Sophie's Story

   C and I have run away from home for the weekend. Between the stress of the system conversion at the store and some family matters that we have been dealing with over the last several weeks, it was time for a short break.   We decided that a long weekend in Chicago was the the ticket. We would go and leave our worries behind us for a few days. We would come back refreshed, well rested and ready to go again.   We started out for Chicago on Thursday morning stopping in Small Town to attend my weekly Toastmasters meeting. C was greeted with enthusiasm. He had joined for a brief period and many in the club remembered him and welcomed him. In fact he was called on to be a Table Topics speaker. At the end of the meeting he was given an award for being the best Table Topics speaker at the meeting.   We stopped briefly at the post meeting social time to catch up on a few matters.Then we were on our way.    We drove through Wisconsin listening to music, doing a little chatting and notin

    I came to work Monday feeling tired and discouraged. We had survived my boss's vacation last week thanks to some extra help given to us by the scheduler. Still, I was tired and drained. Because of the amount of work created by the new system conversion I was only taking weekends off. This means that my boss and I are working 14 days on and two days off. We stay up to ten hours a day.   I had taken two interns this summer. I was hoping to have an intern from North Dakota, but my site was not needed this year. I had made out my intern schedule before I  knew our conversion date. By the time out date was set, it was too late to cancel the slots from my schedule.   As a result I wasn't able to be the type of hands on truly involved preceptor I was used to being. Many times my intern spent several hours researching assignments while I struggled to keep up with the rush of customers in the pharmacy. My last intern wasn't able to meet all the school assigned requirements.

   A few weeks ago we had an excellent lesson on forgiveness in Relief Society. Forgiveness is something I've been struggling with for most of my adult life. As someone who practices Christianity, I am required to forgive. There are several commandments in the Scriptures that talk about forgiveness and the penalties for failing to do so.   Once in awhile you see heartwarming stories about people who have forgiven others. One example is the shooting of several children at an Amish school in 2006. Besides stories about the shooting and how it occurred, there were also several stories of how the Amish people reached out to the family of the shooter. (The shooter had killed himself.) The Amish invited the shooter's widow to attend the funeral for the girls that had been killed and many Amish attended the shooter's funeral. I also read a story of a woman who was seriously injured when a teenaged boy threw a frozen turkey through her windshield. She forgave the teen who threw

  A month or so ago my friend Helen, came to me with a bag in her hand. She asked me if I wanted it. Inside the bag was a partially knitted scarf and some balls of yarn. She had started the scarf, but decided that it wouldn't look good on her.   I peeked inside the bad and knew instantly that I would happily take this project off her hands. The scarf was beautiful and the yarn looked like it would be fun to work with. It was very bulky and was worked on the largest needles I have ever seen. Even though it would be breaking my one project at a time rule, I took the scarf.   I loved working on it. The yarn was one of those that changed between thick and thin. It was also self patterning which meant that the colours changed too. The scarf was actually two yarns knit together. the second yarn is called eyelash yarn. It's more like a thread with a fringe on it. It gives the scarf a fuzzy appearance. I really liked the look of the scarf and it gave me another idea. Using the two

  There's a part of me that wants to write about a certain group protesting here in the Twin Cities lately. I'm fighting the urge because most likely I'd get into trouble with someone. I can, on some level, understand their frustration and belief that they are being belittled and marginalized. What I don't understand is how they think their current methods of protest are going to help. So far all I see is that they are angering people and creating unsafe conditions for themselves and others.   Today I'm going to write about a pet peeve that lives in my "kennel of irritations", to use a phrase from a Whoopi Goldberg quote.   One of the thing I don't like about society in general is that many of us say things we don't really mean. We say things like "love you" and "I'm sorry" when we don't really mean them.   The fact that this is a pet peeve probably has to do with the writer in me. Overusing phrases like "I'

   Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Holocaust survivor, died last weekend. I watched a tribute on the CBS Sunday Morning show. I also read a snippet of an article that made me think. The article was about how his death is a double tragedy first because he was a "rare and unusual" man and also because the Holocaust survivors are dying out.   This last thought caught me the most. The writer was correct. Those voices are slowly fading away.    It is going to happen. Human lives are only so long. Eventually those who were survivors or have seen the horrors of World War II will die and their voices will be gone.   It's a disconcerting thought to me. Those people are first hand witnesses to death camps, bombings and the inhumanity that comes with war. They were there. As long as they are alive you can't pretend these things didn't happen. There is living proof.   Maybe it's me, but it seems like history is becoming less important. Learning or

  A few weeks ago C and I were out at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. We usually visit there on Saturdays. During the summer there is at least one wedding and sometimes up to three.   I was refilling my water bottle at a drinking fountain while watching a group of five bridesmaids in their dresses and sky high heels mingling in the hallway. My mind went back in time to our wedding now nearly twelve years ago. I remembered the stress of planning the wedding, picking out invitations,wondering if the minister would be all right marrying us since neither of us attended services. (My mother insisted on a church wedding.) I looked at those bridesmaids and shook my head. Thank heaven I'll never have to do that again.   I didn't think that I had spoken, but the grrom overheard me. "What do you mean?" he asked. "You're scaring me." I didn't have time to explain to him what I meant. I said, "Marriage is a wonderful thing. You won't regret it.