Memorial Day

Here's some ketchup on Memorial Day:

 Bill, Mauri and I decided to attend a Memorial Day service at our local cemetery.

I remember last year thinking that we needed to be more patriotic. That we should do something MORE in commemoration of those who have served our country AND of our own dearly departed. My friend who sings in the Parker Chorale had mentioned the choir would be singing at the service, so I figured it would be the perfect Memorial Day morning activity. When I asked my friend what time she would be at the cemetery, she said 9am.  I worked it into our schedules and we headed out. I have to mention that I did have the thought to go online to do a quick time/fact check, but gave it no heed. Why do I do that to myself?

I also need to mention that in the 11+ years we have lived here, I have never, no, not once, stepped foot in the cemetery that is located in the heart of the town. I have passed by it thousands of times (at least). I have glanced in it's direction. I have occasionally seen people there. 

I was kind of excited to go.

When we arrived, there were not a lot of people around. Maybe it's a private service, I thought. We could see that the choir was getting set up, but there was no sign of my friend. We decided to take a walk around while we waited for the service to begin... hopefully around 9:15? 9:30?

It was quite fascinating. I don't think I've ever been to a cemetery like this one ever before. It is rustic. VERY rustic. From the occasional spigot with a hose attached, I could tell there is not, nor has there ever been, a sprinkling system (so that's why it's brown all summer long). There were all types of headstones; from beautiful and ornately carved granite stones to weathered pieces of sandstone with indiscernible writing (another friend we ran into at the cemetery called it a "genealogist's nightmare"). There were plastic flowers, thriving iris plants, bushes, benches, statues, wrought iron crosses, and all other sorts of memorabilia and grave decoration. The mound of dirt covering a somewhat new grave apparently stays a mound of dirt until the natural ground cover (that turns brown in the heat of the summer) takes over. I supposed that people who want a flowering plant or bush to thrive near their loved one's grave marker have the option to come and water with a hose.  New graves were next to old graves that were next to new graves that were next to very old graves. 

I have always been interested in what is printed on headstones... tiny bits of a person's life. Motorcycles... cars... horses... sometimes even a picture of the person. I saw one headstone with the word

"Beloved." 

THAT, I decided, is what I hope people will think of me.

After the initial thought of an uncaring groundskeeper or cheap landowner passed through my mind, the natural landscape and haphazard placement of graves began appealing to me. I think some of the fuss around death and burial has become less of what it REALLY is: progression. I will refrain from going into my lengthy thoughts and supporting reasons for why I'm good with a no-fuss-put-me-in-the-ground-don't-worry-if-I'm-comfortable-or-pretty type of deal. I might need to put it in a will.

I figured this type of cemetery would be right up my ally. Until my genealogist friend mentioned it cost a boatload to be buried there. It does have a nice view (like that matters?).

In case you can't read this one (a favorite): 

Johnathan H. Tallman

Aged 25 Years

Killed by Indians

May 8, 1870 

I couldn't help snapping a pic of this one. We decided that Dorothy must have loved being a hairstylist.

Note to family: I would rather have "Beloved." Even if I put a comb and shears on my business checks, I don't want it etched in stone. Thank you.

After meandering around for 45 minutes, we realized that the Memorial Day service wasn't going to begin until 10. We did not bring sunscreen. We did not bring chairs. We did not bring water bottles (although some nice people were handing some out). My Chorale friend was a no-show.

We decided to forego the service and get on with our day, vowing that next year we would be better prepared AND show up at the right time.

I snapped this quick pic before we headed out:

That afternoon we had a neighborhood get-together

complete with a bouncy house in the culdesac.

The Billats shared their blow-up water slide,

and our neighbors hosted on their driveway.

The weather was quite cooperative (maybe a bit cool towards the end for the water slide kids), and it was fun to chat with neighbors we haven't talked to all winter. Perfect.

Next up: Mar's end of year Napoleon Dynamite party.

Junior Escort

Shilo was a Junior Escort this year for graduation. They select the top ____% of the Junior class to participate (not sure what percentage... 5? 10?), so it's an honor to be asked.

I attended, to support Shi... and all the Seniors I know.

"Yep, you're doing it right, Shi!"

(An inside joke:  After I had Mauri, a 4-1/2 year-old Shilo would sit on the sofa and watch me work out with Denise Austin every day. As she sat comfortably watching me pant and jive away, she would say, "Yep, you're doing it right, Mom!" Loved the moral support.)

Shilo was in the same section that Lex sat in last year as a graduate. Shi told me that if I wanted to see her face, I should sit on the home side of the stadium. You don't have to ask me twice.

Because of how things are set up (four corners), if you have a graduate sitting in Shilo's section, you sit on the visitors side so you can see them receive their diploma(holder) and have photo ops as they exit the platform towards you.  I remember last year being envious of the opposite shady sun-to-your-back side as we sweltered and fanned ourselves for the 2-hour ceremony. It's all done alphabetically by last name, and the graduates are assigned their seats, so there's really no choice in the whole matter.

This year I was quite comfortable on the home side, sitting along the edge of the shadow, sun to my back. When I would feel a little warm, I could shuffle slightly to the left into the shade. When the shade became a bit chilly, I could slide back into the sun. Perfect. I also consciously selected to sit behind a small child, ensuring I would have a good view of the entire affair. I sympathized with the crowd on the opposite side and their incessant fanning. I noticed the ambulance that came to carry away a guest who had passed out from the heat.

I took notes for next year, because I know I will forget the important things.

I asked Shilo to try and jockey for a position on the home side next year. Of course, she told me she couldn't do a thing about where her seat would be assigned. Still, I encouraged her to try.

I decided that the best seats would be on the home side, six to seven rows down from the top, on the edge of the shadow, on the north side (all graduates exit towards the north to pick up their diplomas). 

If wishes were fishes.

BTW, the Blue Heron (mentioned in my last post) that was stalking our goldfish, successfully managed to eat all but one of them. Bill and Mar added two dozen more little feeder goldfish, and today I could only count 13. There are some hiding spots in the rocks, so I hope they are all just being cautious. AND, when I went out for an early morning walk this morning, what I thought was a young deer in the median of our culdesac, was really a coyote... a really big one. I figured that was probably why my dogs had gone nuts a few minutes earlier (thankfully, I had taken them out for their morning potty break and then brought them right back in, rather than letting them run around unattended for 30 minutes or so, which is more of the usual routine).

Today was the last day of school for Shi and Mar.
Mar had an end-of-year party. Apparently it is still going.
More on that next time.

Mishmash.

I thought I would do a quick (ha!) post covering a random bunch of stuff that has happened in between all the other stuff I've already posted about. For memory's sake.

Hmmmm..... where to begin.

How about here, since this picture cracks me up. This is our cute neighbor, who loved that Conan was a bit smaller in stature (not much) than Jack and Ava. He enjoyed feeling more "comfortable" and "safe," and thus wanted to carry poor little Conan around with him for a while. 

I smile every time I look at Conan's look of desperation. He's totally giving me the "get me outta here" eye.

I can't remember if I already posted about Lex coming home for a visit during her semester break...?

Before we knew it, she was heading back up to Idaho with her roommate Sydney (via Utah, thus with Conan in tow).

Ten-four, little buddy.

We've done some yard work.

 There are life lessons in this power-raking incident. A lesson about communication. A lesson about the power of a power rake. A lesson about how many bags it takes to clean up the mess.

 The communication lesson comes from the conversation Bill and I had that morning. It was the Saturday of General Conference, and we needed to do some work inside and outside the house to prepare for our semi-annual Conference Luncheon the following day. We talked about the need to rake and mow the yard. Bill mentioned that if we were to rent a power rake, it would most likely take a chunk of the day, especially with 4 hours of Conference breaks thrown in (and he would need to be done by 5 to attend the Priesthood session). I thought I had clearly expressed that the priority that day was inside the house, and we didn't really have that much time to put into the yard, so would he mind just mowing and trimming?

Next thing I know, he's borrowing the neighbor's truck to go pick up a power rake.

Then the power rake is at the house.

Then he's madly power raking, leaving huge piles of dead grass all over the ground, along with chunks of sod ripped out by the powerful power rake.

Then he's returning the power rake, and Mar and I are raking and filling bag after bag of grass.

Later, I asked him if he thought I had told him to power rake that day.

"Yes. Didn't you?"

{NO}

Clearly there are still things to be learned in a marriage relationship, even after 25 years.

The power of a power rake lesson comes in now that, over a month later, our lawn is still looking pretty distressed, with giant divots here and there. All that work with nothing to show. I keep telling myself that next year we will have the best lawn on the street (or not). 

The final lesson: 13, if you really squish that grass in tight.

We've had a few long-course swim meets at pools far from home (not exciting far in another state or anything, just boring far, like an hours drive away).

Meet #1

This was Shilo's first ever long-course breaststroke swim. She did just fine.

Meet #2

And a few middle school track meets.

 Just like her big sister Lex, Mar dealt with heel pain the whole season. I've decided that it's plantar fasciitis, plain and simple. In the longer high school season, Lex could usually work hers out after a few weeks, but the middle school season is only three weeks long (2 of the 5 meets were rained out), so Mar had to run through her pain every race.

This was Mar's medley relay team in the last race of the final meet (and the only meet against other 6th-grade middle schoolers, since only two middle schools in our district have them).

They won. We don't think the judges were DQing, but if they were, they would have been DQed at the first hand-off (Mar was not involved). It seriously slowed them WAY down, and they were still able to pull out a win (barring the DQ, of course). Nice!

Cheyenne had a birthday, so we made her a mint chocolate chip cake to help celebrate.

And we've had this guy (or gal) hanging around the past few days, checking out the fish in our pond:

This picture doesn't really give an accurate portrayal of the size of this crazy bird. I am fascinated that a bird that looks like he should live in some exotic place (or at least the un-exotic zoo) is flying freely around my neighborhood, with a fancy for my backyard. Every time I try to grab a pic, he flies to the top of the back-door-kitty-corner-2-houses-over neighbor's roof.

We think he's munched one of our large, plump goldfish, and he's looking to finish the other three off.

That's the mishmash for today.

Goodbye Tweet(t)y

I have sad news to share. Mar's bird Tweet(t)y is no longer with us.

She's in a better place.

It started last Saturday when we noticed Tweet(t)y acting funny. As Mar observed her, she thought, perhaps, that Tweet(t)y was trying to lay an egg. Since Buddy's been gone for over 5 months, that seemed a little curious.  Mar did some research and discovered that yes, female parakeets can lay eggs without a male around (I assume the same is true for chickens, right?). Since Tweet(t)y had never laid an egg before, this was all new to us. She would lean over her perch, drop her tail feathers, and pant. She seemed to be trying to squeeze the bulge on her bottom out (it definitely looked like labor to me). 

This continued all day Sunday. Mar did some more research and discovered that parakeets can be "egg-bound," meaning that the egg gets stuck, and that, without intervention by an avian vet, the parakeet will die. She discovered this news while we were google chatting Sunday evening with the out-of-town kids, and immediately had big tears streaming down her face.

"We have to take Tweet(t)y to the vet," she said.

I promised I would call around the next morning to find a vet, and hoped that Tweet(t)y would just drop the egg while we were all sleeping that night (I'd dropped a chunk of change earlier in the week for Jack and Ava's check-ups, and did not cherish the thought of dropping more for a bird). Nope.

As Mar left for school the next day, she asked me to come get her out of school when I took Tweet(t)y to the vet. I told her I would "see," since very likely I would just be dropping her off, then picking her up once the egg issue was resolved.  As soon as offices were open, I started my calls.

After locating the nearest avian vet that had an opening ("Can you bring her in right now?"), I threw on some shoes, grabbed the birdcage, and debated if I should go pull Mar out of school. I decided that I would (I call it personal revelation... divine intervention...), called the school to notify them I was on my way, and headed out the door.

Dr. Summar was great.

Before he picked Tweet(t)y up he said, "I think Tweet(t)y is a boy."

Female parakeets have pink at the top of their beaks, and male parakeets have blue. Tweet(t)y's had started out pink, but over the past 6 months or so had turned blue. Mar had even mentioned it to me.

(My initial reaction was to chuckle thinking that, perhaps, Tweet(t)y had been a boy all along. Then I wondered if birds could spontaneously change their gender...)

He picked her up, carefully took a look, then said, "I'm sorry to tell you that it's not good news."

*Start tears*

He explained that it wasn't an egg, it was a tumor on Tweet(t)y's ovary. The weeping tumor was excreting testosterone, which probably caused the color change in her beak. She had lost most of the muscle in her chest, and was struggling to breathe because the tumor was closing off the access to her lungs. She was going to die. He asked what we would like to do, and I asked for a few minutes alone with Mar.

We chatted briefly about what the compassionate thing to do was: let Tweet(t)y go now. We had observed her suffering over the past three days, and it would only get worse.

Amid tears, Mar held her on her finger and sang "You Are My Sunshine."

(As I look at the pictures now, I can see how sick Tweet(t)y was. She definitely was not the vibrant, healthy bird from a few months earlier.)

The vet came back in, took Tweet(t)y in a soft cloth, had Mar pet her one last time, then left the room. Within 5 minutes he was back with Tweet(t)y neatly wrapped and ready to be taken home for burial.


I am so grateful that I took Mar with me to the vet. It would have been devastating for her not to say goodbye had I needed to make that decision for her. Tender mercy.
Heavenly Father loves her!

She is such a sweet girl with such a tender heart. She often talks about how she wants to be a vet someday. On our drive home, I asked her if she would still want to be one, as it would include this sad side of the profession.

"I would think about all the animals I could help," she said.

We had the funeral Tuesday evening.

Now Buddy and Tweet(t)y can be together.
Mar says she is never moving from this house. Ever.

Mother's Day Weekend

I can't sleep this morning (I believe hormonally related - as usual - awakened by a hot flash... night sweat... whatever you want to call it), so I thought I would catch up on a couple of posts in the cool and quiet of the 5am office (been up since 4, just taking care of a few other items of business, too).

Here's a review of last weekend:

Mar was inspired by mine and Taylor's bold haircut move to take her lengths to a new level. She was in desperate need of a trim, but decided to make big change and cut it off. I have been preparing her to take charge of styling her own hair once she has completed 6th grade (a week away!!), and she thought shorter would be simpler. We thought to grab a couple of "before" pictures, but things were pretty busy around our house and we didn't get any official "after" pics. Luckily, there are pictures from later in the day to follow.

Bill wanted in the photo action. He also wanted to prove that he was being helpful and productive in the kitchen while I was cutting away.

He was icing the 4 dozen cinnamon rolls I had made that morning for our girls camp fundraiser.

I have to mention that I made these a little begrudgingly. I had not volunteered (I would have made bread like last year - much less effort required), but had been asked via text, along with a "I heard you make great cinnamon rolls" thrown in. First, let me say that I don't think I have ever made cinnamon rolls for anyone other than my family. I think I mentioned back here how I prefer the bready type, and usually just mix up my regular bread dough when I make them for the fam. I am certainly not known far and wide for my awesome cinnamon rolls. 

I decided to make a recipe I had only made once, a few years back. I remembered that they were sweet and soft, more of what most people would expect from a cinnamon roll. In the interest of time, I was daring and quadrupled the batch, not knowing if it would work, then made a few of my own adjustments in rolling and baking them. They took a lot of time, and, being the messy baker I am, made for a tedious clean up. 

Mar had been asking for a trim/cut for weeks, and wanted to have time to play on her Saturday, so after whipping up the icing, I assigned Bill the task of spreading it on while I did the trim + another cut for Emily Yoshikawa who would be leaving on her mission the following Wednesday (less than 24 hours after her brother returned from his).

To be honest, I didn't think the rolls looked that great, but I sent them off with the girls when they headed to the fundraiser to set up.

This was the second year of a "drive-thru" dinner fundraiser and bake sale. I think it's the best idea ever. (You can also catch a glimpse of Mar's new 'do.)

 The girls are each assigned families in the ward to call (and encouraged to invite neighbors and friends) to take orders for burgers/dogs/chips/drinks. Families that order give a 30 minute time-frame of when they will "drive-thru" to pick up their order on the given date.

 The girls help put the meals together and deliver them to the waiting cars.

This year we had a professional-chef-turned-chiropractor do the grilling (nice to have one in the ward), and our camp director was uber organized, so things ran like clockwork. In fact, every last burger was sold. That's a careful plan! Everyone was worried when a dear VERY elderly brother from our ward pulled up towards the end of the drive-thru and we were OUT of burgers. 

He had ordered hot dogs. Perfect.

This was the first reveal of my new hair, and I was anxious to get the initial comments out of the way.

I noted at the bake sale that my cinnamon rolls had all been purchased. I hoped that they were good, and at the very least baked through, but not overdone on the bottom (those kinds of things you can't be really sure of, especially when you're baking a recipe you are not terribly familiar with in those flimsy disposable aluminum pans).

I've gone on so much about the cinnamon rolls because boy-oh-boy did I receive kudos for them the following day at church. One family that had purchased some had their extended family in town for their oldest child's baptism. The best comment of the day was from the grandfather:

"I am a cinnamon roll connoisseur. People bring cinnamon rolls for me to try, so I can let them know if they're good. I've eaten hundreds of cinnamon rolls in my life. My wife makes great cinnamon rolls. But those were the best cinnamon rolls I have ever had. The only thing that could have improved them are raisins!" (I totally agree on the raisin thing, but I didn't put any in because most people - in my family - prefer them without.)

Okay, so maybe the effort was worth the praise.

Other comments I received on Sunday:

"Wow. You got your hair cut!"

"I was wondering who that was sitting up there. From the back I couldn't tell who you were."

"Hi! Are you new to the ward?"

So glad that's over.

Once church was done, Bill was home nice and early (Happy Mother's Day to me!).

We whipped together our fondue (notice the nice pot I purchased received),

 and ate to our heart's content.

 (By the way, fondue is super quick to put together. The following day I whipped some up for Shi on her lunch break, lickity split. Yum.)

Then Mar gave me a swing in the hammock. 

After chatting with our Moms and taking a nice evening walk with the dogs, we indulged again.

I won't mention that I ruined two batches while trying to make the chocolate fondue. Bill's the master. He figured it out and saved the day.

We google chatted with the out-of-town kids, then helped Shi finish up an essay (until 1 in the morning) before hitting the sack.

I can't wait for school to be over!!