Ready. Set . . .

Here I am, about to embark on the fourth year of my two-year degree.  But I don't know if I am ready to go.

We've been school-shopping this week—and still have more to do.  Lindsey bought all her start-of-the-year clothes and some school supplies, I got one pair of slacks and one shirt each for Kaylie, Rachel and Jessica, and one cute pair of shoes for me.  School starts Wednesday, but I'm thinking (clothes-wise), "This won't do."  So we'll keep shopping.

As for mentally ready?  I could use another two weeks, I think.  But, alas! It is not to be.

This semester I am signed up for:  Elements of  Effective Communication.
Human Relations in Career Development. (Oh, yay.)
Intimate Apparel—learning to make underwear, bras and swimsuits.  Cool.
and
Collection Development, where I will design, draw, buy fabric for (possibly in Los Angeles), make patterns for, choose models for, and eventually sew a seven-piece collection to show in the student fashion show in April or May.

I'm thinking of adding an exercise or music class, but am undecided.

Sadly, three of the four classes I'm registered for are late-afternoon or evening classes which means I'll be in school when my kids are home.  But I don't get to fuss over that; at this point I have to take what I can get.

So here we go again.

A Brush With the Supernatural

Earlier in the week as we were making a commissary delivery Michael and I saw a little dust storm rolling toward us, and it reminded me of something that happened when I was around ten or so.

It was a dark and stormy night . . .

Actually, it wasn't really stormy.  My sisters and I had all turned in for the night.  Denise (three years younger than me) and I shared a room, and Melanie (five years older than me) slept in the bedroom across the hall from us.  Denise often had a difficult time sleeping—she would get scared—and obviously Melanie was more sympathetic and nicer than I was.  I probably thought things like, "Denise is such a baby!"  (Hey, I was ten-ish and she was the pesty little seven-year-old sister.) And I probably said things like, "Just be quiet and go to sleep."  Just oozing empathy.

Anyway, Denise went and quietly knocked on Melanie's door and pretty soon Melanie came into our room and settled into the bottom bunk with Denise.  Just as we were quieting down to sleep we heard a shriek of wind, and Melanie's bedroom door slammed shut with a huge bang! The wind howled for a bit, and then it stopped as suddenly as it had started.  We sat up in our beds, wide-eyed and jittery, every nerve on edge, in the dark, and with  the glowing eyes of our dolls staring at us from every corner of the room.

And then we heard it . . .

. . . A steady tap, tap, tapping on Melanie's bedroom door.

In just a moment Mom came up to see us.  "Did you hear that little devil?" she asked.

That what?!

"A little devil came through the house." she said, as calm as calm could be.  Then she bade us good night and went back to bed.

And the tap, tap, tapping was still beating a staccato on Melanie's bedroom door.

We girls nervously sat there, whispering, and wondering what could be in that bedroom, tapping for us to let it out.  Finally we got up the nerve—all three of us together—to go look.  We opened the bedroom door to be greeted by several more pairs of gleaming eyes, looked around and saw . . .

. . . a Hawaiian shell necklace hanging from the doorstop of Melanie's closet and steadily tapping on the door.

My Brazilian mother meant a little dust devil, but my ten-year-old self had never heard of such a thing before then.  :-)

What Michael and I saw the other day was not a dust devil, but it did remind me of my encounter with a little devil.

The Good News Is . . .

The good news is that all my weird symptoms have decreased since we arrived in the valley.  My lips still feel weird—like when you're coming off of the anesthetics after dental work—but they are not super swollen any more.  In fact, if they stayed the way they look right now, that would be OK.  Without the weird tingling. And the rash is fading too, and it's much less itchy, so I didn't go to the doctor after all.  If things get icky again, then I'll go.

The better news is that we celebrated my dad's 85th birthday today.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

And the best, really good news is that Jason received his mission call today!

This is the picture Jason submitted with his mission application.
Good-looking kid!

Well, technically the call came in the mail last Wednesday, but we weren't here to see it until today.

Just barely back from camp, Jason used his pocket-knife to open the eagerly-awaited envelope.

Elder Jason Daniel North has been called to serve in the Canada, Vancouver mission.

This is Jason immediately after reading the mission papers.
He's been smiling like this all day. :-)

He will report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on October 30, 2013.  Yay!  How cool is that?!

What a Week!

This past week has been . . . eventful? . . . for me.

First of all, Kaylie was signed up for Young Women’s camp, and they would be leaving on Tuesday. So we left her behind with Brad and Becky (Bruce’s brother and sister-in-law) last Sunday when we came back to HSR.  Strange to leave one of my kids behind like that.  

Then, on the way to HSR, as we were crawling up Parley's Canyon, the back end of our tailpipe fell down and was dragging the road.  Of course, we didn't know what the bad sound was until we pulled over.  We didn't have a welder or even baling-wire handy in the van, so what could we do?  Bruce and Jason got the curvy metal rod thing that holds the jack in place and jimmy-rigged the pipe in place.  Amazingly, it stayed put for the rest of the drive.

When we got back to camp there was a staff Christmas party with a white-elephant gift exchange and pizza (a very Christmasy dish). The party was OK; the younger staff had fun and got a little crazy.

After the party I found out that Courtney was no where to be found.  In fact, Courtney would not be back for the rest of the summer.  Suddenly I didn’t just work in the commissary, I became the commissary.  Besides stocking and delivering the food, now I would have to make the orders from our supplier, keep our own inventory and make a report of how much we’d delivered to other camps and how much their stuff cost (so we can bill them for it).

I stepped into all that as gracefully as possible, I think, but I don’t know how graceful that actually was.

We usually delivered the Monday breakfast and lunch on Sunday evening; it was about 10 p.m. when I started that last Sunday, but I got lots of help from my family. :-)  Then, on Monday I discovered that in the rush of leaving, Courtney had forgotten to make the Sunday order—on Sunday afternoons she ordered the food that would arrive on Tuesday mornings.  If the order wasn't in by 4 p.m. on Sunday then the delivery couldn't get here by Tuesday. The commissary was stocked with enough food to get us through Tuesday evening, but then there would be nothing—or at least not nearly enough—for Wednesday.   Aaaaaaaahhhh!  This was not good!

So I pulled the food and made the Monday-morning deliveries (food for Steiner through Wednesday afternoon, and dinner for our kitchens) and then I got on the camp computer to put in an order with US Foods.  Then I spent about an hour calling and waiting for calls from our sales rep to see if there was any earthly way we could get the truck on Tuesday anyway.  He did arrange for us to get that delivery, although he couldn't guarantee what time it would come.  Good enough!  The man was my hero for the day.  Later that day (Monday) I made the order that would arrive on Wednesday afternoon, which would feed us through next Tuesday.

The promised truck arrived Tuesday just before lunch.  Yay!  Now I could feed the camp this week, from Wednesday through Friday.  But a big order arriving also meant stocking and organizing the food in the commissary—on top of the daily deliveries—as usual.  And now I had to do it entirely by myself until Michael was available.  (Michael makes sure KP happens in the east kitchen before he can come to work in the commissary.)  After stocking and delivering, I started working on the reports for the other camps.  Courtney had already started working on them, but I wasn't sure what her method was, or how far she’d gotten, so I just started over.  I still have a lot of work to do on that.

Wednesday was pretty normal:  our deliveries, a trip to Steiner, the delivery truck, computer work.  But on Wednesday evening Bruce and I took Lindsey and delivered her to Young Women’s camp (where Kaylie already was).  Her camp is between Evanston and home.  We thought it would be about an hour’s drive, but it took us more like two-and-a-half hours.  We drove up a steep, unfamiliar, winding mountain road in the dark—not my favorite kind of experience. The van didn't like it much either. But we made it and Lindsey’s friends were happy to see her and I was happy to see Kaylie and to see other friendly faces from our ward too.  We talked for a few minutes, made sure Lindsey was settled, and headed back to HSR.  On the way down from the girl's camp we saw a buck with a huge rack of antlers—I’d guess at least six points on each side!  We made a brief stop in Evanston to fill the gas tank and arrived at our home away from home around 12:30, where I went straight to bed and fell right asleep.

Then I woke up at around 3:30, feeling dreadfully itchy on my sides.  I discovered that I’d broken out in hives!  I don’t know why—no change in laundry detergent, soap or shampoo; no change in anything I could think of, except for my job.  Could it be stress?

By the end of Thursday my torso was covered in hives—I was spotted like a Holstein cow—and I itched so much that it was almost painful.  I tried some anti-itch cream which helped a little bit, and I got some Benadryl from our medic that night too. The Benadryl made me super sleepy, although it did not alleviate the itching. At least I fell asleep quickly, but when the medicine wore off I woke up so itchy that I couldn't get back to sleep.  I tried everything I could think of from creams, to trying to sleep with a cold-pack, to taking a long shower.  The shower helped most, but I only got about four hours sleep, all told.

At first on Friday morning I was not quite as itchy, and working kept me from scratching too much.  Could it all be going away?  I got another order in—probably the last one of the season (which will be delivered on Tuesday morning!)—and made my usual Friday rounds of deliveries, plus Michael and I delivered Monday’s breakfast (why wait until Sunday night?).  But as the day wore on my rash continued to radiate outward.  By late afternoon it wasn't only on my torso, but on my arms, hands, legs, feet and neck.  And by the time I went to bed I could see that it was starting to creep up the left side of my face.  

Now I am awake at 3 a.m.  My hands are swollen and I have a huge, fat lip. My neck is covered with the red, itching hives, the rest of me is still rashy, and my skin almost burns. And  I am slightly achey.  We get to go home in the morning, but not soon enough for me.  And then I will probably go see a doctor.

The question is, what on earth happened to me this week?!

But We Clean Up Pretty Good

It was cool and overcast when we got home Saturday afternoon, so Bruce and I went out to take a look at our yard.  Then we grabbed some tools and got to work.

These are those nasty milkweed/dandelion-type weeds, happily growing next to the fence.

And here they are again, lying mostly dead on the ground. 

That's me hacking at the weeds with a tree-trimmer.  For one thing, our garden-shears are not working; for another, the stems of the weeds are as thick and tough as tree branches.

Now I am admiring my work in trimming back the Virginia Creeper, which had crept over the fence and across our lawn.

When Ryan came out and saw what Bruce and I were doing, he got out the lawn-mower and mowed down the weeds in the middle of the yard.

And here's what our yard looked like on Sunday morning.  Wow!

Now, I understand that simply chopping down the weeds doesn't get rid of them entirely.  But Wow!  Our yard looks pretty good.  Maybe we are not total rednecks (or just white-trash) after all.  And when we are finished with camp—and can keep an eye on the yard and the watering—we will get some broad-leaf plant killer and fertilizer (and maybe bug killer too) for the lawn.  There may be some hope here after all. :-)