Sophie's Story

There has been a lot of bad news this year. I don't think I need to recap any of it for you. It is almost beginning to seem like there is nothing good happening at all. There are some brave souls who are trying to combat this. My friend,Carol, sent me a link to a website that only broadcasts good news. President Thomas Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints observed, "While there are some things wrong in the world today,there are many things right," I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of hearing about the bad economy, the bad politicians and the fact that the whole country is going to H. E. double hockey sticks in a hand basket. I am pleased to say that several good things happened to our family this year and I'm going to tell you about a few of them. Carrie finished her first year of college this past spring and did well. She enjoyed school and spent a carefree summer doing some travelling to visit family in New York and Texas. When S

I was having a stressful week. Cooking for company at Christmas, working trying to keep the house neat. Worrying the the gifts I ordered would not come on time. Hoping that I would have enough Christmas cookies for Christmas. We were planning to have a small party on New Years Day. The house was a mess. I wasn't sure how many were coming. I wasn't sure what I would feed them or when I would buy groceries since the weather was supposed to be bad. C was working overtime and unable to help. I didn't need the cats to have an accident in the living room, but that is exactly what happened. I'm not sure why two healthy cats would choose to relieve themselves in a corner of the living room when they have three perfectly good litter boxes that would be much better. They are electing to stay silent on the matter so I will never know. Before going to the Internet for information on how to rid my house of the smell I went to Facebook. There was a message from Lissa. Lis

Carrie announced her intention to move out at the end of the month about four weeks ago. My first reaction was to try to talk her out of it. I didn't think it was a good idea. Part of the reason why she moved in in the first place was to save money and so that she could concentrate on her studies without having to worry about anything else. The program she is in is fairly difficult. She would not be able to work a part or even three quarter time job and maintain the grades she needs to to keep her scholarships. My cold practical side was not happy with the fact that she would need to use her savings to pay rent and living expenses. What would happen if she needed that money for school next year, I wondered. What if her financial aid next year would not be enough to cover her needs? Did she think this over at all? I worried that it was something I said or did. I know this sounds really silly, but as a stepmother I worry about this stuff once in awhile. I worried that other

"Greeting cards have all been sent. The Christmas rush is through, but I still have one wish to make. A special one for you." 'Merry Christmas, Darling' The Carpenters There are a few cards that have not been sent. Most of the presents that I ordered have arrived and are wrapped. For me, the Christmas rush is through. I have baked as many cookies as I can. The house has a few decorations. C has repaired the tree lights that Colby chewed through. It's Christmas Eve. I will be going to work today, filling the last few prescriptions for people to pick up. Watching people rush around looking for last minute items. The store closes at 4 PM. C and I will enjoy a dinner of chicken parmesan that we will prepare together. After we clean up the kitchen, the festivities will start. The first thing we will do is find a TV station that has "Yule Log" on. Yule Log is a picture of a fire in a fireplace with Christmas music playing in the background. I pref

The past few days C and I have been shovelling snow. After the last snowfall on Monday, C did not think shoveling was needed. I disagreed. I was afraid that my car would slide on the loose snow and into the side of the house. So we cleared the snow. Later that afternoon my back started to hurt. Really bad. I knew what had happened. Most likely I did not use good shoveling technique. I used my back too much instead of my legs and now I was experiencing the results. Fortunately for me being a health care professional I knew what to do (warmth,ibuprofen,mild activity) and what not to do (bed rest). In a weird way I'm glad this happened. I know that my back will get better and I did not do anything to my spine. I didn't do anything to a disc and there is no nerve pain. (I do know what that feels like.) I am getting a little taste of what life is like for several of my customers with back pain. That's not a bad thing. Sometimes health care professionals get a little sm

I got a letter from Elder Zee yesterday. He is one of my pen pals, out in this part of the country on a mission. His mission is about over and he will be returning home in three weeks. He is excited not only about going home to his family, but also be cause it is Christmas. He loves Christmas. Everything about it is fun for him. He and his brother missionaries have drawn names out of a hat to give presents to each other. He is going to read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" every day to his companion to get him into the spirit. He wants to find a Santa suit, if he can't find that he will get a hat. Elder Zee has always been enthusiastic. I'm amazed at it and I really hope that he stays that way. I'm not surprised at his attitude. I don't really share it though. December for most people in retail is something you get through. It means long hours, long lines and grumpy people. Even in a pharmacy people are in a hurry either due to the weather or events t

There was a snow storm this weekend. We got close to two feet of snow on the ground. While snowstorms are not unusual for Minnesota this is a lot more snow than we've had in the past few years. C and I spent a lovely day indoors as we couldn't get out of the drive way. We worked on Christmas cards and watched a movie. I thought we should shovel the driveway, but C didn't think it would be worth it. The snow was still falling and then the wind was supposed to start blowing. I was worried about the amount of snow we'd need to clear, but C had a good point. This morning I was up at 5:15 am thinking about starting to shovel. I knew it would be an all day task and thought to get an early start. It was still dark though and being unable to see would be a problem. Also I wasn't sure how cold it was outside. Waiting until sunrise would be warmer. Three hours later, I was bundled up and ready to go. I surveyed the driveway and got to work. It was a lot harder than I

"I don't like this!" the woman exclaimed, "You're over here and the bathroom is over there. Why can't they just leave things alone! They were working fine just they way they were!" I nodded in acknowledgement as I have been doing for all the complaints about the pharmacy moving to its new location in the store. Privately, I thought it was one of the stupidest complaints I'd heard and I've been hearing plenty since we moved into our new spot almost a month ago. The fact is things weren't working. The new pharmacy has much more light, is much more open and has a space where we can consult with someone privately without blocking any aisles. Since we are no longer near the door, it's warmer and there is a more comfortable waiting area. We have a rubber floor which is much kinder to the feet and backs of those who work there. I feel safer being away from the door, there are a lot of crazy people out there. Someone thinking of robbing the

Frank came back to our house the day after Thanksgiving right on schedule. Frank, for those of you who don't know him, is an Elf on the Shelf. The 'Elf on the Shelf" is a Christmas book about a tradition that a family started. The Elf would show up after Thanksgiving and serve as a scout for Santa Claus letting him know how the children in the house were doing. Every night he would go back to the North Pole to report and in the morning he would be in the house, but in a new spot. Children could talk to the Elf, but he would not be allowed to talk to them. He could, however, "talk" to the adults. Since we have no children, except grandchildren that visit once in awhile, we had to tweak this tradition a bit. We decided that every other evening one of us would "hide" the Elf for the other to find the next morning. When you buy an Elf you have the option of going online and giving it a name. We named our Frank after Frank Sinatra, my favourite singer. In

In case you've missed the news, Prince William of Wales has become engaged to his long time girlfriend, Catherine Middleton (Kate). There were the obligatory photos of the two of them when the news was announced. The was quite a bit of press regarding her engagement ring, a sapphire surrounded by diamonds that his father gave to his mother as an engagement ring. Some people thought it romantic and some people thought it was creepy, given what eventually happened to the marriage and to Diana,Princess of Wales. I think it's just fine. It is a nice looking ring and shouldn't be sitting in some vault somewhere. It wouldn't be the first time a man has given a woman a family heirloom as an engagement ring. A few days after the engagement was announced a customer of mine noticed my ring. "It's Diana's ring!", she exclaimed. She was the first of several people who remarked that my wedding ring looked a lot like the one currently gracing the hand of Miss Mid

Hi Everyone! This is Scamp. Sophie is making Colby and me write this. For some reason she doesn't realise that we are house cats and are thankful for the same things pretty much all the time. Don't get me wrong, I love my life and I prefer it this way, it's not high on the excitement scale. So, here it goes. I am thankful for my humans. I'm not saying this because I have been promised a treat after I'm done writing. I really mean it. Our humans are good. I like Sophie's hair. I like to sniff it and chew on it especially after she's washed it or even better after it's been coloured. I love freshly coloured hair. Carrie has nice hair too. I'm thankful for grooming sessions. I need them so that I look my best. I am a beautiful cat, with long,silky,black striped fur and it takes some effort to look this good. I'm thankful for milk. Milk is very good for me and Sophie keeps some special cat milk on hand. It tastes good too. I'm also th

I have started my celebration of Thanksgiving this week. It hard to celebrate Thanksgiving these days. Everywhere around me it seems that people are putting up Christmas items and stores are competing for buyers already. I am irate at the thought that a holiday that is supposed to celebrate giving thanks and selflessness is being pushed aside in favour of Christmas, which is now a holiday of relentless consumerism. Yeach! C and I are very big on giving thanks. There are several times in our lives before we knew each other and after where kindness from someone made a big difference. We take very seriously the verse from St. Luke "For unto whomsoever much is given,of him shall be much required" (12:48 KJV). C practices tithing after the custom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I do a variation on this. Since I do not belong to a church to contribute a tithe to, I take my 10 percent and put it into our savings account. If we run into an issue where money cou

C and I have a standing date every other Friday night to go grocery shopping. Yes, while most couples are ordering the appetizer and working on the first glass of wine,C is at the deli counter getting some sliced ham and I am looking for some sushi. Since we religiously follow the rule of not going to the grocery store hungry we will sometimes grab a quick (or not so quick) bite before we start shopping. We like to go to different places when we can. C had heard about this really good barbecue place from some coworkers. He went there alone once to scout the place out. He liked it so much that he brought me a bit of food to sample at work and we decided that that is where we would eat before our shopping date. It turned out that we had both eaten late lunch on Friday so we shopped first. After our purchases were loaded into the car we headed off to Dickey's Barbecue Pit. I liked the place the moment we stepped inside. It was small, with tables on one side and a long counter

Catalog season is now upon us. From now until the middle of January I'm going to get about half a ton of catalogs in the mail. Thankfully we have a post office box so I won't have to worry about our letter carrier getting a hernia. I like to at least look through most of them. Some of them have a lot of nice things or interesting things but are either too expensive or too impractical for us. I get catalogs from businesses I'd never order from. I'm surprised at how many. I always though the Internet would cut down on this. Oh well... I got one catalog from a place that sells educational type toys. I have no idea how I got this as I have no kids and don't order from places that I thought would share a list with a toy store. I looked at it anyway and was instantly jealous. This is a really cool catalog, it has all kinds of educational toys in it. There are all kinds of games and puzzles. They have Rubik's cubes,books with brainteasers and logic puzzles bo

I had a song stuck in my head. It was the latest song by Taylor Swift. It had been playing in my head for the better part of two hours and I was getting tired of it. It's not that I have anything against Taylor Swift. It's nice to see a female vocalist that can play guitar and write. I even sort of like 'You Belong With Me'. Her phrasing is atrocious though, but that's another story. The fact is, most of her songs are about being a teenager. I'm 41 and not interested in that anymore. I would prefer something more mature. Normally I can hear the Muzak playing throughout the store and that helps. The channel that is usually on is like a radio station minus the commercials and plays a variety of soft rock type music and a bit of country. Usually I can find a song to replace what's stuck in my head. Unfortunately for the past week or so someone has chosen the elevator music channel. You know what I'm talking about. It's the one with popular songs on

I like writing letters. I also like getting letters. It's a toss up as to which I like more. I like choosing a pen (preferably black roller ball gel ink pens medium point) and good stationery (very hard to find so I use a composition tablet these days) I like sitting down with a cup of tea and writing to someone. I also like opening the mailbox and seeing familiar handwriting. It's almost like Christmas for me. With email,texting and social networking websites few people write letters anymore. That's very sad. Writing a letter is more than just putting information on paper, it's a way of letting someone know that they mean enough to you to actually take time to write. Letter writing is a dying art which is unfortunate as a lot of history has been chronicled via letters. I have had several pen pals over the years. Eventually we lose track of each other or something else happens and the letters stop coming. My last pen pal was my stepdaughter Elin. She no longer has

We heard from Lissa yesterday. She is daughter of a close friend from high school. She spent the summer working in South Dakota, decided that she didn't want to live there and moved to Las Vegas to be closer to her boyfriend. We've heard from her on and off the past few years as she's moved to different cities and worked different jobs. She had some big news to tell us, were we sitting down? Nervously we each took a seat. I've known her since she was an infant so I braced myself for the worst. Then she told us. She and Kurt got married the day before at a drive thru wedding chapel in Las Vegas. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then.... Wait a minute! Drive Thru!? You can get married in a drive thru?! I understand eloping, I couldn't see Lis going for the whole big white dress thing in a church, but a drive thru? How do you do that? "I want a Coke, large fries, two hamburgers and a marriage license. Could we customize the vows please?" "That w

As you may have guessed, C and I spent last week in Door County Wisconsin. This is a trip we take every year. We had a very good time and the weather was perfect. I'm pretty sure that this was the best weather we experienced over there. We are home now. All of the things we bought are spread out all over the dining room. Scamp and Colby gave us a warm welcome on our return. I guess they didn't want to play with the cat sitter who came in once a day to care for them. I thought I would share a few snapshots from our trip. We meet lots of interesting people on these trips. We've met a scrimshander, someone who creates works of art on ivory. We met a funeral director from Chicago and his wife. We met a pair of young lawyers, who after spending a lot of time and money on law school, decided that they hated practicing law and wanted to do something else. I'm not sure what the male half wanted to do, but the female half wanted to become a make-up artist. This year

C and I decided to hit the Bayside Tavern tonight. The Bayside is a bar in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. It is a lot like small town bars all over the Midwest. Neon beer signs on the wall,game schedules on the walls and a few large screen TVs so the patrons can watch the game. (Whatever happens to be on). It was also very smoky,but now that Wisconsin has a restaurant smoking ban the nicotine addicts have to go elsewhere for their fix. It is also a place to get the best pizza in the county. We wouldn't have ever gone there except for the the advice of Mark, the innkeeper, several years ago. We have been enjoying it ever since. The game that is on all of the big screen TVs is the Texas/Yankees playoff game. Texas is ahead by one game. I'm hoping that Texas spanks the Yankees as it would be nice to see someone else playing. We like to sit in a corner booth so both of us can see the TV. A Yankee player had just scored a run and it was under review. They showed the hit from severa

The Sister Bay Fall Festival is this weekend. This is one of the last big events in Door County before some of the seasonal businesses close for the winter. It starts on Friday night and goes through Sunday. C and I usually miss the Fall Festival. We arrive in Door County on Saturday and spend the weekend doing other things or the Festival is the weekend before we arrive. This year we arrived on Friday. We stopped by the Festival after getting settled in to get the lay of the land and to look at the craft booths. They were starting to close up for the night, so we decided to come back on Saturday. Saturday morning we had breakfast and got caught up with the innkeeper who we haven't seen since last year. Then we set out. We decided to go into Fish Creek first to walk around. There was a parade which meant that that it would be very crowded and hard to get into town. We spent a few pleasant hours exploring the town and then headed north to Sister Bay. We like going to str

I had to give a speech at Toastmasters last week. For those of you that don't know TM is a club where people can learn better communication and leadership skills. We do this by giving speeches,practicing extemporaneous speaking and taking leadership roles within the club. Every Thursday I drive into Wisconsin for the seven AM meeting. I was looking forward to the speech. It was one I had given before, last fall. I was showing off my new dulcimer that I had bought in Door County about a month before. I thought I could do a better job and not many people came to the first speech so I thought I'd do it again. It was a busy week at work so I had almost no practice time. I wasn't worried though, I had done this before and had planned out what to say. I just needed to practice a song I wanted to play and write out an introduction and outline. I did both on Tuesday before the speech. The only thing that needed to be done was to tune the dulcimer. C agreed to tune it for m

I read two articles online today. The first one was how some Minnesota suburbs where starting to look into domestic partner registries. The other one was on how Americans are changing their thinking on gay marriage. This got me thinking, what is marriage? I know what some would say. Marriage is one man and one woman. That's not what I mean. Is marriage a legal contract between two consenting adults to live together sharing their possessions, debts and caring for any children that may occur from their union? Or Is marriage an agreement for two people to live together according to the dictates of whatever faith they practice and to raise any children they might have in that faith? This may seem like a silly question to ask, but it isn't. When C and I got married we had to get a license from the state we would be married in. We had to provide information about our parents,prove we were of age to marry without permission,swear that we were not related and in addition C had to

The Minnesota Historical Society is hosting a travelling exhibit called "Chocolate" for the next few months. Starting out from the Field Museum in Chicago the exhibit has been seen in museums all across the United States. It is all about the history of chocolate starting from its beginnings as a seed from the cacao tree to the candy that is familiar to all of us today. C and I were able to go to the sneak peak of the exhibit before it officially opened yesterday. The morning started with breakfast at the museum. There were eggs, breakfast potatoes and, in honor of the exhibit, chocolate french toast. There french toast was excellent, I'd never had it before. After the meal we went up to see the exhibit. In front of it was chef was talking about how to make Guatemalan chocolate. This is a kind that you drink. It is made from rounds or bars of pressed Guatemalan chocolate that is dissolved in water,mixed with a wooden device to make it frothy and served warm. There w

My grandmother had pots of African Violets in the living room windows. There would be two to three pots sitting on each sill. I liked looking at them. They were shades of purple, pink and white and very pretty. Grandma said I could pick one out and take it home with me. I thanked her and looked over each one before making my selection. When I got it home I took care of it as best I could. I kept it watered put it in a window. All the blossoms fell off and it was clear the plant was sick. I fertilized it, talked to it, kept it watered and did all I could to keep it alive. It died anyway. I felt really bad. Grandma had given me this wonderful plant and I killed it. I decided I had a black thumb. I tried growing other house plants with varying success. They would stay healthy but eventually all of them would die. I gave up. No plants for me, except for this vine thing I got that seemed to stay alive no matter what I did. Fast forward to 2008. After our cat,Ary, died a frien

The St Paul Minnesota Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints held their Stake Conference this past weekend. Stake Conference is when several Wards (congregations) gather together to listen to various speakers. These include people who live in the Stake,local church leadership and sometimes General Authorities (people with leadership positions over the church at large). One of the speakers at this fall's conference was Elder Gerrit Gong. Elder Gong was called to his position in the church this past April. He is 56 years old and married with four sons. He was educated at Brigham Young University and Oxford where he obtained his Ph.D. He was worked for the State Department and the United States Embassy in China. He was also a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities. One would think that reading the above paragraph a dry talk was in store. College professors have a stereotype of being rather stuffy,delivering boring "I know it all" type

I was cleaning out my wallet the other day trying to find something. It was stuffed with receipts,business cards, odd slips of paper and blank pieces of paper that were probably receipts at one time, but the ink has faded off. Obviously I need to clean it out more often. One thing I have quite a few of is loyalty cards. It seems to be the trend in business today that if you give a business your phone number, address and email, they give you a card that is supposed to give you all kinds of discounts and stuff. Some of these make sense Aveda,Petsmart,Petco,Hallmark,Godiva and Dunn Brothers. These are places I go to on a regular basis. Well...maybe not Godiva. Godiva is a special treat. I like the truffles and they have really good dark chocolate. Some of them make no sense. I found MGM liquor warehouse, Famous Footwear, DSD Footwear,Breadsmith and PB Loco. I think I may have gone to MGM looking for some cooking wine once. I don't go there on any kind of regular basis so how d

C likes to tell people that I am literally an answer to a prayer. He says that he realised that Heavenly Father would know the type of woman he should have in his life and asked for help in recognising that woman when he met her. I'm certain he did have a few ideas about what he would like. She'd have to be good looking,educated, like music and some other things. Maybe he had a few daydreams now and again. Then I came into the picture. He's told me several times that I am more than he could have ever wanted. I tend to be a bit skeptical of that kind of talk. Then I realised there is one thing he probably wished for that he didn't think he'd get. I like football. I'm sure I'm not the only woman that likes football, in fact I know I'm not. The stereotype does remain that women prefer to do anything except sit in front of a TV on fall weekends and watch the game. I started watching football with my Dad when I got out of college. Sin

C had some dental work done and needed to take some ibuprofen to work. I remembered that he had a bottle next to his bed on the night table. "Take the bottle by the bed!", I called out to him from the other room. I heard sounds of shuffling as he rooted around his side of the bed to look for the pills. A few minutes later he came out. "I can't find them, " he said. "Did you look under the bed?" I asked. He answered yes. "Did you look really well under the bed?" "Yes," he said "They are not in the bedroom." I knew they were there. I saw them when I put something in the trash can a few days ago. I knew no one had touched them. They were there, he just didn't see them. I went back into the bedroom, pulled up the dust ruffle and saw the bottle. I picked it up and handed it to him. "Honey, Where did you find it?!" he exclaimed, in an exasperated tone of voice. "Under the bed." "But I looked th

C and I went to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival yesterday. We had a very good time. I had been watching the weather the past few weeks. If the weather was going to be cool enough I was going to wear the noblewoman's costume I bought about 12 years ago. At that time I was dating a guy who worked at the Festival and was very into it. He had found a dress that he thought I might like. I tried it on and it fit. In fact it looked very good on me. It was my favourite shade of blue with dark gold accents. The outfit consisted of a gauze shift, a taffeta/satin underskirt, a velvet overskirt and a long sleeved blue velvet bodice with dark gold accents and a decorated front. I wore a matching blue velvet hat with a small black feather and a small blue pouch. Sometimes I would carry a pewter wine cup decorated with a Celtic knot pattern. I wore it every time I went to the Festival. Sometimes it would be way too hot to put it on, but I did. I had even worked up a character to be

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is holding their General Conference this weekend. Church members from throughout the world will gather at the convention center in Salt Lake City to listen to talks by the General Authorities and other church leaders. More will be watching on satellite TV and Internet broadcasts as well as audio broadcasts. Presiding over this gathering and giving several talks will be President Thomas S. Monson. I encourage people to listen to President Monson speak either at LDS.org or on YouTube. He is an excellent speaker and a great storyteller. You don't have to be a church member or even know much about the LDS faith to appreciate a speech given by President Monson. At age 83 he's been married for nearly 62 years and has three children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He illustrates his points with events taken from his life as well as quotes, poems and lines from musicals. My favourite talk by President Monson is one he g