How can it already be the end of January???

It was a chilly and busy week but not many photos to show for it.  I had physical therapy on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.  I was supposed to have a crown put on a back molar on Thursday morning but the crown-in-a-day machine in the office was not working so I opted to put it off until mid-February.  (my temporary crown experience was NOT fun so I didn't want to go through that again).  The piano was tuned on Tuesday and our dishwasher was fixed on Wednesday.

I had a ton of orchestra business to do Tuesday morning and a Zoom meeting to discuss / update my job description on Friday evening.  With the start of my receiving social security in February, and with my growing music studio (two in Phoenix, two in Columbia, one beginning cello student that started in December, two beginning violin students starting this coming week, and a piano student to being this month), I really don't need the money from the orchestra administrator job (it is only $250 per month).  Going forward, I am going to try to be more diligent in carving out the time I need for doing this job - which is mostly keeping on top of email - but I would give it up in a heartbeat.  

I have a new calling in the ward:  Choir director.  I am very excited about it because I have not had that calling in many years.  Last Sunday, I brought home all the choir music from the choir closet which is not as much as it sounds like - it comprised only two shelves worth - and throughout last week I sorted and organized it all (and threw out all the illegally made photocopied music).  This week I will decide what I want to work on and hopefully we can start up rehearsals by mid-February.

Elise came to St. Louis Thursday afternoon and evening for a very brief visit.  We did manage to spend about thirty minutes playing duets - she on viola and me on violin - and we had an early dinner together before a mad dash to a six o'clock temple session through going-home traffic and a bottleneck at Kingshighway and Chippewa thanks to Spire Gas taking up both of the northbound lanes!!!  She returned to Columbia after the temple.  We had lunch with Beckie on Wednesday and Larkin came over for the first time in over a month on Friday morning.  She helped me put away all my January snowman decor and put up February Valentine knicknacs.  We cut out heart shaped sugar cookies and frosted them.  When I took her home that afternoon, I gave piano lessons to Noah, Lucy, and Quinn.  

On Saturday morning, we went for some training at the temple baptistry.  We will begin this weekend and will work the first and third Saturdays of the month from 8:00 to 11:00.  I returned to pottery Saturday afternoon and trimmed the pieces I threw last week.  And, in the evening, we went to the VanVooren's home (our east neighbors who currently don't live at the house but are diligently working on it) for pizza and a movie.  We had vegetarian gluten-free pizza which was delicious and then we watched Groundhog Day in their basement home theater set-up.  Steve and I watch this movie every year but Ed and Mona had not seen it in many years so they really enjoyed it.  They have four little dogs who also enjoyed the movie .....well, they enjoyed sleeping on all of our laps while we watched.

 

The Birthday Boys!

Steve turned 69 on Monday, January 17th and Quinn turned 9 on January 18th.  So, we had a joint birthday celebration on Sunday, January 16th.  Steven and Elise drove over from Columbia, attended church with us at noon, and we had a yummy birthday dinner that evening at 5:00.  Quinn wanted pancakes and we were all delighted with that choice.  I fixed a hash brown/egg casserole and we cooked up bacon and sausage, too.  

It turns out that the Southerland family were Covid positive during this visit, although no one knew it at the time.  Only Emily had a weird feeling throat and she took a home-test that was negative.  But, throughout this past week, everyone in their family started to display symptoms or to test positive.  Ugh.  Now, Steven had just gotten over Covid so no surprise that he didn't get sick.  But, amazingly, neither Steve, Elise, nor I have shown any Covid symptoms all week (granted, we were not tested, either, so we might have just been asymptomatic) and now, the five days have passed and so hopefully we are out of the danger zone....But, just to be safe, we have worn masks all week just in case.  That is, except for Monday when we didn't know anything.  It was the MLKjr. holiday with kids out of school so my Columbia cello students came to St. Louis for lessons.  Here are Sally and Linus bombarding Ethan Barner with puppy love.  And just to assure you, Ethan loves it!

In other doggie news, a couple of weeks ago, I bought some Dollar Tree rawhide chews to see if Linus and Sally would like them.  Linus seems to be ambivalent but Sally will occasionally pick one up and chew on it a bit... but mostly she just carries it around in her mouth like she is doing below.  Weird little dog...

On Tuesday, we learned that we will get to be temple workers again and will serve Saturday mornings in the baptistry for the 8:00, 9:00, and 10:00 sessions.  Not sure when we will start - maybe in February? - but I am happy with this assignment.  Even though we are retired, we have a "work week" routine Monday through Friday with weekends open so working on Saturdays fits right in to our schedule.  We will even try to head over to the Southerlands afterwards on every other week for piano lessons since we will already be close by.  

It has been bitterly cold the last part of the week - with the "real feel" below zero.  But, happily, thanks to no mountains and an ever-fluctuating jet stream, we will be back up in the 50's tomorrow!  I am SO thankful we bit the bullet and paid for a new heater last fall when we installed our new air conditioner.  25 year old units were just disasters waiting to happen.  A two year-old dishwasher, however, should NOT break down but that is what ours has done.  Some kind of sensor stopped functioning - probably several months ago given the poor job of dishwashing it has been doing - and we finally got a repairman out to look at it on Wednesday.  He has to order parts so we continue to do hand-washing.  (happily, only two people do not generate a lot of dishes).

Speaking of not functioning, my knees are in that category.  I can still walk just fine and most of the time they feel great but occasionally they feel weak and they hurt (riding bikes, going up and down stairs, etc) so I am resuming physical therapy for a few weeks to try to strengthen those muscles.  I had my first visit Friday morning.  

One of my 2022 Resolutions is to visit someplace new in Saint Louis each month.  Beckie joined Steve and me Saturday morning to check out the second largest Catholic church in the city called Saint Frances de Sales Oratory.  It was built in 1911 in what at the time was probably a middle class neighborhood.  Sadly, it's magnificence now sits in a rather rough part of town.  It is, however, still very well maintained and it is just gorgeous, rivaling the cathedrals of Europe.  Amazing stained glass, a functioning pipe organ, just breathtaking! 

After leaving the church, we drove a short ways to antique row on Cherokee Street and to SaxQuest. 

 

I had been there before to rehearse that saxophone / string quartet number with Carondelet Strings and I had been wanting to bring Beckie and Steve there ever since.  There is a museum upstairs with more saxophones of every shape and design you could ever imagine including an original set of instruments built by Adolph Sax himself.  This is us standing in front of them in this magnificent antique display cabinet.  The next photo is of a trio of tiny soprano-type saxophones.

Our third stop was to Ruler Foods - a small Kroger grocery store quite close to Beckie but she had never been inside.  This store is our go-to ice cream shop with $1.99 cartons of delicious flavors.  After dropping Beckie off, Steve and I picked up my re-haired cello bow before going home.  I went to pottery Saturday afternoon and collected my glazed pieces and threw a bunch of new stuff.  So fun!

We invited a couple from the ward for dinner last night and after they left, we watched the second of two movies we had checked out from the public library.  Friday night, we saw "That Touch of Mink".  It was quite entertaining and we watched it because of a reference to it in a book by Yogi Berra that Steve has.  In the movie, there is a hilarious scene in the Yankee dugout with Roger Maris, Micky Mantel, and Yogi Berra and Cary Grant and Doris Day.  Saturday we saw "The Red Pony" because we had recently listened to one of our CD's featuring movie music and Copland's soundtrack to the Red Pony was included.  While Copland's music is timeless, the film sadly was not.  It was just a strange story with tedious characters.  Oh well, you win some and you lose some.  Oh, we watched "Encanto" again.  Loved it, of course!

 

Settling into a routine

This is the only photo I took all week!  We finally got snow yesterday.  Not much fell after this picture was taken.  Emily got a little bit more - enough to build a snowman.  And, Columbia got even more than that - maybe four to five inches.  

This past week was one where Steve and settled into our routines - mostly old, tried and true ones like morning prayers/stretch/scripture study/walk.  We have a new afternoon one that we hope we can make stick.  We want to ride bikes followed by a half hour of local news followed by Jeopardy and then take the dogs on a walk before dinner.  This all takes about two hours.  Jeopardy and news are already a habit (I do sewing during the television time) but for our health's sake (and our dog's health's sake), we need to do the physical things more regularly.  Our biking had a hiccup early on as my back tire had issues but a trip to the bike shop solved that.  

Saturday morning Steve and I helped out at a funeral for the son of a good friend of ours from Columbia (Katherine Eschrich's son, Robin, passed away after a four-year battle with cancer).  He lived in Fenton and so the funeral was held in the Fenton Ward meetinghouse, although Robin probably never darkened the door of that building.  It was a weird funeral in many ways.  First of all, the music selections (which is where Steve and I helped).  He wanted the song "Praise To The Man" to be sung.  I guess somewhere in his past when he was attending church, this song had a big impression upon him?  But, to sing a song about Joseph Smith at his funeral is decidedly weird.  Steve sang this song in a men's quartet comprised of men from our ward.  He also wanted the song My Way" to be performed so I played it on my cello.  The lyrics are totally an "in your face, God" statement but I guess that is how Robin was in life?  His brother who gave the eulogy didn't wear Sunday clothes or even a tie - instead he wore work clothes and maybe that was some kind of obscure homage to Robin?  Because his other brother had on the same uniform.  Aside from his family, there were no other members of the church in attendance so, as I lead the congregational singing, there was not a soul who opened their mouths or even opened up the hymnbook to follow along.  I was met with stares as I sang and waved my baton.  A little unsettling.  Happily, the bishop and men's quartet sang as well as much of the family and one lone man from the ward who had never met Robin but came to help with the funeral set up.  The Praise To The Man quartet had a mostly easy piano part (which I played) but there were a few measures that posed some real challenges so I practiced it all week.  And, while I didn't botch it up too badly in the performance, I sure played it better at home!  (isn't that always the case???)

Steve and I had a temple baptism trip scheduled with Noah on Tuesday night.  We drove to Ballwin to pick up Noah and half-way to the temple, Noah realized he didn't have his recommend!  (It ended up being with Emily in New York). So, we took him back home and drove to the temple ourselves only to learn that the chlorine levels in the font were too high and no one was doing baptisms until they were lowered.  So, we left our seven names with the baptistry to be done when the water was safe to enter and drove home.  Totally aborted trip.  

I was back in Ballwin again on Wednesday night taking Emily to her house and Beckie to her car after picking them up from the airport after their amazing three-day adventure in New York City.  Their primary objective was to see Hugh Jackman in "The Music Man" on Broadway but the managed to do a whole lot of fun things before and after.  It sounded like they had SO much fun.  

We had very mild temperatures mid-week and I was able to putter in the yard for an hour or so:  raking up leaves, turning the compost, etc.  The dogs always love to hang out with me during those times.  

We had a little scare with our external hard drive and I was afraid we had lost a lot of saved files.  Happily, replacing the cable solved the problem but you can bet I will be doing some backing up in the days ahead.  Our dishwasher is not draining and we are discovering that finding a repairperson is kind of a challenge.  Hopefully by this time next week, it will be fixed and operating.  Thankfully, we don't generate a lot of dishes so handwashing has not been a huge task.

Other fun things I did last week:  I pulled out my oil paints on Thursday.  I got to return to the pottery studio yesterday and did two hours of glazing.  I was able to talk Steve into watching Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on Friday night.   And, that pretty much sums up our week.   

The First Week of the New Year

It is all quiet this chilly sunny Sunday morning.  A week ago, I was here on my own with four dogs while Steve and Sarah were visiting Julina in Indiana.  Sarah and her dogs drove away yesterday morning and stayed last night in Aurora, Colorado.  She will be back in Ogden this evening.  While I don't miss the dog hair (Bones is the WORST at shedding), I will greatly miss having Sarah here.  We have already started a list of things to do when she comes next.  

Some of the highlights of this past week with her include the three of us going to the temple Tuesday morning, Steve and Sarah visiting the World Bird Sanctuary on Wednesday morning (this is becoming a yearly tradition), Sarah and I doing some painting together Wednesday and Thursday afternoon and all three of us heading to the Mississippi River very early on Friday morning to try to catch the sunrise and to see bald eagles.  Beckie and Sarah went to Historic St. Charles together on Thursday and Sarah spent two times this past week with Emily and family.  We watched "Rons Gone Wrong" together Thursday night.  Below are photo highlights of our week with Sarah...

When Beckie came over to pick up Sarah.  Sally has become her "baby" as you can see

Brrrr - it was REALLY COLD Friday morning.  

Here is Sarah ready to drive away with her puppers already loaded in the car

Melanie Johnsen turns 50 today and she came to St. Louis to celebrate with us Friday and Saturday.  She brought a dozen gluten-free cupcakes to share and we enjoyed a delicious birthday dinner Friday night.  We went together to the temple Friday afternoon (Sarah was with Emily so she didn't go) and we watched "Singing in the Rain" after dinner.   Saturday morning, after Sarah left, we watched most of the "Music Man" before she needed to leave for Emily's for her Fiftieth Birthday Photo Session.  

A few years ago, Sarah made us a cute nativity ornament on a tree cookie and I loved it so much I asked her to help me make a whole bunch for gifting next Christmas.  

We did some watercolor, too.  

Back in the summer, I bought assorted colors of polymer clay (Femo, Sculpy, etc) for a grandkid project and we didn't use it all up.  I needed to make a carrot nose for a snowman pillow I sewed this past week so I just decided to use up all the extra clay to make things for the doll house and to make three little birds.  

Finally, I had acquired two small lidded baskets over the past couple of months (the larger one was on the ground next to a trash can and the smaller one was at a thrift store).  They were in great condition but had outdated pictures on the lids.  So, I painted primitive sheep on them to match the other primitive sheep pictures I have in my kitchen.  I am happy with how they turned out - and, because they were "primitive", there was a lot of room for mistakes.

All in all, a busy, satisfying week and going forward, it will be time to resume a weekly routine in a brand new year.

 

Happy 2022!

Here is the bird bath that I got from Steve for Christmas...

On Monday, the 27th, Sarah went to Columbia for three days to hang out with Steven and Tamara and to visit as many friends as she could (and who were in town).  Steve and I kept her dogs here.  Aside from Lily and Bones almost taking our arms out of their sockets when we leashed them to go in the back yard because the two neighbor pit bulls were out, it went very smoothly.  Sally has finally stopped growling every time Lily enters the room!

I helped a friend from church do some packing Tuesday morning.  We did our regular grocery shopping on Wednesday.  I started to put away Christmas decor on Thursday and Sarah returned to her doggies at noon on that day.  She and I went to the St. Louis Art Museum on Friday morning because one can get into the special exhibits for free on Fridays.  We went to see Art Along The Rivers which was good but I confess I loved looking at the Monet and the several Van Gogh paintings even more.  It was fun to go with Sarah who is an amateur artist like I am as we analyzed painting styles, etc.  

Unseasonably warm weather continued all week and our neighbors to the east, Ed and Mona, invited us to their impromptu bonfire New Year's Eve.  They piled up all the scrap wood from their remodeling endeavors and it was quite a blaze.  Another invited family brought s'mores fixings.  

New Year's Day dawned cloudy and rainy so we did not do our annual "watch the sun rise to greet the new year".  We will try to do that sometime this coming week when we actually have a sunrise.  Instead, we prepared a HUGE finger-food feast for a family gathering at noon with Beckie and the Southerlands.  We had originally planned to have this activity in the evening and Steven was going to drive over from Columbia to join us but winter weather was threatening.  We bumped our start time to  earlier in the day when the cold front was still several hours to the west.  Steve, alas, could not come because the freezing rain and sleet was much worse in mid-Missouri.  In fact, Saint Louis got none of that kind of precipitation.  By the time the bitter cold arrived, the rain had moved east.  

We ate and played games.  Quinn, Lucy, and Larkin played with our Legos.  Noah experimented with bizarre taste testing (cream cheese mints with goat cheese dip, etc).  During an epic game of Trivial Pursuit, the younger Southerlands played on their Chromebooks.  We had a grand time.  

Today, Steve and Sarah are traveling to visit Julina and Alex through tomorrow night while I stay home with the four dogs.  Where Friday we had temperatures in the high sixties, today, we will be lucky to reach twenty-five degrees.  I am SOOOOO thankful for our new heater we had installed in September!