News of the (whoops! past two) Week(s)

We were all set last weekend to spend a night at the sand dunes in west Juab County, but reports of freezing nights scared us off, despite John pish-poshing our pampered city-ness. So instead we met up in SLC for the afternoon before Chris' All-State Choir concert at the tabernacle. Rob, Betsy, Ethan, and Amy came with us to Temple Square and surrounds to look at the flowers and the new construction at City Creek. In the end the flowers were a bit scanty, having just been pulled up for the spring bulbs to be set (I presume), but the visit was still fun.

We spent some time in the two visitors' centers. When Betsy asked Ethan who this person was, he shouted, "JeeJee!"

John was very civilized and appropriate...

..until the urge for a nap overwhelmed him...

...below, in the most public spot in Salt Lake. "Would you lie down on the steps of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican?" I said to him. "Or on the floor of the Taj Mahal? This is just the same." He is shameless.

It was fun to spend time with the kids.

I think maybe my pretty new blue and teal scarf was not quite as cool as I thought it was. No, the scarf is OK, it was the rest of me. Sigh.

Betsy, Ethan, and Snoopy. Snoopy has his own sign. Ethan talks and talks, orally and with his hands (ASL). Maybe we'll learn sign as he does.

Ethan and Auntie Amy:

Rob at one of the new fountains next to Deseret Book at the new City Creek development. While there we saw John's new book (one of a collection of essays on Fathers).

Betsy, Amy, Rob, and Ethan skipped out on the concert, but that was OK because we got to sit by Liz and Alan
and Tana and J.Lynn. In fact we ate dinner before the concert at the nearby JBs with Tana, J.Lynn, and Shane, who was also singing.

They wouldn't let us take photos during the concert, so this one was taken beforehand, and about a third of the choir is missing. J.Lynn took pictures and video during the afternoon practice session, however. Here is a video of part of one of their songs. Pretty impressive!

J.Lynn took this photo of Chris. Liz and Alan's Frost is bottom right.

We did our writing group the next day at Charlotte England's cabin. I took my camera but forgot to take photos. We have been participating in the writing group for twenty years now.

This week was my first chance to swim since surgery (since a long while before that, actually. A side effect of endometrial cancer is that you're not so comfortable swimming). Anyway, it was great! I don't know why the pool is so underused in the evening, but there have only been four or five other people in the pool whenever we've gone. I think it has helped get me off my metabolic plateau. I've now lost 41 lbs. Even though my blood sugar is still above normal, it's much better than it was right after surgery. We'll see how it progresses. My blood pressure is usually between 110-125/70-80. I went to visit mom and dad at the farm on Friday and all we talked about was medical stuff. I am now officially Old.

Several of us, including Sergene, went to see RED on Saturday. Extremely silly. I've still got a crush on Bruce Willis though. Then John, Sergene, and I went to see The Magic Flute at BYU. Here for your listening pleasure, is the Queen of the Night.

Update on the Summer So Far

Everybody's out for the holiday--Amy at the parade with her inlaws, Jamison rock climbing with Chicago friends (right, I know, but what can you say), John, Rob and Chris climbing Timp. I said I'd stay home to clean the house and do laundry but I slept in instead.

It's nice to be using all our space. A&J are in the guest room and in the underused front room as their office/studio. They're waiting on applications and programs, and considering the next school year. I hope they stay through the time we'll be gone to the UK in the last half of 2011.

John spent spring term away from home with his "Utah Study Abroad" classes (officially titled "Integrated Natural History of Utah" or INHUT). This is the second year he's done it, this time mostly with freshmen students. Other faculty include Riley Nelson, our entomologist neighbor through the block (who once gave demonstration of spiders doing a mating dance during a priesthood lesson on avoiding the evils of porn, according to John), rec management prof Stacy Taniguchi, who once saved a colleague who had fallen into a glacial crevasse by boiling water and passing it down to him all the while holding the rope he was hanging from, and Brian Cannon (a history teacher I don't know anything about). Or maybe it was Brian Hill, not Stacy this time. They backpacked into and studied four watersheds: Vernon Creek; the Bear River; the Provo River; and the Escalante River. John of course is from Vernon and Riley is from Brigham City, so when they go to church and interview the locals, they have a connection. It's nice to have him home, even though he still flinches when I say, "John!" thinking I'm going to ask him to do something. Usually he's right.

A&J have been garden slaves. Now the main work is done, I hope they don't vanish like the shoemaker's elves. That's why I don't pay them (for fear they'll vanish). Chris also does some work. He has a part-time job taking care of an elderly neighbor's garden, and he spent a week working at the Greenjacket Ranch before Rebecca's wedding. Chris liked his physiology class this past year and is thinking about post-HS training in medicine. Other than being a rock-god, of course.

My job is OK except for Congress's problem funding Medicare/Medicaid recently, which means I haven't been paid this quarter for what amounts to about a third of my patient load. We'll see what happens with that. My other problem is not going to bed on time and having my circadian rhythm low point kick in at 3pm and not being able to tolerate caffeine anymore (rebound headaches). I have to leap up immediately after my early afternoon sessions and do jumping jacks to keep myself awake. By five I'm usually OK again. But I think the solution is getting 8 hours at night instead of 5 1/2 or 6. I'm still not sure what's going on medically--I still have MD appointments, one with a hematologist and one with my Cylon gynecologist.

We're planning a trip to the Shakespeare Theater in Cedar City and another to San Jose in Costa Rica. John and I both want to visit the West Desert near Lehman Caves for background for new writing projects. I told Eric we want to visit Anchorage too but I haven't called Boyd about it because we can't decide what month. A lot depends on B & MA's schedule of course. I hope to visit D&D again sometime, and the Mo'ungas in Houston. Rob's flight benefits will really help with cutting the costs.

Betsy and I do our PWA meetings still, even though Tena's in Houston--Professional Women's Alliance--a support group for women trying to maintain a good balance between home and family and career. I have four areas I'm working on, and seems like I can only really do two or at a stretch three of the four. The bottom of the list is writing, and it ends up being the one neglected. But I have some new ideas about werewolves that I want to think about. I'm also trying to reassemble "Blood Practice" for anybody who would care to read it and comment.

Everyone is welcome to come visit our garden, and pick strawberries and raspberries to eat. I'm inordinately fond of it.

Update

Thanksgiving this year we will be in Chicago, with Amy and Jamison, Brett Betsy and Ethan, and Jackie Joel and Blythe. A&J are in a new place, a studio apartment which they said reminds them of Harry Potter (don't know why yet, but wouldn't it be cool if it was house elves? Maybe not, if you remember Dobby).


Rob and Nicolle have found a new apartment in the Aves, and even though Rob has a previously scheduled gig in New York (working for JetBlue makes the cross-continent commute possible), Nicolle is moving on her own this weekend. So I''m taking the truck to Salt Lake tomorrow morning and I'll bring the babies back with me in their Nissan, and then in the afternoon John will come home from his wilderness writing trip to Moab, and we will have a lot of fun. R&N's new place is only a couple of blocks from their old place, only a couple of block's from Brett and Betsy's, only a few feet from the babysitters, and across the street from a chocolate shop! And a block and a half from Smith's. So very good. I can't wait to see the apartment tomorrow.

Chris and a mixed group of his buddies are watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure after the THS state football victory over Springville this afternoon. It's always been my favorite Keanu Reeves film.
I'm trying to get the motivation to tidy up my office (cleaning it is beyond me). Then I want to organize my (electronic) Blood Practice files to take on our trip to Chicago, where I hope to have some quiet time to work on the novel. I'm committed to a writing group start-up in January, where I'll be working on the Mormon werewolf story, so before that I want to have the vampire novel out to whatever reader-critics I haven't already exhausted. If you haven't met my protagonist, she is here. The writing group requirement is 2500 words/week. Yeah right. And if I can work it into my schedule, and BYU allows me to matriculate, I'll go to John's novel-writing class winter term (T Th 12-1:15, when I'm usually doing psychotherapy at the care center in Pleasant Grove). If I can be super-organized and productive this month, I'll use the werewolf novel for the class--if I'm slow I'll do what will hopefully be the final rewrite of Blood Practice. The tentative title for the werewolf thing is The Werewolf Solution, but it's sort of evolved away from that. We'll see what happens.

I am sad and anxious about Tena moving to Houston. What will I do without her support and encouragement in our biweekly PWA-S meetings (Professional Women's Alliance--South Chapter)? I know things will work out for them and they will be happy in east Texas, but I sure will miss her and her family. I will have to use Rob's partner flight benefit to go visit them. Her job headquarters is close to the Woodlands, and they might even end up living there. Wouldn't that be weird! But a house like the one where we lived would be perfect for them.

I keep trying to balance the four main jobs in my life--that is, 1) home & family, 2) psych, 3) writing, and 4) personal & health--and as usual, doing 2 1/2 of them at a time. I'm continuing with the gratitude exercise whenever I remember, which is about every other day. Today I'm grateful that my little ASUS is up and running (and thanks to B&B for helping me clean it up); for water, which really is amazing, in that we can drink it, bathe in it, wash things with it, look at it, and get rained on by it; and I'm grateful that Amy got her phones fixed. And also grateful for green pens. And Belgian chocolate. And that my Bike o' Death is working again. And for my cats. And grandbabies. OK, time to quit for the night.

News of the Week Nov 23

Life is busy, but, thinking back, not as busy or desperate as some years in the past. We had time to coerce Chris into eating out with us, poor chickadee (actually he is very pleasant to do things with), time to go swimming at the BYU pool three times, time for John to go to three basketball games, time for me to do my visiting teaching, and time to watch four more episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (our latest family craze).

Rob, Nicolle and babes came over Friday night, before their big trip to Texas for the week. Here Colette plays with an elephant, a dinosaur, and Mike Wazowski (and her mom). We love to see them.

News of the Week 9/7/08

John turned off the air conditioning last night for the season, which may have been a mistake. This afternoon it's 80 degrees in the house. It's been in the 50s at night, however, and we (almost) need an extra blanket on the bed when we open the windows. While I was in Salt Lake with Betsy working on business and billing yesterday, he bottled tomato juice and white grape juice (really a lovely warm pink color). I think the purple grapes are nearly ready, and peaches too. It reminds me of this.

We had Rick and Cheryl Duerden and their daughter Annalise over for dinner on Friday. They will be going with us on the walking tour in the UK next spring, and then taking over the program in 2011. Rick is a Shakespeare scholar, so we're spending more time in Stratford and going to more theatre in London. We're also visiting York on this trip, and later staying deep in Wales rather than just on the border. Speaking of the UK trip, John said the student film about it has been nominated for an Emmy, although he doesn't know what category it's in. Hannah (and maybe Jim and Rose?) will be at the awards ceremony.

We went to a picnic in the park for the Utah County Democrats yesterday. Anna, who went with us to the UK in 2005 and 2007, was there--she is the "pizza delivery girl" who blogged about an encounter with our Senate Majority Leader--and she's now campaigning for RaDene Hatfield, who is running against him. It has been very interesting to follow the political tempest. I'm proud of Anna, who has kept her head with poise and grace through it all. We took salad with fresh tomatoes to the picnic. RaDene ordered pizza from Nicolitalia's, which is really quite good (Spaghetti Girl is eating there, a few posts back).

Other than that, it's been a quiet week. Chris and John are settling into school, and I like having a regular schedule. I ride my bike every weekday morning, walk at the church with the RS ladies every Tuesday and Thursday morning, and swim MWF (or Sat) in the evening at the BYU pool. I visit patients at the Alpine Care Center in Lindon twice a week and go to my office in Orem Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and evenings. I'm seeing clients Monday and Wednesday mornings as well, which I don't prefer, since I still have T/Th openings, but maybe it will be temporary. We look forward to Dave coming for a visit on the 20th!

News of the Week 8/31/08

Things were quiet at our house until Friday, when Rob and Colette arrived for the Labor Day weekend. Nicolle and Johnathan are visiting her family in Texas (we miss them dreadfully) and Rob was lonely in Salt Lake, as well as having gigs in Provo, so it worked out well. I took a lot of photos of Colette at the Scera park in Orem while Rob played at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, but it is very hard to catch her on camera--she's a speedy girl who doesn't stop to pose for photos--that's why it's a little out of focus. She climbed the highest slide at the playground about 45 times. "I did it, I did it!" she chanted.

Our garden is still lovely, if a little exuberant. There are squash and pumpkin blossoms, for example, in the peach trees and roses, and on top of the grape arbor. Our neat little knot garden that is so tidy in the winter time looks like this by the end of August. What's that extra large tomato with the bucket--oh, sorry, that's Chris.I told him he looks like a dahlia. I eat about five tomatoes per meal, and we have buckets and buckets of table grapes. Soon it will be time to make purple grape juice. Here are some more photos of the roses. When it cools down just a little, as it has, the roses put out another flush of blossoms.
Dave called tonight and said he and Devon are in their Philadelphia apartment, within a half mile of the Mint, Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell. Dave has a part-time blogging job, and is looking at other options, including private practice. Devon's classes don't start for a few weeks.

Amy and Jamison are settled in their new place in Chicago. I can't wait until they send more photos. She enjoys her classes and will be painting by Friday--she meets with her advisor on Tuesday. We look forward to our visit in February.

We haven't heard much from Betsy and Brett--I think they are in full-out school mode. We'll see them tomorrow at our Labor Day Barbeque, and hopefully have more pictures then. Chris is doing well in all his classes (two weeks into the school year), and John starts teaching on Tuesday. I feel sort of left out not to be doing anything with school. I'll survive it though. I bumble along with my work, still trying to figure out how to be an effective businesswoman. I'm grateful for help from Betsy and Rob. I'm also glad that the BYU swimming pool will be open again this week--I really miss swimming. I do OK riding my exercise bike, but swimming is more fun and more of a workout.

We're happy to hear from Tena of the new little (or not so little) Mo'unga baby Elias. We're sad to hear of Justin's accident and pray for his recovery.

News of the Week 8/24/08

A lot of changes this past week. Last Sunday Amy headed off to Chicago in the moving van with Anna and Eric, friends who are going to graduate school at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. She has been staying with friends of Jamison in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago, and found an apartment nearby. She has been painting and fixing it up, and Jamison flies out tomorrow early--I know she has missed him and will be glad to see him. She sent some photos of the place, but I think she'll have to send more with the paint job, new blinds, and the little bit of furniture they have. It's pretty exciting. And now that she has a place to live, she can start to think about school. Several years ago John and I were at a conference in Chicago and visited Trent, a former student at the Art Institute. We saw the building where the art students have classes and their working studios. And we plan to visit A&J in February when John has another conference in Chicago. But it's still a long time away from them. Thank goodness for inexpensive cell phone calls.

Dave and Devon are planning to move into their new place in Philadelphia on Labor Day. I think they're both pretty busy. He's planning a quick trip out in September--just a few days, but some is better than none. We wish Devon could come, but she'll just be starting her new classes.

Chris started school last Tuesday. Brett and Betsy start school this week. John goes to his faculty meetings this week and starts teaching again after Labor Day. My life goes on the same with therapy clients and testing. I'm trying to get back into writing (vampire story) more regularly. Basically I think age has slowed me down. Or maybe laziness.

It's always great to have Rob and Nicolle and the babies visit, as they did this weekend. This time I was sick with some kind of 24 hour bug, and after Friday night just stayed in bed and slept. I'm hoping I didn't give the bug to anybody else. Before I got sick, though, we took the babies out for pizza and spaghetti alfredo while Rob was at a gig and Nicolle at her cousin's wedding. Here are photos of Spaghetti Girl doing her thing, serious Johnathan, and Chris. We sat outside on the patio. It was fun.

News of the Week 7/20/08

The summer is flying by. Amy and Jamison moved into his mom Debbie's new house in Lindon this week, and we were sad to see them go. They will be able to stretch out a little there, I think, and more easily visit with Jamison's brothers from back east who are here on holiday. It was great to get to know Jamison better, and he certainly saw us at our normal condition, whatever that is (bathrobes, messy house, kitty crises, and all). Amy's working hard on the Chicago move. We're both so busy that we don't see or talk to each other much--I'm really going to miss her when she leaves next month.

Chris bought a used PlayStation and Guitar Hero III, and he so far hasn't done anything else this week. He says he's getting tired of it and might trade it back at GameStop at the mall for the money minus 20 percent. His way-cool pedal came, but he's still waiting impatiently for the guitar and amp to show up. He has to make up a foods class online before school starts (August 18), but he just growls at me when I mention it. Actually I think it would be fun. He is a good cook and interested in eating well. Maybe after he trades in Guitar Hero... I made him a copy of the car key, which he carries around on his belt loop, and uses to start the car if I leave him alone in it for a second. He is excited for drivers ed. I tried to warn him

but he doesn't listen.

John spent the end of the week at the Green Jacket ranch, cowsitting for Liz and Alan. He said it's still beautiful and green, because of the slow start to the season. He came back sunburned and tired, and said it was harder than he thought but he enjoyed it. I shouldn't complain about our little garden--what a huge job the Mitchell's have!

Chris and I missed the Vernon reunion last night, mostly because I am trying to finish the six psych evals I must send off before we leave for London on Friday. At least I've already done all the testing. I only have two more feedback sessions and then the writeups--oh, and a collatoral phone interview tomorrow with a family member for one of them. Five of the evals are for Voc Rehab and one is for the care center in Lindon. I am a slow report writer. Any kind of writing is a nervous business for me. I bite my cuticles and jiggle my feet and get up and pace and am very easily distracted away from actual work.

Dave and Devon sent photos around of their new loft in Philadelphia, where they will move on Sept 1. Maybe since Dave doesn't have a family blog, I will have to post the pictures here:

Dave is starting up a law practice and (as he said in his last message) blogging as the immigration specialist at this site beginning next month. Pretty exciting.

Rob and Nicolle are still deciding what exactly to do, I think. Last time I spoke on the phone with Rob, Nicolle was working at Tocanos in SLC, but I'm not sure how permanent that will be. Rob helped me build a new web site, Karla Bennion PhD, which is still sort of in the beta-phase until I get some photos and more text.

Next thing on my tech list is to invite J.Lynn over for lunch and have him help me order a new desktop, as my poor little 6-year-old Dell Inspiron laptop is totally outdated. The monitor went out, and I have it hooked up to a $10 used monitor from DI. My 2" by 4 and 1/2" external hard drive has more storage space than my main computer. (But the ASUS is sure fun. I took it to my office the other day and got onto somebody's unsecured wireless--should I feel guilty about that? is it dangerous? I take my 2 gb data stick with me and have every text file I've ever written in my life with 99% of the room to spare.)

Well, speaking of text files, I'd better get to the psych reports. My RS lesson went well today--this time I only had four questions and by pushing it a little got to three of them before the meeting was over. We do have a talkative congregation, which is good of course. Makes my job easier.

News of the Week 7/13/08

Not too much drastic has happened this week, which is good. John goes into his office MWF to read independent study lessons and graduate theses, as well as (most importantly) play basketball with his faculty group at noon. He also goes swimming with me--three times this week!--at the RB pool. I'm only up to 12 laps (1/3 mile), but he does 18 and has time to sit in the sauna before I get out of the locker room. What a patient man.

I'm riding my exercise bike every weekday morning, since the big scary ultimatum from my MD. Jamison rides it too--I'm glad we have it for both our sakes. I work two mornings a week (well, noons, actually, about 11:30 to 1:30) at the Alpine Valley Care Center in Lindon, doing evals and visiting with elderly patients with various problems, from strokes to MS to dementia. It has been much more interesting than I anticipated at first. The end of life is in many ways as important and varied as the beginning, and, since it happens to all of us, there's no reason to avoid talking or thinking about it. I remember after Lucy died how differently I felt about death. I think a lot of my reaction then was due to the blow of her death, but this time it feels like I'm regaining some of that objectivity, or maybe just increasing my comfort level with the idea of getting old, dying, and then being dead. The patients I visit with talk about their own deaths with equanimity and often impatience.

I see private patients at my office in Orem on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and evenings, with sometimes an emergency appointment on another day. Betsy has helped me get on more insurance panels, and I'm doing a lot of testing and therapy for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation. Right now I have plenty of work, and I'm trying to figure out how to do it more efficiently. Especially the report-writing. Not taking time out for blog posts might help.

I'm also still going to my weekly SFF (science fiction/fantasy) writers group on Tuesday nights. I haven't really worked on my vampire novel for ages, however. I know what needs to be done, I just haven't figured out how to write the way John does, in between and around everything else. I'm excited about the next story, which is Mormon werewolves. Betsy helped me order a new mini-laptop online (an ASUS ordered through Costco, 9" monitor, 12 Gb, Windows XP loaded, 2.18 lbs, but I'll spare you the photo) and I'm looking forward to spending time writing during our trip to England in a couple of weeks, while John's at his Hardy conference. I have a little portable 26 Gb hard drive and a bunch of 2-4 gig data sticks to go with it, so I should be able to take all the photos I want. It can do internet too, so I'm hoping to figure out how to blog from there. Maybe our B&B or wherever we're staying will have Internet access. John wants to go to Cornwall and the fen country (maybe stay in Cambridge, Coventry,and/or Nottingham) as well as Dorset on this trip, rather than spending any time in London. It looks like we might be deciding what we'll do after we get there.

Yesterday we went up to SLC, the Aves, to visit Brett & Betsy and Rob & Nicolle, and I forgot my camera! The babies were sleepy anyway, but with them living so far away, any chance at photos should not be missed. Rob is building me a psych blog. I bought 5 years of website server and 4 years of domain name (or the other way around, I can't remember) for a little over $200. We looked at a few local psychologists' web sites, and Rob was not impressed. That's the other thing I should be doing instead of blogging--getting the info together to send him. Oh well.

John, Chris, and I went to Hell Boy 2 yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. I can't resist sending you the Barry Manilow video that goes along with it. If you are into demons, fairies, elves, governmental bureaucracies, and Armageddon, this movie is for you.