Still waiting

My dad is still in the hospital and there's a procedure scheduled for tomorrow. He is feeling so well, it's hard to believe he's having problems. He is also being extremely patient (and yes, for those of you who know him, I am not making that up.) I'm here to make sure that Mom gets rest and has moral support, I think. I now fly out on Thursday instead of Tuesday and will still be able to make the wedding in Virginia. The schedule will just be a lot tighter.

So many days in your life you can predict a lot of things that will happen. But for the past few days, I've been living in the land of complete unpredictability. And also, I've been not in control of what's happening. Neither have Mom and Dad. This will eventually make you crazy. Off to do laundry because I only brought a carry on bag and didn't expect to stay this long!

Sevensup --no peanuts

Sometimes things don't work out the way you want. When N flew with me to Shreveport when she was a tiny thing, her Gramma asked her about her flight. Her answer was "Sevensup, no peanuts." I'm afraid this trip to Louisiana falls in that category. Dad is in the hospital having tests run and so none of the three of us, Dad, Mom or me, made it to my niece's wedding yesterday. Thankfully, N had already planned to come and was there to represent our family. She drove up to Shreveport after the wedding reception and Mom and I had a lovely visit with her late last night. My brother and his boy will drop by the hospital today so I'll get to see them there. Dad is feeling well and I feel that he is in very good hands. The Seven-Up this trip was being able to spend a lot of special time with Dad yesterday in waiting rooms. The "no peanuts" was the very obvious lack of wedding in this trip planned especially for that.

Roundabout trip

I learned a lot about the Wilkes-Barre airport in the past few days. My plane kept getting delayed and delayed until I finally realized I wasn't going to make my connection in Atlanta. (And I had had a three-hour window.) Usually I can find someone to talk to in long waits like that, but I ended up being rather quiet for a change and had to overhear a long conversation between a guy and this young schoolteacher about their tattoos. It was one of those you wanted to ignore but had trouble doing so because they were talking loudly in your ear. Word for the day: Sycophant. The guy fawned all over this girl for her bravery in getting a huge ankle tattoo. Yuck!

Rather than have them get me a hotel room in Atlanta and then start out for Shreveport on Friday morning, I offered to go home and have them fly me to Shreveport the next day. So Michael came and picked me up. They actually boarded us on the plane and then we had to get off again at one point. This is when I found out that the last planes leave W-B by about 6PM. So at 6 o'clock the restaurant and snack bar close. You can't even buy a bottle of water after 6. I also learned the next morning that getting to the airport by 5:30 AM for a 6:30 AM flight isn't necessarily early enough. It seems that all their morning flights are at 6AM (so they can make connections in other places) so there was a huge line at the check in counter and at the security gate (of which there is only one!) So note to self and others, get there plenty early for a redeye flight, especially if you have to check bags.

Once I got to Atlanta things went a lot better and it was an uneventful trip after that. The Shreveport airport was unrecognizable as they have built a new terminal since I last arrived there. But we passed the old building on the way out. I have some really vivid memories of that terminal.

My parents are great and doing well. We are looking forward to the wedding today.

Flight to LA

I'm almost packed for my trip to Louisiana. I always check the TSA website for updates to the rules about what you can carry on. I don't check bags unless I absolutely have to so I want to be able to carry everything on board.

They now allow nail files (I have one that really looks like a weapon which I will be leaving at home--I don't care what they say), corkscrews and scissors shorter than 4 inches but do not allow pool cues, snow globes and gel shoe inserts. I'm just amazed at what the thinking is. Musicians are having a heck of a time traveling because in some cases they cannot buy an extra ticket for their instrument.

I'm thinking I need to write a suspense novel about a hijacking by tuba.

Old-fashioned department store

I was looking for some special pantyhose for these weddings coming up and called Macy's. The lady there said that they had sold out for the season. (What?? People don't buy pantyhose all summer?) Anyway, I tried Boscov's which is a department store downtown and the lady there said they had plenty and that they had colors that were very fair (for the whiter shade of pale like myself).

I went and parked the car in a pay parking lot. (This reminded me of old-time shopping trips with my mom in downtown Shreveport. Then I entered this real time warp of a department store. It looked exactly like Selber Bros., Rubinstein's, and Goldring's in Shreveport used to look with big glass counters and lots of mirrors. The perfume counters are in the middle as you come in, followed by jewelry followed by the escalators (this store had four floors!). And the clothing was pretty time-warpy too. The seventies-style polyester smock tops were sending me right back to my early married days. The store has everything from a beauty salon to photo finishing place to restaurant.

And yes, they had plenty of pantyhose like I needed. And I bought a great set of flannel sheets for our very pudgy and hard-to-fit mattress 75 per cent off. Michael had said we weren't going to be stoic like the last time we lived in a cold climate. Our stoicism then was pretty much determined by our lack of funds. So he said we would have remote car starters and warm clothes and flannel sheets.

I looked for American Quilter magazine (which features a photo spread and an interview with my firstborn this quarter) but the local Barnes and Nobles downtown doesn't have much in the way of magazines. Disappointing.

The best thing that happened today was that I got to talk to MF and her two, M and V. M was excited to count backwards from twelve and V sang her ABC song. Tomorrow I leave for Shreveport, so will probably have limited time to blog. The weather is so gorgeous here, it's a shame to leave. It would be much more fun to miss a blizzard.

The picture is not of a deparment store obviously. I realized I hadn't posted a picture for a while so here's an oldie but a goodie from our trip to France in 2006. I call it "White-haired man with white bear." I love this statue in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. It's by Francois Pompon. I love the simplicity of it. He said he was trying to portray the "very essence of the animal."

Meeting the neighbors

Found out this morning when is the best time for meeting the neighbors. 6:00 AM. I met two folks I hadn't met before because they were out walking their enormous dogs. It was beautiful out at that hour--I am getting acclimated, I didn't even wear a sweater. It's now 3:35 PM and it's still only up to 77 degrees.

Today I took books back to the Back Mountain library. This is a really cool place. They converted their old high school into a public library. I decided to put Eclipse on hold as I had read the second in the Twilight series (by Stephenie Meyer) at Georgia's house. I was surprised to be first on the hold list. So I ought to be able to read it soon.

They have two cool ideas. One is a club you pay money once a year to join. This gives you first crack at the latest new books which they buy for the use of the club members. They also have a set of books which are checked out for one week only. This allows them to circulate new and popular books more readily. Their big deal is an antique auction in July. It's evidently quite amazing and involves much more than antiques. It sounds more like a community fair than anything. My library card isn't just good here in Back Mountain. It can also used in all the libraries in the county including the big Osterhout library in Wilkes-Barre. It's on my list of places to visit because it was built with the consultation of Melvil Dewey and is a renovation of a Presbyterian church from the mid-1900s. I am pretty sure my dad has been there, probably to do his research papers for high school. It's been around so long, they opened a children's section in 1904! They unfortunately lost 69,000 books and all their newspapers and magazines in the Hurricane Agnes flooding in the 70s. (See a previous post about the tendency for natural disaster around here.) We were so pleased that the University of Iowa library that we love so well was saved recently with the help of many volunteers.

It's a good thing they have such great libraries around here since they have no stores like Denton's Recycled Books and Records. That store was amazing. Almost every time I was in there, someone from out of town was in there stocking up because their community didn't have anything like it. My daughter and son-in-law who live in the Czech Republic used to buy books by the sackful when they visited us. Alas, they won't be able to do that here. I tried to find a used book store when we first moved here. I finally found one of the used book stores listed in the phone book. I was careful to do so during its wacky and random opening hours. But alas, it still wasn't open. And judging from the size of it, there wasn't much in it.

Jed and Ellie Mae

We have new oil barons in the family. My parents are selling the drilling rights to the natural gas underneath their property for a tidy sum. The actual drilling will be far from their property so it won't change their quality of life. It seems oil drillers have new ways of extracting the natural gas that they are pretty sure exists below Shreveport. Dad says that the mineral rights revert back to you if you've owned your property for more than ten years in Louisiana. Since they've been there since the 50s, I think they're set. If the drillers do find gas, my parents should start getting checks. Momma has started to call Dad "Jed" which makes her either Granny or Ellie Mae. I definitely think she's much more of an Ellie Mae.

Now Michael and I have never owned mineral rights to any property we've ever bought. If I remember correctly, we didn't even really "own" the lot in Hot Springs because it's part of a National Park. We had a hundred-year-lease or something weird like that. And I don't even know if there has been anything valuable under the property we've owned. But if there's anthracite under this house, it's not mine and someone else already has the right to dig a big old tunnel under it to get it out.

We ended up buying a house on the side of a mountain for two reasons. We couldn't bring ourselves to buy a house that might have subsidence problems. This is a nice way of saying that your house might fall into a hole in the ground because of a mine tunnel underneath it. (Which indeed happened to my dad's childhood home.) And we also didn't want to be in a flood zone. Most all of Wilkes-Barre and the other towns that run alongside the Susquehanna are in a flood zone. After seeing the pictures of Iowa City (and the flooding of two different places where we used to live)I think we made a good choice. We got less house for the money, but I feel a lot more secure when it rains.

Differences between there and here

It's time to think back and do a little comparing between there (Texas) and here (Pennsylvania.) Today, because it's Sunday, I am thinking about church.

The big challenge in missionary work in our ward (congregation) here in Pennsylvania is not in baptizing people! We have led the stake (a stake is composed of several congregations, in our case, eight), for the past two years. We even led the mission (a big part of Pennsylvania) two years ago. The bishop told us that the ward is right on schedule for the goal of having 25 baptisms this year. (If I remember aright, this would have been a good number for our whole stake in Texas.) Today our six missionaries were all sitting with investigators (people who are interested in learning more about our church) and we had new people there today who had never attended one of our meetings. So if we are getting new members to join, what is the challenge?

Getting them a ride to church. Many people in this area have no cars and rely on public transportation. Most of the people in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area live in the Susquehanna valley. But our church building is way up on Back Mountain, only one half mile from my house. Some of our members have a forty-five minute drive to get to church. The people who have cars and who can pick others up have just about maxed out their car capacity. When I first got here, I couldn't understand why everyone stayed after church for such a long time visiting. This is because a) there's not another congregation coming in right after ours to use the building, and b) this is the only time most people see their church friends all week. They also schedule all baptisms on Sunday right after the meetings are over. The only other time the building is full is on Wednesday night when they have the youth activities.

Today we had a visitor from the stake level (a high councilor) and he actually apologized for talking about doing missionary work. He said, "I'm preaching to the choir." The missionary zeal in this area is the first thing Michael noticed when he moved here.

If this area is strong in missionary work, what was special about my church home in Texas? More things than I can count. But I would have to say that the closeness, the love and the friendships were as intense there are any place I've ever attended church. And I do miss my friends more than I can say.

Michael and I have a new church job now. We are missionaries! Michael is excited. He wants to use Zach's old name tag. We will spend one night a week going out with the missionaries and will help them any way we can. What a pleasure to be a part of such a successful program!

And, of course, playing the organ is still so much fun. I get so many thanks for my not so perfect efforts.

Hail yes

I went to the grocery store about 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon and when I came out of the store it was pouring rain. Not too bad a thing really as I had my umbrella with me. When I got home Michael was already there (very unusual for him to be home before 6:30.) He pointed out the hail that he found when he got home. I was only gone from the house for an hour all day and while I was one half mile away it poured hail down on our house. It wasn't big hail, just large English pea size. And because it's pretty chilly here in the evenings, it lasted a long time. Funny. The only damage it caused was to my rhubarb. It just destroyed it. So I'm baking rhubarb pie right now as we speak.

Today we went put the top down on my car and drove to Frances Slocum State park. It's just a few minutes from the house. It was like being in Canada. Beautiful big lake with huge pine trees. We noticed that they allow no gasoline-powered motors on the lake. It was very quiet and peaceful and the weather was just perfect. It really feeds the soul. It was like being on vacation ten minutes from home.

Who's dilatory?

Joseph Smith Memorial Building ceiling
Originally uploaded by suze67

Today I finally had the movers come do "debris pickup" which is included as part of our relo package. This means that they come get all the boxes and paper. There wasn't as much as you would think since a family in our ward had taken enough boxes to move their whole family of five. Even so, the mover guy seemed impressed by how many boxes he had to move. Oh well! We have a lot of stuff.

So the basement is pretty cleared out and I'm working on the office today. I just about got the living room the way I wanted it yesterday.

The photo today is one I took with Michael's little Olympus on a trip to Salt Lake City. (The Olympus is his and I have used it almost exclusively. The Nikon is ostensibly mine but when we're together, it's Michael who uses it. Go fig.) This is the ceiling of the Joseph Smith Memorial building. Pretty neat if you ask me.

I highly recommend getting an email subscription to the word of the day from dictionary.com. Even though I think I know a lot of the words, it's good to review and to get real details on the meaning and see them used in sentences. I learned a new word a few days ago--"dilatory." This applies to a person who procrastinates, i.e., moi. I've been putting off using it on my blog. Hah! So here's to the dilatory out there. You know who you are.

Flower power

wet daisies
Originally uploaded by mmedenney

I've started posting some photos on flickr since my daughter really seems to like it. Right under my picture there's a box with a link to my flickr account. This way you can see more of my pictures than I can post on my blog. I really like this daisy one but I'm not sure it's a great photo. I love the darkness and the saturated colors. It had rained really hard so the flowers were glistening. I also like it because I'm finally starting to experiment with exposure, etc. Let me know what you think.

Today I made monumental progress in the living room. And set up our debris pickup. The moving company will come and take back all the moving boxes and paper. We've taken our time getting around to this but I think we have most of things unboxed. That will empty out a good portion of the basement.

Lost in my own neighborhood

Today as I was going to the post office to mail my job application, I noticed that my street was closed. I've explored the neighborhood so little (and haven't seen a good map of it) that I didn't know where to go. So I ended up getting lost in my own neighborhood. I finally got out my GPS system to get me to the post office.

People were very nice. At the post office and at the bank they had advice on how I should get home since my street wasn't open.

I lined us up with a new dentist today. One of the most difficult things about moving is that you have to start so many things over. After twenty-three years in Denton, I know who all the good doctors are and where to find them. This also goes for jewelers, dry cleaners, and hundreds of other service people I would need from time to time. I only have a few contacts here and have to trust their judgment or just use the Yellow Pages.

I've decided to start trying to learn how to use my camera again. After a big rain storm, all the flowers in the yard looked good so I went out this afternoon while it was still overcast. We have a big field of daisies, and also have foxgloves, roses, sedum, clematis and one last rhododendron blooming right now.

Lagniappe

Today I went into Wilkes-Barre to make color copies of an article for a job application I'm making to the Times Leader. This is the paper my grandfather worked for as a job printer. They are looking for correspondents to cover school board meetings and such. Not a full-time job which is perfect for me. Any thoughts and prayers would be appreciated. If this is right for me, it will happen. If it's not, it won't. We felt so much divine guidance pushing us to come to PA that we have to continue to listen and trust that we will be guided to the right activities. I found the job because the newspaper was delivered to us for free on Monday. Seemingly random but I'm thinking that little in life is really random.

In addition, I went looking for something to wear to the two weddings coming up. What are the chances that the first outfit I tried on would be perfect and more than 50 per cent off? That's what happened. I tried on one suit at Macy's and it was perfect. People around the store (and not just salesladies) commented on how good it looked and how well it fit. Amazing. The color is unusual (I won't spoil the surprise for readers of my blog who will see me at one of the two summer weddings) so the shoes were an issue. Shoes are always an issue when you wear a 5 1/2. I tried at three places at the mall. Very few shoes my size at any of them. Then I went to the strip mall that has three of my favorite stores lined up: Marshall's, Dress Barn and Ross. There was nada at Marshall's but they had lots of shoes my size at Ross. I found a perfect pair of Kenneth Cole Reaction heels.

The lagniappe today was the adorable pair of aqua flats that I couldn't pass up at $10.99. Oh, and I almost forgot. I'm a member of the Tuesday club so I got the senior discount. The bummer is that they wouldn't give the discount to me in Denton unless I asked. But here the young lady asked me. Alas, I must look my age (or 55 anyway).

Exterminator conversation

I think the conversation is on a higher plane here generally. The exterminator came today to get rid of some black ants. While he was here he discussed the following:
Hillary Clinton (he knows her as she grew up near here)
Obama
Climate change
Racism
Italian food restaurants
Outdoor sports and Texas
Education

I took notes when he started talking about Italian restaurants. He said that his town, Old Forge, is known for having the best pizza in America. We'll definitely have to check it out.

Annoying neighbors

The pictures are of Michael enjoying one of his Father's Day calls. At this point he is talking to Georgia. He's had a really great day. Morgan called by Skype and little Vivian kept popping up out of bed during the call.

They do Father's Day up big in our ward here. The fathers got bags of candy and if you had a Primary child you got a crown. One class made ties for their dads (I'm guessing the girls at Achievement Days) and you had to hand it to the dads for wearing ties with ruffles, sequins, and other frou frou girly stuff.

The annoying neighbors? Last night a car horn kept sounding. It was okay for a while but then it got annoying. I wondered why they didn't do something about it. Come to find out, it was Michael's horn. His has a different note than mine so I didn't recognize it. It must have shorted out in all the rain we had yesterday. We have seen the enemy and he is us. So Michael cut the wire to the horn and all was well.

Hard to kill headache

What a shame to feel punk when the weather is absolutely glorious. And it would be hard to imagine more perfect weather than we had today. I did hang out two loads of clothes which was pleasant and felt constructive. But enough whining.

I made a couple of phone calls to my parents and to some old friends to make myself feel better. Those and the sweet-smelling laundry were the bright spots in a day which dragged on a bit.

Another way to make myself feel better is to look at pictures. So here's another of my precious J. What a cutie-pie!

Haircut

Okay, it's not that my hair doesn't like Pennsylvania. It's that my hair texture has changed. Derrick, the highly-recommended cosmetologist, says that your hair texture can change every seven years or so. And that my hair is now officially curly, right down to the roots. Who knew? I thought it was some weird wavy in-between thing it was doing. No matter how I blow dried it, it was always wavy and cranky. So I should be able to mousse it and let it curl and be happy with the results. But he worked intensely to straighten it out yesterday so it looks good today. He also said very randomly that hair coloring is going out of style and that his ladies aren't coloring theirs any more because of a mayonnaise commercial. ???? It seems that Kraft had an ad with a woman with gorgeous silver hair and that after that all his clients decided to let their hair go natural. I looked for the ad on You Tube but couldn't find it. I guess the medium really is the message.

And the tree limb on our hedge was actually our neighbor's favorite lilac tree. She's out of town and her husband dreads telling her that it's gone. So he'll be working on that for a few days. His six-year-old son and I chatted yesterday while the big guys looked at the fallen tree. I asked him if he liked Spiderman and he said yes but that he wasn't allowed to watch the movie since he was only five. And I had thought that I was the last mean mommy in America. My son wasn't allowed to watch the Ninja Turtle movie when it came out because I thought he was too young. The neighbor's boy really is a cute kid and I hope that he and grandson M get to spend some time together in August.

Big storm

The big news in my life is the announcement of a baby girl granddaughter due on my birthday. Sweet! And I look at the joy my parents continue to get from their grownup grandchildren and I see how bright my future is.

We had a big storm yesterday with some dramatic straight line winds. By Texas tornado standards, it wasn't that dramatic but then in Texas there weren't 70 foot high hemlock trees across the street from my house. Watching those enormous trees sway was fascinating and sickening at the same time. It did occur to me that we ought to be in the basement instead of at the front door but it was quite a show.

I saw on the Weather Channel that a neighborhood in Philly was particularly hard hit. One poor soul had a huge tree uprooted in his yard which in turn flipped over a slab of sidewalk concrete onto his car which he had parked on the street. His other car which was parked in the garage got hit by another tree.

I've been hearing chainsaws all day in my neighborhood. We have a huge tree limb on our burning bush hedge. The limb came from the neighbor's yard so Michael and the neighbor are going to have to work out a way to get it off our lot.

Mind-numbing behaviors

My daughter's blog had a classic entry today about that one thing you do when all else fails. This is the activity you turn to when you are too tired, upset, blotto, drained, emotional or (fill in the blank) to do anything else. For me it is Georgette Heyer (pronounced "hair") novels. Although the books in our house are in utter chaos right now, the Georgette Heyer shelf is doing fine thank you, although not in its usual alphabetical order. Many of these novels are out of print and so some of my copies are old secondhand paperbacks which are held together with rubber bands. I do have a complete set of both the regency romances and the mysteries and I (or someone who loves me very much) replace my worn out copies when better ones come along.

I remember first reading these novels when I was still in junior high school. Then a friend in graduate school who suffered from insomnia recommended them as reading for those moments when all else fails (see above paragraph.) Although my daughter might be the only person in the world who falls back on infomercials, many besides myself rely on Georgette Heyer. The website www.georgette-heyer.com will pretty much clue you in on the addiction. I did notice going through the site just now that I own a fair amount of first American paperback editions (mostly worthless because they are in such bad shape) and even own a shoddy copy of a British first edition. Who knew? I also noticed that the shelf of copies in my local Back Mountain library are American hardback first editions. So if you know that Georgette Heyer particularly hated the color "puce" (which is a dark purplish black and not green at all) and always dressed an unsavory character in that color, then you, like me, are a true Heyerite.

On the mend

Yesterday, I dragged myself to church with a box of Kleenex and a sack of throat lozenges and coughed my way through sacrament meeting on the organ bench. Then back to bed for the rest of the day. It was a scorcher by Shavertown standards (96 degrees)and very humid. And we have no A/C. Michael really suffered yesterday but I didn't mind the heat too much. We will be getting a room unit I feel sure after Michael's experiences yesterday. We had already discussed where we might put in a window unit.

Today, not much of anything has happened because I learned a long time ago that you need to rest one more day than you think you should. This isn't laziness but common sense. A relapse is always worse than the original whatever it was you got.

I'm trying to justify the expense of a daily newspaper. But the Times-Leader costs a fortune. The other paper around here, The Citizens' Voice, really looks like a rag. It's printed tabloid-style like the National Enquirer. I can't bring myself to subscribe to it even though it's cheaper. The Times-Leader also includes the weekly edition of our local paper, The Dallas Post, so I guess I'll have to spend the money. I've realized that reading the local paper really makes you feel a part of the community. Church will never do that here since our ward boundaries are huge. We have many different communities represented in our congregation. I think there are only two church families in Shavertown where I live.

The picture I took a while ago of the back of our house. The sugar maple is enormous and shades the entire backyard.

Still out

Still sick today. But we had our first dinner guests yesterday evening. Two great young men who are serving as missionaries in our ward. I didn't make anything special: cheese spaghetti, a salad, some vegetable soup from the day before and a pan of brownies. But they were very appreciative.

Today has been pretty much of a loss. So I'll post some pictures of G's oldest and hope to feel better tomorrow. C is a very big-hearted and artistic child who loves making things and who loves helping others.

Sick leave

Yesterday my neighbor and I were looking at my yard and I started getting stuffy. I figured I was allergic to something in the yard. But today it's a full-fledged cold. I had many plans for today as we are having our first dinner guests tonight. The missionaries are coming for dinner. But all those wonderful things won't get done. I'll manage the food but that's about it. I feel terrible.

I hope I feel like taking pictures of the poppies today. They are enormous. And the iris are lovely as well. We met some more cool neighbors last night. This is a wonderful neighborhood. People who are out walking just drop by to say hello. It's amazing.

On the writing front, I got the go-ahead from The Friend magazine to write a story for them that I had proposed. It's about a young lady from our previous ward (congregation) and her baptism day.

Today's pix are of S. He's a computer and Wii whiz and a sweet, loving child. He loves fancy and likes to dress up as a superhero.

Amazing Everill

Everill, the former owner of our house, was nothing short of amazing. He has planted bulbs and shrubs so that the yard has stayed in flower for weeks and weeks. My neighbor tells me that this will continue through the fall mums. Right now the iris are blooming as are the poppies. There are so many iris by the street that it looks like Monet's garden down there.

Today's pix are of J, G's two-year-old. He totally surprised everyone the other day by being able to pick out all the letters I asked him about in the newspaper I was looking at. G tested him later and he was able not only to pick them out but to name them as she pointed them out. She didn't teach him so that means he picked it up from one of the games the kids play on their computer. He and the dog, Bella, roughhouse harder than any two I've seen. And they both love it. At one point, he and the dog had played so hard that it looked like J had a beard because of all the dog hair stuck to his chin. He's a pixie and very delightful to be around.

The baby

It was good to get back home to my little kitchen. I was a little puzzled by a huge stack of clean dishes, pans and plasticware on the stovetop until I figured out that Michael didn't know where to put them. I asked him if he didn't need the cooktop but he said that the microwave was good enough. This reminds me of an ad I read somewhere in the last week about a young lady who is using her kitchen as an auxiliary closet. There was a picture of her in front of her kitchen cabinets filled with purses and shoes. She realized that she never cooked (just ordered takeout) so she just reserved one cabinet for a few glasses and plates, and kept available the microwave and the sink. The rest she devoted to her extensive wardrobe. The lesson here is, it's your house and you should use it in the way it works best for you. This is why our sunroom is a tuba practice room.

I'll post pictures of all the grandchildren one by one. Their faces are so mobile that you can't quite get what a child looks like without multiple pix. So I'll start with J. Note the bottle in one hand and the Wii controller in the other.

I did okay until...

Yesterday I came home from Utah and I did okay driving away from the G's house. (I usually bawl.) I had to drive so I guess I was concentrating on that. I actually did okay on the plane ride too. But when we got to Philly and were getting off the plane, a tiny little girl (maybe three) was walking in front of me and I saw a grey-haired gentleman yelling, "Evie! Eve! Evie!" And then she ran up to him and he swept her into his arms with the most glorious smile on his face. That's when I started to cry.

It was good to be home though. And the yard exploded in my absence. We have a whole row of iris in the very front of the yard by the street, mostly purple but some peach colored and some yellow, the rhododendron tree is in bloom and there are giant red poppies coming out in the back. I've never looked closely at one. They have this deep purple pollen in the center. I was reminded of that devilish Georgia O'Keefe puzzle we had. The center of that puzzle was black but when you look closely at these you see that they are really deep, deep indigo. We went over to a couple's house tonight (there were six of us) and we all commented about how the trees in bloom make this place really unique from all the places we remember.

I miss G and D, C, S, J and J very much. The baby, J, will change the most between visits and that makes me sad. But I have much good work to do here in PA and we know that we were led here and so we were meant to be here. Pictures tomorrow, I promise.

Hilarious

One of the things I like best about visiting Utah is that my Utah children are so up-to-date and cool. We watched the most amazing video the other night. It's called The King of Kong or A Fistful of Quarters. It's a documentary about people who set world records on old-style video games, the big stand-alone machines like Pac-Man. It's a must-see. I thought it was going to be just hilarious but it is also very poignant. The documentary makers were brilliant! Today I fly back and my Pennsylvania life resumes. I have an article to write for an ezine called Writing for Dollar$, I just got the okay from a Mom to write a story for The Friend magazine and I have a way overdue article to send to a travel site. It's exciting to get back to the writing. But when I leave here there will be the inevitable tears. It's always so hard to leave.