Monday, August 31, 2009

SIMPLE WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT.

Today, I have spent the time on the computer, which is not like me at all. For me,computers are very intimidating, a pain, I always get lost in that vast space and it crashes and burns. I press "send" and it does but to who? I love the old way of communicating like writing letters and picking up the phone to talk.
I love paper and pencils and stamps to mail my letters.
Besides that, I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up and I'm not twenty anymore, so today I used the time to write and that has always been one of my dreams as a little girl.
Where did this dream come from? A teacher, my elementary school teacher.
Simple.
We were asked to write an essay, it had to be at least two pages on anything we wanted, a story of some kind, so I did. It was a fairytale that I don't recall anything about. All I remember was he loved it he was impressed enough to tell me that I should become a writer when I grow up.
Over the years I have wondered about that and deep inside desired to write children's' books. Just a simple little comment and it has stuck with me for all this time.
It has been a day where I have enjoyed the fact that I'm a work in process myself after all these years. I have enjoyed and thrived today because I took the time to expand my horizons. I will always remember and appreciate Mr. Jones for encouraging me a long time ago.

SATURDAY

Saturday was a rather busy day for all of us.
I was a nurse, a taxis driver, ATM(insufficient funds),cook and head bottle washer and laundry queen and if I sit here any longer I will be able to add more to my list.
Colin was home sick, sore throat, coughing, sniffling yuckiness sick feeling stuff.
Stuart had his "acting up" class and then decided to hang out with some friends.
My husband was busy with getting ready for a business trip he is taking this week and he had scouting stuff to do and then he left for a few hours to do some "spying".

Spying? you might ask? You don't have to force it out of me, I hate pain so I'll just tell you...he went to spy on a high school freshman game. Clip board, camera in hand and off he went, my big guy to watch how the enemy, high school rivals are doing before his guys meet them on the field, when? soon!

By 11:30pm I was sitting relaxed on my new couch that I just love. I stepped out of my box on the color. Tomato Red.
Tyler was working away in his office and I knew he hadn't realized the time when I decided to text him. What a 'spy' thing to do I thought.
"Your wife loves you", I wrote, laid the phone down and within a moment I could hear him climb the stairs wearing a BIG grin on his face. It just was cute to see. A happy contented man with a dvd in his hand ready to show me what he had done all day in the world of "Bond, James Bond". So we sat there and watched.......freshman football.
I love our neighbourhood, everyone has kids and a dog, we wave to each other when we see each other, share our garden treasures we have grown this summer, the gatherings at the end of the street or sitting on the front porch. It is just so nice.

Saying that I have neighbours who I don't know on the next street, their backyard and our backyard join with an old fence separating us. We can't see each other as there are a lot of mature trees but they are annoying to say the least and who knows maybe they are nice.
They have a dog who barks and barks all the day long.
Every day, all day.
That dog is lonely, he wants to play,someone to talk to, but he is left to himself, bored out of his tiny little mind. I'm not sure what kind of a dog he is but he barks and barks and barks. Sometimes he barks at night. All night. Nobody comes to check on him, nobody, they just allow him to bark and bark.

Saturday night I had trouble getting to sleep, it was hot and I was actually in some pain so I took some pain medication and often it can help me sleep, but that didn't last too long. About 2 o'clock in the morning this dog started to bark and bark and bark. There had been silence until then no one sneaking around in the night, just the little crickets making their song as they like to do during the hot summer nights.
As I laid there listening to that poor dog barking and barking and barking, I couldn't take it any longer. I checked the time it was 3 o'clock .
Then finally I snapped. My window was wide open, I got out of bed and yelled and I yelled loud, "be quiet, stop barking and go lay down". So I obeyed, went back to bed and went right to sleep and so did the dog.

Friday, August 21, 2009

oouch!!!

At the end of July, the young men in our ward went on a "High adventure" trip down to Beaver, Utah. My sixteen year old was excited about the weekend. They left early on the Thursday morning, with SUV's and trailers packed with kids,mountain bikes and camping gear.
The plan was to get to their destination, the drive was about two hours away unload and do the mountain bike adventure, get back to base and then they would go water rafting the following day. Seems like a fun filled weekend. They are a really great group of kids and I was really excited for them all.

The weather was beautiful and Tyler and I were enjoying spending time on our front porch with a few of our neighbours, when we got a call from one of the leaders telling us basically that Stuart had biffed it a couple of hours in to the mountain biking. He was pretty cut up but no broken bones and he was on his way home.

Of course I was thinking the worst, like any Mom would and preparing myself to having to take him to the ER to be stitched up then having to get a plastic surgeon to fix any thing that needed to be fixed after the 500 stitches I figured he would be needing.
I so don't do well with blood and needles, people throwing up or loose teeth, I have to usually sit down as the room starts to spin.
It seemed like a long time until Stuart pulled into the drive way with Brother Cox.
My heart jumped to see him sitting in the front seat, I kept telling myself not to faint, be brave and to definitely not to embarrass the boy or he would never speak to me again. I did hug him, very gently and took a deep breath and surveyed the damage. It was difficult to tell with all the blood and lots of gravel. I wasn't sure if I was happy he wasn't as bad as I had led myself to believe or that I was impressed I was still horizontal and keeping what I had eaten earlier in my stomach.
He was really afraid as to how this was going to play out, he hates needles too and the thought of how his wounds were going to get cleaned had been praying heavily on his mind all the way home.
We got the blood cleaned up so we could see what it was really like and how best take care of Stuart and his wounds, when Stuart asks "I'm I going to have a scar?" "Unanimously both Tyler and I said,"Oh yes". I'm thinking how is he going to react when his next question was "will it be a bigger scar if you take care of it or if I go to the Dr'?"
In my mind there was no doubt he would be OK if we took care of it but I was certain the scar would be bigger when out loud he yells "alright that is cool, how big do you think it will be"