Weekly Review June 10 '22

 Happy first week of summer vacation for us! I am happy that I don't have to get Seth to Seminary or to school and that I don't have to nag him about homework. It is nice to be on a more relaxed schedule although I haven't been sleeping in. I actually keep waking up really early but that's okay because I prefer to get an early start to my day.

When I wrote last week, Seth was working on a homework assignment for his English class. He ended up putting in several hours getting it done and then I checked it and made him change some things. He wasn't very happy about that but he did cooperate and with my help he finally got it done and submitted. He wasn't fully convinced that the changes I was telling him to make were actually right or necessary and he told me he would be upset with me if I messed up his grade. But guess what? When I checked his grade on Monday I discovered that he got 100% on that assignment. So there you go...I think he is more convinced now that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to English assignments. 

On Saturday Frank and I got some shopping done at Costco (never fun to go there on Saturday, but we couldn't avoid it this time). I also cleaned out all the cabinets in our bathroom...we had accumulated a lot of stuff in there and they were a disorganized disaster. That turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated so it took the whole evening, but it looks great now. I got so busy doing that, though, that I forgot to clean the kitchen floor as I usually do on Saturday evening so on Monday I cleaned the kitchen floor and cleaned all the bathroom floors too while I was at it. 

On Sunday morning I went to my first choir practice since before the Covid-19 pandemic started. It was really lovely to be singing with other people again! We will have another practice this Sunday morning before church and then we will sing during Sacrament meeting. Frank had both Ward Youth Council and Ward Council meetings to attend after church so he was pretty busy. This is his month to conduct, so he is also planning Sacrament meeting topics and asking people to speak. For Seth and I, Sunday was pretty restful once we got home from church.

I was quite busy on Monday. besides sweeping and mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, I also vacuumed or swept all the other floors. I bought groceries as well and started laundry and read scriptures. I got all of that done before lunch time. I went to lunch with my friends Rebekah and Starr. Starr moved to Utah last summer, but she is visiting right now so we went to lunch so we could visit and get caught up on her life. I enjoyed having lunch with my two friends a lot, but I had a mishap on the way there. We had chosen to go to a restaurant in the historic downtown area of Frederick so I had to park in a parking garage and walk a few blocks to the restaurant. On my way there, I tripped over an uneven spot in the sidewalk and went down hard. I had so much forward momentum that even though I threw out both of my hands and was able to break my fall, I still hit my face on the sidewalk! It was really strange...I remember having this split second realization that even though my hands had hit the pavement, I wasn't stopping and I knew I was going to hit my face. I wasn't running or even walking very fast so I still can't figure out why that happened! Anyway, I landed harder on my left knee and hand than on my right knee and hand, so my left knee looks the worst. My right knee has a few small bruises and cuts but my left knee has an abrasion and large bruises all over it. Both hands got slightly skinned and I had small "road rash" spots on my chin and right cheek. The injured places on my hands and face barely show up and my cheek hasn't bruised either although it still feels slightly tender. I am really glad I wasn't wearing my glasses (I wear them more often than not these days) because it's fairly likely they would have been broken (and could have caused more injury to my face, too.) My screen saver on my phone did get a big crack in it...my phone was in my purse and my purse was on my shoulder when I fell. I'm glad it was just the screen saver instead of the screen...I've had this phone for only 3 or 4 months.

I was able to go on to have lunch with my friends and I was okay but I suspected I would feel worse later and I was right. By Monday evening I noticed that both arms were hurting from my wrists all the way up to my shoulders and into my chest. They felt even worse on Tuesday, which didn't surprise me a whole lot. And Tuesday night a spot in my upper back started hurting too so I didn't sleep very well that night...no matter which way I turned, something hurt! On Wednesday I spent a lot of the day walking around (more on that later) and although I didn't feel bad then, by the time I got home in the late afternoon I was starting to hurt all over and I just collapsed for a few hours. Then I had to go to the YW activity. When I got home from that, I took 2 Ibuprofen and went to bed. That seemed to help a lot...I slept well and when I woke up on Thursday my arms were barely hurting and they have continued to improve since then and are feeling pretty much back to normal now. I'm sure they just got really jarred from the fall and needed some time and rest to heal. Although my left knee still looks terrible, it doesn't hurt all that much, thankfully. It looked like this on Monday:

Like this on Tuesday:

And like this yesterday:

This seems to be one of the fun things about getting older. I don't think I've tripped and fallen down for a couple of decades, but this is the third time I've fallen and injured myself in the last 10 months! I feel like I used to be able to stop myself from falling when I tripped, but now I just go down...hard! However, I keep thinkng how much worse it could have been...what if I had broken both my wrists? I'm thankful it wasn't worse!

Well, I didn't mean to go on and on about that, but it had a fairly big impact on my week. Meanwhile, the last day of school for Seth was Tuesday. He got out two hours early on Tuesday but I had totally forgotten it was a 2 hour early release day so I was surprised when he showed up at 12:30 instead of 2:30! When he got home from school on Monday he had to clean his room because Tim's family was coming to visit and one person needed to sleep on the trundle bed in his room. He had so much stuff on his floor that there was no room to pull out the trundle. I did tell him weeks ahead of time that he was going to need to clean it before they came but of course he put it off until the last minute. I helped him a little bit and we managed to fill an entire garbage bag with just trash--papers and things like that--to throw away. We also filled a small box with items that he has outgrown to give away. There is still a lot of stuff in his room, as you can see from the pictures, but it is so much better than it was before. His entire floor as well as the upholstered chair (which pulls out and becomes the trundle bed) used to be covered with stuff:

Frank also had a busy week, of course...he started his new job on Monday. He has been experimenting with leaving the house at different times in the morning to figure out when the traffic is the best. He seems to be enjoying his new job so far although of course he is mostly going through training and getting things set up. His boss says after he gets through the initial training he can work from home one day per week and he can also choose a time to come in and a time to leave on his days in the office...he can start working as early as 7:30, or he can come in later and leave later. Since he wakes up pretty early most days, he will probably work 7:30 to 3:30. He has enjoyed being able to leave work at work...when he comes home, he doesn't have to do anything for work. He has continued to do quite a bit of work for one of his clients though so he's still been pretty busy. 

On Tuesday evening I had book club and Frank had a Bishopric meeting (his meeting was via Zoom). Tim & Rachelle and kids were coming to stay with us that evening so I left book club early. We discussed West With Giraffes which everyone loved. After I left, they chose the new book which is A Gentleman in Moscow. I read that book earlier this year and I loved it, too. The day they chose to meet next time is the first day of Girls' Camp so I probably won't be able to go unless I don't have to be at Girls' Camp until later in the day. I don't really know what the schedule is like yet. 

Tim and family arrived around 8:15 and it was fun to have them here with us! We're glad they didn't mind being crowded into our little house. Tim & Rachelle got the guest room, Zane slept on the trundle in Seth's room, Gwen slept on one of the living room couches, and Izak slept on an air mattress in the living room. Everyone claimed they slept great; hopefully they weren't just being nice!! We enjoyed visiting that evening and again in the morning. (Frank went to work before they woke up, though.) They planned to go to Gettysburg that day before heading to Philadelphia for a concert so Seth and I went with them. Or more accurately...we caravaned with them, since we took our car and they took theirs. Seth and I have been to Gettysburg many times, of course, but it is always very moving to visit there and it is so beautiful there as well! Of course our main motivation for going was to spend more time with Tim's family and we enjoyed visiting with them whenever we stopped. It was a really nice day...sunny and pleasant, not too hot. But as I mentioned before...it was a little too much for my still recovering body! I'm glad I went in spite of that, though. 

Seth and I got home around 4:00...we hadn't had lunch, just a few snacks, so we stopped to get some food on our way home. Then, as I mentioned before, I collapsed on the couch for a few hours until it was time to go to the youth activity. 

When we were leaving to go to the activity, we discovered that there was a beautiful rainbow. I took several photos both before we left home, on the way to the church, and once we got to the church. If you look closely, you can see in some of the photos that it was actually a double rainbow, although the second one was really faint. 

The youth activity was combined for all the YM and YW. We were having a "farewell party" for a brother and sister because their family is moving to Utah soon. (Have I mentioned that I am really tired of people in our ward moving to Utah?? Our ward has shrunk to half its size in the last couple of years!) I mean, I know people have to do what is best for their families but it sure is sad to see so many people move away. Anyway, for the activity we had a chicken dinner (from Roy Rogers...Frank picked up the food and they still gave him a 20% discount even though he doesn't work there anymore) and then played dodgeball, because these two youth really like sports. I feel like such a spoil sport, but there was no way I was going to play dodge ball with my achy body!! Besides, I was worried that I would fall and get hurt again. I can't even walk down a sidewalk without getting hurt, what are the chances I could play a game like dodgeball on a hard gym floor without getting hurt? It was fun to watch, though, and I wasn't the only leader who chose to watch rather than play. 

There's not much to say about Thursday. I got the regular chores done (grocery shopping, laundry, vacuuming) with help from Seth. I got some other little things done like trading out the salt & pepper shakers (I still had Easter / spring sets out). Even though I actually slept well Wednesday night, I was feeling sleepy in the early afternoon so I decided to take a quick nap and I was shocked when I woke up a couple of hours later! I have no idea why I needed a long nap like that. Today I had a YW presidency meeting which went really long so that took up the whole morning. Thankfully I was up early this morning so I got most of the budget done before the meeting started and I was able to finish it up quickly after the meeting. Tonight I am going to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom because I haven't seen it yet and we have tickets to see Jurassic World: Dominion (the sequel) tomorrow morning. I'm getting to the point where I really don't like going to movies in the theater but Frank and Seth really want to see this movie and want me to come with them. We're trying out a new movie theater so maybe I will enjoy that more...I've heard it's pretty nice. 

Seth has been mostly vegetating in front of a screen the last couple of days but next week he will have much more limited screen time and we're going to set some goals for a few things for him to accomplish this summer. This summer is looking busy and I feel like it's going to go by really quickly. I am happy to report that I saw fireflies for the first time last night! That is one of my favorite things about summer in Maryland. 

Weekly Review June 3 '22

 I'm taking a break from helping Seth with a homework assignment; I'll see if I can get this done before I need to help him some more. He is working independently at the moment though, which is good. 

When I wrote last Friday we had three of Seth's friends over for pizza and cake. Saturday was Seth's actual birthday, so he opened presents when he got up. He was really happy with everything he got.

Besides the items in the picture, he also got a digital video game (so we just downloaded it for him)--Lego Star Wars Skywalker Saga. He had a fun day putting together Lego and Mega Construx sets and playing the new game. 

He also played online with his older brothers for a while which was really fun for him. For dinner, we let him choose a place to eat; he chose Outback Steakhouse. 

Frank did not have to work much over the weekend as he had feared, which we were grateful for. He and I got a few chores done. I did a little bit of cleaning and organizing and we also went to the store to get some curtains. When we replaced our windows, we had to discard all our blinds because they don't fit the new windows. Most of our windows didn't have curtains and we haven't been able to find blinds to fit our new windows (they would have to be very, very narrow) so we hung some sheets up over the windows so the whole neighborhood wouldn't be able to see in our windows at night. We've been meaning to get curtains since then, but that is easier said than done. I went shopping for curtains last week and couldn't find any that worked. If I liked the color or style, they weren't the right size. Or if I actually liked both the color and the style and they were the right size, there was only one panel in stock! It was crazy! On Saturday we decided to try one more store and thankfully we found some acceptable choices there. I still wouldn't say they were exactly what I had in mind, but they are good enough. We got curtains for all of the windows in the house except for our room because our bedroom  was one of the three rooms that already had curtains. (The living room had curtains but when we took down those curtains right before the windows were replaced I decided to take that opportunity to wash them and they shrunk...a lot! Seth's room also had curtains but they had been there since he was a baby and they were made out of two cute Noah's ark print fabrics. He's kind of outgrown cute juvenile prints!) We purchased a couple of new curtain rods too. After we got home, we hung up the new living room curtains and a curtain in the kitchen--neither of those required hanging a new curtain rod. Then Frank hung the curtains in the guest room which did include hanging a new curtain rod. After that his back hurt too much to do anymore that day. We finally got the new curtains hung in Seth's room last night so the only curtains left to hang are the ones in Frank's office. It's nice to have curtains on the windows instead of sheets.

I can never remember much about Sundays. It was a 5th Sunday so all the youth met together which meant Frank and I got to sit together for that meeting. Oh yes! Now I remember...it was actually a pretty interesting Sunday at church because both the RS presidency and the Primary presidency were released and new presidencies were called. I had picked up on a few vibes and was pretty sure at least one and possibly both presidencies were changing, and I even figured out who the new RS president was going to be because a) I saw her walking down the hall with the 1st Counselor in the Bishopric, b) Frank slipped and ALMOST said something to her husband last Sunday but stopped himself and c) I was asked by the former RS president last week to help one of the sisters in the ward with budgeting and on Saturday the EQ president sent me a spreadsheet with some of this sister's financial information and I noticed that the email was sent not just to me but to this other sister who I was already suspecting was going to be involved in the upcoming changes. That was the real clincher! At any rate, I think both of the new presidencies are going to be great. The Primary president who just got released was called to be the 1st counselor in the RS presidency...reminds me of me, since I got called to be the 1st counselor in the YW presidency the week that I got released as Primary president. 

Monday was Memorial Day, of course, so both Frank and Seth were home. Seth had a lot of homework to do and unfortunately he had quite a meltdown over that but he finally gave up and got it done when he saw that we were not going to relent. He has had a lot of homework to do every day this week because this is the end of the school year and he has had quite a bit of catching up to do with a few missing assignments, some late assignments, and redoing a few assignments that he didn't do well. It has not been fun for either him or me, but fortunately we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. When he finishes the assignment we've been working on today, he will only have one assignment left. I would like to say that he is learning to put forth his best effort and not to procrastinate but I think all he's learned so far is that he doesn't like me. Maybe next year...

On Tuesday I had my follow up appointment with the cardiologist. He said that my echo looked good...as a matter of fact, my heart looks better than it did a year ago. I have a leaky valve (have had it my whole life, probably). Last year it was leaking 10-15%. He says this year it is only leaking 10%. So that is good news. I don't have to go back for a check up for 3 more years. 

Wednesday was Frank's last day of work at Roy Rogers. Originally his last day was supposed to be Tuesday but it worked out a lot better for our health insurance coverage if he worked one more day, so he did that. Frank had me meet him for lunch at one of the restaurants for the last time. They scheduled him to be in a meeting starting at 3:00 pm that day, so he was working up until the last minute but now he is done! 

I had a dentist appointment that afternoon to make an adjustment to my crown because it's been bothering me...it's sensitive to cold and I always avoid chewing on that side of my mouth when it's something hard or really chewy because it's uncomfortable. The dentist just ground away a little bit on one side. Hopefully that will do the trick...it seems to be a bit better now. When I took Seth to the dentist back in February, I gave the dentist an invitation to the Washington DC Temple openhouse. He was very excited about it and proceded to let the whole office know about it! Because of that, the hygenist who helped the dentist with my tooth on Wednesday had recently attended the temple open house. She told me how much she loved it...how beautiful it was, how kind and helpful everyone was...she was just gushing about it!! That made me really happy. The dentist was complaining that she went without him...he was out of town when she went. He still hasn't gone himself, but he said he was planning to go this weekend. I hope he does.

After I got home from the dentist, we had a visit from Amanda, Jonathan, and Andrew. They've been visiting in the area for a while and had just gone to the temple openhouse as well. We enjoyed talking with them and we all took a walk down to the river behind our house. The river is not very high right now so we were able to walk across a really shallow spot to a small island that is in the middle of the river. The guys all tried a hand at skipping rocks...they are all pretty good at it, actually. It was beautiful by the river, but we didn't stay out too long because it was a very hot and humid day. (This whole week has been pretty yucky but that was probably the worst day. Today it is much cooler, thankfully.) 

We saw a crane:

And a duck:

Our visitors stayed until we had to leave for youth activities. We are glad they took the time to come see us!

The YW had class activities that evening. My class had a "spa night". We painted our nails and enjoyed talking with each other...getting to know each other a little better. Only two of the four girls in my class were able to come but it was nice to get to know those two girls better. Unfortunately, this was my class advisor's last activity. She got released on Sunday because she just moved to a different apartment and it's in another ward's boundaries. She has been a really good fit for my class and I haven't figured out yet who we need to call to replace her.

Yesterday turned out to be busier than I anticipated, mainly because Frank and I had to make a decision about which retirement plan he wants to sign up for with his new job. I thought we had until Monday to make this decision, but we got a call that morning saying we had to make a decision by 4:00 pm that day. We had already researched the plans and have actually been trying for weeks to get in touch with someone to get more infomation about each of the plans with no success. We had a lot of questions that needed to be answered before we felt like we could make a decision. It was pretty frustrating! We did finally get in touch with a couple of people and got most of our questions answered so we made a decision. Once you choose a plan, the decision is irrevokable and you have to stay with that plan until you retire (or change employers)...no pressure!!! Hopefully we made a good decision but I honestly don't know if we did or not. 

Last night a sister in my ward came over so I could talk with her about budgeting. Earlier that day, the RS president texted me to let me know that another sister in the ward will be reaching out to me for the same reason, and thanked me for my help. I was a little surprised by that because I had only agreed to work with one specific person; I didn't know I was agreeing to help multiple people! Hopefully it won't be too overwhelming though and I do want to help people in this way if I can. Anyway, the sister who came over last night...her situation is pretty difficult but I'll keep working with her and hopefully I will be able to help her get to a better place. It was a reminder to me of how blessed we have been!

Frank has been busy the last couple of days doing work for clients. He's had a little bit of down time, I think, but not much! I'm a little frustrated about it because I think he deserved a few days off before jumping into his new job. About a month ago he told one of his clients that they needed to find a new IT company to help them because they need more help than he feels he can provide for them. They said okay but later they talked him into staying with them. Most of the work he's been doing the past two days has been for this client. Seems like there is always someone who needs him! 

Speaking of being needed, I was asked this week to go to Girls' Camp later this summer as a camp mom. I like Girls' Camp and I'm sure I'll have fun but I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to go this year. We are leaving for Utah the following week so it's going to be a little crazy. Last time I went to Girls' Camp I barely slept the whole week. It will be great if I don't do that again but I've been in a pretty bad sleep cycle the last few months so I'm not very hopeful. I wake up nearly every night and lie awake for hours before going back to sleep (or sometimes I don't go back to sleep at all). This doesn't bother me as much as it used to when I had little kids. Facing a day full of caring for little ones when you're already exhausted can be totally overwhelming. Now I know I can take a nap if I need to, although 99.9% of the time I don't actually take a nap. Just knowing that it's a possibility makes a big difference!! 

I believe that is all our news for this week.