2024.5.12 weekly

It's been a wild and unusual week.

Stick felt really sore and kind of awful last weekend. We thought maybe he'd hurt his back or pulled a muscle doing yard work. It continued to get worse and worse and we started wondering if it was his kidney or some other important organ.

Last Monday afternoon he had me look at his back to see if there was any bruising and I noticed a little bit of a red spotty rash, but no real bruising. He'd been putting a heated rice pack on the pain and we thought maybe the rash was from that. Late that night I looked again and I could see that the rash was pretty raised and hive-like and seemed to be getting worse. Early Tuesday morning, he miraculously was able to get in to our doctor and after a single glance, she diagnosed him with shingles! We are at the age where doctors start mentioning the shingles vaccine, but neither of us have done anything about it. I had shingles as a kid and I remember it being super awful, I had scarring on my back for a long time from the shingles.

It's been really awful and quite painful for him all week. He has a six inch wide scabby-rash from his belly button all the way around to his backbone. Basically right where his pants waistband and seatbelt hit. In addition to the painful rash, there's all kinds of terrible radiating internal pain. I will be scheduling my vaccine appointment this week.

Too add to his fun this week, he was scheduled to go to Houston on Wednesday. He left for the airport around 1pm in the afternoon and right at 3pm, when he was in the plane, sitting on the runway ready to go, a major storm blew in. Complete with pitch black skies, tornados, and dumping rain. (The storm knocked out our power for 12 hours.) Stick's plane sat on the runway for 2 hours waiting to leave and then once they were ready to leave, got turned back for mechanical problems. Everyone scrambled to book the next flight and he was able to get one leaving around 11pm. He waited around for hours for that flight and then after getting delayed a few times, they eventually cancelled that flight too. He got home around 1am. So twelve hours at the Charlotte airport, when he didn't feel well and then he just came home.

Stick fixed our stove top last week but we decided to get a new one because the current one is 16 years old and clearly on it's last leg. Then two days ago our freezer broke down, and our thermostat. We also bought a new seal for the bottom of our garage door because birds keep coming in a building nests in our garage. We love our house, but it's definitely starting to show it's age. Also we paid $1000 for one of the boy's cars to get fixed again. It's been quite the week for spending money that we didn't want to spend.

I finished my last week of seminary and school. Despite enjoying them both, I'm definitely looking forward to summer vacation. It was very satisfying to delete the 4:55am alarm on my phone.

School had been such an interesting experience this year. I started the year completely unprepared for the realities of the lives these kids are living. They tell me things that break my heart on a regular basis. I've cried more than once on my drive home over their terrible situations. Over the school year, I taught 400+ lessons to 17 students, including 4 Spanish speakers who came in January and don't know any English at all.

I've had three students tell me their dad is in jail, three of them have been seriously abused, only four of them live with both parents. One student tells me her family has no car and several of them have no adult in their lives that works. They all receive breakfast and lunch at school. Some of them don't have a bed/bedroom and they sleep on the couch. A few of them come clean and taken care of, but most come in dirty clothes and they smell like dirt or smoking. They miss a lot of school. If the adult in their lives can't get them out the door in time for the bus, and they miss it, then they miss school because no one can take them. They miss SO much school. One little boy has a pair of glasses that are completely being held together with electrical tape, and one girl told me she's supposed to get a hearing-aid but mom tells her they will get it later. One student told me her dad got murdered by his girlfriend. Most of them are attention starved and hug me every single day. Students that I don't even tutor see me in the hall and hug me. Yet, despite all these hard things, the students talk about Jesus and church, and two of my girls often want to pray before they do their timed reading practice.

I do not know if my job will be there in September, the state program that hired me was funded by Covid relief money and that money is now gone. If Lincoln county wants to continue the program, they'll have to fund it and we haven't heard yet if they will or not.

Bekah starts AP testing this week, which she's a little stressed about.

I planted a lot of California poppies this year. I worried that they'd all bloom while we were in Italy, but they finally started this week, and I love them.

We had an unwelcome visitor on our back porch this week, complete with nasty lumps that used to be some kind critter.

We celebrated our 28th anniversary this week. Stick found a really yummy restaurant called Webb Custom Kitchen that had amazing food and was built into a movie theater from the 1920's. It was a a fun date. We tried to go buy a me a new dress too, but dresses are impossible and I couldn't find a single thing.

Bekah made and served me a delicious breakfast in bed today for Mother's day. Our ward gave out Crumble cookies, which was a yummy change from the usual candy bar.