Wonderful FALL Weather!

The weather has cooled.  It’s delightful.  Our flowers in front are blooming their hearts out. We had several showers of rain this week.  The garden is still giving beans. It’s a great time to be alive!

This week just seemed to go on.  Nothing spectacular or dramatic.  I guess that can be a good thing.

With the colder weather Tom went out and gathered some deadfall and burned it.  He’d cleaned up in this area before the ice storm, but all the dead branches left up in the tree have gradually made their way to the ground. He had some toasty fires going.  I went out and helped him a little bit one day.  The chiggers nibbled my legs in thanks.  Somehow, that makes me somewhat less willing to venture out again.

I’ve been continuing working on copywriting.  I sent a query on another article for the Barefoot Writer.  The editor said send it in.  I worked on it a while and then sent it to Deborah to copy edit.  She does such a good job!  She not only find the places where I have two spaces instead of one, she gives good suggestions on things that sound confusing or might be phrased better.  Me… I likes this girl.

Friday I went visiting teaching.  One of our sisters is sick in bed. Another is in the hospital.  Mind you they are both nearly 90.  But my companion was speaking about how healthy she and her husband were up until a few years ago and now they have a litany of ailments that have slowed and crippled them. Dang, it sounds unpleasant to get old!

Barbara, our neighbor is trying to get a portion of her garage turned into a little book store. She’s been fixing and painting.  Tom went over a couple weeks ago to put up dry wall and tape it. I volunteered to paint the ceiling.  Saturday we went to get some paint. I think she has a cute vision for a little book store with a boutique of some of her collectables in one corner. I hope it will bring in a little income for her. We talked about shelf design and I think we have a plan.

Our new chickens are doing tolerably well.  They are very skittish.  I tried to put them in early last night as I had the Relief Society broadcast to attend and an ice cream social before it.

Here are the chickens saying, "Monster!  Monster!  Must escape!"

 One silly bird did not want to be herded into the chicken tractor.  She flew over the fence.  By the time I got her back in, the others had ambled out… Phooey!  They just stayed out till I got back home about 8:30.

I took this photo Sunday.  After standing quietly for about 5 minutes they decided maybe they need not huddle together for protection. The are part Americana so they have puffy feathers at their cheeks.  Hmm.. if you ever get close enough to see them.

Saturday Tom left early and took the youth to the temple.  They had 18 youth and 12 adults.  Some of the adults were going with their children.   It was a long day, but they got as many baptisms done as they could in their one hour allotment.  Then they dined at 5 Guys and started their 5 hour trip home. 

They stopped at the orchard.  Tom called.  Will you have time to do 40 lbs of applesauce before we leave to go to your Mom’s?  Sure.

Sunday I taught the Gospel Principles class again.   Tom spoke some in the 3^rd hour as Relief Society and Priesthood met together to talk about the value of scripture reading.  We look forward to General Conference next weekend.

YARD SALE!

Essentially the yard sale overshadowed the whole week.  Tom started last week sorting through garage, barn, and shed and staging things in the center of the garage and the overhang.

Monday we went around and priced things. I went through closets in the house for other odds and ends. I also got notification for an Elance job.  It gave me a 5 day turn around to do 5 articles on finance and stocks at 500 words or more.  I was a bit disgruntled.

First, the pay was low.  Second, I’d agreed to the job if they did the research.  But they just gave me topics and said essentially “don’t worry if you’re not a financial advisor (or know what you’re doing). We tell everyone to do their own due diligence.”  And I’m thinkin’ REALLY??  How many finance articles do I read that are written by writers, not experts???

Why didn’t I turn it down?  Good question.  I’m new on elance and need good references.  I wanted to write for the financial sector and this seemed like a good start. When you begin elance, you have to work for dirt for the first few assignments.  But there was a pretty high stress level about writing these articles well.  I figured I needed to do one a day.

That evening, when I went to put the chickens in, one newbie was over the fence in the pasture.  Two others were in the garden.  I grabbed the pasture one and tossed her back into the pen.  The two in the garden needed more hands, so I went to get Tom.  When we came out… no chickens in the garden.  None.   And it’s nearly dark… and getting darker by the moment.  We wandered and searched, but no luck.  We hoped they’d show up in the morning.

Late, late Monday night Miranda and her “chicks” came to visit.

Tuesday we were up early chicken hunting.  We wandered all over the yard and checked under the porch, the garden, the pond area, the barn and the pasture.  No chickens.  I tried to get their friend out of the coop in the hopes she would call to them.  She was a bit distressed at my efforts.  Likely she called, “HELP!  MURDER! Stay away!” 

Just when I’d given up… the two ladies showed up on the pasture side outside of the chicken fence…anxious to rejoin their friends.  With a little persuasion we got them back under the fence to their friends…err friend.  The two older hens are more likely to chase and peck than be friendly.  I had some discussions with them, including a thrown cucumber.  I’m not sure it made them kinder to the pullets, but it made them more leery of me.  

Miranda spent parts of Tuesday and Wednesday hanging out with her friend Sarah Simpson (now married) who lives in Austria but was visiting home.  We did a little more yard sale prep and I managed to write the first finance article.  I sent it off to see if this was what they wanted.  They liked it.

Wednesday we checked that our ad was in the Baxter Bulletin.  We put out some of the weather indifferent stuff in prep for Thursday’s yard sale.  Our neighbor Barbara was having a yard sale with us.  So the missionaries and we worked over there getting tables set up and books set out.  I think we worked Barbara half to death.  In the evening I had a call and then a meeting at church.  Miranda held down the fort.  We had fun playing with Ethan and Camden and visiting with Miranda.

Eeeearly Thursday morning, before daylight, we went out to prep.  We’d listed the time from 8-4… but people were at the gate by 7am.  And being hungry for sales we let them in.  It was a lovely day!  Cool and sunny.  It was a great day to sit outside. Tom found a book from our sales pile and read that in the slow times. 

I came inside and cranked out another finance article.  The articles themselves were not hard to write… but the research!  I spent hours checking out Stansberry Reports, the Palm Beach Letter, Morningstar, Yahoo finance, Motley Fool, and the Wall Street Journal.  Cowabunga!  Now I know why it’s so hard to choose good stocks.  One source says it’s the best thing since Apple.  Another says it’s a fluke.  One says it has great earnings, another says the analysts’ who follow it don’t recommend a buy.  Almost no one agrees on any stock.  Then they wanted parameters of stocks between $5-20 or innovative, or in the real estate or construction market.  Yikes.

Here’s the good news.  I decided I don’t want to write for the financial niche.  I might have gone to Bootcamp promoting myself as a writer in the financial niche. It’s great I learned early it’s not my favorite area.  I like learning about it.  I don’t want to be considered an expert.  I’m also writing for a job coach and I did a job for a career coach and motivational speaker.  I like those areas much better.

We had good sales our first day.  Early Friday morning a storm blew through.  We’d covered everything with plastic and put lots of stuff in the garage.  They’d said 20% chance of rain and maybe 1/10^th of an inch so we didn’t expect much.  But the wind whistled, lightning flickered, flashed, and cracked nearly non-stop, and a ½ inch of rain pelted in about an hour.

Most of our stuff stayed dry, but Barb’s tarps were old and allowed rain to wet sheets and books.  Very disappointing.  The bedding could be washed and dried, the books?  I loaned her a hair dryer.  I think she ironed some of the pages.  Books are her friends!

Miranda kindly made muffins and fed us as we cleaned up the rain debris.  She left about noon to go visit a friend and head home.  It was nice to have her here.

I’d put out a bunch of horse stuff—2 western saddles and an English saddle, 10 bits, 2 cinches, various tie-downs or chest straps, a few light blankets, leg wraps, etc.  Two saddles sold the first day.  Friday a woman came by flush from selling a horse.  She was setting up a consignment booth with horse stuff and basically cleaned me out!  Joy! (Still have the English saddle and one set of leg wraps.)

I got the last of the finance articles written.  Relief!  Saturday I reviewed them one last time and sent them off.

Saturday we were a bit more relaxed for the sale.  We sat around discussing what we’d do with the unsold things… but we still sold over $100 that day.  Mid day, Barb and I went to a surprise 90^th birthday party for Sister Dale.  It was lovely.  We came home and helped pack up all the stuff that didn’t sell.   We’ve got a pile to go to Salvation Army.  Another (including the old file cabinet) for the metal recycler.  And a small pile to try to find a consignment store to take.

By late afternoon, I was bushed!  I had a landing page for my coaching client to spend 2 hours on.  I did one hour in the late afternoon.  Then we went to the ward fish fry.   WOW!  Good food and lot of friends to visit with.  So much food, I could not taste everything.  So sad.

We went to Baxter Retirement Home to visit Sister Dawson and then we came home.  Tom went to bed early.  I finished my last hour on the landing page and joined him.

Sunday the primary children performed their annual program.  It was very sweet.  They processed in singing I am a child of God.  We have one boy with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair.  His part was to say, “I am a child of God.”  It was very moving.  The children sang well.

I taught the Gospel Principles class. It was fun.  After church we had a baptism that was well attended.  Then I went home teaching with Tom. 

And that’s our week… or more than you wanted to know about it.

Anniversary Week

 We’ve had such a fun week!  I worked Monday morning like crazy to be done in time to leave for Eureka Springs.  Then we wandered over there.  We made a couple of stops in town and on the way there and arrived at the Arsenic and Old Lace Bed and Breakfast about dinner time.

We’d stopped at the welcome center and grabbed handfuls of maps, places to see and dining establishments.  Fall is a bit of a slow time, and some of the eateries were closed.  The first night we tried a Mexican place—it was coastal Mexican food with lots of citrus.  Oh!  Can I say, GOOD?  Mmmm. I had a spinach salad with avocados, mango, cheese, bacon and yum.  The salad dressing had a hint of lemon in the vinaigrette.  Tom had chicken enchiladas with an amazing white sauce.  Again, it had a bit of lemon flavor, but the meat...mmm… like barbecued, but not the tomato kind…. just flavorful.

That evening we walked part of the town to walk off dinner.  The next morning we walked into town stopping at shops and galleries.  They have some very talented artists there.  Jewelry making, pottery, fine arts, mosaic, beads, fabric work—it’s all unique and interesting.  I especially liked the pottery and looked for ideas there.  They had some wonderful polished stones—spheres of agate and other highly variegated rocks.  Actually the only thing I bought was a fossilized snail.  It had lovely brown tones and I want to make it into a necklace.

When we got footsore, we hopped on the trams that go around town and admired the historic homes and the scenery.  We stopped at the Crescent Hotel and wandered around.  We went to the historic Catholic Church.  There was an underground tour… but we didn’t make that.  Apparently Main Street was called Mud Street because it was low and all the mud and water flowed down.  So they raised it – in some places as high as 12 feet.  The second floors of some buildings became the first floor.  The court house has deep pits around it with retaining walls so the windows can get light.  It would be interesting to see all the first floors that are now underground.

The weather was delightful and we ate lunch outside at Local Flavor.  Again, the food was very good and filling.  We wandered around town, but weren’t sure what to do for dinner.  So we stopped at the fudge store for snacks and went out for banana splits and called that dinner. Hah!  The advantage of advanced age.  No one tells you, you can’t do that… and if they do… you don’t have to listen.  Well… the scale does complain a bit.

Wednesday we drove around town and cruised all the little side streets.  Some people call it little Switzerland because it’s so hilly.  But it’s not nearly as tidy as Switzerland. I think it should be called little San Francisco.  The streets are very narrow and windy, the architecture is similar, and the culture is liberal. 

On the drive home we stopped at some yard sales.  I had to laugh.  We’d go into these boutique stores and think, who needs all this stuff?  Mugs, ornaments, doo-dads, wind chimes, shirts, hats, belts… just stuff!  But then we stop at the yard sales and here’s all this great STUFF!  We picked up a scissor, a lamp shade, some crinkle ribbon, a few romance novels.  Come on.  Doesn’t everyone need those?

We got home in time for Tom to attend his meetings.

Thursday Tom started cleaning out the garage, barn, and shed in preparation for our yard sale.  Wow!  He’s done wonders with the garage.  All of them are neater and more organized.  And we have a pile of stuff in the middle of the garage and under the porch to go to new homes.

I got a tracfone and will use that as my phone.  870 656-3194.  Of course, I’m not all that good at answering my phone.  But’ it’s there for when I travel and for business.  I have it programmed with maybe 5 names.  More to put in.

Thursday I did a little work and listened to a peer review for the article I’d submitted to AWAI’s on line magazine The Barefoot Writer.  They gave good information to improve it.  I got to listen in on reviews of other work… and it was not much better than my review… so I certainly didn’t feel singled out.  I made the changes and sent it back on Saturday.

In the afternoon we went to the fair.  It was fun to go around and see how my entries did.  Mostly they did very well.  My beaded necklace and my picture of flowers in Switzerland were considered for Best of Show for their categories.  I got all blue ribbons except for a white for my Switzerland Castle (too dark of an exposure) and my peach jam (too little head room and too much foam.)  I love it that they tell you why they rated it as they did.  Tom says the peach jam will still taste great.

Thursday night was Relief Society.  We had a good taster’s table and learned “texting for dummies.”  It was taught by two teen-aged girls.  Who better to teach about texting?  They really were very patient with some of the older women who had never texted.  It was a fun class!

Friday I did a little work.  Then I needed to fix dinner.  The missionaries were coming over and I invited two other sisters. One brought her handicapped granddaughter.  It was a nice evening, but somehow a bit stressful prepping dinner.  After they left, I needed to make cinnamon rolls for my Saturday meeting.   Well, I didn’t HAVE to make them, but we’d eaten some Silver Dollar City cinnamon rolls, and this just seemed to be the right time of year for them.

I’d also been busy visiting with seminary teachers and preparing the training for Saturday. One teacher is really struggling.  Some are still not able to post their attendance.  I think things are going well, and then discover there are glitches and struggles.  We had rain—a nice gentle rain—Friday evening and all day Saturday (over 1.5 inches). 

I drove to the training in Branson in the rain and came back in the rain.  Later that evening I picked up two sisters and we went to a Relief Society event on hand gun safety.  It was a good lesson.  Shot a 22 for the first time in YEARS!

Tonight Brother Lawson, who is the seminary and institute regional coordinator, will be speaking to our youth.  So I’ll be going to that.

It’s been a great week.  Happy 42 wedding anniversary to us!

Back Home

It’s been a good week.

Monday we tried to get back into the groove of home life.  I got some writing done.  Barefoot Writer’s accepted my photo and wanted an article to go with it.  So I worked on that through the week.  I also tried to work on my website.  I’d neglected it for quite a while over the summer.  Some of the links were down as the fashions I’d put up were discontinued. 

I had one of my St. Louis properties receive an offer.   That’s been off and on as they didn’t like the condition of the downstairs unit. Roaches.  Lot of them.   Sigh. How can someone live like that?  Also, she wet mopped all the laminate floors… so they curled from the moisture and will have to be replaced.  Offered to fix or lower the price.  They said, how about both?  We said:  No.  So I think we’ll be fixing and/or looking for another buyer.

I have been working more with elance.  I submitted my profile to be checked, (through the course I’m taking on it.)  And they liked it with just a few suggestions.  So I got brave and on  Tuesday I applied for some jobs.   And by Saturday I had two jobs!  I was astonished.  I heard you had to bid on like 15-20 jobs before you got one.  And they said you had to start with cheap jobs.  I just couldn’t bring myself to do the $5/article jobs.  So I bid on ones at $18-20/hr.  It was exciting to be accepted.

This week was the week my report was due for seminary.  I’ve learned the new WISE program and have helped some of my teachers put their attendance in.  I’ve called… and called… to get the last bits of information.  This is the first report. I hope we will work some of the bugs out and get the teachers into a routine so it goes more smoothly next month.

Saturday we took Randall and Lori Drake to Silver Dollar City.  We had some free passes and wanted to use them.  We had a really enjoyable time.  We didn’t even mind standing in line, since we got to chat as we stood.  As we left, we stopped at Andy’s Frozen Yoghurt.  Ahhh!  So Good!

We had been continuing with unseasonably hot weather.  Then we finally got some rain this week and on Saturday, when we went to SDC it was a lovely 78!  The beans are liking it, too!  The beans have started producing more than we can use.  We’ve given away several bags.  I suppose I should be diligent and freeze them.

Next week is the fair.  Each year I say I’ll enter things.  Then I get busy and don’t.  So I decided to put it on my calendar and gathered stuff.  I decided to enter some photographs from Kenya and our trip to Switzerland.  Sunday I took them over.  Fair starts next Wednesday.

Next week Tom is taking me to celebrate our 42 wedding anniversary.  We will go spend a night or two in Eureka Springs at the same bed and breakfast we visited when we first moved here and went for our 25^th anniversary.

I guess that’s all the news.

Life at Andy’s

Monday we drove down to Andy’s house.  We stopped in Little Rock at the AFB for Dad to get his ID card renewed.  We wondered why an “indefinite” ID card needed to be renewed; something about a double check to make sure I signed up for Medicare.  We got to Andy’s just in time for dinner (how convenient!).

It’s always fun to be there. They have such good kids… and Kera’s a good cook!

I guess I had not been watching the weather carefully enough.  It turned out Tropical Storm Isaac was heading for New Orleans.  Rebecca was dithering about whether they should evacuate or not.  It was “just” a tropical storm… or maybe a category 1 hurricane.  And she didn’t want to be in the lines and lines of traffic.

We watched the news updates.  They expected it to gain strength. Dan got permission to leave.  And so in the evening they decided to bail out.  They arrived an Andy and Kera’s about 11:30 and dropped off a few kids and a dog… and Rebecca.  The rest went to a hotel.

 Then Isaac toddled along and dumped bunches of rain in New Orleans and crawled up to Vicksburg.  Tuesday and Wednesday the weather was great.  Thursday it rained all day.  We walked the dog in the rain.  He didn’t seem to mind.  He attacked the rain gutters like a bear catching fish. Friday it rained on and off.

Tom had a list of chores to do.  The upstairs bathroom had been drywalled, but needed taping and sanding, then painting. He and Andy installed a vanity, outlets, light fixture, and finally, Kera put tile behind the toilet.  They also fixed a bi-fold door, installed a closet door on the new closet in Nathan’s room, fixed a hole in wall in the kid’s room, mended a broke stair, and fixed the ceiling in the food storage room where they’d taken a strip down for some plumbing thing.

He stayed pretty busy.  Me?  I read books, visited with Rebecca, Kera, and grandkids, went thrift store shopping, weeded the front flower garden (and got bit twice by fire ants) and cut  the hair of almost half a dozen kids.  I did a little work and some seminary stuff.

I forgot my camera, so while this would have been a great photo op… you’ll have to check out Rebecca’s blog to see them.

When we went thrift store shopping, I found a perfect kitchen table.  It’s maple colored pine and just a little wider than our existing one, but it opens up with a leaf in it.  I know it’s just an excuse—but did you know that if you put a hot potato on the wooden surface of a table it will mar the finish?  Like make it milky white instead of nice looking?  So since I did that to our old table the week before we left for Andy’s it seemed fortuitous to buy this new-to-me one for $25.  I also found a big go bag… so now I have no excuse not to get prepared.

Saturday we left after breakfast.  We stopped at the commissary and stocked up on things and continued on home.  The house was fine, the chickens alive, and the beans ready to pick.  First beans of the season.  It’s been so hot they’ve not set fruit.  Last night I had to chase an armadillo out of the garden.  I think we’ll have to get rid of the grubs in order to get rid of the armadillos.

Sunday has been good. We had good meetings.  We are singing great songs in choir.  We only got about 1.7 inches of rain here, but more is predicted later this week.

Writing Missionaries

We have 8 missionaries from Kisumu and Busia out on missions now.  One is in the USA, all the rest are scattered through Africa.  They are remarkably mature and dedicated to the gospel.

I decided I needed to write to them once a week.  In some missions I can send an email.  In others, I need to send the letters via DearElder.com and through the pouch from Salt Lake City.  There is a great section in dearelder.com on dear John letters. You might browse that when you want to feel better about your life.  Some are truly awful.

I asked the missionaries to write back about families or people they are teaching.  Here is a letter from Elder Odunga who left from Busia.  He's been out maybe 6 months.

"Today I will tell you about one of the families am teaching. The family is called the Musiniwa family.This gentle man saw as on a street and came to contact us and requested if we could go and visit him. we made an effort to go and see him that very day. When we came to the house we found him reading the D&C. 

We thought to ourselves that he called us to have a bible bash but we were petiencent and we wanted to hear from him . He the told us that his relative gave him the triple combination in 2010 and he has been waiting for two years somebody who will ever come and explain to him what the Book of Mormon was since his relatives who are the members of the stay far away. The day we met him he had read the whole Book of Mormon and he was about to finish the doctrine and covenants.

He told us before we started teaching him that the Book of Mormon is very true, We the found out that he had a degree in theology and he was a bishop in a certain pentecostal church. Even now he always read the Book of Mormon along with the Bible. He came to church last week with his family and we are now with him to prepare him for baptism. It is a family of four."

Elder Akal wrote:

One of my investigators are baba and mama  Erick.  They are  quite  powerful parents and they  are ready to learn, despite the fact that baba is a priest in Zion church, he believes the book of Mormon and calls it a dictionary of the Bible. But yesterday we made him understand that its another testament of Jesus Christ.  He was  worried about leaving his leadership positions and following the truth or continuing in his faith but the fact that mama has no problem,she is helping him understand that when God closes one door  another one is  always opened. Through this I know that he will come to know of the truth of the gospel  One problem over here is that people are too much to the traditions and they believe mostly in ancestors.    

I love how the Lord touches good people everywhere to help them live better lives.