Everything is OK, Expensive, but OK

Here is the dead hot water heater sitting quietly at the back of the garage.

My right foot is all healed up from its run-in with the blender that I dropped on it. You see a happy foot because it has some garden dirt on it--which means that it was just outside in the garden.

The only ducklings to hatch at the lake are growing up fast. One of them injured its leg, but is able to keep up with the others. There are so many people who come and provide feed for the birds and animals there that I think its chances to grow up healthy and strong are good.

One of the cowbirds that nested in the marshy reeds that surround one side of the lake. It was overcast enough so that I could get a picture of her head and her eye. It was a hot day, even with water all around, the birds were still panting in the heat.

Well, it looks like this week is going to be one of rather huge expenses. The car is in the shop--with AC and a transmission system leak. The hot water heater died last night, and while doing so completely flooded the garage. As I speak, the AC & Heating person is on his way to pick up a replacement so that he can muscle out the old one and delicately implant the new. My left knee has an acute meniscus tear--and some deformity of the cartilage. Don't remember WHEN that happened.

On the up side: When the hot water heater overflowed, all of the water ran through the garage and down the driveway instead of pooling up and flooding the house. My knee injury happened when I was asleep or out of it (perhaps, Brent thinks, the night that I fell and smacked my face against the bedpost) so that it needs mending, but I didn't have to feel the hurt of the injury. I am able to put off the surgery until after my horticulture propagation class is over. And as I sit here, it doesn't hurt or itch at all. And the car? When we get it back, the AC will again be ice cold even when it is above 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 100% humidity outside. I think that about covers it.

Also--my foot is recovered with only minimal scarring. The blender, however, is definitely a goner.

Oh! On the most uppest side: Brent is home from Houston and everything went well and he didn't get sick while he was there.

Volvo Transmission Blues, With Chocolate on the Side

I have just gotten off the phone with Brent and feel quite sheepish about the car repairs that will need to be done on his Volvo. The fellow who usually takes care of us called this morning and told me about the AC (which was why we brought the car in to be looked at) and about something else and then something else about the transmission (fluid leaking) and something else about the brakes (I think). Anyway. When Volvo Tony was talking to me this morning, everything he said made sense. When Brent asked me about it, I can’t remember anything that was on the list of things to fix—except the price. I do remember the price. Which was the least ambiguous and most startling thing about the whole conversation. It felt weird, though, because without all the details, the money REALLY seems big. Kind of like someone telling me that I’m pregnant with triplets when I didn’t even know who the father was or that I was married yet.

Not quite that bad.

But close.

On a cheaper note, I have discovered the Family Home Evening notebooks in which we wrote the minutes from each week’s meeting. I remember looking forward to my turn to be the scribe—if the lesson was boring, I could doodle in the margins. Perhaps that is where Meg got her first desire to draw from—a remnant of my own, bored scribblings. I am getting that way more and more now. I have a hard time just sitting through Sacrament Meeting or Sunday School lessons without a notebook and a project. One of my on-going ones is the simplified re-telling of the Parable of the Olive Tree from the Book of Mormon. I read and re-read the verses and try to recount their contents as if I were explaining the story to Meg, La and Nate during our nightly scripture readings—lots of lots of years ago.

Megan calls me now and I hear Jon in the background, sing-talking to himself with a magazine in one hand and a truck (Ca! Ca! Ca!) in the other. She is going to make lentil and onion soup for dinner “because it is simple and delicious!” I never made lentil and anything soup for dinner in my life. Her life is so different from anything that I could have imagined for her—but just in the details. I was able to see her on the floor of her living room and playing/teaching/loving her young children. The important things I have been able to know about for Meg, La and Nathan. Some I see for Brent—but I do not see for me. A good thing, perhaps, since I have trouble remembering what needs fixing on the Volvo only hours after having someone list each item out slowly for me. Much more than that and I would probably overload and need repeated administrations of dark chocolate and warm cookies, just from the oven. WAIT! That is what I need NOW. I hope that someone is writing down all the stuff I have been told and forgotten. Some day, I hope to be ready to hear and remember it all—with a perfected mind and steady focus.

Someday.