Beneath the Wraps

     There are some months when I seem to be full of ideas and others when my mind is a blank - or I'm just not motivated.  My blog posts become feast or famine (at least in my mind) but unfortunately some of my ideas don't get written out - or they just don't seem so important once I see them on screen.  Or else I just haven't come up with the right words STILL             I often experience times of frustration - like when I hit a key that somehow changes the placement - and I feel helpless at not being able to change it back. On January 21, I posted an entry called "Judge not " I don't know what buttons I pushed to bring it to March 13 - but there you have it . . . again.  And yet, maybe somebody needed that post to land at the top because perhaps there is some hidden message that might speak to them that maybe they wouldn't have waded through otherwise.  I'm rationalizing . . . ...

            We haven't been here for even a year, and have already seen drastic makeovers.  Dairy Queen/Tommy's from this post            Another restaurant change has been the recent transformation of Patty Ann's.              Sadly this restaurant closed just shortly before or after we arrived.                Patty Ann's was a landmark in my mind.   We would stop and take pictures with the boat or building or picnic benches.             At the beginning of the year the signs came down.  The benches disappeared.  New signs went up.  Mid Town Grill. notice the apostrophe in TACO'S             Yesterday Rolland decided he wan...

            Jenna left the house at 5:15 on Wednesday.  I told her she could stay out for an hour and gave her my phone so that she would have it when the alarm went off.              She returned home at 5:30 and I told her she could continue to play for 15 more minutes.  Not even two minutes passed before I heard her wailing. Had we been prepared for disaster, both of us would have made certain she had stayed in.             It happened so quickly, she's uncertain of just how it happened.  evidently she took some kind of fall on her bike in which her mouth was gruffly introduced to the asphalt at high speed.  She came in the house with her mouth bleeding.  Roland and I both thought that the tooth had broken.           ...

            From the time she was a baby, Jenna has never liked egg yolks.  I had attempted to give them to her between the ages 6 months and a year.  I would scramble the yolk, hard boil it, fry it, poach it - it didn't matter what I did with it, she didn't enjoy eating it.             My son Biff doesn't eat egg yolks either - I think just because he's health conscience.  He used to give me his egg yolks - which for the most part we would use as an ingredient in cakes or cookies.             When I introduced Jenna to the egg white, she was fine with it.  Eventually she learned to like scrambled eggs (even with the yolk - though white is preferable) and even hard cooked eggs.  At first without the yolks - but now she'll actually eat the yolk.  But it'...

        I don't recall how many vacations we may have taken when somebody in the car called, "Are we there yet?"         I give my parents credit for livening up the journey for us - allowing us to enjoy the traveling part - well, as much as can be expected.  Our car problems were never a part of the plan - in fact it actually deferred us more than once.  After a while, though we still couldn't plan for whatever car problem might occur, we learned to roll with the punches.  No family vacation was complete without car problems and/or rain.         I wasn't able to go to Yellowstone with my family the year that car broke down 18 miles outside of Pocatello, Idaho. My mom and sister left my brother, Corey, and my dad in the car while attempting to walk to the next town on foot.  Back in the day when we just had road maps to go by.  No GPSs to l...

   My dad was a man of few words.   He did not share much of himself with anyone - including his own children.   So when he did share experiences with us - particularly about his past - it was indeed a rare treasure.   Although I may have not appreciated it at the time, I now realize what a treasure it truly was.        We were having a family home evening lesson - I'm thinking on judgement.  I remember him sharing an example from his past.  He said that there was a boy in his class who was not all that nice, one that had the reputation of a bully.  Someone whose personality clashed with everybody.  My dad was no exception.  He said though he had tried, he just didn't like the guy.        One day the teacher had given the class an exam.  My dad said his arm was in a cast at the time, and he wasn't able to write the answers in the given amount of time.  When ...

        This past week has been kind of dreary, as far as the weather goes.  The week before was overall perfect weather during daylight.  But before the sun rose or after it set, the temperature would drop at least thirty degrees.  That isn't nice.         In the morning, I would reach for my jeans, knowing that I'd be changing them into shorts as the day grew on.  I would lower the thermostat or turn it off completely - open the windows and the doors until the outside temperature and the inside temperature were the same.  There were even a couple of days that I had used the fan!         I didn't have to change my clothes this past week.  There was a lot more rain than sunshine.  And two nights of terrorizing wind that I remember being - when I lived in Utah.  But had never seen it here - or heard it, rather....