Summer Fever, Senior Fever

Aah. Chamomile tea - very relaxing. Just what I needed following a crazy week of downpouring rain, late to all-nighters, and utmost exhaustion to complete my second assignment of my Communication Consulting and Training course. So now, as my brain unwinds and... ick, headache... I can actually write for fun : ). This past week's spin cycle is summer plans or something to with summer.... ya really tired - which is good. I have to present in the morning.

Anyways... my summer, well as you can see is school, school, and did I say school? Since I had surgery back in March (which it has been 3 months and I'm officially healed! yay!) the timing was perfect so that I finished one class, went into "spring break", and moved my 2nd class of the semester to right now.

For the past two summers I have physcially gone to Gonzaga University campus in Spokane, Washington and loved it! I missed going this summer and staying at the B&B five blocks away.... I have found doing a class during summer is difficult when it's a full 8 weeks, and I don't go to Spokane. But as of today I am half-done! Two assignments down, two to go! And it's only getting more intense! You parents, I don't know how you do it, but you're amazing!

The other thing that's making it hard... this is my second to last class.... that's right 1 more and I'M DONE. D-O-N-E, DONE! No more acadamia as a student for me.... I don't want to hit the bottom of the scale shown here. It's scary how close to the "socks with sandals" area I've been... (if you didn't look at that scale, do so now....)


So I have summer fever and senior fever combined... plus I'm currently without employment, so ya. Great times.

Altough here's what Merlyn and I just designed for my assignement I just finished (yes it will take years to do):

This one is a sketch done to scale by Merlyn of the current layout of our yard.



















This one is our xeriscape design for entire yard.
Whew! What a pain to get pics on here.... grrr... anyways it's exciting. But we're hoping to at least begin with:
Painting the house, rebuiding the porch covering, new gutters, redo the grade around the house so water flows away from instead of towards, new side door complete with storm door, new bathroom window, take down those blasted weedy trees, and celebrate our 5th anniversary in August... while living life in between.... whew!

Night ya'll that's all folks.... need sleeeeeeeeeeeeep - and hopefully can get up early enough to shower and prepare for my presenation.

--Ecologista

Help with Education

Hi all,

We could really use your help in anyway - especially if you could donate even just $10 to help raise awareness that Food Allergies are very real for a lot of people - myself included. I'm still learning a lot too!

As a reminder I created a team - Hall of Allergies - for the Oct 3rd, 2009 Food Allergy Awareness Walk here in Utah. So please visit our team page at:

http://www.foodallergywalk.org/site/TR/2009Walk/2009Design?pg=team&fr_id=1380&team_id=40370

Thanks and God Bless!

Our Story

Since I have some time I'm going to do what Evenspor did here. I'm going to do the same, and tell you our story for this past week's Spin Cycle: "I Love You".

It was my second year at Utah State University's College of Natural Resources (CNR). I had moved into the top floor (3rd floor) of the 'natural resource (NR)' floor in the campus housing in between the Engineering and Business buildings, and across from the new library and CNR. It was nice to be right there, pretty much on campus, where you go to class - but what I didn't anticipate was Merlyn.

Not everyone - in fact half of the twenty-four(+/-) women and men that lived on the third floor were not NR majors... It was fall 2003. I was meeting my new neighbors and one in particular was tall, and somewhat handsome (of course at the time I was NOT interested in dating, in the least bit - I wanted to stay as far away from the dating nonsense as I possibly could....)

Sidenote: For those of you unfamiliar with how housing works, there were four apartments per floor that could house up to six people each. Two apartments were for women, two were for men - so it was "co-ed" Utah style. (I say Utah style, because you would rarely find men and women in the same apartment - unlike one of my friends' place in Nevada. I have also lived with men in a house during the summer - at least the few that were single were... uninteresting...)

Right, so we were all friends, yada, yada, college life is great and hard. Round October, the tall man, who told me a nickname then had to prove his real name as Merlyn, started to show interest in me (although I honestly had no idea, except this weird sensation that he liked me - it was like walking into the sunshine after being in the cool of the shade - it really freaked me out!)

Time passed, and when the first Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was out, our student government was able to do a showing at the Kent Concert Hall. Well, Merlyn, being a man interested in the movie, came into the Quinney Library where I worked one day with tickets in hand to ask me to join him. I said sure, why not, I'd like to see the movie - hey it was free (really it was free, even for him)! On my way to chem lab the day of the movie an odd idea hit me - "Does that mean I'm going on a date?" It seemed weird, but I guess it was.... sort of. We went as friends and nieghbors - but he began hanging around me more and more.....

He later amitted that he was thinking about getting back with an old girlfriend, but then became interested in my girlfriend Jeweles next door. He was shy - and everytime he worked up his courage to go ask her out, he happened to notice a lovely short red-head. So weirdly enough my name kept pushing Jeweles out.... I talked to her about it, and she said she wasn't interested in him - she really liked him, but just as a friend. (She married the man that was Merlyn's roomie - it's funny we both met our future spouses' and didn't even know it... none of us did.)

I liked him - er, I wasn't sure of these "feelings" I was having. They really frightened me. My dreams never really involved a man - at least not until after I was graduated from college and had a "real" life, with a career I enjoyed and traveled the world.... So yes, I was afraid of an early ball and chain.... if that's what you want to call it. I did everything I could consciencoulsy or unconsciencously to see if he would stick around or hopefully give up on me...

And yet somehow we became - gasp - boyfriend/girlfriend in mid-to-late November.

One dinner date I had drank an orginial A&W rootbeer, well, he insisted on opening my door, and with him looking down at me from his stance of over 6' and me at my just over 5' I let all out right in his face! *BELCH* *AHH* *BLUSH* *LAUGH* I'm sure those in the long line of the drive thru heard it! It was LOUD. He looked at me, and I believe he said, "Um, smells like rootbeer." (I'm still laughing about it to this day. Hey he bought me dinner and the rootbeer.)

Well, obviously nothing seemed to deter him. In March of 2004, unexpectedly (even by him - as our whole relationship-thing, was unexpected) he proposed to me (no ring, I was very picky about being able to design it - which I did do)... I was going to wait a month and tell him no - I'd rather date longer & maybe serve a church mission - but I only lasted a week and here we are 4 years and 10 months later into our marriage. We were married August 2004.

Merlyn I Love You!

Food Allergies

Hi all,

It's Food Allergy Awareness Week, May 10-16, 2009.


I created a team - Hall of Allergies - for the Oct 3rd, 2009 Food Allergy Awareness Walk. So please visit our team page at:

http://www.foodallergywalk.org/site/TR/2009Walk/2009Design?pg=team&fr_id=1380&team_id=40370

Wahoo!

Yay! Our bishop's surgery was a success! Yay, he made it to ICU. Yay, he's alive! Thank the Lord, Almighty! What a relief..... whew!

This past week has been a beautiful week - despite the utter shock - and today we enjoyed going over to the Conservancy District Conservation Garden, where I talked to a member of UFAN (Utah Food Allergy Network) and got a free box of Enjoy Life double chocolate brownies.... and also ran into someone that works for the BLM doing wildland fire stuff and recognized her from the East Fork Fire back in 2002! I got her bus card and will be networking with her... wish me luck!

Got over $600 worth of repairs done on our Geo Metro - all new brake system in the front and new exhaust, the entire thing. It's weird to drive such a quite car! I could actually hear myself think and nothing else! I think it was that quite when my parents bought it 12 years ago... it's been too long and I can't remember - and it's been really loud, so loud people with the real glass packs would look at us funny - you know Geo with glass packs HA! I think we'll be investing in window tinting for the car(s) - we put that much in, they're staying with us, so long as they keep going.

Saved every bit of cash we got, enjoyed Cinco de Mayo with some cash, bought new mattress covers and a twin bed set... now we just have to finish figuring out our emergency plan and prepare our home so we can get licensed!

My class starts May 18th! I'm ready! No job, yet. Just trying to sell our couch and organize, find a job and be able to be Foster Parents....

Pic

My ring finger scar 7 weeks post-op.

Spring - mixed emotions!

I know it's been some time since my last post, but as you are well aware, my life takes no rest. I do want to make a correction to my last post those things happened in 2 years, not 2.5 - but that doesn't matter.

So I got out of my December brace briefly in February. I completed my first spring class just in time for benign vertigo - which is being so dizzy you can't do anything except find a certain position that lessens the nausea, spinning and headache. That was the first Tuesday of March, the first Wednesday of March I was considerably better minus my increasingly swollen ring finger which just healed from the bone cyst being fractured. The pain was all the pains they ask, all of them all at once! Luckily it wasn't broken so we set my surgery date for the following Thursday, March 12, 2009. That week was torture, no pain killer - which I can only take max strength Tylenol, ice or heat - nothing soothed the pain.... I went to work Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior to surgery. Talk about pure torture! The Tuesday prior to my surgery the liquid built up in my finger burst and three things happened at once:
1. The pressure release was a relief
2. But at the same time it hurt all the worse because there was nothing padding my empty & near boneless finger
3. And I could feel the wetness under the surface of my finger, then the unquenchable fire flowing down my finger, my hand, my wrist, my arm up into my lmpyhs in my armpit and my jaw, any extra cyst fluid, aka toxin, flowed out my sinus's' down my throat making it too burn like mad. I pushed myself onward, holding back the tears, gagging and nausea to keep working and try to focus on something else (yes I called and left a message for my doctor, and I called my sweet hubby). So I suffered, as I always do, the best I can - and keep going.

Well, I went in early Thursday morning and received more torture as my veins roll and the two people trying to stick me with an IV failed until they finally tried the area I know can be hit best, the inside of my elbow - of course by that point I was completely soaked from my own sweat and shaking so bad, it's a wonder they were able to finally hit it - I was in complete shock and finally passed out in the operating room just as they moved me and administered the anesthetic heavily. The anesthesiologist told my husband as we kissed before rolling me into the surgery "suite" that I wouldn't remember - yea right! Although the stuff used for this surgery was for people like me with an allergy to eggs - so it actually wasn't as bad as the stuff used for my short 20 min EGD. This surgery from the time I went into surgery to the time hubby saw me again was 4.5 hours. I was supposed to rest for the day there - but the ***!!##$% post-op nurse decided without consulting me, my husband or my doctor that I had to wake up and go home! I won't go into any more details, cause it makes me full of anger and bad tongue.

They took bone from my left hip - in order to graft that bone into my ring finger - so moving me was bad - for once in I have no idea how long I was pain free and comfortable, and I was rudely moved...... but that doesn't matter now.

What matters right now is that I am seeking the Lord and especially for Him to accept my fast and prayer for our bishop who is undergoing open-heart surgery unexpectedly. I went to the hospital yesterday - as I found this out just Wednesday night - to see if they were ok. Instead of me comforting his wife, she comforted me - I did not get to see him as he was exhausted from all the poking and prodding.... I pray he does well and comes through and that his recovery is steadfast as the Lord willith.

I thank God that I can now use my finger again, not fully yet, but I can type - I can walk.... pool therapy and hand therapy is truly amazing. It will be two months on May 12th. I pray that bishop will be able to recover to the point he can go home at the end of this month.... and that in June I can visit him sometime.... but for now I pray for good news, I pray he makes it to ICU, then onward from there.

PSALM 39:12 "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears...."

JOHN 14: 1 "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

13 "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

As a friend whose wife just miscarried their first blurted out "Spring Sucks!"

Ironic really - spring the coming forth of new life, our Savior's precious Atonement all in spring. But maybe that's why it's hard. We need to learn to understand the Atonement our Savior suffered because of His love for all of us.... that strikes me awe and calms my soul. My soul is still pained for the love and concern of those I know and care about. My prayers are also for an old high school friend's little baby as she battles rare brain cancer and for anyone else who needs them. I am no better than anyone else, and I have been weak and sinful for a long time... but I am engraven in my Savior's hands and he has not forgotten or let go of me. My bishop's shocking surgery is a blessing in disguise - I am becoming more fervent in wanting to do better, in seeking out the Lord even more. I have not been able to fast for a long time becuase of my own health, but I am. For the sake of my beloved friends, family, and for my soul.

O, beloved God, help us all! O weak flesh and mere mortal that I am! Foolish I am! Omnipotent and Loving is our Father and Savior! I was once fearful of happiness and joy - now I seek to know them! I embrace my pains, trials and tribulations! O, beloved Father and Savior help and guide us! I emplore Thee oh Most Holy One, hear the cry of my heart.

PSALM 55: 1 "Give ear to my prayer, O God; and hide not thyself from my supplication.

2 Attend unto me, and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise;

4 My heart is sore pained within me..."

PSALM 55:16 "As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me.

17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.

22 Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee...."

Amen.