Music and good eating

I packed up my music studio this past week.  All that is left is some furniture I don’t want and the piano and couch that will go to Emily.  I had a lot of my old textbooks that I just don’t want any longer so I decided to revive the Amazon bookstore I created a few years back to sell some of Sarah’s textbooks, Sarah Jeanne Books, and list them to sell.  Surprisingly, they are still worth some money. In fact, less than four hours after listing all of them, I had my first sale!

Two of my cello students are from Jefferson City and their district music festival was on St. Patrick’s day.  Since I am their accompanist, that meant Steve and I had a reason to have lunch at Oscar’s Diner in Jefferson City that day.   Their gluten-free patty melt (get it?  Patty melt on St. Patrick’s?) is decadently delicious.   

Since I had a music textbook to ship, and because we had a half hour until I was to accompany my first student, Steve and I walked to the Jefferson City post office right across the street from the capital building. 

  It was a lovely early spring day and the post office was up the hill from the performing arts center giving me a chance to work off that fattening lunch I’d just had.

This was one of the cute buildings we walked past.  Not something you would expect to see in the midwest, right?

Thursday and Friday evenings were spent rehearsing and performing in The Armed Man – A Mass For Peace.  Below is a link to one of the pieces – Sanctus. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dIOLbwZJDs  

The cello part was pretty simple.  In this piece, you can hear the cello line – rhythmic underlying notes.   

Here is another link to one of the other numbers – Hymn Before Action

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN1yssJK29I   

It was fun to play and I got paid a small amount. 

On my way to my car in the parking garage, I took this photo of Jesse Hall lit up for St. Patrick’s day.

 

Speaking of….. I love the food of St. Patrick’s day.  I didn’t grow up eating corned beef and cabbage.  It wasn’t until Steve started working at the law library.  His Irish co-worker, Diane Collins, hosted St. Patrick’s Day dinners at her tiny apartment.  She invited anyone from the library staff AND their families to come -  so we packed up our kids every year and went.  Corned beef, cabbage, red potatoes, and green pistachio pudding was her regular menu.   Her apartment was a booby trap of breakable knic-nacs  to keep the kids away from.  AND, we all had to watch out for her evil, insane cat, Katrina!   Fun memories.

Then, you have the off-shoot of the corned beef:  The Reuben sandwich.  I had never eaten one of those until a co-worker brought some one night while I was working as a unit clerk at the hospital.  How could sour kraut be on something so delicious?!?!   I got to enjoy two Reuben sandwich dinners this week.  Mmmmmm

I went to my doctor on Monday to discuss my blood pressure – which is just higher than it should be.  She changed my medicine and, so far, I can’t see much of a difference.  In fact, it is even higher.  Sigh.  Aging stinks.  But, at least I am not turning 75 which is what my friend, Katherine Eschrich did on Saturday.  Here she is with her cake.  

Here are all of us who joined her at Cheddar's for lunch to celebrate with her.

And the word on our mission is.....

....nothing yet.  Getting all our medical information has been the major hold up from the get-go.  First, there were some blanks on our medical forms that both our doctors forgot to fill in.   Those had to be taken care of before even submitting everything to Salt Lake.  Then, once our papers were in the senior missionary office, we got a call from the medical department asking for the date of Steve’s kidney stone and for three consecutive days of blood pressure readings from me.  Tracking down the kidney stone incident was a bit tricky.  Steve was able to determine that it happened after he had been made bishop which gave us a start date of 2005.  But our on-line medical records didn’t go back that far and requesting written medical records is fairly time-consuming.  Our journals were the next source only Steve’s journal is done on the computer and the years 2005 to about 2009 are currently lost to us – they are stored on a crashed external hard-drive that we hope sometime in the future to have technology able to unlock such things.  Thankfully, I keep an old-fashioned hand-written journal and, after delving into two and a half year’s worth of entries, he was able to learn that his kidney stone happened on November 28^th, 2007.  Anyway, we called the senior missionary medical department two weeks ago on Monday, February 27^th to give them this information thinking all was well.  Imagine our dismay when Steve got an e-mail from the senior missionary medical on Saturday, March 4^th stating that they were still waiting on his kidney stone date!  Sigh.  So, we called again last Monday, the 6^th with the information and now we HOPE all the paperwork is in order and that we should receive the big white envelope in the next week or so.

On the moving front - Steve and I have stored away all the stuff from the sports room.  I also consolidated the food storage we have in the closet in the family room to make shelf room for storing packed items.  I am impressed with how much food we actually have stored!  Over a year’s supply with many things.  Beans, wheat, spices, and more.  We also have two small freezers of food to use up.  After a discussion of home-made freezer strawberry jam, I was able to use up the rest of our frozen strawberries and make two batches of the stuff with Beckie on Thursday morning.  There are still frozen blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries that I will make into regular jam in the coming weeks.  I re-potted a couple of plants for giving away.  (I want to keep the pots they were in) 

 

I will start packing up my studio this coming week.  I feel confident that we will make the March 25^th deadline to have all three rooms empty for Elizabeth and Carolina to teach in starting on March 27^th. 

Beckie got a job working as a server where Kyle works.  She is in St. Louis this weekend and maybe for much of this coming week for training.  Here she is reunited with Kyle's dog, Luna.

She rented “Arrival” for us all to watch on Monday night.  That was a fascinating movie.

Steve and I took my friend Julie Vornholt up to the Amish stores Saturday morning.  

I went to Elizabeth Crippen’s home Thursday afternoon to work on crafts.  I was hired to play in an orchestra for The Armed Man concert on March 17^th and I had a rehearsal Saturday afternoon.  It was nice to play cello again.  I have been spending my Tuesday evenings rehearsing with the stake Easter cantata. 

We celebrated Tamara’s birthday last Sunday.  

Beckie made a delicious Mexican feast!  

Both Sadie and I got haircuts this past week.  Here she is pre-haircut.  It takes both Steve and me to do her haircuts.  He holds her and pets her and I clip furiously away.

  

Not much to report this week

It was a quiet week in Lambson-land.  The highlight was Beckie's amazing dinner she prepared Wednesday:  grilled ahi tuna steaks, ratatouille with a balsamic reduction sauce, smashed baby potatoes.  Oh, it was so delicious.  Beckie loves cooking shows and, this past week, she introduced me to the Great British Bake-Off.  I crave cake after every episode!

Steve and I got to see "Lion" at the theater on Tuesday.  What an amazing story!  We checked out a new taco restaurant on Friday for lunch - it was pretty average.  Friday night, we watched a documentary called "Escape Fire" about the American health system.  It was very interesting.

I went to pottery.  We served in the temple on Saturday. We rehearsed with the MMCO on Monday and with the Easter cantata on Tuesday.  I pruned roses on Friday.  Steven and Tamara's T-shirt quilt is almost done - hopefully tomorrow night.

Steve has started to dismantle his sports room.

Beckie is here!

Tuesday, Elise, Steve, and I drove to St. Louis to pick Beckie up from her flight from Hawaii.


She wasn't completely ready to leave the island life (she had been there over four years)

but her roommates were and she couldn't afford to live there by herself.  And, they all three want to pursue their Buttertooth adventures in St. Louis....

Before driving to the airport, we met Emily and Larkin and Quinn at an outlet mall.


Beckie's returned to Columbia with us to accomplish her first and most important objective - to find a car.  We went looking Friday morning and TA DA, found a lovely 2006 Prius with less than 100K miles and at a price she could afford.  She picked it up Saturday afternoon.

Beckie being home has been a magnet for the Lambsons in the area - Elise, Sarah, and Steven and Tamara have all been here most evenings.  Steven and Tamara came over both on Wednesday and on Friday.  In fact, on Friday, we had a wurst dinner thanks to Steven and Tamara who had gone to Hermann in January and purchased several flavors of bratwurst at the Wurst House.  They provided a sampling of four different varieties and we fixed up some yummy sides.

I finished Sarah's quilt top



and started working on Steven and Tamara's joint quilt last night while Steve and I watched 12 Angry Men (the original).  Boy, what a good film!

I picked up my most recent batch of glazed pottery.



Weather has been unseasonably warm this month.  I spotted this hyacinth blooming on February 22nd!

I worry about our "non-winter" this year. No snow or moisture of any kind is not good.  Steve finished emptying the 55 gallon drums of water on our trees and shrubs but that won't substitute for a couple of good snow melts.   Maybe in March???

Finally, look who visited the bird seed on our back deck this morning....

a red wing blackbird - they usually hang around water so he was a surprise.  This is the second day we have seen him.

And, a usual sight....Mr. Cardinal

The week went quickly!

 I made some organization in the family/storage room....

 

 Would you say we have a LOT of DVDs?  I tried to toss that lawn statue with the creepy-eyed kids because one has a broken arm (on the floor in front) but Steve wouldn't let me!  Ruth Marshall gave it to us. 

Steve has drained water from two of the four 55 gallon drums.  He is watering the trees in our yard because we have had NO moisture of any kind for a month.  This “winter” has not acted normal. 

I cleared all my tubs of craft stuff (felt, patterns, fabric, etc) out of the Noah’s Ark room so I could store the boxes Beckie has been mailing home to herself (T-minus two days and counting before we pick her up at the airport!)

Steve and I went to see “A Dog’s Purpose” for a Valentine date.  We just sobbed and bawled our way through it.  Red rimmed eyes as we walked out of the theater.  GO SEE IT!

I am half-way through with Sarah’s T-shirt quilt.  I glazed 12 pots at pottery and threw three new ones.  Steve and I served all day in the temple yesterday. 

Medical glitches on our mission application have been solved and hopefully, it is on its way to Salt Lake now.  Just for fun, I decided to highlight all the missions that we could afford – yellow for domestic and orange for foreign – and it is surprising the possibilities.  

That was our week

And so it has begun

We started dismantling rooms this week.  First pieces of furniture to go were the family room couch, the DVD bookcase,  and the iron bed in the quilt room.  Melanie got the first two items and Katherine Eschrich got the last one.  Delivery was on Saturday.  Here are some before - after photos......

 

 

 

 
 The family room will become our storage unit while we are gone.  The quilt room will hold my sewing machine and supplies because I am certainly not finished with sewing projects and won't be until the very end.  Currently, I am doing t-shirt quilts and I have the tops finished for mine and for Steve's.  I still have Sarah's and Steven/Tamara's to make.
 
 Steve's

 
 mine

We are still looking for a home for our dear old Trissy.  Sixteen years old and still going strong - although she is deaf, getting cataracts, is slightly senile (she keeps forgetting she has already been outside only minutes earlier), is arthritic but still manages to get up and down stairs, and she has this incredibly HUGE fatty tumor on her hip. 

 

 

I am thrilled to report that my bladder is now completely back to normal.  I have cautiously eaten acidic foods this past week and have felt absolutely no pain!  At big test was the lasagne (tomato sauce), salad (dressing) and cherry pie (tart cherries) I ate last night and I experienced nothing but a happy mouth!

The MMCO finally got to perform their winter concert at Parkside Manor on Saturday.  Here we are.

Steve and I had our interview with the stake president on Sunday.  There is a blank on my medical form and one on Steve's that our doctors need to fill in and I forgot to submit our dental forms (they were completed first and I wanted to keep them separate from the unfinished medical ones so I put them in an envelope in the back of our mission application folder and then forgot them!).  So, nothing will be submitted to Salt Lake until we get those three issues solved by Tuesday night.....

Rehearsals for the Easter cantata began on Tuesday and Steve is singing with us this year!  I got to do pottery on Wednesday and I cleaned and prepared six pieces for firing. 

And, on Tuesday, I got to have a deliciously decadent gluten-free patty melt at Oscars in Jefferson City after taking Sarah Everett to the Missouri National Guard headquarters to get a new military ID to replace the one stolen from her wallet.  (Her late husband was retired Navy and she gets medical benefits from his pension).  We were so hungry we didn't stop to visit the museum but I did snap a few photos of the old military vehicles parked outside.

Surgery is DONE!

The bladder stone is gone.  Surgery went smoothly Tuesday morning - I checked in at 5:00 am, surgery started at 7:00, it was finished before 8:00, I was home by 10:00.  Such a short time to knock me flat for the rest of the week.  I cleared my calendar for the surgery day but I was not expecting to be so tired and worn out Wednesday, Thursday, and even Friday.  I cancelled things - even POTTERY!  And, I just slept and hung out on the couch.   I watched "Zootopia".  Steve and I watched two Foyle's War episodes.  We watched the BYU-TV production of "Winter's Thaw" that came out in December and tells the Tolstoy tale of the shoemaker at Christmas time (not the one with the elves...).  It was really well done.  I recommend it highly.  The energy was back on Saturday -  in time for Steve and me to go to St. Louis and serve in the temple.  AND, for me to give Lucy her first piano lesson.
 

Here we are.  (Lucy is wearing a jacket/cape combo from a cartoon she likes to watch)
I found a pre-reading book in the piano method that I like to use.  I hope she has fun with it.  I started to take piano lessons when I was 8 years old and Juli, 2 1/2 years younger, started to imitate what she heard me playing so my mom enrolled her in lessons right away, when she was 5.  Right about the age that Lucy is now.

I have not attempted to start eating acidic foods without Prelief pills, yet.  I am supposed to have a two-week follow-up appointment and I might give it a go after that......

Oh, and we pushed the "send" button on our mission application.  We had the interview with the bishop this morning.  After the interview with the stake president (day TBD), it should take 5-6 weeks before we get the envelope in the mail with our assignment....

AND, on the day of surgery, Steve and I celebrated 42 years of marriage.  We went out to eat BBQ the night before.  And, we cooked steaks for Tuesday night but I was too nauseated to eat :(