Downtime

Thursday again already.  If nothing else, at least time is flying by.  At this rate, I'll be dead before I know it. If I had any gumption tonight, I'd post a bunch of pictures of the stuff we've been up to, as promised in my previous entry.  Because you know I will wake up tomorrow only  to find that 40 years have passed, and I won't be able to remember what I had for breakfast, let alone what was happening in those pictures from the summer of 2013.  Who are all those tall blondes anyway? But pictures require more effort than I can muster after a long day of pill pushing.  And pulling.  Yesterday, a kid got mad at me because I would not give him any rubbing alcohol.  He wanted some to put in his ear.  He said his ear hurt.  I said go to instacare.  He said I just need a drop of alcohol to put in there.  I said go home and get some.  He said how about some of your hand sanitizer, which sits out on the counter for people to use.  I said I can't recommend that.  Then he pumped some into his ear anyway and walked away.   He didn't even hang around to tell me if it relieved his ear pain.  Today we had a huuuuuge debate (actually a day long series of debates) about where to give flu shots.  That was riveting.  And there were wheelchair races in the lobby.  Then some old man told me I didn't look too fussy.  What does that mean?  Is that a compliment?  Was he hitting on me? Or insulting me with some old man humor that I am not aware of?

And I think I failed to mention the night not long ago, when the lady came in looking for some burn cream. She had a big, red blistered  burn on the side of her face.  She said she was cooking dinner, and was trying to move a big pot, and it was hot and hit her in the face.  I so wanted to ask her why she was using her face to move a big hot heavy pot.   I had such a hard time grasping a mental picture of how that whole scene went down.  But I refrained.

 Seriously, can life get any more exciting?

Yes, it can.  I can tell about the lady who came in looking for a topical pain reliever for what she described as a wound on her foot. Silly me.  I was just trying to be helpful when I asked her questions about what it looked like and how big it was.  Then she uttered the words you never want to hear in a pharmacy.

"Well, let me show you."

And then she  lifted up her moo-moo, and oh, I do not want to go any further in describing what I saw. Lesson learned. Do not pry.

Tonight me and the fab four are kicking back eating grilled cheese sandwiches in front of some inane cartoon on Netflix.  Just soaking in what we have in the  here and now, which is that tonighht  Duncan and Olivia are equally mesmerized by the same TV show, and that, also tonight,  we need neither  furnace nor air conditioner to be perfectly content.  Nobody is worrying about getting anything constructive or noteworthy done.   And remarkably, nobody (meaning me) is feeling much guilt over that.  Ah complacency, we wear you well.  We should drape ourselves in you more often.

No Catch Up, Just Applesauce

One blog entry? ONE? It's September 24, and there is ONE entry on the old blog for the entire month? Shameful, I tell you.  Simply shameful. Maybe it's a revolt.  No news on here til there is good news.  No wait, that's not right.  The old adage says no news IS good news.  So that doesn't exactly work for us.  Well, it kind of does.  There could always be worse news, right?  Really, it's just that there is not much of anything going on, and we all seem to be really busy with all this nothingness that is happening. 

We did make applesauce with my folks a few weeks ago. That was something.  That was actually one of my H.O.G. moments of the past month.  I was lamenting how much I missed the homemade applesauce we made a few years ago, and  wishing some apples would magically appear that I could turn into applesauce.  Lo and behold, not two days later, my boss just happened to ask me if I could use any apples.  His apple tree had been hit by a hailstorm a few weeks earlier, and some of the apples had gotten pelted he said, but if I wanted any, I was welcome to them.  So we went apple picking, and roped my dad and mom into helping out.  H.O.G. right there, I tell ya.  The downside is that after I took all the apples I could use (which by the way, they were beautiful, and hardly damaged at all, my boss is just a perfectionist), he still had a ton left over on his tree, and last week he brought me another huge box.  This is only a downside because I don't know when I'm going to deal with that box.  But make time for applesauce we will, even if we have to stay up til midnight one night to do it.  That applesauce is something else, if I say so myself.


Hoo boy, now I've gone and done it.  I went through the pictures on my phone to find the one of Olivia picking apples, and now I've remembered a TON of stuff we have been up to.  Dang it, now I have to make more applesauce AND catch up the blog.

Rewind

Today was kind of a crappy day, until it was made by Olivia, who requested that for our Friday night movie, we watch Joseph Smith and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Now THAT would be a musical.  That kid always make me smile.

So many pictures, so much happening all the time, and no time to keep track of it all.  Never fear I HAVE been keeping track of my HOG moments, just haven't kept up with 'em on here. I will though. As soon as I catch up a little with everything else that's been happening.

Mitch had a birthday on the fifth of September.  He went to Comic Con with his friends that day, so we had to celebrate a day or so early and I only snatched one picture of him.  Why I like this picture is because you can totally see the cowlick on top of his head.  That was the first thing I noticed about him when I first laid eyes on him was that distinctive cowlick, that I knew was going to make for some interesting hairstyles his whole life.  He has grown into it nicely, I think.

He is busy with work and school and we don't see too much of him.  We are getting to that stage of life where we have to cook Sunday dinner to get our kids to visit us, and even that only works sometimes.

Before that, we went on a family hike up a canyon in Ogden somewhere.  It was so hot.

  Trying to get a good self-and-Duncan portrait is harder than it looks. Plus we are dorks, which makes it extra hard.

We made it up to the waterfall, only to find that it was mostly just a water trickle.  I guess we need to go in June to get the full effect. But it was nice and cool, and everybody got damp enough I guess.

If you go hiking in the canyon, and you meet a guy from your town who played for the Boston Red Sox for six months, do NOT let him take  your family pictures.  This is what you will get:

And there goes my future.

And before THAT, we took advantage of having Alisa and Erwann home for a while, and we dragged everybody over to the nature park for some family pictures.

Now I just gotta pick out my favorites to print off and hang all over my house.

And before THAT, we dragged Erwann all over downtown Salt Lake City for some good clean Mormon fun.  We went to Temple Square, the Beehive House, and the church museum.

 Of course we had to take the obligatory tourist photos in front of the temple, but personally I like the above shot better than the below shot.

And before THAT, Dan and the kids went to the bus station to collect our girl and her guy. We had one short week with them here, but we (and they) crammed in quite a few adventures in those short days.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, Will and Audrey started school.

 First day of high school for Will

And eighth grade for Audrey

And then Erwann became a U.S. citizen.

Nah, just kidding.