Books read May 2021

 Twelve books this month! Apparently I have been escaping reality within the pages of books this month. I have not read this many books in one month in a long time. Despite all this reading, I have been managing to keep our small garden flourishing as well. Two of the five potato plants are up--once the other three are up, everything planted will be up and growing!

And now for the books:

1. The house in the cerulean sea by T.J. Klune. This was a lovely fiction book about magical children and the government agency responsible for their welfare. Agent Linus Baker, who writes very clear reports, is sent to a particular house on an island to report on the welfare of the children, and particularly to notice if Arthur Parnassus, the person in charge, is doing a good job. This book is about kindness and acceptance, and is a lovely read. (Cerulean is a kind of blue. But saying cerulean instead of blue--that helps you to imagine exactly the color of the sea.)

2. The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress. This steampunk YA novel was really interesting, and I was hoping for a sequel, because the Friday Society is formed in the very last chapter!! It is simply begging for more!! So I will be watching this author. Three girls in turn of the century (20th, not 21st) London randomly meet at a festival, and randomly fall into the need to solve the mystery of a murder. All three girls are basically orphans who work for men--a couple of nice men, and one who is not nice at all--so they are each a "girl Friday" to someone. Hence the Friday Society. (Canadian author)

3. Spencer Kimball's Record Collection: Essays on Mormon Music by Michael Hicks. My friend Michael retired from the School of Music at BYU, and this collection of essays he had written were published in this book soon after his retirement in 2020. Michael is a very interesting person, and there is not much that he doesn't know about the history of music in the LDS church. One thing that I learned from this book--or that I realized about Michael--is that he does not expect the church to be perfect. Like, too many LDS people DO--they just feel so threatened by imperfection. Michael is a convert to the church; he was raised protestant, and spent time as Pentacostal, but didn't join the LDS church because he thought it was perfect. So he can discuss things that might make some LDS people uncomfortable (because imperfections!) and like, he is okay with that. I do not think I am explaining it very well. He is just "so what?" about "mistakes"--like, of course there will be mistakes! (Because human!) So kind of refreshing.

4. Does this church make me look fat? by Rhoda Janzen. You may remember that last month I read Rhoda's first book. This lovely book continues with her life story after she met her second husband, who is a very committed Pentacostal. If you remember, she had left her own Mennonite faith behind as she journeyed through life...and surprises herself by completely falling for a man who is nothing like she expected! He is not an academic (her first husband was and so is she) but a motorcycle dude who doesn't drink and who is all churchy!! Rhoda is amazed because her man's son even likes going to church. What? She finds herself back to being an active church-goer, surprising herself. Lovely book. Beautiful explanation of tithing.

5. The vanishing act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell. Imagine that you were committed to an insane assylum at age 16, and 6o years, 5 months and four days later you are getting out because the facility is closing. Imagine that your great niece you have never met (didn't even know about) is taking custody of you. And she didn't know about you either! And now here you are together. In the first half of the 20th century men could put away "their" women--wives or daughters--for all kinds of things. Disobedience. Depression. And--sucked to be a woman then! This is actually a beautifully told story. I really liked it until I got to the ending. I hated the ending. So, do read it, but when you finish it, if you, like me, prefer to write your own ending in your head, then go for it. (UK author)

6. The Doctrine and Covenants -- the last one of the Standard Works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, since I have been reading my way through all of them--so I have read all of them in the past year and five months. 

7. Recipes for Love and Murder by Sally Andrew. Josie recommended this book to me, and I loved it. Tannie Maria is a South African woman (Afrikaans/English mix) who loves to cook. She writes a recipe column for a regional magazine, but her editor tells her that the publisher has decided to jettison the cooking column in exchange for an advice column. They decide to combine the two, since Tannie Maria needs her job! So, her advice to letter writers usually involves food. Tannie Maria and her friends are such lovely people. She reminds me a little bit of Alexander McCall Smith's Mama Ramotswe, but only a bit. Both are very comfortable women to spend time with, though! Recipes included, for those who are interested. (South African author)

8. Secret daughter: a novel by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. How can a poor family in India afford to raise a baby girl? That is what Usha's birth father wonders, and he thinks there is no good answer to that question. So when her older sister is born, that baby is disposed of. But her mother won't let that happen to Usha! She is spirited away to an orphanage and adopted by an American bi-racial couple. When she is grown, she decides to find out who she is. Her adoptive mother has not exactly supported Asha (as she is now known) to have much to do with her Indian heritage, even though her adopted father is Indian himself.  A lovely novel. (Author is Indian/Canadian/American)

9. Giacomo Meyerbeer: The deliberately forgotten composer by David Faiman. When we talk about the greats of classical music, we have Schumann and Mendelssohn and Wagner, but not Meyerbeer. And yet, in his day, he was considered a master. This book looks at antisemitism as a reason for the need to resurrect Meyerbeer's works after a century of neglect. (I already knew I didn't like Wagner--as a person--much. More fuel added to that fire.) Also I didn't realize that Meyerbeer's name was actually Meyer Beer. When he was making a name for himself in Italy, he put his first and last name together and took his father's name, Jacob, italianizing it to Giacomo. (Israeli author)

10. Stories of Raymond History by Jeanne Nalder McInelly. I belong to a Raymond Facebook group, and amid all the things to buy and sell, services sought or offered, and wrangling over different political points of view is the fresh air offered every few days by Jeanne Nalder McInelly as she writes the most interesting stories! The first one of hers that I read was shared by my cousin Ron, and was about roller skating in Raymond, which of course meant that my Uncle Frank and Aunt Celia were featured. I loved the story, so I joined the Raymond group. (You have to answer some questions to be allowed in. Like "Raymond, home of the first-----" (stampede) and "What is the name of the High School sports teams?" (comets) maybe a couple more...) She compiled only the January to April stories to make this lovely book, which sells at Barnes & Noble for less than $6. Shipping ups the cost--so that made me buy more books to get free shipping! It is good to support businesses! And it was a delightful read, if you have a past with this little town!

11. Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri. If I was going to buy a book from Barnes & Noble, this was a great choice!! I loved this book!! This is a fictionalized nonfiction account of how Daniel, his sister Dina, and their mother Sima came to have a fatwa on their heads, so had to leave Iran in a hurry, via Dubai to Italy and final accepted as refugees, sponsored by a couple in Oklahoma. Sima was a doctor, but in the United States, where her medical degree is not recognized, she works at all kinds of jobs, including as a cleaner at a hospital. With parents who were a dentist and a doctor, the Nayeri children were used to luxuries like candy, a swimming pool, toys. As refugees in Dubai and Italy, they had nothing. As refugees in Oklahoma, they end up in a little house with a violent stepfather and a bunch of stories that nobody believes. Very eye-opening about the refugee experience. (Iranian American author)

12. The silver gate by Kristin Bailey. I had to grab a book fast because I realized that I would be sitting in a doctor's office waiting for Josie, so this was the book that I grabbed! (There are no magazines anymore since COVID, and Sherlock on my phone has turned into a bit of a mess because I don't really understand applications on phones. So boredom without a book!) Though this historical fantasy is set in ages past, the child in the book has Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome and so society generally thinks she is a changeling. After their mother's death, Wynn's brother Elric quickly takes Wynn to run away, the only way he can save her from their father and the other villagers who think she is evil because she is different. 

What a Week!

 Last Saturday, as I looked to the week ahead, there was only one thing on the horizon: David and Ruth were reaching the long planned-for move from Prince George to Airdrie, Alberta. The sale of their fourplex in PG was going through on Tuesday morning, and then they would be getting into their rental moving truck and making the drive to Airdrie. It is a long drive, and the mountain passes are still snowy in May, so I thought that would be enough of a worry for me.

On Sunday, all of our children got onto a FaceTime call for Zoë's birthday, and that was fun. We talked about the coming week that seemed pretty normal. Except we could see that Abra was not the happiest, but I think she was having connectivity issues, and so it was hard to hear her.

Well, on Monday, Abra made the decision to move back to Alberta. She had been thinking about this for some time. BC is nice but expensive, and Abra does better when she lives closer to family. So she was also planning to leave on Tuesday. Maybe that would have been easier--if she and David had both been driving on the same day.  Monday was filled with helping Abra make decisions, and some attendant worrying, because that is what I do: I excel at worrying!! (Naturally, my other children were worrying with me. Some of them are excellent worriers, too!)

On Tuesday, it took longer for all the red-tape for David's sale to happen than expected, so they didn't get off until the later afternoon. So I got to worry a lot on Tuesday, especially when it was 8:46 PM when they were in Jasper! I mean, it is still light at that time in Alberta in late May, but that meant they still have a whole bunch of driving to do, partly through mountain ranges. I tried to sleep but woke up at 2 AM thinking "they should get there anytime" and finally falling back to sleep without hearing from them, though they did send me a message at 3:34 AM saying they had arrived.

Also on Tuesday, amid all the discussion about what was going on with Abra and David and their moves, Nancy let us all know that THEY are expecting a baby this year, too. Three babies in one year!!! This was absolutely shocking to me because I thought that Andrew had been snipped. I knew that DMBA has ridiculous snipping rules. Like, so ridiculous that it makes me a little bit angry. (I am being careless with the truth. It makes me more than a little bit angry.) Insurance companies being involved in medical decisions--so stupid!! So stupid!! But I thought that the snipping had probably happened since they moved to Georgia. I didn't ask, because not my business, but I just assumed because here was Nancy home schooling! And working on her own Master's Degree!!! Like, no way was a baby PLANNED with all of that going on!! But it turns out that due to COVID, elective surgeries are out. So. No snipping happened. 

Now, I am not unhappy about them having a baby--they are great parents! And I love babies so much!! So it is okay. But now I do have to worry about Nancy having a baby. That is a big worry to me, because having a baby is a BIG DEAL. Like, physically for the mother. In my opinion. If you have not seen the Heiss family's cute announcement about the baby, click on this link to find it.

On Wednesday, Abra had to go and buy a phone (graciously provided by her sister Kelli, but paid for by David via Piper on Monday, so that it was done before his big moving day on Tuesday) so that she would have communication possibilities while on a 13 hour solo drive through mountain pass after mountain pass after mountain pass. She had trouble trying to connect her phone to blue tooth, and that is a hard thing to help someone with when you yourself are clueless! She finally just left because it was already noon by then...so another drive that would go super late, or early depending on your point of view. Meanwhile in Airdrie, David and Ruth were working on the paperwork for the house they are buying. They were signing papers, but would not be getting access to the house until Thursday.

On Wednesday night, when I had a chat with Patrick on the phone, he told me that my sister's granddaughter Alexia is getting married in Idaho in July. That was not a worry, but it was something that was a part of my what a week! week. I went to bed very tired but very worried, because I had last heard from Piper at 9:26 PM, and Abra still had another mountain pass to cross at least.

I don't know when Abra arrived in Calgary for sure, but at 9 AM Piper answered my message and verified that her mother had arrived some time in the wee hours of Thursday. That was a relief! Still had to worry about David...and a new worry! Rosie! Her baby was due on June 2, but decided on a May birthday instead. Unknown to me (or I could have started worrying sooner) she and Austin had gone to the hospital on Wednesday night. Rosie only told Josie, but told her not to tell yet. So before I could even check with David to see how the accessing of their house was going, I got to start worrying about Rosie! Having babies is no small thing, and it always worries me when my people are having babies!

Kelli started chatting with her siblings about Rosie being about to have her baby at 3 AM that Thursday morning, but I was blissfully sleeping, trying to make up for the lost hours on Monday and Tuesday nights! So I awoke to quite the conversation in my messages! By the time Rosie actually told all of us that she was in the hospital about to have a baby, it was some time mid-morning. We had known for a while (for me) and a long time (for Josie who had been first to know, and for all the rest of them who had been awake to get the news at 3 AM) and some of us were getting worried, because it seemed she had been a long time at the hospital.

And by some of us, that included at least Nancy and I, who have had babies ourselves, and we did not like that Rosie had been in the hospital for so long and yet making so little progress. They had put her on a slow pitocin drip because of her MS, but I was super distressed that they had broken her water so early. Gah!!! I was pretty unhappy that she was in a bed and immobilized. Nancy and I both thought she should have been encouraged to move and stuff. Well. Suffice it to say that we worried all day.

We worried for David as the afternoon was creeping along and they didn't yet have possession of the house! My cousin Lori and her husband Jim picked up Ruth to make sure she got to eat and rest, since she is pretty pregnant. David hung out with the realtor, waiting for all the bank transfers to happen. But 5 PM came, and the last necessary transfer did not go through by the end of the business day. As Kelli teased him "So you and your pregnant wife are still homeless?" (At least they took advantage of the wait time to get the vents cleaned, and then the carpets cleaned--the realtor could go inside the house, but David could not; that was how the laws work.)

And we worried for Rosie who was on a fetal monitor, with an epidural, and a super slow labor. Then, by six and seven and eight, all was quiet. Too quiet. We are asking each other "Have you heard from Rosie." Nothing. Nine, ten. Kelli tells me she is going to bed; she and Allen have to drive to Las Vegas in the morning. Eleven. Nancy and I are texting "Have you heard anything?" I sent messages to both Rosie and Austin. Downstairs, Josie was up. The three of us--no possible way we could sleep until we heard from Rosie! Also Patrick was of course awake--he lives in Hawaii!

Finally at 11:56 PM Rosie sent a message: "It all happened so quickly. I was at 6cm at 6pm and then I started feeling contractions around 8pm and felt an urge to push so Austin got the nurse. She came and looked and I was at 10cm and baby's head was right there. I only pushed for almost 30 minutes. Then they handed her to me aaaand I started hemorrhaging. It was pretty bad and only now are things more normal. It was kinda scary and I needed a blood transfusion. But she's here and healthy and I'm good now. We'll take a picture later but we're all so exhausted from the last few hours. Her name is Ireland Rose Barker. 7lb 6oz 20.5" born at 9:03pm. She looks like she actually has a little bit of red hair."

So. Finally we could try to sleep. Still worried for Rosie. I am sorry! I worry about people having babies! The United States does not have a great record for maternal death in labor and delivery. I mean, they are not horrible like South Sudan or Chad, but neither are they good like Poland or Belarus. I mean, even Greece loses only 3 mothers per 100,000 births. You would expect the US to do better than Greece, wouldn't you? But no. For the US, it is 19! Canada is better, at 10, so I will worry less about Ruth when the time comes. So sue me. I worry. Especially when I can see the hospital making what look to me like really stupid decisions that are almost going to guarantee that the mother has a harder time than necessary (that will make the final bill that much larger so the hospital makes that much more money.) AARGH!!! (I know that I am biased against the US medical (non) system. They think they are sooooooo good and sooooooo superior when instead just AARGH!)

So all of that was Thursday. A loooong day of worry from tip to top. However, I did get a better sleep after the relief that Rosie and baby were okay.

Friday, David could not do anything more about his house until the offices opened at ten. Lawyer's hours. The problem had been that though he had a bridge agreement that was supposed to allow all the banking transactions to go through smoothly from the sale of one home to the purchase of another, the lawyer in Prince George had not signed off in time (maybe he forgot he had an extra hour that the lawyer in Alberta did not have before the banks closed?) so that stopped things until after ten on Friday morning. 

Friday morning, Kelli shared with me a picture that Rosie had sent her. I do not think Rosie loves this picture. This was taken just after the medical staff had saved her life (I am grateful for that--even though they mess things up for mothers, the medical personnel in the US DO know how to do emergency medicine very well!)

Rosie looks exhausted--for good reason! She reported: "I am good, mostly! They did a really good job stopping the bleeding and the medication they’ve given has helped with the blood loss being pretty normal. Austin and I are finally able to process everything from last night, we were in shock a bit and didn’t realize how stressful and scary the situation was in the moment because it started so quickly. My OB says she’s mostly seen my hemorrhage situation happen to mom’s who have a red head baby. Iree (ireland) has been great! She’s mostly calm and sleeps easily with the sound machine. She also just immediately got the hang of nursing and latches so easily. I don’t know if her hair is red, but Austin swears it is. And all the nurses and doctors keep commenting on how she got Austin’s hair. I hope it’s red, but I feel like I can’t fully see it haha."

Huh? Hemorrhage and red haired babies? That seems like an old wives' tale to me!! I shall have to check that out!

When I checked with David around noon, they still weren't into the house, but by 1:34 on Friday afternoon they were in!! Hurray!! Then they had to get the truck unloaded and returned to the rental place, which they did. So now, they are in their house surrounded with boxes.

Last night--Friday night was serenely quiet. It was my first worry-free sleep since Sunday night. That was a lot of stuff to pack into just one week!! I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30 feeling pretty refreshed, and without a boatload of worry rushing into my consciousness as soon as I woke up. Here is hoping next week is...less than. Just a normal old boring week sounds about right to me!

Bumpa Stories

Interview with Bruce Layton 25 April 2021 (Duration: 30 min. 5 sec.)

Me: Can you talk about your earliest memories?

Bruce: Well, Grandma told me when I was born I was a code blue baby, which meant I came out blue instead of the pinkish color you are supposed to, and I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck three times. And as I was growing, I had physical issues. I had chronic ear infections in both ears, and that impaired my speech so I had a speech impediment. I kind of sounded a little worse than a cartoon character named Elmer Fudd. I had a lazy R, so all my R’s sounded like W’s, and S’s and a few other things.

And what happened was when I had the ear infections, I could only hear half a word, and when I spoke, I only spoke the words in half because that’s all I knew. And to me, it was normal, but everybody else thought I was mentally impaired at the time. And I remember, must have been third grade, I had to give an oral repot and I didn’t want to do it. But the teacher made me do it, so I stood up in the front of the class, and the first couple of sentences, the class started laughing, so I turned around and looked at the teacher, took my report and threw it in the trash, and walked out of school. And it took them a couple of days to get me to go back.

And then they started sending me to a special class called remedial reading, and everybody nicknamed it the retarded class. So my early days of growing up were not the happiest.

And because I had a December birthday, I was always a half a year older or a half a year younger than my friends, so I didn’t fit along in there. But I got tired of having a winter birthday, so I sent out an invitation to everybody saying it was my birthday in July. And it was a surprise to Grandma when everybody started showing up with all these presents. Needless to say, I didn’t get a birthday in December that time! Haha!

I remember that we lived on a kind of busy street. It was ninth west. And I wanted to go play with a friend who lived across the street. I was in first or second grade, and he only lived a couple of blocks away, so I knew where he lived. But I had to cross the street, and I knew you had to cross the street at the cross walk, where the crossing lines were. So I walked up to the crossing lines, and proceeded to go across the street, and I noticed this car coming, so I stopped and turned around and went back to the curb. Well, the car saw me going across the street, so they stopped. When I turned around and noticed the car stopped, I started going across the road again. Well, she noticed me going back to the curb, so she started going again. So we both stopped and I went back to the curb and I noticed she was stopped—that happened about three of four times. Finally I got tired of it, and I guess she got tired of it, because I started running across the street, and she got the car going and I ran into the back end of the car. It knocked me out for a few seconds, I don’t remember what happened, but anyway, I got up and ran over to my friend’s house and we were out there playing when my mom, and the lady and a couple of cops came and I thought I was going to get arrested. But they wanted to make sure I was okay, which I was.

And in front of our house we had this humungous, I guess it was an elm tree, and all my brothers could climb it, except me. I couldn’t climb it. And about fifteen feet from the tree, we found a gopher hole. Well, there was a spider. At the time it looked like it was about the size of a softball but I’m sure it was about the size of a golf ball. And we went up to the hole and stomped on the ground, it would come out and chase you. We thought that was great. And it would come out about six inches and go back in the hole. I was out there by myself and I stomped on the ground, and the spider came out chasing me. And it never went back in the hole. And the only place I could go was up the tree. So thanks to that spider I learned how to climb trees. That never stopped us. We were always climbing and jumping off of things.

We would grab all the pillows in the house and put them in front of the refrigerator. And we would climb up on a chair, onto the table, onto the counter, all the way across to the refrigerator and climb up and jump off onto the pillows. My mom had a picture of Chuck and I dumping cereal in the big glass bowl. She could never figure out how we got the big glass bowl down, because it was in the top cupboard, and the cereal was also in the top cupboard, and yet we were on the floor dumping the cereal into the bowl. I don’t remember that, but we’ve got a picture of it.

Me: Did you guys have any Easter traditions?

Bruce: We just got new shoes, Tami got a new dress. If we needed it, we got new slacks and a tie, and that was it. We went over to my dad’s dad, Grandpa Russell. And they visited while we were out playing. We didn’t have any Easter hunts or whatever. It was kind of boring getting together—you know, it was good to get together with cousins, but we didn’t do anything at my grandma’s house, ‘cause Grandma [referring to Cleone] wouldn’t let us. She didn’t want us to get dirty. That’s all I can remember about Easter growing up.

Me: What about Christmas memories?

Bruce: The thing about Christmas is, well, I always liked to climb trees, and same with my brothers. So every Christmas when we got a tree and brought it in the house, it’d get knocked over every year. My dad got a little angry with that, so he brought home a tree and put it in a five gallon bucket filled with sand, and tied the Christmas tree to the curtain rod. And all it did—all of a sudden there was a loud crash, and when grandma and grandpa [referring to his parents] came running in, they saw four little boys standing around [saying] “We don’t know what happened. It fell over by itself.” So that’s one of the Christmases.

Pause, I prompt: your dad slept at the top of the stairs?

Bruce: Oh, yeah. That one. We lived in a split entry house, which means, you go in the front door, you have a choice of going downstairs or upstairs. But every Christmas we would sneak up and see what Santa brought us. Well, one year we were all sleeping downstairs, everybody, all six of us—Tami on up. And Santa came and we decided we wanted to see what Santa brought us. So us four [five] boys would come up and climb through the railing into the living room. [Bruce said Kevin was too young, but I think this is wrong, because Tami is younger than Kevin.] But Tami was too small to climb up there, so she tried to step over Grandpa, and she got halfway over when she slipped, and fell right on top of him, and so we were busted.

He [Bruce’s dad] figured, well we’re up, we might as well have Christmas. But we still couldn’t open up the presents till we had breakfast. I guess this was around five or six in the morning that this happened, so he just let us stay up.

Me: Did you have anything special for breakfast on Christmas?

Bruce: Just whatever, usually pancakes I guess. Which rolls into another story of us going out fishing, and we decided to have a pancake-eating contest. So Grandpa said, as long as you eat them, I’ll cook them. Between the four of us—me, Chuck, Ken and Bob, we must have devoured over 200 pancakes that morning. We ran out of floor, ran out of eggs, everything to make them with, so we had to quit eating.

Me: How did you feel?

Bruce: Oh, we felt fine. We’d get up and run around. We were just full of energy.

We would grab blankets and climb up on an old shed and jump off and hope the blanket would act as a parachute. Nope. Don’t try it; it doesn’t. Oh, by the way, I should have warned you at the beginning, anything I say, don’t try this at home. And if you do, don’t try it with parental supervision, ‘cause they won’t let you do it.

One day I was playing in the garage with a friend of mine, we were playing matchbox cars, and Chuck came up and asked if I knew where the matches were. I guess, but why? He said, “Oh, we’re going to build a torch.” Our torches would be—we’d get a can of soup, fill it up with dirt and douse the dirt with either gasoline or turpentine, any flammable fluid, and light it on fire, and there’d be a flame about three feet. Cool, you know, flash flame, woosh!! Anyway, I thought I didn’t want to do it. Chuck talked me into it. He said “It’ll be cool.”

So I got the matches, and we went out in the field behind our house. And – it was a can of turpentine, and we dumped it, soaked the dirt two or three times and lit it so it would, you know…[would flare]. We were there for a while. We thought the flame had gone out, but it had gotten so hot that we couldn’t see the flame. And when Chuck dumped more turpentine onto it, it flared up. And Chuck wheeled back the can, and everything would have been fine if Chuck’s friend hadn’t hit Chuck’s arm with the can of turpentine, and it tipped the can over on top of the fire, just as a breeze came and blew all the flames and fumes onto me. So I jumped up, I was running around catching the field on fire, when Chuck finally caught me and rolled me and put out the fire.

I ran over to a neighbor’s house because I knew she was a nurse, and I knew my mom wasn’t home. And she took a look at me and grabbed me and put me in the shower with cold water to stop the burning, ‘cause once the flames are out, it still burns inside, until you completely put it out. And, I don’t know, should I tell the gross part?

Me: Yeah.

Bruce: Well, as she was taking me into the shower, I got a glimpse of my face in the mirror, and I had gobs of skin just dangling off my face, kind of like one of those turkeys that has that hanging thingy. It was quite gross. And by that time, my mom had come home, and she came over to get me, and she didn’t realize how bad I was. And she couldn’t drive—she was too upset—so the neighbor drove, and along the way to the hospital there was a cop giving a lady a ticket. And so we stopped and got the cop to rush me to the hospital. And it would have been pretty cool, if I wasn’t in shock, sitting in the back of a cop car with the sirens going.

We went up to the Primary Children’s Hospital into the emergency room, and nobody was there. They had all decided to go on break at the same time. And I heard the cop say, “Just a minute!” And the next thing I knew I was put in a tub of ice and getting all my clothes cut off, and they were debating on whether they should put a tube down my throat, I can’t remember the technical word for it, where they cut your throat open and stick something in so you can breathe. They thought I was blind. They said my legs were so badly burned that I would never grow and possibly never walk again. And they put me in a coma for seven days, 7-8 days, and I came out of the coma. They stuck me, they stuck the bed to where I could look in the mirror. And what I saw in the mirror just horrified me. It was me. And thy had strapped my arms down with 2 x 4s because I had 8 IVs going in my arms at the same time to keep my body fluid. But even with my arms strapped down with the 2 x 4s I was able to reach and grab a bell and throw it at the mirror. That’s one of the first times I ever had good aim, but I hit the mirror with the bell and broke the mirror. And that brought everybody in.

They decided to do an experiment with me—why, I have no idea—but as a result of the experiment, I did not scar like everybody else who has burns. What they did was they put a wire cage over the top of me, and just covered me with a sheet, and about every 45 minutes they would come and peel the bottom sheet off of me. Oh, that was painful. After a while, I was able to get in a wheelchair, and then I had the wheelchair taken away 5 or 6 times a day because they couldn’t stop me going up and down the hall, and I would almost hit people.

Me: Didn’t your grandfather and your dad give you a blessing at some point in there?

Bruce: Yeah, they did. And in the blessing they also said I wouldn’t scar too noticeably. And… I keep jumping back and forth before the wheel chair… I couldn’t open my mouth any wider than to get a very thin slice of roast on a knife blade in between my lips. For dinner [one night] they gave me a humongous hot dog, and my mom was furious. And she went down to the kitchen and came back with a plate of roast beef and gravy and fed me. There was no way I could open my mouth wide enough to eat because of the scabs.

Then we got out of the Primary Children’s Hospital. I got to spend a couple of days at home before I went to the Holy Cross Hospital to get plastic surgery done on my legs. And after the surgery, I had to go to the bathroom, but I wouldn’t go ‘cause when I sat down, where they took the skin off was so close to my hip that it hurt every time I sat down. And when the doctors and nurses heard that I wouldn’t go to the bathroom because it hurt, they thought I was constipated. So they wanted to put a suppository in, and “No, I don’t need that! It hurts my leg!” And they kept insisting. And I kept fighting. So there I am, with skin grafts on both legs, in the hospital, and it took 4 nurses and 2 intern doctors just to hold me still and turn me over. At this time I was ten years old. To turn me over to put a suppository in me, and they couldn’t believe how strong I was. At the time, I did not want that thing. But they did it anyway.

Boy, jumping from year to year. When I was four—I think I was four—Chuck had to get his tonsils out, and I guess I did, too. So they scheduled us at the same time. Or one of us needed to get them out and they decided to get the other one—I don’t know how it happened, but anyway, Chuck and I were getting our tonsils out at the same time. And I got mad because they wouldn’t let me go in and watch Chuck get his tonsils out, ‘cause he went in first. So I kept climbing underneath the chairs and wouldn’t go with them, until they finally promised to give me my tonsils, which I was quite proud of. So, yah, I got my tonsils out, and they did give me the tonsils, which grossed Grandma out, and she threw them away a week later, and I was mad. Another thing they promised was I could have all the ice cream I could eat. Well, they could have promised me I could have anything in the world to eat, because you can’t eat anything after you get your tonsils out. You can’t swallow; it hurts too bad. So the ice cream—yeah, they promised all the ice cream I could eat, and I couldn’t eat anything other than jello. At the time the hospitals had yucky jello—I don’t know what they flavored it with, but it was [grimace and noise of disgust]—or they didn’t flavor it and they just put food coloring in. Oh—that’s it for now I guess.

Gas

 Yesterday, my friend Renee who lives in North Carolina, a retired music librarian, posted about an attempt to get gas, and how there were long lines that reminded her of living in California during an earlier gas shortage.  I was puzzled--what gas shortage?--and so looked it up and found this headline: 

Panic buying strikes Southeastern United States as shuttered pipeline resumes operations 

So, it seems that there was a cyber attack on a pipeline, and that was a problem, but the bigger problem was the panic buying, and people trying to stock up on gasoline.

Huh.

This is actually something I can understand--when I married a city slicker, and was faced with the permanent restriction of only having the gas that was actually in my car, that was an adjustment for me.

I was a late driver, so while living in Utah as a BYU student, I did not start driving until my junior year. My Uncle George furnished me with an old boat of a car that was extra to them--the gas gauge didn't work, but it could get from point A to point B. His only stipulation was that I had to visit he and Aunt Lillis, since I had a car. And so I happily did this. Keeping that car gassed up was a challenge, given that I never really knew how much gas the car had, or how much I even COULD fill it. But I knew this situation was only temporary, because I would go back home, and then I didn't really have to worry about gas.

This was because we had not one, but two, gas tanks. TANKS. Not the puny things in cars that only hold 10 or 15 gallons, or whatever it may be. But tanks that held a lot of gallons, that tanker trucks would come and fill when they needed refilling.

As a child, getting gas meant driving across the yard to the gas tanks. If you were filling your car, you used regular gas. If you were filling the pick-up truck or any of the farm vehicles, you used purple gas. 

Regular gas and purple gas were the same, except for that the purple gas was dyed a pale purple. Purple gas was intended for farm vehicles, and was less expensive than regular gas. But it was illegal to use purple gas in a regular vehicle. Regular vehicles has to use regular gas. 

We only gassed the car up at a gas station if we were traveling, or in town and maybe Mom had not gassed up at home because we were running out of regular and it wasn't time to get a tanker to bring more gas yet.

So basically, my dad bought gas in bulk, and we always had gas storage, unless the tank was empty, but that was all planned for, so if the tank was getting low, then Dad would have scheduled a time for refill.

It boggled the mind to think--what do people DO when they don't have gas storage? Like, if you only have a tiny yard, or worse, live in an apartment, you can't very easily have a great big gas tank for gas storage, can you? That felt very insecure to me!

Despite which, I married a city boy, and have now lived these 41 years without gas storage except maybe one gas can. Weird. 

Rhubarb

 One thing that is nice about living in a house again is the opportunity to plant a real garden. Unfortunately, we have never been really good at gardening and are somewhat out of practice, but Bruce bought an array of plants that we will soon plant and hope for the best for them, given our lack of experience!

But we don't have to plant rhubarb. We have a lovely, large rhubarb plant growing in spite of our in-expertise. And in spite of our lack of watering it!--we are in a drought here in Utah, and so we didn't even have our outside water turned on until Friday last. 

I have learned a few things about rhubarb:

1. To pick rhubarb, do not use a knife. Grab the stalk and twist it. This is the preferred method of harvest. And this accords with my memory as a child, because the rhubarb plant was free for the snacking when we were outside playing, and we didn't usually (or ever) carry a knife around; we just would rip a stalk off and eat it. Of course, also discarding the leaf, which we knew was poisonous to eat.

2. Savoury recipes for rhubarb exist! I am scared to try them since I only cook for two or three people, and too often when I experiment (which isn't often, honestly!) nobody else likes it, so I end up having to eat it myself, because I am too trained in waste not, want not, so I can't throw it away; I have to eat it. But otherwise, rhubarb is only used in sweet things, and so I really do want to try some savoury rhubarb dishes.

3. Sometimes, if your brother and his wife come to your house and get some of your rhubarb, which is a nice favour to you since there is plenty for sharing, sometimes they make you a delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie, which is almost too pretty to eat. (But you know that if you don't eat it, it will go bad, which will NOT be pretty!) Look at this deliciousness!

And did it taste as good as it looks? At least that good. Possibly even better! So yummy!