Sophie's Story

        Anyone who knows me well knows that I love the New Year's holiday. I'm a big fan of starting over and taking other chances. The idea of having the fresh slate of a new year makes me really happy. I also like celebrating the new year by eating junk food, staying up late and watching the clock strike midnight.      Something I like to do at this time is to make a list of things I 'd like to do or habits I'd like to develop this year. I don't like to make resolutions because things change during the year and priorities shift. Sometimes I manage to get most of the things on my list done. Sometimes, like this year, I have not.    A year ago at this time I wanted to practice all of my instruments regularly and learn ASL. I wanted to do better with time management and clean up my diet a bit. I also wanted to vary my exercise routine and knot socks.   I didn't get into the habit of instrument practice nor have I made any progress toward learning ASL. My time man

     This has been a different kind of Christmas day for me. Yule log was not on TV this morning. I didn't make a leisurely breakfast of popovers. Instead I woke up a  4 in the morning and tried to get back to sleep. At 20 to five I finally got up, went into the living room and turned on the tree lights. I read a book while Scamp curled up in my lap.    We had practiced our piece for Sacrament meeting a little bit the night before. I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I hoped it would go well.    I fed Scamp, gave him his medicine and sat down on the couch.  I listened to some spiritual stuff on You Tube. I sent Scamp into the bedroom to wake up C and headed to take a shower.    We wanted to get to church around 8:30 so we could practice a little bit. We needed to allow time for our instruments to literally warm up. We were giving someone a ride so we had to leave early.     After my shower I fixed myself a little food. We'd have popovers after church, but I needed a littl

     This past week I did something that I haven't done in a long time. I worked over 40 hours. One of the pharmacists tested postive for Covid which is a mandatory five days off per protocol. At the end of the five days, she still tested positive. That meant that she was going to be gone another five days. Since part of my job is to cover all vacations and time off, I covered her shifts.     It was busy and sometimes hard to keep up, but I also liked it. I got to interact with a lot of people. It was acutally fun.    The downside was that the things I had planned to do at home did not get done. This was compounded by the fact that there was a winter storm this week. I was afraid that when I got off work Wednesday night, we would have trouble getting home due to poor road condtions. Since I had to work Thursday morning, we stayed in a hotel in Hudson.    It was a nice hotel clean and comfortable. There was a hot tub and pool. Had I known about the hot tub, I would have brought a sw

        In the cemetery by St. Anthony's Church in Cumberland, Wisconsin is a small granite stone. The stone says God Bless Our Baby May 22,1935- December 1, 1935. It is the grave of Mary Jane. her parents are my aunt Christy and her husband Jim.     I found this stone when I was in junior high. I'm guessing I was paying my respects to Aunt Christy when I  stumbled upon this small stone. Until then I didn't know about Mary Jane. That isn't surprising since there is a 34 year gap between our births.    I've wondered about her on and off through the years. What was she like? Was she a happy baby or one that was sick a lot? Did she have hair? Did she look like Aunt Christy? Did her older sisters and brother like her? Did she cry a lot?     I wondered what happened to her. She died when she was six months old. Did she get sick? Did she born with some sort of genetic thing that shortened her life? Was there a accident? I'll never know the answers to these questions.

         Over the years I have had a love-hate relationship with Christmas. One thing I always liked to do was bake Christmas cookies. For many years it was the only things that made me happy during the month of December. The bad years were the years when I didn't have time to bake anything.     I started doing the holiday baking when I was un junior high school. I can't even remember the various things that I used to make. One of them was always fudge. The first year I hade it it was very good. Ever since then, I haven't been able to do it. Eventually I stopped trying.    I don't make quite as many things now. One thing I do make is cut out Christmas cookies. I use the recipe that Grandma Story used. I cut them out using the metal cookie cutters we used when we were children. These cookies are always frosted and decorated. I like to have help in decorating the cookies. Sometimes the help comes from C. This year the help will come from my parents. This year I'm goin

     Nearly every time I get my eyes checked, the prescription on my glasses changes. Occasionally it's so small a change that I can get away with without getting a new pair of glasses. Most of the time I have to do something I truly dislike, shopping for new frames.    It used to be that I would save frames that I like and simply have new lenses put into them. Since I now wear progressive bifocals, I had to get rid of the frames I had as they would not work with my current prescriptions.    Finding frames that fit my face is almost as hard as finding clothes that fit my body. I have a small face and not much of a bridge on my nose. The glasses that fit best are children's size, but they are  mostly made of plastic frames that would slide down my nose like a skier on a ski jump. I also prefer something a bit more mature looking.    This means I'm stuck looking in the adult section. I prefer a thin frame since my lenses, even with high index plastic, tend to be pretty thick.

     Ellen has been a friend of mine for several years. She's very artistic and likes to paint. She's come with me a couple of times to visit my parents. When she visits she bring paints, brushes and canvas and helps my Mom to paint a picture. With Ellen's guidance, Mom painted a picture of a poppy that was so good, I had it framed for her.    While they paint, I'm either baking some cookies or making other food. I would watch them while I was cooking. It looked like Mom was having fun. I asked Ellen if she and I could do that sometime.    Sometime finally came on Tuesday. Mac, Ellen's husband, and C decided to go to a movie. It was a historical war picture that Ellen was not interested in. I thought this would be a good time for us to paint. I found a picture of some lavender  and pink flowers that I liked and asked her if we could paint them. She found a corner of the picture that she thought would look nice. The first thing I did was paint the canvas dark green s