Balance Restored (or I Counter My Husbands Building Skills)

Everyone who knows my husband knows he is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to building things. He is the kind of person that when you are waiting at the counter in the store, remarks on the actual construction of the counter top. He makes observations in hotel rooms about the grout lines, makes people nervous when they show him things….

You may remember Lola the pig, I think I have mentioned her a couple times on this blog.  Well, sweet Lola is rather hard on shelters.  If you are as blind as she is, and weigh 500#+ maybe you aren’t as graceful as a gazelle. Anyway, Lola has managed to destroy just about every shelter we have provided for her.  At this point, I’m a little frustrated…OK, I’m very frustrated.  We gave her the old goat shelter, but it turned out that she is a little large for turning around in it, and tore the back wall all to pieces.  Then she is a little big for the little door, it scraped her back.  So the other day, Scott and I turned the shelter around and took the rest of the back wall off.  Then I had the idea that I would just build an over head shade type shelter out the front for her to keep the sun and rain off her. 

A quick trip to Doug Jones sawmill for some rough cut lumber and I was all set.  I would have asked my husband, but he is already pretty busy lately, and since I had Monday off, I figured I could do it all on my own.  I did require my sister Nancy to come over and hold some posts for me initially, and she encouraged me with the following statements:

“Do you have any idea what you are doing?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what you are going for”

“You should see it from this angle”

And finally

“Why don’t you wait for your husband to get home”

Thoroughly inspired I continued on. After all, I have watched and assisted Scott many times.  Not to mention that I attempted to build a tree house and a general store when I was about 10. I had the tools necessary, the requisite lumber, and the will.  As they say, the proof is in the pudding.  Yes, I managed to do this all on my own. I didn’t need a tape measure or level. Nope just good old pioneering spirit. As my pictures will demonstrate, this is an edifice worthy of engineering study.  Indeed, Lola was excited and moved in right away.

Of course Scott had to come and take a look when he got home.  He then gave it his infamous “stare”  then said, “I’m just trying to figure out what you are going for”.   Going for??? Dude, I’m done! I believe I should have my own show on DIY, but in the meantime, I am currently doing bids for your home remodel!

Wanderlust

I traveled quite a bit growing up. My parents loved to cruise all over the lower 48, and we traveled to all kinds of historical sites.  Then in my late teens and early twenties, I traveled even more.  I lived in Iceland for a year and a half, travelled down to England, I have been to Hawaii and nearly every one of the lower 48.  For some unknown reason I also get a copy of Travel and Leisure (I am baffled who actually uses that magazine to plan their vacations). Anyway, I noticed in an add for Holland America Cruise line that they had 34 day European Cruises.  We started looking them up and were fascinated by 112 day round the world cruises, a mere $40,000 per person (based on double occupancy) for a mid level cabin.  Who leaves for 112 days???

I realized, very unexpectedly the other day, that I currently have very little interest in travel. I’m not sure why, I used to love it.  Scott asked me the other day what we were going to do this summer, we both scheduled a week off in July, and I honestly couldn’t drum up any interest in traveling anywhere.  I just want to stay home.   I wonder if that is normal, for wanderlust to eventually die?

The Family Curse

First of all I have to say, that for any others out there so afflicted, I feel your pain.

Yes, I suffer from this as well...I have

                         the family piano.....

 



When I was little my mother forced, yes forced me to take piano lessons. I didn't want to, but I was the bottom of 5 girls and my Mother's last hope. Honestly, I neither excelled or enjoyed the experience. When I started this forced labor, my parents had an old upright piano, for some reason (I thought my parents never would go for it) I convinced my mother that I would be much more interested in playing a new piano.  So they bought me one.....


Thirty some odd years later there it sits, collecting dust and holding knickknacks. I don't play it, my kids don't have any interest in playing. But I feel guilty, because my parents bought it for me when they probably couldn't really afford it, and now what??? It only gets used on Christmas Eve, I think the F sticks a little, but I don't worry about it, because I don't play it, Jackie or Allison the Younger does mmwwaahahahahaha.

A friend at work recently remarked that his parents were moving and planned on taking the family piano up to his little brother in Wyoming... they live in Delta. We laughed cruelly over his misfortune. And then we laughed over the misfortune of his future Elder's Quorum's that will have to move that piano so many times.

If you suffer from the this, I am so sorry. As for me, well.... when the old woman isn't paying attention, it might end up on Craigslist.

Over Reach or Stupidity?

All over the news that idiot in Nevada is putting people and animals in danger.  I really doubt that you will find anyone more against the overreach of the government than I am, but this idiot, that can't even form a proper sentence is totally in the wrong.

First of all, I had "a bunch of Mormon pioneer ancestors that settle on lands" as well, I don't think that makes me inherently have the right to just do what ever I want on that property.  If that were true, I could go camp in the dug out that my ancestors made on the side of the Manti temple.

Secondly, I grew up in a family that ran cows on US Forest Service and BLM land.  We had close to 10,000 private acres and ran cows on nearly ten times that with our cow permits for 1,200 head of cows.  We followed the rules, we bought the permits and paid  the yearly grazing fees for the privilege of grazing our cows on the peoples lands.

From what I have understood from the news reports Clive decided to stop paying his grazing fees back in 1993. Yes, for over 20 years he has allowed 1000 head of cattle to graze, for free on my land, your land, and your neighbors land.   You may be ok with that, after all you may generously think, "Well, I'm not using it that sounds good". But, trust me that is a pretty dangerous slope to go down.  For instance, the median between the highway is public land, maybe I could grow a garden there.

Then the story gets a little dicey as Clive claims that the reason they won't let his cows graze is because of the endangered Desert Tortoise, which wasn't placed on the endangered list until 1998.  Yet still the BLM attempted to work with the idiot for well over 14 years.

Clive claims he is willing to pay the grazing fees to the state of Nevada, but not to the feds because they haven't done anything to manage the land.  OK Clive, why didn't you write a check to the state of Nevada in the last 20 years???

Let me give you another example, in case you still aren't getting this.  The highways and roads that we all drive on are public roads.  The government -state, fed, and local maintain those roads. You can walk on all those roads for free, however for the privilege of driving on those roads I am required to license my vehicle and pay taxes on it. I'm pretty sure I don't like what they use most of those funds for.  I don't think Denver needs pretty medians more than I think that 5th street needs to be repaved. But just because I don't think that they are spending the money properly doesn't excuse me from paying my license and tax for my truck.

Now Clive has ginned up a whole lot of anger, especially from people that don't understand the grazing and permitting process. He is putting a whole lot of people in danger, was given multiple opportunities to round up his cattle before the feds came in and now is crying foul.  Mr, Clive is in the wrong, and I hope no one pays the ultimate price.  By the way Clive.... be sure come November to vote again for Harry Reid.... after all he's a Mormon elected by your state too.

***BTW, I know his name is actually Cloven, and I'm surprised it isn't LaCliven

Kassandra

WOW!!! 20 years ago today, a little girl came into our family that would change it forever.  I can't believe that in a few weeks she will be graduating from high school. She has beat so many odds and brought so much love to our family. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

KASSANDRA FULLER

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

When Mum isn't a very Good Word

A few weeks ago, thanks to a news report in the Daily Sentinel, I found out that a member of our ward was sentenced to 17 years of federal prison.  Mum was the word from the leadership in our ward, even though the investigation had been going on for over two years.  This man had been active in our ward, attending meetings with his family.  He had plead guilty was and sentenced to 17 years for distribution of child pornography, including a video that contained a three year old girl, and for email correspondence with a teenager that included video of himself doing a lot of things.

 Disclaimer….

First of all, the church that I attend doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to my Savior. It’s his name on the front, not mine.  I have neither the authority nor the audacity to tell anyone they cannot come into my Brother’s house.

I also believe in the rule of law, that people are innocent until proven guilty.

 HOWEVER…. Time for my Rant

I do not believe in ever, EVER, EVER being discreet for cockroaches. My responsibility as both in Primary and as an adult is to protect children.  The leadership in my ward decided that mum was a better word, and as a result, this person had access to children in our building. I don’t know now, and I may never know if this decision had any consequences on any children in my ward.  I was told that after the investigation began, that this man was watched by two members of our ward who were required to be with him in the building at all times.  Let me say, I don’t believe that was true.  Without knowing I would have easily left him alone, for instance in the nursery, while he was dropping off his child, while I ran down the hall to get water. Because I didn’t have a clue.

As a victim myself in my childhood perhaps I am biased, but I truly believe that as soon as the allegations were made our Bishops (there have been two since the investigation began) should have warned people that the investigation was ongoing, there was an issue and cause for concern. Instead, they believed that the feelings of the one overrode the safety of the innocent.  Remember, judges in Israel, you too will be judged.

The idea of exposing my precious children in Primary to a potential predator makes me beyond furious. It has taken me more than two weeks to calm down enough to blog about this. How dare the decision to protect the cockroach over innocent children was ever made. Cockroaches require two things the bright light shined on them and a giant shoe.

17 years now seems pretty light, and like my cousin who made headlines back in the 80's for her statement an Arizona legislator, sexual offenders should all be castrated.

My Desert

 
 

 I live in what is known as the high desert.  Many people think it is ugly, brown, barren.  But they don't know my desert like I know my desert.  Every season I watched this amazing place transform week by week.  This week, it's the Primrose's turn to start blooming. Beautiful patches of little white flowers, along with a few others.  I think I have loved the desert even when I was little.

These are some of today's jewels

 

The desert gets a lovely green sheen in late May and early June, cactus flowers and flox, thistle and sage blooms. 

I love the desert, it is filled with organisms that have adapted to very harsh environment and not only lived, but thrived. Their beauty and determination inspire me and make me grateful that Heavenly Father appreciated variety as much as I do.

 

Grandma & Grandpa Whiting

 Ralph Eugene Whiting

RE Whiting

My grandpa, Ralph Eugene Whiting died in February of 1979.  I was 11 years old. His first marriage had been to a woman named Zella Berry, it was apparently somewhat of an arranged match. Two families very closely linked in the giant metropolis of St. Johns Arizona, seemed a perfect match. Zella was a few years older than Grandpa, and although married for several years, it didn’t appear to be quite as copacetic as hoped for. I have only seen a handful of pictures of Grandpa and Zella together…neither seem very happy.  One of the things that contributed to the difficulty of their marriage was the fact that they didn’t seem able to have children.  So they decided to adopt. Now part of this story is a bit dicey, but my understanding is that they “acquired” two boys (where? Maybe an orphanage in California, maybe one of the “Orphan Trains” that traveled around back then). Adoption was a totally different world back then. Anyway, Lester and another younger boy where brought into their home.  When it appeared that the marriage was definitely not working out, they sent the younger boy back.  Uncle Lester stayed, I’m not sure who he primary lived with. 

Next Grandpa met a young woman named Alice (Aliceson) Jane Darwin. She had recently moved from Alabama to Arizona because she suffered from “consumption” now known as TB. Word was that she was a genteel southern belle and he was a rough and tumble, divorcee sheep herder.  But love triumphed and they were married, despite her mother’s misgivings.  The claim is that everyone that knew Aliceson loved her, and she even taught Uncle Lester how to drive.  Even though she was told by her doctors to not get pregnant, Aliceson gave birth to a little girl named Anna June.  Aliceson did not die in childbirth as suggested in popular family lore, she actually lived about a month after giving birth and died on her birthday, January 17^th, little Anna June followed a few weeks later.



Heartbroken, Grandpa Whiting decided to go on a mission, and served three years on the Eastern States Mission. Upon his return he went to see his sister Myn who had married and was living in Los Angeles.  Myn’s husband was a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times, and had a daughter from a previous marriage.  That daughter was named Nellie Eliza Priestley.  Nellie (Nell) had herself just divorced shortly after giving birth to her oldest son.  She had moved from Salt Lake and was living with her father and step mother in Los Angeles, when Grandpa went for a visit.  She claimed that three days later he proposed while driving on a freeway.

 Nell was nearly 18 years younger than Ralph, and certainly more cultured.  However, we need to remember that society didn’t treat divorcee’s very well back in the 1920’s & 30s. My dad once told me that if his mother hadn’t been divorced she probably would have never looked twice at Ralph.  He also told me that while he didn’t think his parents loved each other when they married, that they grew to love each other very much over the years.



One thing is for certain, when I knew them, they were certainly devoted to each other. My Grandma had a passion for theater, music, parties, and productions.  My Grandpa was a business man, but he was patient and supportive of his wife who always had a project going on, from Easter Contata’s to a pagent on the side of Kannah Creek hill, to a huge luau.

I’m not sure why I’m blogging about my Grandma & Grandpa Whiting today, maybe because I seem to have as many projects as my grandma, or because we are getting ready to gear up for hosting the reunion in July 2015.  I wish a couple things though…I wish my Grandma would have liked me and I wish I could have spent more time with my Grandpa.



CHANGE Is Hard

Jumping on the ipad wagon early, Scott and I both got the original ipad.  Happy and content we settled in to being “cool”. Sadly, we turned envious when iPad2’s came out with cameras, even Harriet had a newer “cooler” ipad than us. But still we shouldered on, we didn’t need cameras.  Then one day when my ipad was getting a little jiggy, I realized I hadn’t updated the software…only to discover my dinosaur wasn’t upgradable.  WHAT???  Yes, that meant that all the new apps, or upgrades to the current apps weren’t going to work on my very reliable companion. Not to mention I had spent a small fortune on all those sweet iPad covers…

 What now? Another iPad? But no printing capability. So many apps, but no office……

So a decision was made for a Surface 2. I’ll admit, it is taking me a while to get into it.  But I am determined to use this to its full capability.  One of the reasons that I chose this was because I wanted office, printing capability, the ability to blog, and do my checkbook on my tablet.  Unfortunately I have discovered that my beloved 2003 Quicken isn’t going to work on this tablet. I know, what’s the big deal? Online banking right? Well, for one thing, I have 4 checking accounts and 3 savings accounts, of which I use all of them.  Also, I have discovered there really aren’t very many apps out there yet for my Surface.  But the truth be known I didn’t use much more than Facebook and the Kindle on my iPad.

 To top off living outside my comfort zone, I have decided to move my email to a private email service and give up my incredibly long kannahcreekgirl@yahoo.com email address. I have discovered it would be easier to swim the English Channel.

Change is hard

Statistics that I Don't Get

I never took statistics in school.  Back in olden times a biology degree didn’t require it, one of the many benefits of going to college in the 1800’s I guess. Anyway, I don’t really understand a current statistic that I keep hearing on the radio.  There is an ad that talks about how 1 in every 6 people in America suffer from hunger.  Among children the number is 1 in 5, claiming that 50 million people in America suffer from hunger.

Then, because I read a lot of news sites I see that the food stamp program has increased, that over 15% of Americans are on the food stamp program, and that the US spends over 100 Billion (yes Billion) dollars a year on the food stamp program.  That means that 1 in 7 Americans are currently assisted with food stamps.

Then I read about the obesity epidemic, that over 34.9% of all adults are obese and that 17% of children are obese.

So I’m confused…ARE WE HUNGRY or ARE WE FAT or ARE WE HUNGRY BECAUSE WE ARE FAT AND WANT MORE FOOD???????

I don’t understand. Then to top it off, my child informs me that school lunch is disgusting thanks to Michelle Obama, and no one eats it. But I am curious as to how these numbers are generated, see I do understand how polls get skewed.  So if you were to ask my children in the 3^rd grade for instance,

“Have you ever been hungry?”

“Have you ever had to go to bed hungry?”

“Have you had times when there was nothing to eat in your house?”

My children would have answered yes, and trust me…it wasn’t because there wasn’t any food in our house. So I have a really hard time believing that in the country that feeds the world, spends billions for food stamps, that has churches passing out sack lunches and hot meals in the park, is hungry.

Razor

 

Legend has it that my first word was “Blue”. No we aren’t talking about the color, but rather the dog.  The family dog when I was little was named Blue, and when I was a baby we also got Ringo.  But Ringo wasn’t quite as tolerant of a toddler as Blue.  So you see, my animal loving started pretty early.  I was thinking about all the dogs in my life for the last 45 years, and there have been quite a few.  So I decided to narrow it down to my favorite, and I couldn’t.  While I loved Dudley, and all my dogs, I have decided that my two favorites would have to have been Ringo and Razor. Oh heck, maybe I can’t even narrow it down to just those two.

But, I decided that today’s flashback would be about Razor.  That amazing shelter dog that was an amazing find.

 

I don’t even remember why I decided I needed a dog again, I was in college working at Mervyn’s and for some reason ended up at the Humane Shelter.  There he was sitting back in the corner, not barking, and looking very afraid.  He was pretty big, but my main concern was how well he got along with little kids.  So the next day I remember taking a couple of nieces in to see how he reacted to them, he was so excited. So papers were filed and while I was finishing to fill them out, they brought him out to the lobby, he promptly stretched up on his back paws, put the front ones on the counter and made sure I was dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. He barely fit in my little Izuzu and sat in between the bucket seats all the way home, occasionally reaching over and giving me a huge lick up the side of my face. Once home, we never looked back, he was truly home.

Razor didn’t chase or kill anything that I remember, and I had a ton of outside cats running around.  He adored all the kids, would chase balls, and especially liked a particular squeaker type of ball that he would walk all around the yard squeaking…at any time of the day or night.  He knew when the motor home came out that we were heading someplace and would get all mopey and attempt to climb in.  Sometimes if we were just going up on the mountain, he got to come along.  The only time Razor acted aggressively was once when Mr. Bradbury came to talk to my dad, I was home alone, he mistakenly took a step toward me with his finger pointed at me…big mistake.  Fortunately I happened to be close to Razors collar and pulled him back.

Another point in Razor’s favor was that I had an old boyfriend that seemed to hang around the ranch long after we had broken up.  He hung out with my cousin Steve.  Anyway, he had a yappy dingo that would bait Razor from the back of the pickup everytime they went up the street.  One day Razor had had it, it came up as the truck was going up the street, reached in and snagged that stupid dog, pulled him on the pavement and beat the snot out of him. Mmwwwaahahhaha.

After Daddy died, Razor struggled with depression and passed away a few years later. An amazing dog that I can’t wait to see again.

Messin' With Your Female Parts

My niece Allison is due to have baby #4 this week, his name…Wyatt Donald Fuller.  Little Wyatt has made his mother very uncomfortable for the last several weeks.  Like all pregnant women, Allison has been fortunate enough to get all the horror stories, graphic descriptions, and other baby delivering stories that women feel the need to share with expectant mothers.  Yes, everywhere she goes people give her the “Oh when I had….” 

My thoughts however went in another direction, when I was little the one thing that my Dad informed me that I couldn’t do (at least while Grandpa Whiting was alive) was lift a hay bale.  Yes, family lore in the Whiting clan was that a woman lifting hay bales “messes up her insides and then she can’t have babies”. Considered a cardinal sin while my Grandpa was alive, I can assure you that since his death, I have personally lifted more than my share of hay bales.  And I’m pretty sure that the other Allison has too, did I mention this was  her #4?