Glimpses of Some Happy Moments (Despite the Pandemic)

Happy "Mother's Day Visits:  Because Gary had had a fever, we dropped our gifts off on Monday instead of Sunday.  It was nice to have a visit on the back porch with Gary's mom and share the books we had made from our European trip and Jena's drawing of the Nauvoo Temple for her.  (My pictures of Mom Hall's whole face were blurry, but that is her holding the picture.)

Then I made a quick trip to Midvale to drop off a gift for Karla and see my dad for a couple of minutes.  It was good to see him again and have a short conversation.  I think I will be able to make an actual visit by the end of the month if things don't go crazy in Utah over the next few weeks with the virus and moving to being more opened.

Happy:  Monday evening was spent with Jena "attending"  FHE with her Provo Ward 72nd YSA.  Her previous roommates often attend and she enjoys conversations with them at the end of the Zoom activity.  This past week, they each brought their favorite children's book and read it outloud to each other.  Jena had picked a book, but we hadn't practiced reading it outloud (I didn't read the whole post apparently) so we made a last minute switch to the BYU ABC book which was a big hit with BYU students away from their college due to the pandemic or the end of the semester.

Happy Moment:  Gary, who has the service which emails you a photo of the letters you will receive that day. told me early in the morning that I was getting a letter from Washington.  At first, I shrugged it off--due to approaching the age of 65, I am getting lots of mail from "Washington" and every where else about Medicare or campaign literature.  Then he said, No, a grandma letter."  Then I was excited and was happy to get my letter from Tosha and the kids.  The pictures are now hanging on our refrigerator.

Letters and pictures are the best. 

Happy Moment on a Walk:  Often over the past few weeks, I have seen this crane--in the air, in the grass, and by the pond.  One morning I got this picture of him along the side of the Jensen Pond.  His colors match the sand on the shore so well.

"Out the Window" Moment:  As I have mentioned before, I love looking out my windows and seeing plants.  I planted bushes, specifically for that purpose--how they would look out of the windows of our house.  Here is the view out my bedroom window where finally the blooms turned from light green to white--earning the name of SnowBall bush.  I hear it smells amazing as well during this time of the year.

Near sunset time

Happy "Work Done" Moment:  Mostly Gary's work--and the planting was ALL him.  I was a bit of a slug yesterday.

We had removed two trees last year and removing the roots left a far bigger mess than was expected.  So this spring we added new top soil and yesterday, Gary seeded the areas.  (The small one in the front of the photo is where our basketball goal used to sit.  Gary has decided to keep it on the side of the yard and roll it out when we want to play with it.  It fell on Tosha's car last summer and he wants to avoid that happening again.)

Happy "Walk in the Garden":  Have I mentioned that I love purple, white and yellow flowers?

The first are my May flowers which will lose their blooms by June---

These roses and this wispy bush bloom all summer into the fall---

And these are passing the torch on.  As bulb plants, they follow the tulips but don't make it too much past mid-May.

And waiting to take center stage are my hollyhocks which are some of my favorite flowers--

I want to be a gardener some day--a person who every morning is out and about for a few minutes or an hour or so tending the garden.  I am not there yet, but I am slowly getting flowers blooming in an order that matches the changing of the seasons--I love the pattern and feel of it.  What a beautiful world we share even if it is just in our back yard.

There were other happy moments tucked into this week.  A joke Jena made, movies we shared together, a yummy Subway sandwich Gary brought me for dinner while I was working, beautiful skies of blue or interesting clouds of white and grey, books I read, little tasks that I completed, saying goodbye to a client as she completed therapy, and cheesecake (more about that in a different post).  Even during a pandemic, life is filled with these little moments--at least for us.  We are the lucky ones in so many ways.

The Subject of Reading

It is very clear that I love books.  I love reading them, I love talking about them, I love sharing them.  I even like looking at them in the book shelves in my home and remembering the stories or things that I learned while reading them.

I like reading all types of books and I read for different reasons at different times.  It was a great accomplishment for me when I got to a point that I could be reading several types of books at the same time and could go from one to another depending on my mood at the time.  For years when my kids were still at home, I read from a BYU list of 500 books that everyone should read. I liked the diversity of that and how it forced me to broaden my learning and reading.

Lately, I have been much more "lazy" in my reading.  Other than religious books which I read from time to time, I have spent my free time reading on mostly science fictions and spy/mystery novels of all types and haven't really tried to expand beyond that.  I can often go to the little library in our front yard and found a new spy book to read and I find them a great break and enjoyable.  Mostly they don't make me think or evaluate my life or encourage me to make changes or any thing else that reading can do.  My work as a therapist already does that for me almost every time I interact with a client or study more about a therapy treatment.  Books have become my escape/recovery from that part of my world.

If you liked the Ender's Game--this is the pre-story!

Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, and many more

 A recent religious book I have read--which actually was a combination of religion and mindfulness which is part of my therapeutic practice world.  It is an easy read and I would suggest it to anyone who wants to use stillness in their lives

 A number of years ago, I spend some time (which I posted about in the blog) determining my top "14" books of all time.  They still sit together on a shelf with the addition of a Trixie Belden book that I stumbled upon at a book store one day.  Each of these books made an impression on me which was really tied to the time, place, and age that I read them.

This week I stepped out of my comfort zone for reading and read two books, back to back, which were suggested by my sister.  One of them she had asked me to read over a year ago so "that she could have someone to talk to about it."  The other was a more recent addition to that same list.  I ordered them in March just as the pandemic went into full force and since they weren't "essential," I didn't get them until this past week.

First I read:

This book is written by a therapist about her experience as a therapist and also with her own therapist.  After finishing it, I texted Valerie:

"Just finished Maybe You Should Talk To Someone.  It goes without saying that I loved it.  It captures the backdrop of what a therapist experiences as they engage with clients...the not knowing, the knowing but caution to lead and not push, and the richness of sharing that human experience.  It highlighted the amazing mixture of past experiences, our feelings and thoughts, and our relationships on our present moments and present relationships and our present functioning.  Thanks for telling me about it...and as luck would have it, Educated arrive a couple of hours ago."

And I picked up Educated and finished it by Friday night.

Yes, it is the large print addition.  At the time I ordered
it was the only paperback copy that was available.

We haven't talked about this book yet.  It is the story about a woman who was raised in a very dysfunctional family in rural Idaho who later graduated from BYU and then attended Cambridge and then Harvard (I think). The complexity of life, memories, and how we become who we are as human beings are explored in this book but without clear answers to any of those questions.  History, especially our personal history, is shaped by the lens of our beliefs, our expectations, our hopes and dreams, and our heartaches and pains.  This book made me sad for her and her experiences and even more grateful for my own life experiences which were kinder and gentler with always a clear feeling of love and being loved.

And now, I have moved on to The Professor and the Madman:  The making of the Oxford Dictionary another book exploring the complexities of the human experience.

READING--there is nothing quite like it to help explore the world we live in--externally and internally.  Read a new book this week!

Mission Prep During A Pandemic And Then A Fever

Thursday, Gary and I headed to Smiths to get some more immunizations suggested for senior missionaries.  This time it was our pneumonia and shingles shots.  My dad had had shingles a few years ago and send us all an email saying "GET YOUR SHINGLE SHOT."  It has been on my list since then, but that kind of stuff is hard to get on to your "to-do" list when there is other stuff to do. Things move up on your to-do list when you get reminders weekly from the mission department that your immunizations are not yet completed!

This was my first time in Smiths since the end of February and really any store for about 8 weeks.  I heard about the directions on the floor, but wanted to record these reminders of the pandemic.  Will these things remain when things settle down or will they be part of the new normal people are talking about?

Both of these shots require a second dose--one in a year and one in a couple of months.  Fun times....

especially when Gary woke up with a FEVER on Friday which lasted through the day.  It is, of course, not an unusual symptom after getting immunizations but in this time and place, all fevers are a bit nerve racking.  I felt achy and tired, but no fever--so we spent Friday and Saturday not accomplishing much (although I did manage to attend my all-day online conference on marriage therapy on Friday, wrapped up in two blankets and taking a long nap afterwards.)  Just to be safe, we decided not to go do our "drive by" Mother's day gifts today and wait a full 48 hours--just in case it is something more than the shots.  A reflection on the world as we know it right now.

Words of advice:  If you are planning on serving a mission, you might want to begin looking at getting the immunizations that are suggested.

Monday "Breakout"

Last Monday evening, for the first time since the first part of March, Gary and I headed out of our house for an actual gathering with people outside of our own family.  Our friends, Pat and Joyce Abernathy, are serving in the Salt Lake Headquarters Mission in the family history library so we went down and walked around Temple Square (in our masks) and enjoyed a social distancing dinner at the Blue Lemon across from Temple Square.

They answered lots of our questions and shared their love for their mission and for family history.  They have asked to extend their mission until January but they are not sure if that will happen or not.  They also told us that another friend from Hong Kong, Valerie Jackson, has been called to serve in this mission as well and will be arriving in July.  It will be fun to see her again as well.  Our conversations helped us understand more about the mission and the broad range of places which we may serve as it covers the Family History Library, Church History Library, Joseph Smith Memorial Building (which includes the actual mission office), and the Church Office Building.

They have loved being in downtown Salt Lake and have enjoyed many of the concerts and productions which are in the many theatres and concert halls in the area.  It has also been interesting to watch the changing of the seasons in Temple Square and now, the construction changes which are happening daily.  They shared that they have made many friends with people and couples from all over the world who have been called to serve here.

part of the construction barrier

I think we will love those same things.  Walking everywhere, making friends, watching the changing of the seasons, and being a part of the important work done here--wherever we may be assigned.  Can't wait for it all to start.