The end of September

First of all - the good news that Steve doesn't have to keep his head down anymore! He gets to sleep in a normal position again. Weirdly, though, the muscle cramps have returned (Charlie horses in his legs) now that he is not sleeping on his stomach. He got the "green light" at his Thursday morning doctor appointment. 

Second of all - we have had some good rains to quench our parched earth. I have not had to spend a single moment watering this past week.

As for news of the week, it was a fairly normal week: Monday morning Afghanistan women's meeting, lessons throughout the week including lessons with Quinn and Larkin Tuesday evening (they are not a weekly occurrence) , orchestra on Tuesday night, English class on Thursday night, grocery shopping Wednesday morning. 

I attended a Holly Hills neighborhood meeting Monday evening and it is always interesting and informative. Steve stayed home because he was still under his restrictions.

I had lunch with two other sewing friends (Karen and Mary) on Thursday and we made a little "field trip" to the City Sewing Room. I came back with about 25 spools of thread to give to the Afghanistan women and more fabric for zippered bags (to donate to schools to load with food for the weekends) and other random fabrics - mostly for the Afghanistan women to sew. It is always a fun treasure hunt to go there. 

On Friday, my ministering companion, Sam Carpintero, and I took a cupcake and zinnias from my backyard to our friend Carol who had a birthday Thursday. She is a little bit younger than I am and a very lovely person. We had a great visit. Friday evening, I attended a concert featuring the Bach cello suites 4, 5, and 6. They were played on a cello that was in the Baroque style meaning it had gut strings and no endpin and the bow was not a modern design. The cellist - born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, was extremely talented and it was an amazing concert. In my almost 70 years, I had never heard a complete Bach suite performed (each suite has 6 movements) much less three suites performed live. It was a rare treat! Five of the seven cellists in the St. Louis Civic Orchestra attended.

Below is Steuart Pincombe...

left to right - Nancy, Jayne, Jennifer, me, Emma

On Saturday, we were up bright and early to pick up Quinn and drive to Onondaga State Park (about 80 miles southwest of here off of I-44) to take a 10:00 tour of Onondaga Cave. The tour was fascinating - it took an hour and a half - and I couldn't stop taking photos. We ate a picnic lunch afterwards and then took a short hike before driving back home. 

Below was my favorite area of the cave called the Lilypad Room...

A stalactite and a stalagmite on their way to become a column..

Cave Bacon....

There was a river that ran through the cave...

Steve and I watched a hilarious movie last night called The Man With One Red Shoe that featured a very young Tom Hanks (it was made in 1985). Steve had caught just the last 20 minutes of the movie on television about a month ago and wanted to see the whole thing so I checked it out from the library. It did not disappoint. 

Beckie came over this afternoon and cooked a delicious dinner featuring tuna steaks. I didn't feel brave enough to try to cook them and she is an excellent cook. Yum!

I am closing with a shot from the ophthalmologist office Thursday morning of downtown St. Louis. 

 

NOT an average week

Monday started out normally enough - I had the Afghanistan women's meeting in the morning and my piano student/vacuumer that afternoon. Steve and I watched Mr. Roberts in the evening. Because it was in the same DVD set at No Time For Sergeants, I expected a comedy and, granted, there were some humorous moments but it also had a serious side, too, with a rather bittersweet ending. It had a large cast - Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon and James Cagney but there were also secondary stars that would be seen in television series throughout the sixties and even seventies. 

Tuesday was the BIG DAY - when Steve would have his vitrectomy to repair a hole in his left retina. His surgery was early in the afternoon and we were home in time for Jeopardy at 4:30! Because he has to keep his head down most of the time for at least a week, he totally cleared his calendar and I scaled back on mine. For example, I did not attend civic orchestra Tuesday night just to be around in case of any complications (there were none). I did not walk in the neighborhood the rest of the week but I think I might start up tomorrow. Steve has to sleep face down so we bought a special pillow to accommodate that. It is helpful but he is not able to sleep for long periods of time in that position. So he moves into the TV room and sits in the recliner with the pillow resting on a TV tray. That works for about a REM cycle and then he is back face down on the bed. Thankfully I am a heavy sleeper so all his movement doesn't bother me. He has a follow-up appointment with his eye doctor this coming Thursday and hopefully, he will give the green light for holding his head normally! Happily, his eye is not painful. (but his back and shoulders hurt)

Wednesday morning, bright and early, I drove Steve back to the eye doctor for a 24 hour follow-up and everything looked good. The rest of the week has been hanging around with Steve at home - with me making solo trips to the grocery store, to teach piano lessons Friday afternoon, to rehearse a musical number to play in the Tower Grove Branch today and a trip to IKEA to pick up a small narrow table to hold my sewing machine.  Here it is.....

When I bought my new machine, I just set it on the cabinet that held my old machine that I got when I was married but it was not ideal. This is a much nicer set up. And, the cute little chest of drawers that holds all my sewing notions was able to fit perfectly underneath the table

I was planning to teach my English class Thursday night until I got a text Thursday afternoon saying that class was cancelled due to flooding from a burst pipe at the church! Below are photos that came with the text. Yikes! that is a lot of water!!!

     

Surprisingly, the leak was fixed and the water was all cleaned up by Sunday meetings today!

So, with all the extra time, Steve and I have watched movies ....well, Steve listened and I watched. We inadvertently had a Jodi Foster festival by watching Anna and the King and Contact from our DVD library.  

I altered a cute white dress that all my girls wore for their baptisms to fit Alice for her upcoming baptism photos. I put it in the mail for Spanish Fork on Friday.

I made some cute fabric Christmas ornaments. The green tree, made of cloth yo yos, is something that the Afghanistan women will do in a couple of upcoming Monday mornings. 

Our heat wave/drought has broken, finally. Cooler temperatures arrived mid-week. We had rain yesterday, more is predicted for this evening and in the coming week. I harvested five more pumpkins and the tomatoes are having a small renaissance. My second lettuce planting is big enough to start harvesting so I picked a bit for a salad tonight. 

Below is NOT a flower, but a mushroom I spied on Monday, on the only morning walk I did this past week. I thought it looked pretty cool....

Honestly, I have felt like I was on vacation this past week with so much spare time. It has been rather nice....    

Second week in September was pretty average

What do I tell you about my week?  It is back to being stupid hot and we still have not had rain. I guess morning glories don't care about that because they are so pretty right now!

I did a lot with Kindness Begins With Me this week:

- Monday morning women's group resumed

- I continued to collect and price handmade items from the Afghanistan women 

- I visited the City Sewing Room to get more materials for the women

- I taught my English class Thursday night

- I opened up the church Friday morning for some training with girls from a local Catholic high school.

- I spent all Saturday morning at a nearby park where a fund raising pickle ball tournament was held. I helped at the station where we sold the handmade items made by the Afghanistan women.

We didn't sell very many items, sadly. I think the main culprit was the heat. People were just not wanting to be outside or, if they were, they did not want to linger. And I don't blame them. I came home and had to take a second shower, I was so yucky with sweat!  We are thinking we need to just sell them on-line....

Wednesday morning, Emily called me around 8:00 to ask if Larkin could hang out at our place since she was not feeling well. Emily had medical file extraction to do quite close to us so she dropped Larkin on her way to work. Whatever ailed Larkin early that morning dissipated at our house and she just spent the time watching Monster's Inc. and Monster's University and doing some drawing of birds (she is really GOOD!). We dropped Larkin off where Emily was working in time for our 3:00 dentist appointments (routine cleaning - but I have to say I am not a fan of the high powered water pic!!!). Wednesday evening, Steve and I hopped on our bikes and rode to a nearby snow cone stand for a refreshing treat to beat the heat. 

Steve and I were at the temple two times on Friday. In the morning, we did sealings and we brought along our friend Cinnamon Ontiveros so she could do baptisms. I have been seeing quite a bit of Cinnamon lately. She has no car - her ex wrecked it - and recently she had hip surgery so I have been in the pool of individuals driving her to and from P.T.  I also drove her and her kids to their eye appointments Monday afternoon.  The second time at the temple was in the evening to take Lucy and Quinn to do baptisms. Afterwards, we met Emily and Larkin at Oberweiss Dairy for ice cream (and to see Noah who was working there)

Sorry, no photos of Quinn :(

Steve and I watched the season finale of Strange New Worlds and I loved it so much, I watched it again the next night!

We had our neighbors, the Van Voorens, over for vegetarian lasagna last night. Then we got a tour of the progress they are making on the remodel next door. It is going to be beautiful when it is done, at which time, they will sell it and move to their villa in Greece.

I got a happy piece of mail yesterday - my We Rate Dogs order. In case you can't read backwards, the shirts say "tell your dog I said hi"

 

Here we are in September!

But, first, we need to close out August with a celebration of Larkin's birth! She turned nine on Saturday, the 30th, and we went to their home to eat cake and ice cream on Sunday evening. 

We celebrated Labor Day at a noonday ward picnic. We brought a gluten-free pasta salad, mini corns on the cob and leftover gluten-free cake from the orchestra picnic. And, we brought Jer, a fellow we take to church every week. In the evening, Steve and I rode our bikes to the cemetery across the street so I could take more tombstone photos. (It might seem odd that we have to ride our bikes to just go across the street but the cemetery is fenced and the entrance is waaaay down from our house on Bates. So, it is not a very long bike ride but it is much faster than walking).

I finished my HUGE book, Wind and Truth, Sunday night. It is the last of a set of five enormous volumes written by Brandon Sanderson. I started reading the first book fifteen years ago so it has been quite a journey. And, there is another five-book arc planned for the future but the amount of time it takes to write each book is so great that I will probably be dead before Sanderson finishes the final book! Sigh. I read books at the end of the day just before turning out the lights to sleep and all this week, I have missed reading about Dalinar and Shallan and Kaladan. They have been a part of my reading life for so many years and now it feels like they have moved to a distant planet. 

Tuesday I got to work all morning on my dad's history and I got to do some oil painting in the afternoon. Nice! It was the first rehearsal of the season for civic orchestra and it was fun to see everyone again. We are playing some really hard music this year so my almost seventy-year-old brain is really going to be challenged. I left early so I could give Quinn and Larkin a piano lesson before rehearsal started.

Wednesday was a Happy Hookers meeting. I brought some zippered bags and a large bunch of nifty- knitter hats of various sizes that I have been working on all spring and summer. In the evening, while Steve was at a meeting at the church, I started watching the new Captain America (Brave New World). I haven't finished it and I am wondering if I even want to. I guess I am growing weary of the Marvel universe and their convoluted story lines and constant violence (thankfully not graphic but still, someone always seems to be throwing someone else across the room!!!) I'll let you know if I ever finish it.

Thursday I put my nose to the grindstone and did first-of-the-month finances for much of the day. It was the first evening of English classes after our short two-week break and I had a student, who had not attended most of the summer, show up and she almost derailed the class! At the end of the summer classes, you might recall that I distributed a bunch of sewing projects for the women to work on to make money at the upcoming International Fair September 13th and for the Trivia Night in November. Some of the ladies brought their finished items to class on Thursday and this woman was VERY incensed that SHE didn't have anything to sew. And, of course, no one in my class speaks a lick of English so poor Maliha, my interpreter, was just inundated by everyone needing to tell me things all at the same time - with the upset woman at the forefront of it all. Whew! Who knew I would need to practice classroom management with a bunch of adult women???

Friday morning started cool enough that I wore a jacket on our walk with Beckie. We have had autumn-like weather all week and we even got a rain shower or two. Nothing like a drenching rain but enough that I didn't have to worry about watering for a few days. Steve and I attended the temple in the morning. In the afternoon, I started three new piano students - siblings who belong to Paul, an oboist in the civic orchestra. He learned at the civic picnic last week that I taught piano as well as cello (and violin) and he asked if I would consider going to their home to give lessons. At first I resisted but, the more I thought about it, the more I figured I should give it a try since I had just recently lost two cello students. And, it turns out that his wife, Ellie, is from Columbia and she went to school with Elise! They were in String Project together as well as in KICS (an auditioned singing group for 4th and 5th graders) and they were both in the Hickman High production of Secret Garden which Emily was also in!  Small world!!! So, every Friday afternoon, I will drive fifteen minutes to their lovely home next to the Botanical Gardens and teach piano lessons. All three have already been studying piano via Zoom with someone so hopefully, an in-person teacher will be a much better situation.

Saturday morning I attended a stake Relief Society event. I brought Karen Bazdresch with me and it was a lovely affair. We listened to a speaker, were fed breakfast (they had gluten-free options, happily), we worked on a service project and attended two classes. In the evening, Steve and I had a fire in the pit and cooked our hamburgers over it. (our gas grill is dead and, even though we have a charcoal grill, I wanted to see if we could cook over the fire) Then we rode our bikes to a nearby auto parts store to look for pin striping tape that I use to mark finger positions on string instruments. Then, we watched Strange New Worlds. The weather was absolutely perfect!