is now.  I shake my head at the very idea that we had crossed the street so often.  Perhaps mom wasn't aware.

           

      After a while buildings started to spring up.  We had over 40 fast food places within walking distance before I got married.  I don't know when it was that I became so uptight and unhappy - but I think it was rather early in my life.  I loved my family, but I didn't love the congestion.  The older I got, the more uptight I became - though I would try to work on it.  Overall, I probably was not the most pleasant person to be around.  Perhaps that's why no one ever offered for me to join their circle.

       I'm 56 now and this is the first time I can remember being part of a group (outside of church activities or going out for lunch with a few co-workers).  We meet at a local coffee house just to hang out and visit. I usually have water or day-old pastry if available.  The other day our small group car pooled to Winston right after class.  I had collected change from the piggy banks in order to make my Taco Tuesday purchase - only Taco Tuesday prices don't start until 4:00.  It was only 11:00.  I was hungry but strapped as usual.  One of the group members picked up my tab. They want me there enough that they will pay for me.  I've never had that before.

      One time we were invited to an expensive dinner and have a charity dinner coming up.  I have also invited the three of them to watch the dress rehearsal coming up for Jenna and Roland. It feels great to be included and to feel such genuine friendships that I have never experienced before.  It takes some getting used to.   

      Perhaps there are several others who may not classify our group as elite.  At least three of us felt like outcasts during our school years.  Perhaps we all feel that sometimes now.  We support one another in ways that perhaps we hadn't known before.  I like hanging with my small group of friends.

I Need to Take a Breather

            I had quite a full agenda yesterday.  After the sun rose, I drove to Riddle as Jenna had a dentist appointment.  On our return, I stopped at Dollar General for just a few items to add to her lunch and then I took her to school.

            I meant to turn in my assignment before my assessment, but I somehow had allowed myself to become frazzled and instead of submitting the assignment I clicked my assessment and started the quiz. 

            Once the quiz starts, there is no turning back, there are no retakes.  Most tests are timed. I had less than two hours.  And though it is open book, the e-book appears on just one third of the screen and I have to control plus each page I am on in order to view something bigger.  As I had explained in my last post, it is very time consuming.  And while I thought I knew the answers to some of the questions, there were a few that had stumped me. 

            It took all of two hours and I started marking answers just to have them answered but still hadn't checked on whether they were correct.  Time ran out before I was able to find them all - plus I knew I had a luncheon to attend.  I should have waited until this morning to take the assessment!  I doubt I would have gotten a much different score however - but perhaps I would have had a few more right.  I don't guess I'll ever know for certain.

            I had misunderstood the meeting time, for I thought I was assisting with cleaning the church before going out to eat. I have not assisted with cleaning a church building since I lived in Utah.  It is quite different here as it is a smaller building and only one ward meets there.  In Utah the cleaning was always done on Saturday - sometimes by different families, sometimes by organization.  The ward I had attended in Kearns split the work in half with one family cleaning  the chapel and the other the rest of the building.  In West Valley the chapel made about a third of the work (bigger building and three wards)

            This ward is cleaned on Thursdays.  A couple alternates weeks with two sisters - or at least that is how it has been.  But health issues have complicated matters and so there have been requests made for others to volunteer their time.  Aurelia had started at 10:00.  On the average, I am not even available on Thursdays until noon - so I was not there when the workload started.

            Aurelia had invited me to lunch because she wanted me to meet with one of the sisters that she visits teach.  We met at the restaurant that serves Mexican food before returning to the church.  They had the majority of it cleaned already.  I was asked to dust and wipe down the kitchen and doorknobs. 

            The "dusting" reminded me of dusting in the temple.  One has to have a recommend to clean in the temple.  I haven't done it often.  Maybe three times in West Jordan.  It seems like it was a very long time ago.  A white cloth will remain white by the end of the night.  I used a blue micro cloth at the church yesterday.  I did finally manage to find some dust on the piano used in the Relief Society room.  All the dust I had gathered yesterday amounted to less than the size of a fingerprint. 

            One tiny piece of glitter sparkled over the piano keys.  I was excited that there was only one.  I saw glitter ALL of the time when I was cleaning in West Valley. I don't think there was any week I cleaned that I didn't see glitter.  So finding only one glitter speck was really quite refreshing.  I think if they assign workers - even more so specific jobs (that's what they had done in my mom's ward;  my nephew and niece had been assigned to clean the blackboards; someone else was assigned vacuuming and so forth) also I think they might get a better turn out on a Saturday than a Thursday.  Cleaning on a weekday just seems weird to me. 

            Then again, my mom's ward had several hindered people who were/are active.  Those that attend this ward may already have multiple callings.  I do.

            I did not return to the house until just before 4:00.  Today I've been managing online billing, account balances and other information required for credit.  Jenna will be home in one hour and though I have accomplished a lot, I still need my breather.   Tomorrow we'll be going shopping for a car.  Dang! I feel so overwhelmed with missing hours.   

Christmas dinner

                I don't remember having met Shelly's mother before, but  she seemed to recognize me.  Many of our town's citizens had gathered downtown for the lighting of the tree on December 2nd.  I was making my up 2nd Ave. to the library annex when she spotted me and waved as though we had been buddies for quite some time but seemed to have lost touch.  She asked about Jenna and mentioned the desire for getting Shelly and Jenna together.

          Shelly and her mom had moved to Myrtle Creek last year.  I don't know what time of the year Jenna had been invited to her birthday party, but I know we were already living in Tri City at the time.  It was the first time I had dropped Jenna off at a friend's house without meeting a parent first.  Shelly was attending the same middle school as Jenna but did not return. She has decided to do her schooling online instead. 

                I believe that Jenna and Shelly have hung out together four times since December 2nd.  We even did a sleep over at our house.  Shelly and her mom had gone to an afternoon tea party at the grange where the ward had our Christmas party that same evening.  As Shelly was already there, I had invited her to attend the ward Christmas party and hang out with Jenna.  Roland had volunteered to pick up some neighbors and drive them home and the amount of passengers became more than our car could hold - thus we made two trips and allowed Jenna and Shelly to play together.

                I have tried to remain faithful to the positive challenge and had read each day prior but had forgotten the challenge for day 11. It was before I had taken the girls caroling that I had texted Shelly's mother  to ask if they would like to come for Christmas dinner.  I hadn't realized that was the challenge - to do something unexpectedly.

          After I brought the girls back to our house, we received the following message from a ward member:

 

          Shelly and her mom did come to have dinner with us on Christmas day.  I had on my tacky cat sweater and was just about to pull it off when they showed up.  Shelly's mom seemed to like it but I was hot and don't do well with long sleeves and food.  Shelly and her mom are always cold.  Before we ate, the girls exchanged gifts.  After dinner Shelly and her mom play games with us.  Shelly's mother really did enjoy herself.

          I ended up giving my Christmas sweater to them. Perhaps I should have asked Jenna first as she said that she liked it.  But I think it will get more use being at Shelly's house.  Roland was okay with it as he hadn't particularly liked the sweater either but had purchased it believing that I really did like it. I wish I had shown the same gratitude that they had.

The Third Day of Christmas

        My brother had posted the above photo to facebook earlier this month and I thought it I would try doing these myself.  Day Three says to have lunch with someone you admire or run into today.  The chances of me "running into" anyone other than Roland would be slim - though he is someone I do admire.  I suppose I could have just had lunch with him but I actually chose another to come have lunch with me. 

        Aurelia lives  45 minutes away and I said that we could meet halfway - though I'm really not familiar with what eating places are offered half way.  It turns out that she had two appointments in Myrtle Creek and so had planned on being in town anyway.  Gosh, what gratitude she expressed for my rather simple meal.  Well, actually not the meal itself, but the incentive I had taken just to invite her.  I am grateful that I had as we both benefited in a largely positive way.

        Today I will remove three negatives from my life (I am hoping this will be a permanent good riddens) Roland and Jenna have both started Christmas vacation as of last night.  Today is technically the last day of school for this year but I've turned in all of my assignments and so forth for this week.  Because we're all on vacation (even though we won't be going anywhere) I probably won't be posting to my blog again until after Christmas - though I may try.

August 21 Checklist

        Jenna had asked if her friend Kylee could spend the night.  They had planned for Monday night, but workday sleepovers did not work out well when she and Annette we better friends.  I told her it would be up to Roland.  He said yes and   Jenna created a list for the following day.

             Jenna's agenda for Monday, August 21:

 1) [Kylee]

 2) pool

3) eclipse

4) doughnuts

5) library

6) rays/goin’ postal

7) little shop 8 games . . .

9) something scary

10) bed. 

Allow me to explain:  First thing, we went to Kylee’s house to pick her up at 8:30 a.m..  Check off 1.  Next we went to the pool.  When we arrived, there was a note on the door:

A birthday bash is held at the pool each year on the Friday closest to the 21st.  We have missed all three years however. We were in Roseburg this year as I suspect other two as well.   I thought it was cool that the pool was getting an eclipse for its birthday (LOL) It was just Jenna, Kylee and me in the pool.  There were three lifeguards there.  What troopers, allowing us to be there.  They had even allowed the girls to go down the slide that had been turned on. Check off number 2. 

the large slide hadn't been turned on.  They went down this small one

I thought there would be more from the class as we had made reference to watching the solar eclipse from the pool.  Our instructor had a much better view as she was watching from a city closer to Madras.  We had accumulated several pairs of glasses since summer began and Miss J managed to give away all pairs except for one.  I had already given those to Roland figuring there were other pairs in the car.

hype

this was taken earlier this summer

Kylee had a pair - which she had torn in half so that both she and Jenna could watch at the same time.

 

  Kylee had wanted me to take her home for a half hour or so, but I thought we’d be watching the eclipse first.  I ended up driving to the park by myself as I didn’t know if I’d make it back in time to watch with Roland.  As I had mentioned before, neither Jenna nor I were all that impressed as we had been expecting to see the Corona.  I think a lot of people were as we made our way to Kylee's house and found many with paper glasses on their faces looking towards the sky.  They lost interest before the passing was complete.

courtesy of my brother-in-law (view from Utah)

 The skies seemed overcast.  Not as dark as we had anticipated.  The skies were really smoky that day and the next.  Worse than Medford was.  I had a killer headache – my breathing was almost as bad as it was in Utah.  Even Roland has been affected. Check off number 3.

Now Jenna was hoping I could take them to Happy Doughnuts – which is on the other end of town.  I was willing to drive them there, but did not want to make the drive just myself (I think driving up and down Old Pacific all day is what contributed to my leg becoming sore in the first place) and by the time I got to Ray’s (the local grocery store we call Rip-Off-Rays) there weren’t any maple bars (or many doughnuts of any variety for that matter)  Jaime specifically wanted maple bars because Monday was maple bar day at the Happy Doughnut; oh well . . .) so no check-off for number 4.

I had come home to change my pants and returned for Jenna and Kylee just before 11:00.  I hadn’t planned on adding laundry to the agenda, but realized that it needed to be done.  Kylee loaded my car full of cans and bottles to take to the recycling because each return of bar-coded bottle or can (has to be readable and not bent) add up at 10 cents a can, but I had to go to the library for summer reading before they could turn in the cans. 

It was our last day at the for the children’s reading program at the library and Jenna and I have been volunteering each Monday.  I don’t know how I became the story lady, but I have told stories at each event.  After story time we have had an activity except for the day of the solar eclipse.  Story time felt like an afterthought.  The children were more involved in the activities they had already started - which is okay.  Here are some samples of most of the activities that we did for the last two months:

 

we offered Lego activities two weeks in a row:
July 24 and 31

Sponge Bobs birthday was August 10

Solar Eclipse activity Aug 8

display case as of August 8

pin the eclipse over the sun

we created fairy gardens on Aug 14

house to go in the fairy garden

learning the planets on Aug 21

this was our last day of summer reading

tiles created on the last day

making slime Aug 21

cover photo for facebook page; rocks painted at the festival

Check off library.  So I took the girls to Rays, dropped them off with the five or six bags of cans, and went to the laundry mat.  I told them I’d meet them at Goin’ Postal – which is just next door to the strip mall (I guess you could call it that) where Ray’s is located.  It’s still a good walk. 

So we were home and up to number 7.  Both enjoy scary movies, though I don’t know why.  Little Shop of Horrors is not all that scary, but because  the plant arrives on the day of the full solar eclipse, Jenna decided they needed to watch it in honor of that day’s eclipse. But they had wanted to wait until it got darker.

 They started working on number 8.  Asking questions from board games mostly.  Kylee did have an opportunity of playing Balderdash with the rest of us as we introduced her to Family Home Evening.  Kylee fell asleep as they watched Little Shop and started from the beginning the next morning (after she had gone to the pool with us again of course - the smokiest day - not a good workout because we did not breathe the air) The girls were well behaved and at a lower volume than Jenna had been with Annette.

We returned Kylee to her house just after three.  I'd forgotten that I had agreed to work a shift at the library, and so had Jenna go with me as I did not have time to take her home.

The smoke had lifted by Wednesday morning.  Back to a better pool workout.