29 September 2019

I feel like I can say fall is here when I’m able to leave doors and windows open for extended periods of time without the AC kicking on, this was one of those weeks, it was beautiful.  We had a lot going on this week, but it wasn’t necessarily busy, that is I didn’t feel rushed or overwhelmed.  On Monday we had our ministering couple over to have Family Home Evening with us.  We talked about the gifts of the Spirit, had banana bread, and played Scatagories.  It was a lot of fun!

It started to rain on Monday evening and continued through the night and by Tuesday morning we were pretty much rained in.  The yard was a muddy mess and I only got a ¼ of a mile down the dirt road before turning around to come home because it was too muddy and even the smallest washes were running.  As it turns out, I wouldn’t have been able to get to work even if I had gotten down Mann, as all the roads out were flooded; Sahuarita, Wilmot, and Houghton were all closed to travel.  I worked from home instead and we enjoyed time together as a family.  The kids have been finding various ways to entertain themselves in their first week of fall break.  Felicity broke out the Perler Beads, you know those little plastic rings that you can melt together, on Tuesday and by the end of the afternoon everyone was in on the fun.  I sense a lot of refrigerator magnets in my future!

I braved the dirt road and headed to work on Wednesday, it wasn’t too bad.  Arlo had piano class in the afternoon and I got to go for a run, I actually was pretty proud of myself, my first mile was a 10 ½ minute average, and my overall was 11 ½ minutes per mile, it’s good to see progress!  I think I will always be a work in progress, but I guess as long as I keep trying, there’s nothing wrong with that.

We had signed up to feed the Sister Missionaries on Thursday, so after I got home from work Helen and I made dinner; I taught her how to make lasagna. We also invited our sweet neighbor Reina to join us.  We had such a nice time and the Sisters taught a fun lesson when we were done about fortifying our family.  Reina stayed and visited for a little while after the Sisters left.

I was off on Friday, but wasn’t able to make it to the temple because I had a morning appointment with the dentist.  At my cleaning last week she found a little dark spot she wanted to fill before it became a bigger cavity.  I showed up 10 minutes early for my appointment and waited and waited.  They finally called me back over thirty minutes past my appointment time and then were very obviously rushing around. The hygienist did the initial shot of Novocain and it was really uncomfortable!  In response to my tense face she replied “if you don’t like it, don’t get cavities”.  Um, ok, that was a little rude.  So in comes the dentist a few moments later and at first she has the receptionist helping her, no joke, the lady that was moments earlier answering phones.  Now maybe she’s also a hygienist also, I don’t know.  The dentist tells her to step in until the other guy can show up.  If she’s a hygienist, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and the two of them together can’t figure out how to get the water and the drill going at the same time.  In comes seasoned assistant guy, relieves the receptionist back to the phones, and shows the dentist how to operate the drill.  I’m pretty much anxious at this point and going to the dentist doesn’t usually make me anxious.  She starts drilling and it hurts, so I let her know it hurts.  She’s in a big hurry (presumably because they’re 30+ minutes behind), so she’s not pleased with the delay.  Maybe she didn’t wait long enough for it to get numb, so her response is to give me a more, I get a couple more shots (in a totally different place, actually near the tooth she’s working on, as opposed to the back corner where the hygienist was poking me).  She starts to drill again and again it hurts, so I try to politely stop her at which point she tries to convince me it’s just sensitivity to the cold water in another tooth, drilling commences; nope, what you are doing hurts.  Annoyed, her problem solving is limited and she proceeds to re-stick me with Novocain no less than six times all along my right jaw and then starts to drill again, finishing in only a few more seconds.  Thank heavens! She’s put in the amalgam and is using the file/drill to smooth it over when she breaks off the drill in my mouth.  Seriously, breaks the drill in pieces which then go flying around in my mouth (I’m pretty sure that’s the source of a later-found cut on my tongue and inside my cheek).  So now they’re desperately fishing around for all the metal pieces (hoping I won’t notice?).  Filling finished.  No apology, nothing.  My face from my ear lobe to my chin on the inside and outside is completely numb for the next 5 hours.  Saturday morning my jaw aches and my gums are bruised, like literally blue and tender.  Ugh, time to find a new hygienist and dentist!

I had a few more errands to run and an appointment to get to and it was late afternoon by the time I got back home on Friday.  The kids and I enjoyed a quiet evening in and Felicity asked me to show her how to crochet a hat, so we worked on that.  I went to bed before the kids and at some point after Felicity climbed into my bed, then Arlo, and at 5AM when I woke up cramped into a six inch sliver between the edge of the bed and the next child (and two cats coincidentally) I decided to get a jump start on my Saturday.  I went to Walmart and then got my grocery shopping done.  On the way back home I picked up some bribery donuts for the kids for breakfast.  Once I put the groceries away and the kiddos had enjoyed their sweet treat, I told them the fine print was that I was going to get cooperative yard work out of them without inter-sibling bickering.  It worked pretty well, we got so much done outside; I don’t know if it was the donuts or the beautiful weather or some combination thereof, but we worked together for three and half hours and knocked a lot off of my list.  I was frustrated to find packrat damage in the barn, so Helen and I cleaned up the nest and returned all the items it had re-homed back to where they belonged.  I had a long talk with the kids about leaving feed bins open.  I think the cats are going to have to spend a couple nights out in the barn.  We also put another coat of paint on the barn, it’s almost done, I just have to repaint the trim and replace some of the hardware.

Saturday evening Arlo and I went out to prep all my equipment to harvest honey from our hives (finally).  Arlo was very excited to help.  When we got over there I was immediately worried about the lack of bees I was seeing outside of the hives.  I opened the Flow hive and found that my Italian honey bees hadn’t put anything in the honey super and were all down in the brood box.  I pulled a few frames and didn’t find any brood, only some capped honey.  I’m worried they might be queen-less.  Then I opened my other two hives to find only moths, moth larva, and destruction.  My bees were gone and the Wax Moths had utterly destroyed frames and frames of honey and comb.  At some point between when I last checked them and Saturday my hives became somehow weakened and when the moths moved in and started wreaking havoc, the bees abandoned the hives.  I was just sick over it.  

 It was a long defeated walk back up to the house empty handed.  On the positive side, I can clean up the boxes and frames, and start over in the spring with more gentle bees.  It’s so disappointing though, it’s been a steep learning curve so far.

We had Sacrament meeting early on Sunday, 8 am which was then followed by a presentation on the new children and youth program the church is implementing in 2020.  The kids were encouraged to come up with some goals for the coming year, and Arlo set to work right away on defining a few (including illustrations).  I’m thinking that penmanship improvement should also be one of his goals!  We went to visit Grandma when we were done at church.  She wanted to have pizza, so we took her for pizza.  We had a really nice visit and when we were done went to my parent’s house for dinner and visiting there.  The TV is usually on over there and the kids were in front of it, we don’t have regular TV or cable, so it’s exciting to watch programs and commercials at Nana’s.  Shark Tank was on and there were some middle-age women pitching an idea for a line of swimwear for older women.  Arlo very seriously turns around and asks my dad if they can watch something else.  I had to explain to my dad that the women in swimsuits were making Arlo uncomfortable.  Now I could instead have explained to Arlo that 30 something year-olds in one piece bathing suits is not really pornography, or I could completely support him when he says something is making him uncomfortable.  I will chose the latter and hope that he always is sensitive to how things he sees and encounters make him feel.  We wandered home sometime around 8.  I’m hoping that next week will be just as calm and laid back as this week was.  So excited for all the things that come in the last quarter of the year.