Life

My high school reunion was last month, and a video from 1995 was e-mailed around today. I wasn't expecting to ever see it again, and certainly not today. Here's me and my good friend (who dated and married my brother and became my sister-in-law). 

At last month's meeting, my sneaky 80-year-old friends quickly nominated and voted me in as the Vice President of their club, all before I could do much to protest or nominate some else. Then they laughed at me when I looked stunned. And now I'm Vice President, which also means next year I'll be President because that's their tradition. Last school year we learned about inventions, and this year we're studying interesting places around the world based on Nellie Bly's travels.

I looooooove my church calling and the group of girls who come. Last night we made Jello Frankensteins and learned how to sew buttons.

Even though I loved having our friends come to town and stay with us and do fun things, my body was exhausted. I slept A LOT. Paige woke me up after coming home from work, and I have no memory of this moment.

I'm still waiting for a phone call to schedule a Hida scan of my gallbladder. I also received a SIBO test in the mail. A biopsy of my stomach tested negative for SIBO, but my gastro doctor wants me to take this SIBO test and make sure it's negative as well. The biopsy may not have been deep enough where the SIBO thrives. I will drink a bottle of medicine and blow into one of nine pouches every 15 minutes, then send it back to a lab. 

I stopped PPI's and H2 inhibitors, and my doctor wants me to try FDgard next because it's helped some of her patients with similar symptoms. My stomach problems have been chronic so many years, I don't know if I'll ever get it under control again. Some days I'm sad about it and missing my carefree days of eating, wearing, and doing what I want before this started. I've worked hard to get Rosacea, asthma, CRSwNP, and migraines under control, but I cannot get my stomach and throat under control. Anyway, let's move on....

Carson's doing great! He's working and serving hard and happy to be in Wyoming still.

Leah finished another clinic rotation and is back at school testing recipes the BYU undergraduates will make and serve for lunches as part of their program.

Paige has been temporarily working at Target this past year and doing an internship one or two days a week. That internship is now putting together a job offer for her, so her days at Target may be ending soon. I'll miss her wild stories of people who steal from Target.

Arizona had a few days of crazy monsoons and microbursts, and I found water dripping through our kitchen ceiling. Thankfully it sounds like the home builder will cover it, as we're still in the middle of the one-year repairs. 

One day I was grocery shopping. I walked into a store, made it a few steps to the cash registers, and then all the lights went off and alarms started blaring in the store. I looked behind me to the doors I had just walked through, and the biggest storm was hitting. I couldn't believe it! Ten minutes later the store was still dark with alarms blaring, but the rain was over and I walked outside to puddles everywhere, power out at every store and intersection, and rivers running across roads while cars U-turned and found other roads to take. It was bizarre how fast it happened!

Dan still plays pickleball every Saturday morning and soccer on most Wednesday nights at the church after activities are done. Sometimes he hikes or bikes or plays racquetball. I have two groups I rotate through on Tuesdays -- one studies scriptures, one studies Conference talks. It's good for me. One group is my age, and one group is my 80-year-old friends and includes their husbands. The club I'm now Vice President of meets once a month. My Wednesday morning walking group is starting up again now that it will be a little cooler. I try to walk the neighborhood every morning and night to help my stomach. The rest of the time I'm dealing with doctors and tests and my health. 

Lately we've been watching The Middle, an old sitcom we somehow missed. We laugh so hard at every episode. They get everything right about family life. We're also watching the newest Amazing Race and Dancing with the Stars. 

Until our roof leak, we had one more home repair that has to happen -- a shower floor needs to be redone. Workmen have been inside and outside our house for weeks. Once home repairs are done, we'll figure out the other things we want to get done...landscaping, gutters, insulating garage walls, epoxying garage floors, installing an air conditioner and turning a garage into an exercise room, etc. 

Any day my car is going to die, so we need to go car shopping again. It's made it to almost 15 years old and 196,000 miles but it's doing random quirky things, like the headlights turned off while I was driving one night on a winding desert road. I had to use my brights for a while, even with other cars coming, and then I pulled over and turned the car off and on, and the headlights worked again. I never know what it's going to do next.