A few months back, Danica Hill reached out to me to inquire about Nauvoo. She is the granddaughter of Beverly Martin who I met through Family Search. Beverly is a Fraedrich and a member of the Church (which is unusual for that line). She and her husband live in Eager, Arizona and Steve and I got to meet her while we were on our mission. She was a lovely woman who sadly passed away about a year after we met. I believe Danica met me through FaceBook? Anyway, she and her family were in St. Louis visiting her in-laws and Steve and I met them at the St. Louis Zoo on Monday morning. What a nice family - too bad they live in Queen Creek, Arizona.
Monday afternoon, I drove down to the Mehlville School District main offices to talk more about this string teaching job. Throughout the week, I also visited with the other string teacher and the former string teacher (who I knew through Civic Orchestra cello section) and I believe I am going to give it a try this year. That evening, after dinner, I attended a Holly Hills beautification committee meeting and, because it was in the neighborhood, I rode my bike to and from. That was very enjoyable whereas the meeting itself was kind of over my head as they were discussing different landscape company bids and I was completely clueless. Oh well. I was a warm body there, at least.
Tuesday morning, I drove Linus the 30 minutes down to Open Door Animal Sanctuary to have blood drawn. He is apparently a hard stick, though, and the vet couldn't find a vein! I had to drive him about a mile further down the road to a veterinary practice and, happily, they were successful. I was not with him at either location so I don't know how old Linus took all the poking but I did not hear any loud yelps so I think he did just fine. The blood tests show that he has a low functioning thyroid. The sanctuary will mail me pills to give him twice a day and we will bring him back in about six weeks for re-testing. That evening, Steve and I did a shift at the temple baptistry. The couple who usually works on Tuesday nights took our Saturday morning shift back on the first of July when I was returning from Judy's funeral in California.
Wednesday morning, I was one of six women who helped serve lunch for a missionary zone conference. I was hands to help shuck corn, set butter on plates, fill salt and pepper shakers, and then to serve out chicken. It was nice to be among a bunch of young missionaries again. It brought back many wonderful Arizona Phoenix Mission memories. Steve did the grocery shopping while I was occupied but, on the way home, I did stop by a Wal-Mart to get some additional items. I got home SO exhausted that the rest of the afternoon and evening was me just doing anything I could while sitting. I sat at my sewing machine and finished hemming Elise's t-shirt quilt!
All week in the early morning, I have been pulling down bindweed and violets from the fence between us and the Alarcons. It was slow going and by Thursday morning, I still had a few sections to go. It was a rainy day and Sergio Alarcon and his son Edwin were not able to do their planned job (they do construction) so they and their crew worked on tuckpointing their house and Sergio sent Edwin to finish the fence weeding! He not only finished the west fence but he also pulled down all the bindweed growing on the back gate. Wow, what a gift! Speaking of the back gate, one morning, as I was returning from dumping weeds into green dumpster, I snapped this picture of the flowers behind our garage.
Thursday morning, I brought Steve and Emily Hughes (a woman in our ward) with me to the Rec Center. Emily did her own exercising but Steve joined me in the Silver Sneakers yoga class. That afternoon, Steve and I visited the Field House Museum located in downtown St. Louis close to the Cardinal's baseball stadium. Eugene Field is an American poet who grew up in St. Louis and his house is now a museum. There was a Charles Shultz exhibit that we went to see and it was delightful. An added bonus was another exhibit on the St. Louis Browns baseball team - who later went to Baltimore and became the Orioles. Steve really enjoyed that, too. We fed the sister missionaries for dinner and, after they left, we really enjoyed watching A Man Called Otto.
We each posed next to our favorite Peanuts character. Steve's first photo of me also included Schroeder and, rather than delete it, I am keeping since he is my second favorite character.
Friday, I taught two hours of music lessons and baked some gluten-free zucchini muffins and I tried to clean but I was just worn out. Maybe from Thursday!?!? We did attend the temple that night, though, even as weary as we both were.
Saturday dawned cool and sunny and Steve's and my energy was restored so we took another long bike ride (long for us is about 45 minutes!) along a new section of the Great Rivers Greenway. We crossed the Des Peres river and saw many turtles sunning themselves on rocks.
Our energy levels continued the rest of the day allowing Steve to rake grass and take out trash and clean the kitchen and bathrooms. I was able to clean the floors and water plants and work on family history throughout the afternoon. That evening, we attended an open house for a young woman leaving for BYU-I and we finished the night with frozen custard at Ted Drewes.
We don't usually take trips to the zoo, a museum, drive down to Open Door and I don't usually work at missionary zone conferences so, it was for us, a rather unusual week.
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