Life moves on

Sometimes it seems like things aren’t much different week to week.  I spend hours in front of the computer working on writing or learning things or taking care of business.

But I’ll see if I can pull out the highlights.  Monday I learned that Lloyds of London can take up to 60 days to pay my insurance claim. Bummer.  I also had a problem that my hyperlinks in Word suddenly no longer worked.  I spent a good hour or more Googling and trying to fix it.  Finally I called the help desk. Fortunately I had purchased my word program less than 90 days ago and they fixed it for me.  But it took them a good 20 minutes to figure it out.  Resetting to default solved it.

Tuesday I met Marian at the library and collected my pottery treasures.  I was pleased with how they turned out.  The glazes were fired to cone 5—usually she fires to cone 6 a difference of like 84 degrees cooler. We did this because the pattern blue comes out more blue than turquoise. 

 The pattern blue is on the left.  The red-gold... like totally gold is on the right.  I had fun making these with the Young Women's theme for the year.  The one on the left is Katelynn's birthday gift.

 These bowl are pretty small-- like cereal bowl sized for the largest one.

I put Mom's picture there for perspective... and the colors matched.  These are my first thrown pottery.  I was pleased with how they came out.  The back one is red-gold.  The front two both have pattern blue on them, but the right one has cinnamon ripple over the top of the blue.  Even though I only put it half way down the bowl, it ran the rest of the way but still has blue undertones.

However, it turns out the red-gold is more gold than red at that temperature.  It’s so interesting the differences small things make.

Wednesday afternoon I drove to Ava and then joined with Sister Lewis, the Stake RS president to drive to Springfield for our Stake Council meeting.  It is such a gorgeous time of year.  I love the spring and the blooms and young fresh green on grass and trees. It is always a spiritual feast to go to Stake Council… and always a late night. We had a missionary report back from Paraguay.  I got home about 1 am.

As we discussed seminary and teaching—and the new Come Follow Me teaching program I pondered on something I learned at our Seminary training: How much did the Savior know that he didn’t tell as he taught people? So often we know so much.  But people learn better if they can figure it out for themselves—with just some nudges and clarifications here and there.

Thursday we went to our local health fair.  They really put on a nice spread.  The hospital does blood work.  You can have hearing checked, and vision.  Your spine evaluated.  They had lots of booths for the different support systems around town. My blood work was good.  Tom had a little elevated cholesterol. The student nurse who took my blood pressure gave me higher BP than I’d ever had in my life, so I’ll stick with the BP taken the week before for an insurance policy.

Friday we had rain, rain, and more rain punctuated by rumbling thunderstorms. I have a touch lamp at my bedside.  Whenever it thunders just right, the lamp turns on. Grr.  Middle of the night.  Not fun. After the second time, we unplugged it. It was lovely to have rain all day.

That evening we had the Drakes and Arndts over for dinner.  I made the same chicken parmesan and baguettes as we’d had for the Food Nanny meal.  They were tasty.  My baguettes were a bit fatter than typical, but still well received. We also had homemade applesauce and peach jam and home grown asparagus.  I taught Tom that fresh-from-the-garden raw asparagus is mighty tasty.  After dinner we had a fun game of Curses.

 It rained again Friday night and into most of Saturday.

There were enough breaks in the rain on Saturday for me to plant more seeds and weed the garden.  Later Tom and I strung fencing on top of about 60% of the chicken run. This way our little flying chickens won’t be able to escape.  And varmints or hawks hopefully won’t be able to snatch chick either.

Our church building is in the process of being entirely repainted on the inside.  They were still working on the chapel, so we met in the cultural hall this week.  It was different and kind of tipped over the apple cart for those that typically sat in the same place.

This evening the Aaronic priesthood and priesthood leadership have a training meeting in Branson.  So it will be a late night for Tom.