Weekly Review March 26 '21

 I guess I should start out with my visit to the cardiologist, which happened last Friday afternoon (the 19th). My blood pressure was good, my heart rate was a little high but nothing to be alarmed about and the EKG showed only one irregular heartbeat. However, since I was having chest pain and they don't know why, the cardiologist wants to run some tests. I will be doing a 22 hour holter monitor on Tuesday (the 30th), a stress test on Monday the 5th, and an Echocardiogram on April 21st. We'll see if those tests show anything. Meanwhile, the chest pain subsided a lot on Friday afternoon / evening and on Saturday I only felt a little pain (but also felt really tired). By Sunday I felt almost normal, with only a few twinges now and again and most of this week I have felt fine. I think it's possible that the chest pain had nothing to do with my heart at all, but we'll see what the test results say and go from there. I'm just glad that I'm feeling better!

Since I was recuperating, I didn't get much done on Saturday or Sunday (I did finish The Other Bennett Sister on Saturday, though). By Monday I was feeling much better and I was ready for a busy day. After taking Seth to school I had shopping and errands to do. Besides the usual grocery shopping, I did some birthday shopping for Darlee and I also went to Lowe's to get some supplies to make more coasters (similar to the ones I made for an RS activity about a month ago) and while I was there I got some paint and a few other supplies for the dollhouse project--maybe I start working on that soon. Doing all that, plus eating some lunch, took up the whole time that Seth was at school. Frank came home from work in the early afternoon because he had to work Monday night, and he went with me to Lowe's. After we picked up Seth from school, we visited the storage unit to drop some things off and to look for something that Tanner wanted (we found it, thankfully). Frank had to leave for work before dinner time so we had to put off family night activity until Tuesday. Seth and I just had sandwiches for dinner (I am never motivated to cook when Frank isn't home). That evening I made some coasters to send to Darlee for her birthday. I think they turned out pretty nice:

 

Frank had to work all night in Cumberland again, so once again he got a hotel room so he could sleep for a few hours after finishing the job before driving home. He didn't sleep as well this time so he got home by late morning. Meanwhile, I did my usual volunteering for VITA that afternoon. That evening we had a combined virtual activity for the YM / YW. We did "Book of Mormon Baking"--each person was supposed to make something that makes them think about the Book of Mormon. (Although they expanded it to include any scripture story.) Seth made a pizza to represent "Jonah and the Whale" with a whale (made out of pepperoni, with green pepper teeth and a Jonah in its mouth made out of sausage) on top. I made chocolate pudding with oreo crumbs on top to represent dirt, and made some "gold plates" out of a vanilla sugar wafer cookie to bury in the "ground". Some of the other projects: a cake with a ship on top (Lehi's family journeying to the promised land), King Benjamin's tower made out of graham crackers, and people-shaped cookies with missing arms (Ammon defending the king's flocks). It was pretty fun! I'm really mad that I forgot to take a picture of Seth's pizza before we ate it but here is my pudding (although it doesn't look very remarkable):

On Wednesday I got a package mailed to Tanner & Darlee but other than that it was just the usual Wednesday chores. I was supposed to have a ministering interview with the RS president that evening but she had something come up so we'll have to do it another time. 

On Thursday I was able to volunteer a few more hours at VITA (after Seth finished his school work). From there I went to the church to meet other YW girls and leaders so we could do a "drive by farewell" for one of the girls in my class who is moving. She is a very shy girl but I think she was really pleased to know that she will be missed. We had all signed a card for her and some of the girls in the class jumped out of their cars to give her balloons and other small gifts. That evening I had book chat. We forgot to assign someone to bring snacks but I realized a few weeks ago that we had forgotten so I just decided to bring some snacks myself. Everyone seemed to really appreciate that! We had a good discussion about True Grit (you should really read it...don't let the fact that it was made into a John Wayne movie turn you off...it's really good) and now we are going to read The Other Bennett Sister. I was a little surprised that they picked that one...we usually go for things with a bit more depth...but one person really didn't want to read another WWII book (which is a shame, because We Were the Lucky Ones is really different from a lot of WWII books and I loved it) and someone else had heard a lot of controversy about American Dirt, so she didn't want to read that one. However, The Other Bennett Sister is really good too and it actually had a lot more depth to it than you would expect. I liked the character development of the main character and I always like stories about "unpopular" people who come to realize that they have value and who find happiness in the end. I can relate to that scenario! It will be interesting to see what everyone else thinks of the book.

Today I have been busy with mostly the usual things but I also reviewed a tax return for VITA from home...I can log into the tax software from home and the site manager attached photos of all the documents to the return so that I can see them. It was kind of fun to do that. Maybe they will have me do more of those from home over the next few weeks.

I started reading another book this week called The Librarian of Auschwitz (yep, another WWII book). It took me several chapters to really get into it, but now I'm really interested and I'm about half way through. It is not going to be happy like the last WWII book I read, unfortunately. It is also based on a true story about a survivor, though.

Besides that, I haven't been doing much...I don't feel like I had as much free time this week, but it's good to be busier! Our ward choir has started working on another virtual choir piece so I have started learning it this week. (And mostly already have it learned because it's very simple, like a hymn.) The song is called Great is Thy Faithfulness, and I really love the words. 

We had some rainy days this week and some days were somewhat chilly and other days were warm. Today has definitely been the warmest. After several days of clouds, today was mostly sunny and the temperatures got up into the high 70s. It was quite windy too but it was a warm wind. I really enjoyed going outside when I had some errands to run this afternoon! We have spring break all next week but unfortunately it looks like the temperatures are going to cool down and it's going to rain a lot. We don't have any special plans...we would have liked to have gone to NC or something but quarantining makes that really complicated. I will be able to do more volunteer work since Seth won't be in school. We may take a day trip somewhere too. 

Speaking of quarantining, Frank is scheduled to get his first dose of Covid-19 vaccination tomorrow afternoon. I haven't been able to get scheduled yet but hopefully will be able to do that soon. When I was at book club last night, most people there had had at least their first dose so we're finally making progress in the state of Maryland. (A couple of them are teachers and most of them are older than me too so they qualified before me.) It cheers me up that MAYBE we can get more back to normal soon. 

That is our news for this week. 

Weekly Review March 19 '21

 Well, let's see...what did we do this week? Like most of the USA, we had to switch onto Daylight Savings on Sunday and that has really messed me up this time around. Making the switch always causes me problems, but this time has been worse than usual. On Sunday afternoon, I got really tired and decided I needed a short nap...this was around 2:30. I was shocked when I woke up to discover that it was 5:00!! So much for a short nap! I had planned to make meatloaf for dinner but we had to do something else because meatloaf takes a long time to bake and we didn't want to wait until 7:00ish to eat dinner. Of course, when bedtime rolled around I wasn't tired at all and didn't get to sleep until close to 1:00 am. So then of course I didn't wake up until about 7:30 on Monday. And so it went, for the rest of the week. I didn't take a nap at all on Monday so I thought I'd be fine going to sleep on Monday night, but I was up until about 12:30. I've also had trouble staying asleep most nights so I have an hour (or two...) that I'm awake in the middle of the night. I also ended up taking another nap (this one really was short, at least) on Wednesday afternoon. I usually don't take naps at all anymore. The main result of all my sleep issues is that I didn't wake up in time to exercise and only managed to do that once this week, for a shorter duration. Hopefully I'm starting to adapt and next week will be better!

On Sunday I taught the lesson for my YW class and I feel like it went pretty well although we ran out of time. (We only get 45 minutes on our Zoom meets.) We attended sacrament meeting in person and it is nice to be able to do that every week now. 

I did my VITA shift as usual on Tuesday and they would have liked me to come in again yesterday or today but Frank had to work (he actually had an overnight job last night in Cumberland which is a couple of hours away) so there was no one around to supervise Seth's school work but me so I told them I couldn't come in this week. It's good that the IRS extended the tax filing deadline because we are definitely going to need an extra month to get all the tax returns completed.

I had two YW activities this week because our ward decided to gather in person for the church's youth music festival on Wednesday but we also wanted to have an online activity for the people who aren't able to attend in person. So on Tuesday I had an online YW activity where one of the girls taught us the basics of how to do calligraphy. Then on Wednesday evening Seth and I both went to the church to watch the music festival. We played a game of Pictionary beforehand (and others played volleyball). The music festival was really nice.

On Wednesday afternoon I took Seth to the dentist to get two baby teeth pulled. That went quickly and easily, thankfully.

My laptop has been having issues with running really slowly lately and on Wednesday it got really bad. Frank looked at it and realized my hard drive was failing, so he removed it from my laptop and spent the rest of the evening transferring all my data off of the hard drive. He had an extra laptop sitting around, so he got that one set up for me and that's what I'm using now. Not all of my data is on this laptop yet, but I have a lot of the basic stuff I need. 

One of my ministering sisters came over last night to visit me and we had a really long but enjoyable visit. I think that's the first time she's visited me in person since last March, but she has visited me several times over the phone or on Zoom. I appreciate that she is so diligent! 

This afternoon I am going to visit the cardiologist. I've been having some mild discomfort / tightness in my chest and back the last couple of days and last night I felt my heart fluttering a bit, and it's still been doing that today off and on. It hurts a little bit if I take a deep breath too. I really don't know if the feeling in my chest or back has anything to do with my heart, but I decided I'd better get it checked out to make sure nothing is wrong. I called my primary care doctor first, but knowing my history he said I should go visit the cardiologist. I'm actually feeling better right now than I was earlier today but anyway...I'm going to get checked out. 

Frank was gone overnight in Cumberland and because it is so far away he got a hotel room so that he could sleep for a while before driving home. The job he was doing got finished around 1:30 am and he went to the hotel and slept until about 7:00. He just got home an hour or so ago. 

Our weather this week was not as nice as last week...colder, and we had rain yesterday and Wednesday. It's going to start warming up again in a few days, though.

I spent most of my free time this week reading again. I read a book called We Were the Lucky Ones which is about a Jewish Polish family during WWII. The book is fiction, but based on the author's ancestors' experience and it was pretty incredible to realize that most of what happened in the story really did happen. Incredibly, the whole family--mom, dad, 5 grown children, 4 spouses, and a couple of grandchildren all survived. The extended family was not so lucky and most of the spouses lost their immediate family members too. I read that book really quickly...started it on Friday and finished it on Monday. Since Monday I have been reading a book called The Other Bennet Sister which is about Mary from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's pretty good so far and I am over halfway through reading it.  

In spite of the colder weather, we did have a few flowers appear in our front yard this week. 

We're also starting to see buds forming on trees, although none of them have started blooming yet. It makes me happy to see these signs of spring! That's all the news from us this week.

Weekly Review March 12 '21

 I say this every week, I think, but we didn't have a lot going on this week. We do keep busy and happy, there's just not a lot to talk about. I'll see if I can come up with something to tell you about, though! 

I can't remember last Saturday very well now (I really should take notes or something!) but I remember I was busy and felt pretty productive. One thing I do remember is that I pulled out the plaid skirt I've been working on (but haven't touched in over a month) and finished cutting out the pieces and then started sewing it together. I sewed two seams together (the center back seam and one of the side seams) and the plaid matched close to perfectly, so I was inwardly congratulating myself for figuring out how to cut it out correctly. Then I started pinning together the other side seam and I realized that that side doesn't match at all!! Pride goes before a fall, right? I have no idea how I managed to cut two out just right and then totally mess up the other one. Oh well!! At least it is one of the side seams and not the center back seam, because the side seam will be less noticeable. I have no idea if it will fit right or look good enough to wear once I'm finished, but I'm going to finish making it and find out. 

On Sunday we were able to go to church in person again (after having some great Sunday school lessons online) and it was really nice to be there with a larger group. It almost felt normal again. I spent the rest of the day doing indexing and reading scriptures, family history stories, etc. I finished a book called After 100 Years, which is about Frederick G. Williams and his wife Rebecca Swain. There was a lot of good information in there. (Although I realized the book was written in the 1920s, so it could be renamed After 200 Years now.) 

Seth had school on Monday and Tuesday, as usual. I enjoy having quiet time to get chores and other work done...it goes by fast! Seth chose to play Clue for family night activity, which Frank hates because I always win, haha! (Jared has beat me before, but he's not here of course.) 

I worked at VITA on Tuesday afternoon, as usual, and reviewed several more returns. On Tuesday evening Seth had a virtual YM activity and I had an in-person YW activity. For the YW activity we played a Get to Know You game using an app called Kahoot. There were different statements about one of the girls or leaders and we had to guess who it was about. We played two rounds and I did pretty well because I got 4th place in the first round and 1st place in the second round. This was actually a "hybrid" activity...some of the girls and leaders joined in online. At the church, we had 10 of us there. It's the first in-person YW activity we've had since I got this calling and it was fun to see some of the girls in person, even though we all had to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart. Meanwhile, at home Frank helped Seth make potstickers, which is what they did for the YM activity. They actually turned out looking very similar to the ones we buy at Chinese restaurants and they tasted pretty good too, although we would like to experiment with the recipe to make the filling more flavorful. ("We" means Frank...you know how much I "love" cooking!) I got home shortly before the first batch got done, so just in time to taste test them. I was really happy too, that our Insta Pot got used for once...Frank used that to steam the potstickers. We've had that thing for a couple of years and barely used it...mainly because I've had trouble finding good low carb recipes that use it. 

(In the background you can see a laptop; the other YM are on Zoom.)

Three of the girls in my YW class have birthdays this week. I dropped off a card & gift for one of them on my way to the activity. One of the other birthday girls came to the activity so I was able to give her a card & gift, and I gave a card & gift to one of the other girls at the activity, who will drop it off to the 3rd birthday girl. No more birthdays in my class until May!

I had a RS activity (virtual) on Wednesday evening. We were celebrating the RS birthday. A "party box" was dropped off at my house the day before which included a small bottle of sparking cider and a small plastic goblet, a cupcake, some frosting, sprinkles, a candle, birthday cake flavored kisses, oreos, popcorn, and a RS trivia quiz. For the activity we shared our thoughts on what we love about RS and then we decorated our cupcakes, sang Happy Birthday to RS, and did the RS trivia quiz. I actually got all the answers right...although they were all pretty easy and I just happened to guess right on the last question. 

Thursday was quite busy because besides all the usual chores I went in to VITA again for a few hours after Seth finished his schoolwork for the day. They are really behind on completing returns so they asked if I could come in any extra hours this week. (I believe there are a lot fewer volunteers this year, they aren't open as many hours, and it takes longer to complete returns when the taxpayer isn't present so you can ask them questions.) I could work more hours but the times they are open don't coincide with the times that I am available at all...it's kind of frustrating. But anyway, I was glad I could help out a little extra. I also had to get grocery shopping done because for some reason Wal-Mart cancelled my pickup order. That's happened a couple of times because of snow storms but we certainly weren't having a snowstorm on Thursday. It was actually the warmest day we've had so far and got up into the 70s! (Tuesday and Wednesday both got into the 60s, so we had three days in a row of beautiful weather. Today is pretty nice too but temperatures are going to drop quite a bit starting tomorrow.) I went straight to the store after I finished working at VITA and Frank met me there and helped me get the shopping done quickly. Then we came home and made dinner. 

Almost all of my free time this week I spent reading. I mentioned last week that I have books to choose for book chat. I finished reading True Grit on Monday. I liked it...definitely worth reading. Then I started reading a book called American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, which is about a mother and her son in Mexico who have to flee to the United States after a local drug cartel kills the rest of their family. (Fiction, but doubtless there are people who have had similar experiences.) I finished reading that book this morning. It was hard to put down but I did put it down a few times because I just needed to get away from the tension for a while! Definitely it is a good candidate for book club and I'm glad I read it. I feel very, very grateful to be born in the United States and it's good to be reminded of how blessed we are here and how willing we should be to help other people who are in distress. I still have 4 more books to read...probably won't get through all of them before book chat in two weeks, but I'm going to try to read as many as I can.

I felt like my days went better this week because I woke up earlier every day (except today, because I didn't sleep well last night for some reason). I definitely prefer to get an early start...I seem to get so much more done when I do. 

I guess there was more going on this week than I thought, but that covers it. "Happy" one year anniversary of the pandemic! Here's hoping we all get vaccinated soon and that life can get (mostly) back to normal someday!

Weekly Review March 5 '21

 I am glad it is March! It's windy and quite cold today but we are getting an occasional day with temperatures in the 50's which makes me happy. This week we got our 50's day on Wednesday, although it never felt all that warm to me. Frank and I went on a walk but it was after dinner so the sun was starting to go down and it was getting colder. Looks like we will have a couple of nice days next week, though.

We really haven't had a lot going on. I had a goal this week to be more productive (and less lazy) and I did do better than last week. I got all the regular stuff done, plus I did some small cleaning & organizing projects. I started a personal history post but I haven't finished it yet. I did some indexing. I've also been working on getting to bed earlier and getting up earlier--I've turned into a bit of a night owl this last year! Looking ahead to this fall, though--Seth will be going to Seminary at 6:15 in the morning, followed by school starting at 7:20, so that is going to be a big change for all of us. I decided we'd better start working our way into a better schedule now. 

On Sunday it rained really hard all day. We had in-person sacrament meeting and virtual YW / quorum classes. Seth was the teacher for his class. We had a great discussion in my YW class (I wasn't the teacher). We're meeting with the older class for all our lessons and activities now and it is nice to have a few more girls there. 

This is the first week since last March that Seth went to school in person on a Monday! He also had in person school on Tuesday. On Monday my friend Rebekah came over for a couple of hours in the morning to visit. I enjoyed having a few hours in the afternoon to get shopping and other errands / work done before picking Seth up from school.

On Tuesday I got chores done in the morning and did my volunteer shift at VITA in the afternoon. I did finally get to do something useful! One of the other volunteers had completed some returns but they still needed to be reviewed (all returns are prepared by one volunteer and reviewed by another, to make sure they are accurate) so I spent my couple of hours reviewing and I got 3 returns done & ready to file. (Reviewing means you basically go through everything as if you are preparing the return, but you don't have to enter the info into the tax software, you just have to check what the other volunteer put in to make sure it's correct). 

Speaking of taxes, we finally purchased Turbo Tax on Saturday so I could start working on our own tax return. I got quite a bit of it done, but need to track down some more information before I can finish it. 

Seth had an in-person YM activity on Tuesday; they made individual pizzas. He seemed to enjoy that. Meanwhile, I attended a virtual activity with the YW...we made "vision boards" (a board with words and pictures that represent things you want to accomplish / goals you have for the year). We were making the boards on Google slides, and I had all kinds of technical problems (mostly user error since I haven't used Google slides much) so I didn't finish mine but everybody else finished and shared what they made with the rest of us and they were pretty cool.

Seth had an orthodontist appointment on Wednesday afternoon. Besides getting his wire adjusted, the orthodontist also pulled one of his baby teeth that has been hanging on by a thread for months. He has two more baby tooth that need to come out (they are also loose, but not as loose as the one he pulled) so I have to take him to the dentist to get those 2 teeth pulled. 

Yesterday I got to talk to Tanner for over an hour, so I got all caught up with him and that was nice. I don't think I mentioned he got laid off from his job a couple of weeks ago. He has applied for a couple of new jobs, so hopefully something will work out there soon. School is going okay and he and Darlee are going to Arizona next weekend so he's looking forward to that. He needs to get a sleep study done because he is very tired all the time. I talked to Jared on Sunday and they had a crazy week with a flood in their apartment (a plumbing issue that wasn't their fault) plus he has had some health issues crop up again (same problem he had at this time last year that he had to have surgery for). He started a new job a couple of weeks ago and it's going well so far. He's still in the training process. Jessie's grandfather (her mom's dad) passed away a few days ago, so she will be out here sometime soon for the funeral but Jared won't be able to come out with her. 

I pulled out one of my old scrapbooks this week because I was looking for something for the personal history blog post I'm working on. I found what I was looking for, but also realized I haven't looked through this scrapbook in a long time so I ended up spending a morning going through it. I had to laugh about some of the things I saved (ticket stubs, tithing receipts etc.) I also saved a lot of programs from church activities and some of those were really funny to look at and it was fun to see names of people that I had forgotten all about. 

Today I went to the library to pick up the book we're reading for book chat this month. I've read a couple of chapters already and it is quite good so far. (True Grit by Charles Portis) I also got 3 more books because it is my turn to recommend a book the next time we meet. I got a few books that I want to look over / read to see if they would be good for us to read for book chat. That's going to keep me busy for the next few weeks. 

Frank didn't have a bunch of overnights this week but he did end up having to work Monday night ( a job that came up last minute) from 10:00 pm until about 2:00 am. He didn't sleep well at all on Tuesday night (woke up about 1:30 am and never went back to sleep) so he decided to take Wednesday off to get some rest and to get caught up on some work he needed to do for some clients. I'm glad he did that because he really needed it! Today he had to go to Cumberland (about 2 1/2 hours away) but he is home now. Seth is done with school for the day so I guess we've basically made it to the weekend.

This Sunday we get to go to sacrament meeting in person again because our area authorities just increased the number of people who can attend sacrament meeting at one time from 75 to 150. Since there are many people who still aren't comfortable attending church in person, that means that everyone who wants to attend in person can attend every week now. We're looking forward to that. 

That's all the news from around here this week.