Hold Me Back!

 Hold me back! It's a SALE! What's the deal?

Oh. What a surprise!

Would you buy a $170.00 pack for the benefit of a dollar off?

Best Intentions Burned!

 

I try, we all try, but sometimes efforts don't match expectations. I've struggled with writing since November 2021, but I've always struggled with cooking.

One night after making soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, one of our six boys said, "Thanks, Dad, it's good."

"Yeah, I love these sandwiches," another son added. "Thanks for making dinner, Dad."

Surprised, I asked, "Why do you think Dad made this?"

Puzzled eyes turned to me. "Because the food isn't burnt." Then, with a gasp of sudden realization, my son asked, "Did you make this, Mom?"

"Yes, I did!"

"Good job," said another son, genuinely impressed.

"Yeah," said another of our boys. "You did it, Mom!"

You'd think I'd improve as I went, but just last week I was trying for this:

But got this:

(I was SURE I'd turned the oven off!)

And, honestly, how hard is it to microwave a potato?

It depends on whether Bob or I am doing the microwaving, and my hard potatoes prove that it's hard for me. (Haha!) 

(Guess who made the GOOD vegetables? Yep. Bob.)

In the writing world, I had the best intention of writing for an hour a day beginning November 2019. I wasn't 100% with my intentions, but I got three books done. (Dessert!)

When I presented the daily writing class at a Kanab Conference in November 2021, I was so scared I felt sick to my stomach!

Say what?

I've taught a decade of writing classes to children and adults. I created and ran the "Write Here in Ephraim" conference for six years. I was the Storymakers Conference chair. I've presented many conference classes, school presentations, and storytelling in several venues.

I'm not afraid to speak, so when I suddenly hated presenting, I didn't even feel like myself.

Why did my best intentions fall short of grabbing the cliff edge?

My best guess is that immunotherapy cancer treatments for recurrent malignant melanoma changed me. Since the 13 months treatment ended in June 2021, I can't make myself eat meat. I was even surprised that I spit out my first bite of comforting bread pudding last week.

Then I found this article:

"Food and drink can taste peculiar when you have some cancer treatments."

I also feel best after sleeping for 10 hours, and then having a nap in the afternoon! Here's a forum about that:

"The fatigue is a real thing, but there are so many different side effects that various patients experience."

For my being unreasonably scared to teach a class comes this little gem of information:

Immunotherapy is still a relatively new cancer therapy... psychiatric teams...consider immunotherapy as a possible factor in psychiatric presentations. A woman...developed signs of personality changes and acute mania after treatment with checkpoint inhibitors ipilimumab and nivolumab.

That's what they gave me! One of those is also known as "Keytruda," mentioned in this following article:

Keytruda has been reported to cause some neurological (brain-related) side effects. 

You just never know what's next, do you? When choosing a backpack color, I wanted the gray one. GRAY! Not blue, red, purple or orange. That is so Not Shirley!

Have you ever felt not like yourself? What happened?

Never Unpick Again!

I began sewing as a 9-year-old after I was given a toy sewing machine that really worked. I excitedly traced my hand and thumb in a mitten shape on two pieces of red calico fabric, cut the mittens out, sewed them all around the edges, and then was extremely puzzled that my hands wouldn't fit inside.

What was going on? I'd traced them to my actual hand size.

I didn't know about seam allowances then, but I learned all about them, and unpicking, as a 12-year-old Home Ec. student. It also helped that my grandmother Alta was a professional seamstress. As a nearly 6-foot-tall teen, I sewed a lot of clothes simply so they'd fit my long arms and legs. If something didn't get put together right, I unpicked it, even though it wasn't easy to cut all those tiny little tight threads and avoid cutting the fabric itself, I knew if I didn't, I'd never want to wear that puckered article of clothing.

So I was amazed to see this dress in a store, actually for sale rather than stuffed in a rag bag alongside my sewing failures.  

Do you see what I see? You may initially think, as I did, that perhaps a clueless new employee simply buttoned the dress buttons wrong, but LOOK AT THE HEM! IT'S EVEN! So why isn't the collar even?

Even the front placket is off. Who thought that this design was worth selling? A 9 year old with a toy sewing machine?

However it was created, I can imagine that it was sent to the runway in order to automatically turn it into the next big fad.

One thing it proves is that if I'm willing to wear whatever I sew with pride, and perhaps a high priced tag trailing from the sleeve, I never need to unpick again! 

Do you like fads? Do you sew? What kind of handiwork do you do?

It just looked weird

While driving along the highway with Bob and Carolyn, I spied this most interesting cloud that seemed to have bumped up against a mountain wall. I asked Bob to take a picture for me, but he suggested that I just stop and take my own picture.

So I did.

Have you ever seen a cloud formation that looks like it could be steam coming from the ground?

*Gasp* ARE WE TURNING INTO YELLOWSTONE PARK?!