Ida-ho!

We're packed up and on the road. Will dine with in-laws in Idaho.

It's a three-ish hour drive, but I'm sure it will seem longer. Why, you ask? Because the dog is with us and he has gas.

Feeling much better, thank you

Yesterday, Mike and I went to a counseling appointment in the morning and texted back and forth during the day.

I skipped work, talked to my mom, went to acupuncture, spent some time with a great friend who fed me, listened to me vent, and offered some helpful observations and a new tool to play with.

When I got back to Ogden, Mike was home and we talked about how we feel about each other and wanting to really work on the trouble spots in our relationship. Hugs and tears all around. There's still a lot of work ahead for both of us and we're committed to doing it.

Will be going to Idaho for Thanksgiving as planned. Just found out my MIL Sue was in the hospital overnight for a heart problem, but she's being discharged this afternoon and will go home where we'll take care of her (instead of the other way around).

Thanks again for your words of support. Rough patches in relationships are tough and it's nice to have supportive friends when the road gets bumpy.

Broken

Long argument today. Said lots of regretable things. Feeling like setting things right is all but impossible. Eyes nearly swollen shut from hours of crying. Going to bed alone because Mike packed a bag and left, saying he was tired of getting the shit kicked out of him (his descriptor for any disagreement between us).

I'm sure he feels justified for leaving. He interprets virtually everything I say as an attack--regardless of subject matter. He's tired of living like this. I'm tired of having an emotionally checked out husband; it's like being single again.

And I feel like I have no one to talk to. I suspect that the friends I've confided in are tired of hearing about our marital problems and wonder why I just don't get out already. I didn't get through to either of the two therapists I called tonight for emotional triage. My mom is dealing with news that her best friend's cancer has recurred, so I don't want to wallop her with more bad news.

I'm hoping sleep will bring at least some temporary relief.

Stupid Effing Cancer, Part Deux

My mom called this morning to let me know that one of her oldest/dearest friends just found out that her cancer had metastasized. Nancy been treated for breast cancer last year, got through the treatments fine and we were all hoping she was out of the woods.

What sad, sad news to hear otherwise.

Apparently, the cancer has spread to her spine and has been causing her a lot of pain lately. It's too early to know what her doctors plan to do, treatment-wise.

Nancy and my mom met and became friends more than 30 years ago. Nancy's daughters are the same age as my brother and I and we all attended grammar school at San Gabriel Christian School. As kids, we slumber partied and celebrated birthdays together and ran around each other's houses. We also introduced Nancy and the kids to Mormonism and they joined the church.

When Nancy remarried and moved, the kids saw a little less of each other, but our moms stayed in touch. My mom and Nancy saw each other through some particularly challenging years and experiences. Eventually, Nancy moved back and my mom helped get her a job in the volunteer program in my old school district; when my mom retired, Nancy took over running the program and did a lot of great things.

In the past few months, I've reconnected with Nancy's daughters, Jamie and Kristi via FaceBook. A few years back, I happened to be in California at the same time Jamie was and got to participate in her oldest child's baptism. It was pretty amazing to see how her family has grown and think back to when we were friends that age.

So add another name to the list of people I love who were/are afflicted with cancer. Most recently, that's been Lee Gibson, Chester Papiewski, and now Nancy W.

Cancer sucks. Grieving is hard. I've been crying at my desk for the past hour or so. I still well up thinking about or mentioning Lee Gibson. My heart hurts; it hasn't had a chance to recover between blows/new cancer diagnoses. Stupid fucking cancer.

(And a nod to Shirley Mott, my former YW leader and ward stalwart whose memorial service is tomorrow. She and her husband, Ray, were one of the backbone couples in the old Rosemead ward).

Yeah, write.

So I've missed a week of writing. Good thing I'm not attempting that write-a-novel-in-November thing some of my friends are doing. But I'll do a recap of the past week, as it is somewhat novel-like in having some dramatic twists and turns.

Thursday 11/12

The day Mike and I depart for Sunstone Northwest in Seattle. Though he gets home late and we leave three hours later than planned, I do not get all bent out of shape.

We only got as far as La Grande, OR that night. Was a bit more perturbed that Mike left the car idling for 45 minutes at a truck stop while he tried to track down a place to stay on my iPhone. Checked in, applied pajamas, read some Sarah Vowell, and fell asleep.

Friday 11/13

Found the "continental breakfast" in the hotel left much to be desired. Four kinds of donuts, two kinds of bagels, OJ, apple juice, coffee, tea. I grabbed a bagel and some cream cheese, poured an OJ and brewed myself a Tazo tea. Made the mistake of using the powdered creamer--yetch.

Long, quiet drive. Snowed in all the passes between Pendleton and Seattle, yet when we got to the city, it was sunny, clear and gorgeous.

Checked into hotel, ate dinner at Duke's (famous clam chowders), picked up some snack at Trader Joe's, and drove to Wendy's house for a pre-symposium social.

Saturday 11/14

Sunstone Northwest! Got to the venue a little late because Mike missed a turn and we ended up on a highway into downtown with no opportunity to turn around. Just the thing to kick off the morning. At venue, set up chairs, tables, AV stuff, books, and readied for the hordes.

Symposium went well overall--good speakers, a nice mix of topics, decent audience.

The venue was cold all day; someone forgot to override the weekend AWAY settings for the heat during the day. And the venue booker "forgot" that we paid extra to have the venue until 7:00 pm and booked another group to come in at 6:00 pm. That group arrived at 5:15 pm, thinking they had the venue starting at 5:30 pm. Fun to have a rugby team milling in the hallways waiting for us to wrap up.

After party at Molly's was nice--good pizza and conversation. Back at hotel by 10:00 pm. I took a hot bath and blissed out until Mike came in asking if I wanted some ice cream; this disoriented me. I couldn't get back to drowsy after that, so I jammified and went to bed.

Sunday 11/15

Up somewhat early because we had to drive the whole way back in one day. This hotel's breakfast had more options--cereal, milk, pastries, instant oatmeal, fresh fruit. Hit the road; much more snow had fallen and there were travel advisories in effect.

I took over driving and ended up with just enough gas to get to La Grande again, at which time we discovered messages on our phones from Mike's mom saying Mike's oldest sister was missing. Car gone, dogs gone, no one had seen her since Friday. Worrisome. We call to get the scoop. BIL Matt had broken into Jan's house to get an idea of where she'd gone.

We get back on the road with this sobering news. About an hour later, MIL Sue calls to say Jan showed up at Sunday dinner late; she'd been doing paperwork at the Rexburg office (after telling family that she wasn't working weekends there anymore). All is swell.

I sleep through more of the drive; stop in Twin Falls for gas and end up having Wendy's for dinner. Too much effort to scout out non-fast-food options. Arrived home shortly after midnight.

Monday 11/16

We had an 8:00 am appointment, which was the reason for the hurried trip home. I rolled out of bed and put clothes on. Picked up the dog afterward and I went home and just vegged all day. Eventually showered and caught up on shows via On Demand.

Tuesday 11/17

Last lecture of our fall series: Mormon-watcher Jan Shipps lectured at the SLC Main Library on religious studies and the tools this field brings to the study of Mormonism. Met some interesting folks and enjoyed the evening. And WHEW--nothing left but the office Christmas party in 3 weeks.

Wednesday 11/18

Found that Jan's lecture had been written up in Mormon Times--a nice surprise. Trying to cross some things off my to do list, but not feeling very motivated to do anything. Catching up on my blog reading (two speakers from Seattle posted their remarks on BCC) and writing before hopping on the freeway home.

Biggest decision ahead: stop at Costco in Bountiful or in Ogden? And what friend to call on the drive home?

You want a glass or a bottle of whine?

I've been so overwhelmed leading up to this weekend's symposium in Seattle, I forgot completely just 'til this moment about getting cash out of Sunstone's account to take with us--to make change, etc.

All the banks are closed because it's Veteran's Day. And I'm not coming to the office tomorrow at all. Which means any cash we take/use at the symposium is coming out of our personal accounts.

Whyyyy didn't I remember sooooooooonerrr? Waaaaaaahhh!

It's called SAVE AS!

I work with an office manager who started her working career back when telephone numbers had words in them and the typewriter was as fancy as office equipment got.

She's S-L-O-W-L-Y adopted to more modern equipment like computers and email, but still hasn't mastered things like formatting (emails and documents often have crazyass spacing) or using computers to do repetitive tasks more efficiently (she draws out the SLC symposium schedule on legal paper with a ruler until I intervened and did it in Excel).

Several times over the past year, she's lost work on documents because she doesn't remember to rename and save attachments to her computer. She opens them up, works on them, and saves them (she thinks) but once she closes them, they're gone forever in the ether of temp files and whatever gobbledygook name/code they got when she opened them.

So this morning, we had yet another tutorial on SAVE AS. I stressed again that this is the FIRST THING she needs to do after opening an attachement. Save the document to the hard drive or desktop--wherever you'll be able to find it again--and rename it if you're adding stuff/tracking chances, etc. This goes for Excel and Word attachments. If you want the document and the work you did on it to exist later, you need to Save As.

I hope I sounded more patient than I felt whilst tutoring. I swear it seems like she's hearing this for the first time ever, even though this is probably the fourth or fifth time.

In which I ignore comon sense

Watched Food, Inc. last night and was pretty grossed out.

My dad and I drove through a cattle feed lot in Texas that was so big we literally could not see where it ended. From far away, I thought it was a car junkyard. Then we got up close and saw that it was not junk cars, but thousands of cows milling around. And the stench--WOW.

Nevertheless, I stopped at Crown Burger on the way back from an errand to Benchmark Books. Cheeseburger + fries + fry sauce = one full and slightly queasy stomach.

Whither all the locally-sourced, minimally-processed, fresh food restaurants in SLC?

Missed a day, but have plenty of post fodder

I spent Thursday and Friday on the campus of Utah Valley University at a conference on Mormon outmigration and pursuit of education.

It was a pretty interesting conference, headlined by the work of Wesley and Marian Johnson who interviewed hundreds of Mormons, many of whom left Utah to pursue educations elsewhere.

In the crowd of attendees Thursday, there was a striking older woman who caught my attention. She had on an elegant two-piece yellow dress with a gored skirt, carried a fabulous beaded purse, had a broach pinned to her collar, and had on a lovely straw hat with a silk rose on the brim. Hard to miss.

I saw her again at the reception before the final evening session at BYU Library and went up and complimented her on her amazing style. We introduced ourselves and walked into library auditorium while she told me more about herself. She introduced me to her husband and said "You must sit with us!" and said we'd need to go up front because she'd forgotten her hearing aids. I happily obliged.

Throughout the lecture, she leaned whispered asides to me; she's a costume designer and told me the approximate year a photo was taken based on the subject's facial hair or the color of the woman's dress. She was also related to a couple of the outmigrants being discussed and was long-time friends of the Johnsons and others who had presented on the conference program. It was quite interesting to have her as a seatmate.

When the presenter finished and entertained questions from the audience, my seatmate noted that many of the men who left Utah to get educations or who settled outside of Utah for work often left behind families in Utah or weren't as able to participate in family life because of school or work. (She has heard similar complaints from some women she visit teaches who feel isolated or neglected by their busy husbands--kind of like the old adage "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"). Given the long separations, how could these men or their wives be happy about living arrangements that precluded intimacy and sex?

Well, that pretty much stumped the presenter.

He stammered an answer, indicating that there were divorces and unhappy families under those circumstances. He quickly looked around for another raised hand/question so we wouldn't end with a sex question. (At the Lord's University--gasp!)

After the last question and closing prayer, my seatmate said it was lovely to meet me (likewise!), collected her husband, and breezed away homeward. I giggled with the conference organizers about her question and the difficulty of obtaining posthumous data on historical figures' sex lives.

It was one of the funnest--and funniest--parts of the conference.

Today's news

In Provo/Orem for a conference on outmigration from Utah. Ate at an awesome pizza place. Stayed up late talking to friends. Going to bed now. Oh, and I sprouted a zit on my forhead so large it makes me look like I have one of those Cromagnun (sp?) man ridges--but only above my right eyebrow.

Please do the impossible some more.

The short version is my "dream job" isn't dreamy.

While there are aspects of it I still enjoy, they are far outnumbered by the times I have to surmount Amazonian obstacles, make do without sufficient resources, and perform tasks that the guy the board fired last year used to do because they still have to be done by SOMEONE.

At the moment, the finance committee is putting together the year-end fundraising appeal--the one that needs to bring in enough $$$ to keep us open through the end of the year.

The letter is still being revised. The donation form/premiums doesn't exist on paper yet. And the schedule on which the board expects the staff to print, fold, assemble, label, stamp, and mail this puppy out is beyond unrealistic. By November 10? Riiight.

This is the most demanding week left this year. I'll be out of the office at a conference Thursday & Friday of this week--and gone Thursday and Friday of next week to run a regional symposium in Seattle. There's major symposium prep work yet to do. Do I forgo the outreach aspects of my job to do the board's bidding instead?

Success also depends on whether we can line up volunteers to help. Without existing documents or a mailing list, it's hard to say exactly how much help we'll need or when.

It's times like this that make those late-night ads for truck driving school sound rather appealing.

Stupid Effing Cancer

Just heard tonight that dear friend Chester P. has colon cancer. A friend of Chester and Marilyn put out an APB tonight asking for their friends' help.

Since I'm not in California, I can't offer to drive Chester to appointments at the VA or drop by with a casserole. It's like having an extra helping of powerlessness in the face of an already daunting situation.

Hope to catch Marilyn on the phone soon. I imagine this is messing with her LSAT studies a bit, among other things. Like life as they knew it.

Open statement to all things cancerous: LAY OFF our collective loved ones, already! Go grow on ... I dunno, rocks or something.

My attempt at writing every day in November

Well, why not? I'm not going to be all official NaPoBlog or whatever--just need the creative outlet.

Since the month started yesterday, I'll tell a story from yesterday. Mike and I got to church late (per usual) and found a couple of chairs at the back of the chapel. Two teenagers sat in front of us. They did the whole bicker/nudge thing, so I figured them for siblings.

About 10 minutes before the meeting ended, I looked up from my iPhone (aka godsend) to see the girl attempting to finger tweeze a hair out of the boy's eyebrow. Took a few attempts, but she eventually succeeded. Boy winced with pain and rubbed the spot before slapping the girl on the arm.

I've seen backrubs and canoodling at church, but not this level of personal grooming. What's next, trimming one's toenails? Flossing? Nasal irrigation?

I posted a quick FaceBook status update about the above and watched as the meeting wound down. Last speaker wraps it up. Closing hymn announced.

An older couple was sitting one row ahead of the young groomers. When the closing hymn was announced, the old guy shifted in his chair and cut loose an astonishingly loud fart.

The girl heard and looked at the boy accusingly. He mouthed "It wasn't me!" and then the battle was on to contain their laughter. The girl laughed/sang the first line of the hymn and she was out. The boy didn't even try.

By then, I was in a full blown case of the giggles that interrupted my singing and continued as the closing prayer began. The girl and boy ahead of me had calmed down by then, but I kept giggling every time I thought of what just happened.

After that episode, Sunday school was pretty tame. THANK GOD.