Pies, Pottery, Plants, Pretty music

We started our week with Pi Day.  I made shepherd's pie and a coconut cream pie to share with the members of the ward.  We had an informal gathering Monday evening at the church and we all ate pie.  Mine was gluten-free and another person brought a gluten-free pie, too.  YUM!

The collection of pottery that I have been working on was finally finished so I got to bring everything home.  My current focus has been on making tiny vases and little plates with birds on them.  I like how they turned out.

My daffodils are in full bloom.  My Christmas cactus has decided to bloom again.  And I planted 39 sweet pea seeds along our back east fence.  The sticks are where each seed is located.

Wednesday morning, I drove to Ballwin to join Emily and Larkin in hearing Noah's school orchestra play in a large ensemble music festival.  It was so fun.  And it brought back mostly pleasant memories of all the music festivals I took my orchestras to...

We have had gorgeous spring weather this week and I love seeing everything come to life.  Steve and I took the dogs on a nice walk yesterday evening...

 

We worked on our tax return throughout the week.  We are awaiting some information on a possible tax credit for the heater and air conditioner we had installed in September of 2021 but, even without that information, it looks like we will actually get a tiny refund!  

March Madness is in full swing and Sally and Linus submitted a bracket.  They chose only teams that had animal mascots and dogs were favored most of all.  So far, they have made some good choices and some bad ones.  In honor of the season, Steve and I watched "Hoosiers" last night.  We also watched "An Affair To Remember" on Thursday/Friday evenings.  Elise loaned us the DVD and it is the one referenced in "Sleepless in Seattle".  Honestly, it is not a movie I need to see again.  The plot was pretty vanilla, it was annoying at the end when she wouldn't tell Cary Grant that she had been in an accident, and, as much as I love Cary Grant, he was terribly cast in this role.  But then, Hollywood did that a lot back in the day.  OLD actors and actresses were given roles that really needed to be played by much younger people.  

Saint Patrick's Day on Thursday - we did the traditional corned beef and cabbage and red potatoes.  I made green jello with crushed pineapple and we had sugar-free pistachio pudding for dessert.  Delicious. 

All in all, it was a great week.  And we are preparing for our Arizona/California trip coming this Tuesday so hopefully, I will have time to post a blog next Sunday with lots of photos.

 

Second Week of March

I am a couple days late with my blog this week.  That is because Steve and I were in Indiana over the weekend to spend some time with Julina and Alex.  We watched the weather forecasts quite closely because a winter storm was predicted for Friday, our departure date.  Happily, the storm turned out to be just light flurries with no accumulation for Saint Louis and points east so our drive had no issues - aside from watching gas prices go up and up the further east we went!  We paid $3.99 before we left, Illinois prices were at about $4.50 and Indiana was at $4.25.  Thankfully, Julina has a Costco membership so we were able to fill up at $4.08.  We are still in our rental and it gets fairly good gas mileage that enabled us to just drive through Illinois without having to worry about our tank.  Columbia, apparently, DID get the winter storm and about 5 inches of snow - which melted quite quickly since it is March and not January.  While in Greenwood, we helped Julina with a few projects around the house and Steve spent quite a bit of time with Alex down in his basement "man cave" as he tinkered with his huge model train setup.  We had to leave for home early Sunday morning so we could get to our church meetings since the ward choir was singing.  So, it was a short visit this time.  Below are two photos from our time with Juli 

We had hoped to leave Friday morning for Greenwood - I even shuffled a cello lesson to 9:00 am that day.  But, we awoke to no hot water - AGAIN!  So, I got on the phone and called the plumbing company (Aries) to ask to be put on a waiting list for an appointment.  I got a voicemail.  So, I called another plumbing company (Guinner) and was told they were making appointments three weeks out!  I said OK but when they learned that we had a Whirlpool heater, she said they were not licensed to work on those kinds????  Weird.  I then called a third plumbing company (Maplewood) with some reluctance because I had reached out to them mid-February for a water heating installation quote and I had to leave a voice message and they never returned my call.  But, this time, they answered and they said that there was an appointment for Tuesday morning, March 15th.  WOW!  I took it.  Then, about thirty minutes later, they called me and said they had a cancellation and someone could be at our home in fifteen minutes.  What a miracle!!!  So, the guy came and he diagnosed the problem - we do not need a new water heater, we do not need a new igniter - we had a very slow and small leak where the water enters the tank and it was most likely extinguishing the pilot light and when we tried to re-light it, it would still be wet. (that would explain why the second time we had no hot water a couple weeks ago, Steve was able to relight it the next day - it had dried out)  So, he fixed the leak and we have been good to go ever since.  It was also refreshing to hear this plumber say that water heaters can last 15 to 20 years.  That is a completely different story from what Beig Plumbing told us right at the start of this fiasco.  Guess who our new plumbing company is going to be???  And guess who will be saving up for an eventual water heater replacement?

Early last Tuesday morning, March 8th, I got to drive Beckie and Micah to the airport so they could begin their visit to Hawaii.  Pictures on Facebook and Instagram show that they have been having a wonderful food-filled, beach-filled time which is exactly what they hoped to happen.

In typical March fashion, temperatures have been all over the place.  It was SO COLD last Saturday in Indiana.  The sun was bright and shining but it felt like four degrees with the wind chill.  Yesterday, we had sixty degrees!  My little crocus are not deterred, however, by the yo yo weather.  

Before the "winter storm" last Friday, temperatures were nice-ish and Steve and I helped with a cemetery clean-up across the street.  Spring time there is always a need to collect large limbs and branches that have fallen throughout the winter so the mowers can navigate.  

We have a weekly FaceTime visit with Alice (and her family) on Thursday evenings and this time, Alice wanted to draw pictures of Steve and me.  Here are her creations.

Isn't she adorable? 

Hmmm, what else happened last week?  Well, you can see from the photo of Steve and the dogs that Linus got a haircut on Tuesday.  I worked on my t-shirt rug all weekend and I am not totally pleased with the color choices I made so I am thinking of doing a new one with much more white in the blend.  In my humanitarian sewing, I get a lot of fabric donated to me and there was a large piece of white t-shirt fabric  in the last bag of fabric I collected over the weekend (I got two bags!) so I think it is meant to be, right?

I watched "Free Guy" on Disney+ while Steve was at youth meetings Wednesday night.  I enjoyed it.

And, I almost forgot to tell about last Sunday afternoon - attending the performance of the Mozart Requiem with the Saint Louis Symphony and Chorale.  It was just amazing!  All the Southerlands, Beckie, Elise, Steve and I got to attend.  Afterwards, we all congregated at our place for dinner.  What a lovely way to end a Sunday!

some of the delicious food we enjoyed together....

March comes in like a Lamb (son)

It has been nice and spring-like all week with some very warm days and some days a bit cool and breezy.  My first daffodil opened up this week (excuse the blurry photo...it was too hard to get on my knees to get a better shot)

Being the first of the month, I went to the Happy Hookers monthly meeting to deliver all the sewing projects I had completed.  I had thirteen zippered bags to donate to an inner city school that sends them home full of weekend food.  I particularly love the yellow check ones and you can see the dogs printed on the the patterned yellow bags.  Most of the ladies in the group donate crocheted blankets and I kind of wonder how useful those items really are.  Do the nursing homes and women and children's shelters just roll their eyes when a new batch of crocheted blankets arrive every month?  I hope they are welcomed because these ladies are so diligent and thoughtful...

Larkin came for the day on Friday and we had a little outing to Mastodon State Historic Site just south of us about twenty miles.  We visited the museum and hiked down (and back up!) the dozens of stairs to the bone yard site.

 

I didn't have orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday evening so Steve and I enjoyed watching a movie that Elise loaned to us  - "Paycheck".  It was a thriller and a pretty good watch.  While Steve was at church youth activities on Wednesday evening, I finished the series on Boba Fett.  Loved seeing baby Yoda again!  And on Friday, we went to Mona and Ed's for another dinner and a movie night.  Gluten-free pizza was again on the menu and we watched "O Brother Where Art Thou".  Great music, rather odd movie but with some funny moments.  Steve and I started watching "Luca" with Larkin on Friday and finished it ourselves on Saturday.  That was a cute movie.  

Saturday was a FULL day!  It started early with a full schedule at the temple baptistry and was followed by piano lessons at the Southerlands.  The evening was the ward talent show.  I rounded up two violinists and a violist and we played "Concerning Hobbits".  The other talent was quite varied:  poetry readings, a juggling act, ballroom dancing couple, three vocal numbers, a handful of instrumental performances, a science demonstration and a gymnastics show.  There were also tables to display other kinds of talents.  The most impressive one was a poster with an extremely complicated math problem!  Elise arrived a few minutes after we got home from the activity.  She and Beckie and the entire Southerland gang and Steve and I are attending the Saint Louis Symphony performance of the Mozart Requiem this afternoon.  Very excited about that. 

We got the pilot light lit again on the hot water heater and our current plan is to just buy an igniting unit and have a plumber replace just that part since the tank is not leaking.  

And, I think that is all my news for the week....

The end of February

 Well, we have no hot water again as of this morning.  Sigh!  I had hoped we could hold out until my dental work was paid off but I guess that is not to be.  I will be calling the plumber tomorrow morning...

Our Element went into the body shop on Friday morning (see previous blog about our rear-ending incident) and we are driving a Jeep Compass for what looks like about three weeks since some of the repair parts won't arrive until around March 17th!!!  It is kind of a surprise that it wasn't totaled, given the age and mileage on the vehicle.  But, given the cost of used cars these days, maybe it isn't such a surprise.  The rental is much smaller inside than the Element and Steve keeps bumping his head as he gets in.  But, we are glad to have it, for sure!  (and it is large enough to hold my cello)

We had another winter storm on Wednesday/Thursday that dropped about an inch of sleet.  Most of it has melted by now but the portion of our driveway that doesn't get much sun is still a skating rink.  It is supposed to get into the 50's today so I hope it will be melted by the end of the day.  Sally slips and slides whenever she goes out and it is a blessing that neither Steve nor I have fallen!

We had some fun outings this week.  Monday morning, President's Day, we met Emily and kids and Beckie at the zoo.  The temperatures were in the 60's and it was a gorgeous day.  Here we are at the gorilla exhibit.  We all went to our house for lunch.  

Friday morning, Steve and I ventured to the Goodwill Outlet located downtown.  If you are not familiar with the outlet, it is where all the Goodwill stores dump their unsold items.  It is in a huge warehouse room filled with large rolling carts loosely separated into "fabric" and "non-fabric" items and you buy things by the pound -  $1.30 per pound.  I want to make some t-shirt yarn and buying used shirts by the pound is the most practical way to go about it.  And, while we pawed through each fabric bin, wearing gloves, we also found other items like ties, a white dress shirt, and a St. Louis Blues t-shirt for Steve and a silk scarf, a white top, and an ugly Christmas sweater for me.  We went through probably about twenty carts out of the fifty or sixty that were there.  Here is my stack of t-shirts:

Saturday morning, we explored the Telephone Museum located in Jefferson Barracks (a former military installation just south of us that also has a national military cemetery).  It is in a smallish building that used to be officer housing back in the day and it is run by volunteer retirees from the Southwestern Bell Corporation.  Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable.  It is incredible how far the telephone has come in just my lifetime!  

Other than the above listed adventures, we had a fairly average week.  The winter storm started Wednesday and continued through Thursday but it was sporadic enough that the road crews were able to keep on top of clearing so Steve made it to his Thursday morning doctor appointment and I got to my final physical therapy appointment right after that.  The sleet did resume during my PT so I drove home very carefully and we stayed home the rest of the day.  We watched a movie that night - "Big Business" and it was every bit as funny as when we first saw it years ago.  

We had a young couple over for cookies and milk Monday evening and the husband is allergic to eggs and almonds so making cookies he could eat was tricky.  I experimented with gluten-free/egg free chocolate chip cookies and they turned out quite deliciously.  I used ground flax as my egg substitute.  Steve made an eggless funny cake and frosted it like a mint brownie.  He used wheat flour so I couldn't taste the results but it looked yummy.  

Friday evening, we were invited to dinner by Walter and Mary Bell who are in our ward.  They provided a fully gluten-free meal which was so kind and thoughtful.  

The St. Louis Civic Orchestra has a concert tonight so last night was our dress rehearsal.  It has been fun to play the music.  Steve and the Southerlands will be in the audience tonight.  Beckie might also be able to come.

What a week!!!

It has been quite the week.  Hold on to your seats and get ready....

Monday - Valentine's Day.  Here are photos of the roses from Steve and of flowers from our sweet neighbor's, the Alarcon's and especially their ten-year old daughter Giselle.  The bouquet was so large that I had split them up.  The yellow chrysanthemums are on a shelf that I had Ricky Remus install when he was here last week.  

Emily had a photo session in the morning so I drove over to hang out with Larkin and to take her to school.  

I had PT that afternoon (progress is being made, happily, but I will be glad to be finished.  It takes out such a chunk out of my day!) and Elizabeth Crippen arrived late afternoon.  She stayed overnight so we could attend the temple Tuesday morning.  Beckie joined Elizabeth and us for dinner and we played two good games of Scrabble that evening.

Tuesday -we woke up to no hot water!  And when I called the plumber, I was informed that first, a repair person could not come until a week from Friday!!!!!  And, second, our water heater is eleven years old and they don't typically repair units that old because the typical life expectancy for a water heater is 10-15 years.  So, we were looking at a new one.  They were able to send someone to measure and work out an estimate for the next day.  Oh, this was horrible news that just tainted the rest of the day.  We were considering showering at the Y because we have memberships (although we have never used them!).  I called a woman in the ward who works at the Y to ask her about the showers and their availability and she asked what was going on.  When I told her, she said "I am sending Ron (her husband) over right now to see what he can do".  Well, Ron diagnosed the problem right away - the pilot light was out!  And, now we have hot water again - HALLELUJAH!  Yes, we will need to replace it but this buys us some time to pay off our heater/air conditioning payment AND the dental crowns I have recently had.  Which brings us to...

Wednesday - and my new crown that was installed.  The procedure went smoothly, like the last one I had back in December, but having someone grinding and grinding down a tooth for what seems like an eternity is still nerve wracking.  I opted to listen to music via my phone and earbuds this time and I chose Beethoven's 3rd Symphony.  The first movement played as I waited for the Novocain to make my mouth numb so it was during the slow, dramatic second movement when the drilling actually occurred and it was the PERFECT soundtrack!  The next time you listen to it, imagine me getting my tooth drilled and you will know what I mean.  By the third movement, all the preliminary work was completed and it was time to await the crown-in-a-day machine to do its magic so I watched an episode of The Book of Boba Fett.   I actually never finished listening to the symphony.  This all happened during the morning while Steve did the weekly grocery shopping.  He took Fred along.  After all my mouth trauma, I spent my afternoon kind of taking it easy and, just as I was getting dinner ready, I got a call from Sam, the young woman who we take to church every week.  Her blood sugars were in the 500's and she needed to go to an ER.  Barnes is closest but she was afraid she would have a huge wait time there so I drove her to Mercy Hospital down south.  I initially thought I would need to stay with her but she seemed pretty chill with her emotional support dog, Blue, and she said I could go home.  Good thing as she was there for about six hours!  I stayed up and worked on finances while I awaited her phone call.   I finally got to bed at 12:30.  

Thursday - we had been having torrential rain since Wednesday evening as temperatures were dropping that morning but it was still just rain by my PT appointment at 10:15.  As I was driving home an hour later, though, the rain was turning to sleet and it just got nastier as the day progressed....freezing rain, sleet, and a tiny bit of snow.  So Steve and I just hunkered down at home.  Evening activities were cancelled so we watched "Akeela and the Bee" which was a delightful movie.

Friday - our winter storm event was over and roads were good again so I went to pottery late in the morning and had a lovely time.  I taught two lessons mid-afternoon and then Steve and I headed to pick up a few missed items from Aldi as well as to take advantage of a sale at Ruler after that.  It was on our drive home that we were rear-ended as we were stopped at a red light.  We got hit from behind and were pushed into the car ahead.  We sustained hardly any damage to the front of the car (and to the car in front of us) but our back bumper is banged up.  Happily, our tailgate and hatchback both open and close.  The car that hit us was probably going at about 30 mph.  It was driven by two young men, and they had insurance (not always the case here in the city).  It did not fare so well in the accident.  Both airbags deployed, the windshield was smattered, and the front end looks horrible.  It was a 2003 Hyundai and I wouldn't be surprised if it was totaled.  The boys looked un-injured and Steve and I just had a headache / stiff neck afterwards.  We called the after-hours nurse hotline and it was decided that we didn't need to go to an urgent care.  We filed an accident claim with Geico but being at the beginning of a three-day weekend, we have not heard anything from them yet.  Below are photos where you can see that we really didn't seem to sustain much damage.

Elise arrived later Friday evening to stay the night and to attend the temple the next morning.  

Saturday - Steve and I had our temple work in the baptistry so we left quite early.  Elise left a bit later  and we both finished at about lunch time.  We drove over to Emily's where I gave the kids their piano lessons and Elise, Steve, Emily, and Joe visited.  Lucy wanted to show me the piece she is working on in her school orchestra and then Quinn wanted to play Hot Cross Buns that he is working on.   Noah then pulled out his cello and played some of the music he is working on in school.  It was just wonderful!

And Larkin wanted to show me the bed she had created with her many stuffed kitties

 

We got back to our house at around 2:00.  Elise stayed for dinner but then left for home soon after.  Steve and I headed to the church even before she left.  Steve needed to chaperone a youth dance and I had a string quartet rehearsal that had been rescheduled from Thursday night.  All four of us are from the ward and are putting together a number for the ward talent show on March 5th.  

Today - Sunday -  was our first ward choir practice.  Not terrifically attended but I guess many didn't pay attention to the announcement that was made last Sunday regarding this week's beginning.  I have great hopes, though, going forward.  Steve and I caught the final episode of "All Creatures Great and Small" tonight with sadness.  It has been such fun to watch.