Looking back over last week for something worth writing about, I had to stifle a long, long yawn. The week was routine and the routine was pretty dull. There were no spectacular sunrises or sunsets. The weather was just what we expect in mid-January here – cold and gray. We did experience our first dip into the negative digits when we hit minus two on Monday morning, but that wasn’t very exciting, just cold. We had a few flurries, but nothing notable. I actually found myself wishing for some real weather – anything, be it blizzard or thaw, just to have something remarkable to remark upon. I should be careful about what I wish for, but more on that later. We were looking forward to a visit from the Thayns this weekend, but that didn’t happen. It was just one of those weeks. Dull, duller, and dullest.
To keep my sanity during these winter doldrums, I have to keep reminding myself that they will not last forever. There are things coming just ahead to look forward to. It will soon be time to prune the orchard. That’s a big job requiring lots of physical exertion over several days outdoors. Just the sort of thing I need. Now all I need is some good pruning weather – a few days above freezing, preferably with some sunshine, and some available and willing helpers.
Soon it will be time to place my seed orders. That’s something I look forward to every year. I love it when, over several weeks, packages arrive by mail containing the seeds of this year’s garden. I’m not ordering much this year. I’m on a tight garden budget. And that’s because all available funds are going towards the biggest adventure of them all.
We are going to Italy next month! When they announced back in 2008 that the church was going to build a temple in Rome, we decided that, if at all possible, we would go to the open house. It’s been a long wait. They didn’t break ground on the temple until 2010 and then there were multiple delays after that. Now, more than ten years later, the time for the open house is finally here. It starts on January 28th. We have tickets to attend on the 15th of February, the next-to-the-last day. I have long dreamed of going to Italy. Stacey served her mission there back in 1981 and ‘82. While she was there, I kept track of the places where she was serving – Rome, Florence, and Naples – learning what I could from her letters to me and anything else I could find. I read voraciously about the Romans, the Medici, the Italian Renaissance, the art, the architecture. I immersed myself in the music of Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Respighi, Puccini, et al. I read the Italian novels of E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View. Years later, still fascinated with Italy, I read the wonderful books by Marlena de Blasi, A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and her other books. Now I’m actually going to go there! We are leaving on February 12th and will come back on the 19th. There are 14 of us going – me, Stacey, our children Miriam, Hannah, Josiah, Rachel and Tabor, my niece Elisabeth Shillig, my nephew Aaron Shillig and his wife Mandi, our friends Nancy Jones, Otilia Herrera and her sister Baudelia, and Gina Leete a friend who works with Hannah and Stacey.
To keep my sanity during these winter doldrums, I have to keep reminding myself that they will not last forever. There are things coming just ahead to look forward to. It will soon be time to prune the orchard. That’s a big job requiring lots of physical exertion over several days outdoors. Just the sort of thing I need. Now all I need is some good pruning weather – a few days above freezing, preferably with some sunshine, and some available and willing helpers.
Soon it will be time to place my seed orders. That’s something I look forward to every year. I love it when, over several weeks, packages arrive by mail containing the seeds of this year’s garden. I’m not ordering much this year. I’m on a tight garden budget. And that’s because all available funds are going towards the biggest adventure of them all.
We are going to Italy next month! When they announced back in 2008 that the church was going to build a temple in Rome, we decided that, if at all possible, we would go to the open house. It’s been a long wait. They didn’t break ground on the temple until 2010 and then there were multiple delays after that. Now, more than ten years later, the time for the open house is finally here. It starts on January 28th. We have tickets to attend on the 15th of February, the next-to-the-last day. I have long dreamed of going to Italy. Stacey served her mission there back in 1981 and ‘82. While she was there, I kept track of the places where she was serving – Rome, Florence, and Naples – learning what I could from her letters to me and anything else I could find. I read voraciously about the Romans, the Medici, the Italian Renaissance, the art, the architecture. I immersed myself in the music of Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Respighi, Puccini, et al. I read the Italian novels of E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View. Years later, still fascinated with Italy, I read the wonderful books by Marlena de Blasi, A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and her other books. Now I’m actually going to go there! We are leaving on February 12th and will come back on the 19th. There are 14 of us going – me, Stacey, our children Miriam, Hannah, Josiah, Rachel and Tabor, my niece Elisabeth Shillig, my nephew Aaron Shillig and his wife Mandi, our friends Nancy Jones, Otilia Herrera and her sister Baudelia, and Gina Leete a friend who works with Hannah and Stacey.
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| Sister Shillig in Pisa. |
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| Stacey at the Roman Colosseum. |
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| Stacey at the Tivoli Fountain in Rome. |
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| Sorella Shillig at the Vatican. |
We passed two anniversaries on the same day last week. The first was the 25th anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake that took place on January 17, 1994. We lived in Granada Hills, California, then – just a few miles from the epicenter. The epicenter was under California State University at Northridge, the university I graduated from. The earthquake happened at 4:30 a.m., just a half hour before my alarm was to go off. It was a terrifying experience. It felt like the world was heaving apart and sounded like a train was roaring through the house. We could see bright flashing from exploding transformers in the area. We could hear a myriad of car alarms going off and the sound of things falling and breaking. Then it was still and dark and quiet. I pushed the dresser that had fallen across our bed away and ran to check on the children. Everyone was okay. We gathered the children – we had five at the time – and went out through the debris to sit in our Suburban and listen to the radio. Over that day and the next weeks we cleaned up and tried to find some kind of normalcy while enduring ongoing and sometimes very intense aftershocks. The house was a wreck as every book had fallen from the shelves and every item in the kitchen in the cupboards and in the refrigerator was smashed and oozing on the kitchen floor. The children were so traumatized that they slept in bed with Stacey and me for the next six months. We survived, but things were never really the same after that. The world seemed unstable, liable to shake apart at any time again. It was an experience I hope never to repeat. I’m glad we now live in a place with very little seismic activity (we’ve felt two small earthquakes while we’ve lived here). That brings me to the second anniversary.
On January 17, 2000,we arrived at this house after a five day trek across the country with seven children, a dog, two cats, a cockatiel, and everything we owned loaded in a moving van towing our Toyota and everyone else riding in that same Suburban. That’s another experience I’m glad I will never have to repeat. We have lived here for 19 years now, by far the longest time I have lived in one place in my life. My life-long love of this place continues. I’m glad to have found the place where I belong. I love belonging to this place.
Now about wishing for weather. Midweek we started hearing warnings about a big winter storm headed our way on the weekend. I’ve grown rather cynical when it comes to catastrophic weather predictions. My theory is that the bigger the media hype, the bigger the dud it turns out to be. I think a lot of times the grocery stores pay the forecasters to bring on a panic just so they can clear their shelves. We heard all sorts of predictions ranging from four inches to twenty-four inches of snow. The main part of the storm arrived at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. It wasn’t much at the beginning and I thought I was right to doubt the forecasts. It never snowed hard, but it came down steadily and it’s still coming down. They called us at 9:00 last night to tell us that church was canceled. This morning I sent Josiah out to measure and there’s eight inches of snow on the ground. Now the wind has started to blow and there will be drifts. It has grown colder too. Last night when I went to bed it was 22° and when I got up this morning it was 11°. Right now the thermometer reads 9°. Tonight we’re going to drop well below zero and tomorrow our expected high temperature is only 3°. I think I’ll start wishing for a thaw now and hope I get the same result.
On January 17, 2000,we arrived at this house after a five day trek across the country with seven children, a dog, two cats, a cockatiel, and everything we owned loaded in a moving van towing our Toyota and everyone else riding in that same Suburban. That’s another experience I’m glad I will never have to repeat. We have lived here for 19 years now, by far the longest time I have lived in one place in my life. My life-long love of this place continues. I’m glad to have found the place where I belong. I love belonging to this place.
Now about wishing for weather. Midweek we started hearing warnings about a big winter storm headed our way on the weekend. I’ve grown rather cynical when it comes to catastrophic weather predictions. My theory is that the bigger the media hype, the bigger the dud it turns out to be. I think a lot of times the grocery stores pay the forecasters to bring on a panic just so they can clear their shelves. We heard all sorts of predictions ranging from four inches to twenty-four inches of snow. The main part of the storm arrived at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. It wasn’t much at the beginning and I thought I was right to doubt the forecasts. It never snowed hard, but it came down steadily and it’s still coming down. They called us at 9:00 last night to tell us that church was canceled. This morning I sent Josiah out to measure and there’s eight inches of snow on the ground. Now the wind has started to blow and there will be drifts. It has grown colder too. Last night when I went to bed it was 22° and when I got up this morning it was 11°. Right now the thermometer reads 9°. Tonight we’re going to drop well below zero and tomorrow our expected high temperature is only 3°. I think I’ll start wishing for a thaw now and hope I get the same result.
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| Eight inches of new snow this morning. |
So we are home all day today – no church and no need to go anywhere except to the barn to do chores later. We’ve settled in for the day. The wood stove is fired up and the house is comfortably cozy. I have a long queue of Tabernacle Choir music playing, to bring a Sabbath atmosphere into the house. Stacey made a nice breakfast for us (waffles with real maple syrup, bacon, and fried eggs) – something we never have time for on a typical Sunday morning. I have a little project for us to work on throughout the day, a few boxes of family photos and documents to sort through and organize. We’ve already found some real gems in the boxes just glancing through them. It will be a good Sabbath despite the weather.
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| One of the photos we found, taken around 1987. |
