It's the way things are right now.

Dave and George stayed until 11 last night. Working hard the whole time.

Dave is out there now working hard again, almost done. I guess. That's what he says anyway. But I have prevailed upon him to leave a stump for sitting. He told me today, "We bit off more than we could chew." 

Duh. I knew that.

Then he said, "But there came a point when it was going to be either the tree or me, and I wasn't going to be defeated by a tree."

Later I came out and brought him a diet 7up. I said, "I hope you won't be offended by what I'm going to say." 
He got a look on his face that indicated he might be hurt and said, "What's that?"
I said, "Next time I need a tree cut I won't mention it to anyone in the ward."
He laughed--not offended--and said, "Next time you need a tree cut, I'm going to hide."

Well, we chuckled, but I kind of thought his comment indicated he thought I wanted him/ward members/high priests to do it. I'm not offended, but I do protest that I DID NOT. I had already hired the guy to come and do it, but when I got home from Utah, it was begun by Dave, George, and the bishop. I thought, "Okay." But it wasn't okay. Not really. It was simply too big a tree, too big a job.

They work hard, but they didn't have the proper equipment or any safety equipment, and what would have taken the guy I hired a day and a half has taken them a month. And, truly, I haven't been impatient as much as I have been worried about them the whole time.

Does that sound like I don't appreciate what they have done? I hope not, because I do. I just think it could have been so much simpler.  And easier on Dave.

And besides, how do I possibly thank them? 

P.S. It's done.
Here's what Dave said as he prepared to leave. "I think this is the last tree I'll do, but it's done and I'm alive and so there." 
I said, "You know I was happy to pay someone to do it."
He said, "We did it as a service project. Anyone who knows what service means will understand that."
I said, "Thank you, Dave." Again.
And here's what I say about Dave. He knows how to work. He is thorough and tenacious, and he finishes what he starts.

It's the little things, you know

A while back I was kind of whining right here in this blog about BYU mint truffles and my sad lack thereof.

Today I got paid for whining. Really. And I was stunned and delighted and quite humbled. Truly. Because I got a package in today's mail . . . a lovely container of those very mint truffles. It came from California, from Ami Smith.

"Who is Ami Smith?" I asked as I carried the box in the house. Then I opened it. There were the truffles. Imagine an intake of breath. Mine. And still I didn't understand.

Then I found the postcard with explanation, telling me who she is and that she reads my blog. Imagine another intake of breath. Mine again.

So, Ami, I say thank you. I will love the truffles. But mostly I love that you did such a thing.

I actually do live in the city

Okay. What's going on? 

I mean, speaking of wild, and speaking of holy moley, what is going on? 

Ten o'clock this morning, standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing out a bottle, I look up and see a full-grown female mule deer just beyond my back fence, in the Clicks' (their real name) back yard. 

She scratched a lot--deer have fleas, you know--and she ate some leaves from a tree, drank the water pooled on the deck, wandered about the yard, and then moved out of my sight. About ten minutes.

I don't know how she got in there or out. It's a fenced-in yard. Of course I don't know, but obviously it's possible.

I wonder if a mule deer in the neighborhood might keep the raccoons away.

Speaking of Wild

So I was in the kitchen just now, and, of course, I looked out the window for the raccoon. Not there, thank goodness.

My neighbor behind was out mowing his lawn, or I thought it was my neighbor at first. I don't know those people very well, and it took a moment before I knew it was not my neighbor. It was a kid mowing the lawn. About 16 or 17.

No, not my neighbor.

I was sure of it when this kid stopped working, turned toward the house, unzipped his pants, and peed right against the house.

Sure made me think and wonder.

I've Got Some Nerve

"Get down in the keys." I heard my mother say it a thousand times over the years that I listened to her piano lessons. I do not know how many students she had in her lifetime of teaching piano, but I know she was a great and good teacher. 

"Get down in the keys, Angela," is what I would like to say to Angela Hewitt, who has recorded ALL of Bach's piano music. It took her 11 years, and she calls Bach's piano music, particularly his Well-Tempered Clavier "some of the most demanding music ever written."

I have no doubt of it.

The concertos that I know well, from Murray Perahia and others, have become mine, so to speak. I hear them whether or not the CD is playing. And so I have bought Angela Hewitt's recordings of them because she is heralded as a Bach expert. And so she must be. 

Still, I'd like her to get down in the keys. By that I don't mean play louder. It isn't necessarily volume. It's the tone. I mean get a more solid tone. No ticking of the ivories. I know she knows how. I hear it in the Fantasia and some of the Partitas and in some movements of the concertos.

But who am I to make such comments? She's the artist, and highly acclaimed throughout the world, at that.

Ustick

Today I visited Norma Dee Walker at Spring Creek, the Senior Living facility where she is and where some have told me she will stay for the rest of her life. Norma Dee said as we were talking, "until I get out of here." So she may not know what is planned for her. Well, who does. I could see she has faded, and so on.

I have already expressed my views on such places, and this post is not about Norma Dee or Spring Creek. It is really about Ustick Road, because Spring Creek is on the corner of Ustick and Meridian Roads.

Part of Meridian Road is closed, so you have to go out Ustick. Well, you could drive the freeway if you wanted, but I figured I might as well take Ustick all the way, so I did. And I came back on Ustick, all the way to where it ends at Curtis.

Ustick Road is a city and a peculiar culture all its own. A miles-long city, with strip malls and shopping centers and schools and churches and fire stations and doctors' offices and law offices and gas stations and a new Library! and carved stone signs introducing neighborhoods and subdivisions and very old houses and buildings--at least 100 years old--that speak some kind of history that I don't know anything about. All on either side of Ustick Road. Old along one mile and new the next. And much life going on there. It was exciting to see. All of it.

It's not the first time I've taken Ustick from the Meridian area all the way to Curtis, but this time I enjoyed it more. I really looked. I'll drive it again soon.

I Shoulda

When Janeen and I were in Provo at BYU Women's Conference, we stayed in a dorm. When we entered our room, we found a BYU mint truffle on our pillows. A nice touch.

But it went beyond a nice touch. Those mint truffles were good. Really good.

Down in the Wilk, I bought a lipstick and saw a bin of those truffles by the cash register. I asked Janeen if she wanted one. She certainly did. So I bought four. Two for each of us.

The point of this story is something like I wish I had bought the $12 bag, because try as I might I can't find anything here--and I've been looking--quite as good as those mint truffles. Not even at See's.

Too bad, huh.

It may not mean anything

I'm pretty sure it's not normal, I'm not normal. I have eight clocks in my house, not counting the clocks on the stove, microwave, and computer, or my phone. Not counting my seven watches. (This may mean I'm a clock watcher.)

But is it normal to have no clocks?

"Normal" is irrelevant.

The thing is that my sister Janeen has no clocks. Well, there are the clocks on her kitchen appliances. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about clocks, a clock on the wall or in a bedroom. Or someplace. But no.

And she doesn't wear a watch.

She does have lovely paintings on her walls.

And an entirely clean house.

Overheard

"It says it right there in the Bible. If a woman wants to make extra money, she's got to figure out how to do it from her home."

This from a large woman in a Nampa Subway sandwich shop. It was not the first thing she said, but it was the first I heard clearly after I sat down. 

She wasn't speaking to me, but she was facing my direction and talking loud enough for me to know very soon that she was an authority on her subject. Self-proclaimed. The two women she addressed her remarks to had their backs to me, but it was easy to see they were each less than half her weight. They gave her no argument. 

Hmph. And they say size doesn't matter.

"It's why we were made the way we were. God meant women to stay home." And other arguments, all of which I've heard many times before, until she reached another point where the Bible evidence was given again. "It's right there in the Bible. If a woman wants extra money she has to make it from her home."

I did not stand and ask for chapter and verse, but I thought of it.

Her voice accompanied my entire lunch, not that I asked for it. There were other people in the place, too, talking to one another, but her voice stood out, so to speak.

Now, there's this. I might agree with her on at least one thing: If you have children and don't have to work, you ought to stay home with them and raise them. That is if you are not a drug addict or worse. (It's the world we live in.) 

But there was much in her voice, her presentation, her failure to cite chapter and verse for her Bible proof, and--I have to admit it--her size and the fact that she was able to eat her foot long sandwich while she spoke, that allowed me to say, under my breath, "Oh yeah?" and otherwise be pretty darn critical of her.

Sorry.

What she did

This is what I wrote about in The Widow's Chronicle, that you should come here and read this abbreviated account of what Angelina Jolie has done.

 

I don't ordinarily write about celebrities. That's because I don't care a lot about them or take them seriously as people. Sorry. Is that blind and closed-minded of me? Oh well.

But today I write about one of my least favorite celebrities, Angelina Jolie. Least favorite, I suppose, because her face, her family, her alleged good acts (charitable), have been shoved down our throats for about a decade. And I have grown weary of seeing her face everywhere I go. Their faces--hers and Brad's.

However, Angelina Jolie has done something extraordinary. That was the headline. Without the however.

Indeed she has. She has had a preventive double mastectomy, just as Sharon Osbourne did. Osbourne had discovered she carried the breast cancer gene, BRCA1. So does Angelina Jolie, whose mother died from breast cancer at age 56. Angelina mourns her own loss and the loss her children suffer because they will not know their grandmother. So, she had the mastectomy to preserve her own life but not only for her own sake, I believe. For her family.

But the extraordinary part is not simply the mastectomy, it is her publicizing of it as, she says, a public service. To let women know that breasts are not the only definition of their womanhood. To offer comfort to those who have had the surgery. To provide example and resource for other woman. I have to commend her for that.

Certainly to make public this surgery and not to leave it at "a surgery," is risky, given her status as sex symbol/dramatic actress. Dramatic actress doesn't always involve breasts, I suppose, but often. And sex symbol in Hollywood means breasts. No?

We shall see how the movie industry responds to her now. My response is this: I am sorry she and others have had to do this, and I admire her courage. I'll have to remove the least-favored label.

So. What do you make of this?

In March I went to Pennsylvania for Willamina's birth. Stayed a week. The day after I got home I had errands, but my car was dead. I mean, it was deader than a you-know-what. Even the remote could not open the car door. 

After my neighbor, Ron, tried for more than an hour to get the battery charged up with no success, I called AAA. The guy came, got the car started and said I needed a new battery, said this one was wrong for my car, said it had been put in wrong. 

I drove to Firestone, where I had bought the failed battery only 10 months earlier. They replaced the battery.

Okay. You maybe didn't need all those details--but really, I left some out, you know--but it took most of the day to accomplish the car fix. No errands.

Okay again. Last week I went to Utah, Women's Conference at BYU with my sister Janeen. Got home Monday night. Tuesday morning, I could not check my email, go to Google page, do anything online. I called my son Andrew, the computer guy, did what he told me to do--all of which I've done before--but the modem didn't ever come back. You know, the lights showing you can go online. You do know about that. Right?

Called Cable One, my internet service provider, as we say. The guy, Eric, had me do the whole unplug the power and cable stuff again. No worky. So he sent a guy out. "He'll be there," said Eric, "between now and 7 p.m." Handy for me.

But John came at about 11 a.m. Checked everything again. Went outside and checked the entire cable, came back in with a new modem, and guess what. It worked.

So I went out and bought a new modem. Brought it home, installed it, and nothing worked. Called Cable One, got it all registered and whatevered, and thanked Russell, thinking I was all set. No such.

This morning I couldn't get anything online. Called Cable One, spoke to Nick, worked through a buncha stuff, and at last I am abled. I hope.

I think the real questions are these: Why and how do these things happen when I'm gone? And what will happen when I go down to California for my high school reunion? Or should I just not go anyplace?

It worries me, kind of.