Sophie's Story

     Today is my birthday. The sun is out. The sky is blue and it looks like it will be a wonderful day. I have a nice cup of tea to sip on.     I've already heard from my Dad, a missionary serving in Africa, a childhood friend, a new friend, and a man who I jokingly call my twin. (His birthday is the same day as mine, but one year earlier.) I have studied my Scriptures and worked out. I've even put away a few dishes that I washed last night.    Today I'm taking a friend to lunch that I haven't seen in a long time. She used to be part of my Toastmasters group, but had to stop coming to meetings as she took a job working nights. We are going to a Indian restaurant that I have been to many times before. Today, I want to step out of my comfort zone a little. I want to try something I've never tried before. Since my friend knows a lot about Indian food, I asked her to help me.     I've decided that is what I want to do today. I want tod...

     There is a chance that a couple who are deaf may start coming to Sacrament meeting in our ward (congregation). (Sacrament meeting is what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints call our worship service.) As far as I know no one in the ward knows American Sign Language (ASL). Since this is the only way to communicate with them, other than writing on pieces of paper back and forth, it seems like some one should learn to sign. To me it is a way to make them feel welcome. Also I believe that it is only courtesy to try to communicate with them in the language that they speak, even if it is limited at least you are making the effort.    C found a series of videos online that are pretty good. My goal was to watch at least one video a week. Unfortunately my schedule doesn't allow for that. My progress has not been as fast as I would like, however I am determined to do better.    One thing I have discovered from the little ASL that I kn...

     Today is our 17th wedding anniversary. I looked back at a picture of us from our wedding. I looked at those two people posing in a garden. I'm holding a huge bouquet of flowers and wearing a big white dress with spaghetti straps. C is wearing a handsome black suit. That wedding took over a year to plan and was one of the more stressful things I've ever done. Part of my happiness that day was due to the fact that I wouldn't have to waste another minute of my time planning a wedding.     I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Neither of us did. All we knew was that we loved each other and wanted to spend the rest of time together. We had discussed many things during our long engagement. We knew that after the ceremony we would never have to face anything alone again. We would have hard times and good times. Our adventure was about to begin.    One of the things we didn't know was that we would move four times before our fifth anniversary...

      I noticed it when I turned off the light by our front door. There were three paper hearts on sticks stuck into the ground near my driveway. I looked out the window at the other side and found three more paper hearts. I couldn't make out what was written on them, but I was sure they would have some kind of encouraging message on them.    This is called a "heart attack". It's when a group of women from church leave heart shaped pieces of paper in your front yard or taped to your front door. It's not the first time this has happened to me. Several years ago after a very hard and long day at work, I found a bunch of hearts taped to my front door. A group of young women had cut them out, wrote on them and put them on the door. I was puzzled about this one. I wasn't going through a hard time. There was no reason for these hearts to show up. I sent a text to the person I thought was responsible to thank her and also ask what was up.    They had put hear...

     Yesterday C and I went to watch a performance of a local high school band. The first part of the performance showed the band doing various fundamental marching band skills such as turning right and left, marching backwards and other moves. One of the things that caught my eye was a marching band member in a wheelchair who was pushed by another student according to commands.    At one point in the program the director invited the band members to select someone from those watching to "teach" the skills they had just demonstrated.  C, after a bit of finger pointing with a set of parents, we know bounded onto the field. He had been summoned by a trombone player whose father is a friend of C.     Part of me was relieved. I was nervous I'd get chosen and my left-right confusion would be on full display. The other part of me was irritated that C was participating. We were there to watch, not participate and the trombone player should have had h...

   Thanks to the Delta variant we are back to wearing masks at work. Again. I also see that some places are considering mask mandates again. Some governors have issued orders specifically banning mask mandates.  The level of outrage I'm seeing against wearing masks is something I do not understand. Some people are acting like spoiled children at a candy store when it comes to the topic of masks. Their rights are being violated. The whole virus thing is a hoax. Masks don't prevent anything.    If masks don't prevent disease from spreading then why do surgeons wear them when they operate on people? When I was a nurse's aid caring for a patient who had TB why did I have to wear one?    As for the issue of violated rights, I have made a list of things that I and others in society have to do that are a clear violation of rights.     I used to see signs in stores that said, "No shoes, No shirt, No service". It's perfectly legal for a business ...

     One of the activities in a Toastmaster meeting is called Table Topics. It's an exercise designed to practice extemporaneous speaking.  The Table Topics Master (always Master, never Mistress) prepares questions or a question and calls on volunteers or selects people at the meeting to answer them. The person answering the question needs to speak for at least 30 seconds and not more than two minutes 29 seconds. The goal is to put together an understandable response with as few filler words as possible.    I love table Topics. It's my favourite part of Toastmasters and the main reason why I joined. The ability to speak off the cuff is valuable to someone who has a job that involves answering all kinds of questions. I also enjoy being the table Topics Master. I like coming up with questions that are difficult enough to require thought but not so difficult as to make them unanswerable.    Sometimes when we have a meeting where no one has signed up ...

     Normally I don't watch or comment on the Olympics, but a couple of news stories coming out of Tokyo have caught my attention.     The first was a couple of stories with a headline that a team (or person) settled for silver. These headlines always bother me because I consider them to be a bit demeaning. It implies that only a gold medal is good. The silver and bronze are consolation prizes.    I suppose this is an expression of the ,"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing", mindset predominate in our culture today. The gold medal winner is the one standing on top and is the one who gets all the attention. Second and third are just not worthy of much attention.    To me this unfair at best and sick and twisted at worst. The silver and bronze winners worked hard to get to a point where they could compete. They did their best and they placed high enough to win a medal. That deserves some respect. I'm sure that those who placed fo...