Still November???

Look what happened last Monday!  We got about 4 inches followed by bitter Arctic temperatures for most of the week.  Definitely not our typical November weather.  I am happy to report that the upcoming week forecast shows more "normal" late fall weather.  By Friday, it was in the low 50's by the afternoon and I was able to finally plant the daffodil and lily bulbs I had dug up when I was pulling weeds and converting flower beds to lawn earlier in September.  It had been a few weeks since I had been out to do yard work and it felt really good to be digging in the dirt again.  I hope to continue yard projects this week....Steve and I did very little exercising this week because of the weather (and our crummy colds).  Hopefully, THAT can resume again next week, too. 

For combined birthday / Christmas presents to ourselves this year, we bought a new JVC receiver/CD player for the Honda.  The original, factory one suddenly stopped playing CDs!  Not good with the Christmas season upon us and us with our dozens and dozens of Christmas discs.  The installation was Tuesday afternoon after an aborted attempt last Thursday (I forgot to leave the car keys!).  NOW we just have to figure out how to use all the fancy bells and whistles (like Bluetooth)

We love the flexibility and roominess of our our Element but we do miss our pickup truck for hauling large items.  The boxes of flooring and the new bathtub/shower arrived at Home Depot and we had to arrange for a friend with a truck to help pick it up.  Which happened Saturday morning....only, Home Depot forgot to include the actual tub.  They only gave us the shower liner.  We HOPE that the tub part will fit in the Element when we go to retrieve it tomorrow.  And, with that, all the pieces are in place for the remodeling to begin.  We just have to wait on the foundation repair to initiate it all.  And, it doesn't look like it will happen "around Thanksgiving" now.  Maybe in December????  You know contractors.....

Steve and I drove to Jefferson City on Friday for him to have a dental procedure - a root canal that was performed sometime back when that was never completed!  So he had to have minor dental surgery with stitches and everything.  Friday is our usual grocery-buying day so I just went to the Walmart and the Aldi down in Jefferson City while he was in the chair.  It worked perfectly. 

Days for Girls had their usual monthly meeting on Saturday.  As the new sewing specialist, I felt that we needed to inspect the already-packed kits to make sure they met the quality control standards and , wow, I am glad we did.  They did NOT pass muster in a couple of areas.  Thankfully, there were only about 20 kits!  Steve helped Steven hang his Christmas lights in the early afternoon.  Later on, Steve and I joined Hope and Doug Christofferson over at Vikki VanOrder's apartment to help bring her two bedrooms out of chaos.  We worked our tails off for 2.5 hours and, happily, those two rooms look amazing! After we finished, Steve wanted to drive by Steven's house to check out the lights and, there he was, back on a ladder STILL hanging lights!  Evidently, two strands were bad.  So, Steve and I stayed to help him finish and, by the time we got home, we were literally chilled to the bone.  It took us a good two hours to finally warm up!  We bundled in sweatshirts and blankets and watched the new "Little Prince" on Netflix.  It was quite good movie. 

Christmas music is in the air at our house - Steve plays our CDs throughout the day, I am rehearsing "Amahl and the Night Visitors" for Civic Orchestra, and I have been asked to put together musical numbers for church in December.  So far, I have a string ensemble, a flute/cello/piano trio, and a women's trio.  Oh, and I am accompanying the ward choir for their one number.  I am in my happy place.

First Week of November

Tuesday was one of our regular days to go to St. Louis.  Emily had a photo shoot in the morning so we agreed to babysit Larkin while she was gone.  Fun, right?  Only, Larkin is at an age where she does NOT like to be babysat.  The last time we visited, the first words out of her crying mouth were "no grandma and grandpa"!!!  Great words to hear, right?  So, not expecting this Tuesday to be much better, I brought along a tub of plastic ponies from our toy stash and Larkin was at first enchanted.  But, as soon as she realized that daddy was gone (Emily had already been long gone), this was her pose....(don't look at grandma and grandpa and maybe they will go away)

Happily, a few story books later, she was in a more cheerful mood and she even let grandpa swing her in the hammock outside while I gave piano lessons to Noah, Lucy, and Quinn who had an early release day and were home by noon.  

We went to the temple that afternoon and the maple trees lining the drive were just stunning.  Unfortunately, my phone camera just couldn't capture the color properly.

I think I did a little better with the maple tree in our back yard....

I started getting a killer sore throat Monday night which typically signals a cold coming on.  And, that is what it eventually became but by Thursday morning, after a horrible night of sleep, it still didn't feel like a real cold so I went to one of the quick clinics to be tested for strep.  Negative.  And, now it is just a crummy cold that has settled in my voicebox.  Talking is such a chore right now.  I needed to be healthy to attend a Days for Girls regional conference in Hamilton, Missouri on Friday and Saturday.  And, I was mostly healthy.  Hamilton is a good 2.5 hour drive away from Columbia.  It is the birthplace of J.C. Penney but more recently has risen to fame as the home of the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  The You-tube quilting hack tutorials created by this company have gone viral and now it is a mecca for quilters world-wide.  The company has breathed new life into this tiny town and taken over much of the downtown with about twelve fabric stores - yes, I said twelve - each store dedicated to a specific style of fabric (floral, folk, baby, etc)  Anyway, the company sponsors quilting retreats and so an old sixties-style motel has been renovated and a huge conference building was built on the premises and that is where we had our DFG conference.  It was all very lovely and new and the conference was extremely informative for me, the newly designated "sewing specialist" for our Columbia team.  The founder of Days for Girls, Celeste Mergens, was there for both days and she did all the training yesterday.  I was the only one from our team so I knew no one but I met a lot of really lovely women from all over the midwest and made some good connections.  I was able to eat gluten-free (always a worry) although I slept horribly Friday night (new bed, congested nose, no white noise).   On the beautiful drives there and back through rural Missouri (I took different routes each way), I listened to some interesting podcasts.  Overall, a very good two days.



I got home in time to eat dinner and then off to an open house for some friends of ours, Lois and Dave McAllister, who lived here about twenty years ago and were back in town to visit.  It was so good to see them!

Below are Don and Carolyn Alger with Lois and Dave McAllister
on the couch are Boyd and Carolyn Terry, Jodi Johnson, and me and Steve

Week of Halloween

How can it possibly be November 6th already?

Steve and I both had doctor appointments last week on Tuesday.  Steve went to see a G.I. doctor.  For the last six weeks or so, he has been bothered by constipation, lack of appetite, higher than usual blood sugars, and occasional night chills (interestingly, not sweats, just chills).  So, he went his primary care provider who ordered some blood tests.  His alkaline phosphatase levels came back unusually high so an ultrasound of his gut was ordered - specifically to look at his liver.  That showed nothing unusual so another, more definitive blood test was ordered as well as a bone scan  (liver and bones are the reasons for high alk phos).   But, when he went to get the scan, he learned that it had been cancelled because the blood test said it was his liver.  So, Tuesday was the G.I. doctor visit but he really didn't have much to say.  Do another ultrasound in three months.  And, to a thyroid test which might be the cause for the constipation and chills.  Bottom line, we don't know exactly what is going on but it might just be the new "normal".  I went to my primary care provider to follow up on another A1C.  It was 5.9 without being on metformin so she was pretty happy with that and I will continue to not take metformin.  She feels my doctor in Arizona might have pulled the metformin trigger too soon.  I also talked to her about the MRI I had of my right breast.  Back in August, on the morning of  the very day of my annual mammogram, I had a teeny bit of bloody discharge which set off all kinds of alarms at the women's health clinic.  They immediately did an ultrasound but neither the mammogram nor the ultrasound showed anything really significant.  The breast cancer doctor I saw then suggested I have the MRI - which also really didn't show much to be worried about.  I will have another MRI in six months and I am continuing to note the days I see discharge.  It is never very much.  My primary care doctor didn't seem worried.  So, I guess I won't either.

Winter came early last week.  Brrrr.  And, crazy Steve and I decided to ride our bikes on Wednesday morning to the Smiley Lane clinic that is only a mile away so I could get my shingles shot.  We also rode our bikes the next morning after a skiff of snow.  Both were VERY cold rides and we haven't been out since!

The shingles shot really was a doozy for me. I felt like I was getting sick for two days and my arm was red and sore.  And, I get to do a repeat in about four months for phase two.  

Halloween afternoon, Steve and I drove to St. Louis to spend the evening with the Southerlands and Beckie.  We dressed super warmly but, happly, the snow that was to have been falling that night came in the morning so it wasn't as bitterly cold as we had feared.  Everyone but Noah headed over to Beckie's.  Noah stayed back in Ballwin to trick-or-treat with friends.  We ate dinner at Beckie's place and then went to a street about four blocks north of her place where all the people in the block decorate for Halloween and many have fires burning in portable fire pits.  The street was blocked of for safety and we had a great time walking from house to house.  Larkin, as cotton candy, was the "belle of the evening"  

Below is Beckie's apartment with her cute jack-o-lantern in front.  

Saturday, Steven came over to help Steve and I remove two mostly-dead trees from the yard.  And they also hauled some landscape timbers to the landfill. 

Happily, weather was much more pleasant on Saturday so we had a bonfire in the back yard and roasted hotdogs and made s'mores.  

Friday evening was the Civic Orchestra / Columbia Chorale dress rehearsal and Saturday evening was the performance.  Sunday was stake conference and I played my cello in a flute/piano/cello trio as prelude and then Steve and I spoke during the conference about being senior missionaries. 

Progress report on the house - we spent a LOT of money with Home Depot - bathtub, toilet, vanity, flooring, light fixtures, kitchen sink.  We are going to have our driveway lifted with polyjacking (injecting a foam under the cement to raise it) rather than tearing out all the old concrete and pouring new.  That will save us $4000.  But, nothing has actually been started.  We are all waiting on the foundation guy to do his thing.  And, yard work has slowed down due to weather and health, darn it.  If you know me, you know this is just driving me crazy.  So, I try to not let it bother me.  And focus on other things.....

I think this is all the news.