Home again, home again, jiggety jog

It was a great trip and I'm exhausted. Even though I had just one five-hour flight, I left at about 7:30 AM MDT and got here at 8:30 PM EDT. That's eleven hours travel time. Security lines can be really long at the Salt Lake airport so you just can't sneak in at the last minute. No meals included in this trek so after a day of trail mix and pretzels, I was glad to get home even though the fridge was rawther empty. Even though I was tired, I did listen to all the phone messages as my mailbox was full.

I don't put identifiable pictures of the grandkids on the blog but here are a few choice ones that I thought my readers would enjoy. The three older kids are planning their escape. They decided to practice fire drills by jumping on my bed, climbing into the two-year-old's crib and out the window. This went on for quite a long while. The other shot is the two-year-old wading in a reflecting pool at a local park.

It was a busy, busy time in Utah. I went to the Provo Temple, visited with some old friends, saw a senior project presentation, ate Mexican tacos al pastor (including cabrito), bought pastries for everyone at the authentic French bakery in Provo and bought lots and lots of books at the busiest library book sale I've ever seen. And, of course, spent many hours playing with the grandkids.

I'm making baby steps in the right direction in my writing career so am pleased about that. I just got two article assignments from a children's magazine editor. The next big hurdle is to get my book proposal ready.

Sun and fun

I am having fun both with the daughter's family of seven and the glorious sun in Utah. Yesterday it was 91 and because of low humidity so beautiful.

The kids are charming and I've had the opportunity to watch my daughter start up home school for the first time. It's an interesting process.

Not much time to blog but it is fascinating to realize how different this place is from Pennsylvania. To go from an area where the church has so very few members to a land where there's a church building on every block was radical. Denton, Texas is somewhere in the middle with a strong Latter-day Saint presence.

Random coincidence: our wonderful friends, Carol and Steve Harlos, were here in Utah as well and GL and I got to go see their son Jonathan's senior project in graphic design. I was so very happy to see them.

Where do the days go?

Been kinda crazy here lately. We're doing a refinance on the house--tons of paperwork--I'm getting ready to go to Utah, and I'm trying to get some writing done and queries sent out. I talked with an editor today and she liked a few of my ideas. That is always good.

Talking on Skype with MF in Europe is great. Her baby, E, likes my panda puppet and really responds to it. Today M showed me his missing tooth and his new haircut and V showed me the new skirt her mommy had made on her new sewing machine.

I'm so excited about going to visit GL and crew. I'm taking the baptism dress and the blessing dress. Wow! The baptism dress looks amazingly good. I made it in 1984. It needs new elastic in the sleeves which GL and I can take care of while I'm there. It won't be needed until next spring. My mom made the blessing dress in 1976 so it's not an antique but it has gotten a lot of use.

My parents are doing great and we're starting to make plans for a celebration for Dad's ninetieth birthday. Won't that be something? So I have some traveling to do for that as well.

I'd really like to see some of this area. We've had to put off a lot of things because of Michael's work schedule and my bad back. The Barnes Foundation collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings is just down the road. I've seen some of the paintings when they came to Fort Worth in 1994. But their big Seurat didn't travel and I'd really like to see the collection in the building as Barnes meant for it to be seen. Maybe this fall...

Retirement and summer breezes

I thought last year was the most beautiful August of my life, but this one may better it. It's 11:33 AM and a lovely 73 degrees outside. The yard is green, the rhubarb and tomato plants are flourishing, the coreopsis and clematis are blooming in our yard and the mums are just coming on. I'm trying very hard not to get complacent. I check the weather in Texas every once in a while just for a wake-up call. It will be 100 in Denton today, maybe 80 here. There will be a price to pay in January but let me love it while I can.

Retirement looms and we're not ready. Is anyone our age ready? We're looking at refinancing this house while interest rates are low so that we can build up more equity. We had almost paid off the Ridgecrest Circle house in Denton. It hurt like heck to move up here and start on a new mortgage. We've lived in several homes I've really loved, but the Ridgecrest one was the best.

We don't plan to retire here. Too expensive in more ways than I can count. For one thing, they're taxing fools up here. City income taxes, county income taxes, state income taxes, personal taxes. It goes on and on. Plus, stuff like food and utilities cost more.

The ideal would be for some miracle to occur so that we could afford a winter place down South and live up here in the summer. That's what lots of folks here do. You see tons of empty houses in the winter in our area. They wander back from Florida or North Carolina or wherever in May and then go back South when the snows come. Wouldn't that be nice?

I'm cleaning out the office today. I won't finish it. We never really organized it when we moved in. But I'm going to take a few bites of elephant today.

Saying goodbye

You'd think since I've only been in this area for a little over a year, that we wouldn't have had to say goodbye too much. Wrong, wrong, wrong! As soon as we got here, nice families started leaving our church family to go on to new jobs and new adventures. Michael's boss whom he really admired was promoted and moved away. And since then, we've said goodbye to a long string of folks. The latest parting was with a cute family; the father of the family served as my substitute pianist when I was on vacation. As part of our jobs in our ward, Michael and I work particularly closely with the missionaries. And, of course, we get to know them and love them and then they move away.

Today was particularly poignant. We had to say goodbye to one of our great missionaries who is going back home after honorably serving for two years. He's been in our congregation for quite some time. We admire him very much. He's going back home to be a piano performance major and I never even got to hear him play. And we also said goodbye to a young single adult named Brad. He has been serving as a member of our bishopric. He is the kind of quality young person that the world needs a lot more of. We have found him to be not only multi-talented and hard-working but also very compassionate and kind. I got to meet his parents today. They've recently returned from a church mission in Ghana. Quality folks as well. Apples don't fall far from trees as we all know.

And, of course, after having my daughter M here for a month, saying goodbye to them last week was also hard. I miss the kids all the time. What delightful little people. They really charmed themselves into our hearts.

I thought the big goodbye to Texas was hard. Today a young lady introduced herself to me. They're fairly new here and she's from McKinney, Texas. That's just down the road from Denton! I practically kissed her. Maybe I get to say goodbye to Wilkes-Barre at some point. But I've learned that no matter where you live, you find yourself missing folks. You're never immune from a nostalgic longing for old friends and old places--what the Portuguese call "saudade."

Cinco has arrived and my mom is 88

My daughter's baby Cinco has arrived and she beat me. My biggest was 9 pounds 1 and a half. Cinco was 9 pounds 7. Wow! I'll be going to help out on the fourteenth but it will be hard waiting to see him. But I had to wait seven months to see E who was born in Prague and she was worth the wait.

My mom's birthday is today so the baby missed it by one day. I'll be calling her today and hope to talk to GL about her new baby as well.

Migraine is into day number three so I'm not having a whole lot of fun here. The headache isn't that bad. It's just like having someone kick you softly on the back of the knee repeatedly instead of searing pain. Too distracting for words.

I have writers' critique group today which won't be a riot with a headache and then a meeting with a financial adviser. Some days are just more fun than others, I guess. But getting the news about the new baby and having my mom celebrate her eighty-eighth makes everything worthwhile.

Summertime

There hasn't been a lot of summertime here. We only took the kids to the outside pool once. Brisk and cool weather does not make for a pleasant swimming experience, IMHO.

But on sunny days, nothing beats Rita's. Behold a vanilla custard caramel sundae and a wild cherry ice. Both enormously good. We took the kids out for ice cream several times. I have already mentioned that this is "sprinkle" land. When we went to the best ice cream stand at Knoebels, it had a big sign that said "No Sprinkles." I guess they had had way too many requests. (Other ice cream stands there did sell sprinkles.) M and V went for sprinkles every time.

When we went to the Crayola factory in Easton, PA we were surprised by a very tall Civil War monument with a bugler on top in the square where the factory is. I've been doing the research on Civil War music so I was thrilled. We also have a "bugle-shaped" object for the kids to blow on here. My daughter pointed it out to V and said, "What's he holding?" She instantly responded, "A Cwayon!" Natch!