Have a Beautiful, Extraordinary Life, filled with happy people and wondrous places, by sharing my many strengths and talents for fun and profit! =)

This is my fun and profit.

I operate my event business only by word-of-mouth advertising, and it keeps me as busy as I care to be. I could take on a few more weddings in a year, I suppose; the brides around here would certainly be lucky to find out about me.

I get so much joy from designing flowers and have so much gratitude for being part of a family’s big day, that I don’t charge an arm and a leg for my work. If more people knew they could get a world-class master florist at my prices, they’d be beating down my door!

And the ones who do know keep me busy. :D

Ok, so the place itself wasn’t all that wondrous, although I hadn’t ever been there before. It was an outdoor venue, where we were invited at the last minute to attend a steak fry and concert with our new in-laws. They had the tickets handed to them the day before, so we all got to go for free.

The food was pretty decent: Med-Rare steak (which I ate about 2/3 of and gave the rest to my Dearest), baked potato with sour cream and butter, salad with Ranch, a roll, and a delicious chocolate chip cookie. They also gave us cups of ice, but offered nothing we could drink, so we bought some water.

The opening act was the corporate band from the company sponsoring the event. They were awesome. Tons of familiar songs done really well. Then came Joe Nichols. He was good, too, and we enjoyed his performance, but he hardly sang any songs we knew, and almost all the ones we did know were someone else’s songs. Finally, we figured he was holding out his currently popular tequila song for his finale, but we didn’t want to deal with all the drunks that would be leaving the concert at the same time, so we bailed before he got that far.

No matter—all in all, it was a really pleasurable evening.

We had a hearing today. Some yahoo had called the city to report that he didn’t like our old truck or the neighbor’s junk in our yard. Guess what, we didn’t like the neighbor’s junk in our yard either, but we went out there and helped them clean it up instead of reporting them to the City.

The day the inspector came out to take pictures was the same day that we moved some couches to Youngest Daughter’s and (at that time, almost) Son-in-Law’s new apartment, but he got a picture of the big blue tarp over the neatly stacked furniture on the driveway before it was moved.

We didn’t do anything about the first notice because by the time we got it, the couches had been moved and the neighbor’s junk wasn’t ours.

Then came a second notice about “weeds and trash” so we helped the kids next door get their stuff cleaned up.

Then all of a sudden, we get this full-blown citation about “inoperable vehicles” on our property, but there are none, so I called the guy and he said the old truck didn’t look like it was running. I told him it was, but he said we would have to pay a fine anyway. BA – LO – NEY. We decided to fight that baby!

We turned the truck around and switched its place in the driveway next to the sandrail, just to show that it does indeed run, took a bunch of pictures of the front and sides of our house and set off to prove our case.

But we never had to open our mouths.

First item of business was to clarify that everything on the first two notices had been taken care of (even the neighbor’s crap, which should never have been in our case file to begin with).

Next, the hearing officer asked the code compliance inspector to show him where he had notified us about the truck before he issued a citation.
He searched his documents.
He said hmmm.
He squirmed in his seat a little.
He said uuhhh.
The Hearing Officer asked him if he’d like to move for dismissal.
He said yes.

We smiled and thanked them for their time.

My Dearest makes this clanging sound to imitate my brain. He says everything that goes in there gets filed away for safe keeping. I’ve informed him that it’s called scaffolding and he is a construction guy, so he makes the clanging sound when I pull something out of the blue like I did tonight.

I was trying to remember some guy’s name whom I had heard only once a few days ago. I needed to let someone else know to call this guy to help her with some stuff.

I was describing out loud how my brain put his name away (with a silent consonant after a vowel), when all of a sudden, BAM! there it was! I had only heard it once before and didn’t know it would ever need to be recalled.

My Dearest called me Amazing.

Hmmm. :)

People are awesome! My daughter’s bridal shower was right in the middle of a hugely busy day for many of those invited, but friends and relatives made place to show her some love anyway.

Some were on their way to a funeral a hundred miles away, one had to stop in on her way home from her kids Saturday morning activities, another three had to rush over after a wedding, and the hostess herself needed to get to her brother’s birthday party an hour after the shower was over. So yeah.

Anyway, I got her a bunch of little stuff and wanted to think of some creative way to wrap it. One of the things was a kitchen rug, which I rolled up the long way – - – and made a MAST – - – for the SHIP I proceeded to craft out of a box, a couple sheets of poster board and a “boatload” of colored butcher paper. It was AWESOME!!!!!

It was to represent The LOOOVE Boat, so they could Sail Away into the Sunset, but we couldn’t quite avoid the fact that it contained a Boatload of presents. Anyway, it was fun and funny and she appreciated being the center of attention for a couple of hours. :)

My middle daughter is a full-fledged artist in her own right. She is finishing up her BFA at BYU and has her Final Show up in The Fine Arts Center’s largest gallery. In fact, she is the Department of Visual Arts’ Featured Artist!

The opening reception was Thursday night. The huge gallery was filled to capacity at times with faculty, students, family, and friends. It was awesome.

We built a house in 1986 and had to outfit our brand new kitchen with brand new appliances. When we moved to the city we live in now (only about 20 miles away), we moved our appliances with us.

The dishwasher has been replaced a couple of times. The fridge was replaced at about age 15 or so, with a side-by-side that I would never buy again. I do like the ice & water dispenser in the door, though. But the oven . . . the oven was just getting older and older.

It got to the point that we could not touch a metal pan handle while turning the heat knobs or we would get shocked!

My Dearest poured cold water into a glass baking dish WHILE IT WAS IN THE OVEN COOKING. Guess what happened? yeah—the pan exploded. Idiot. Anyway, we never did get all the blue glass out of the bottom of the oven. Every time I cleaned it, I’d find some more.

The last straw happened while we spent a week in Park City last month and my niece stayed at our house to feed the animals and water the gardens. She decided to try making baklava. It actually turned out really well, but she forgot that you cannot turn your back on hot syrup. Not for a second. She let it overboil. oi.

So for a month, no matter what we cooked – in the oven or on the stovetop – it smelled like burnt sugar. First of all, she didn’t clean it when it happened. She left it for me. It got into all the cracks and up inside the heating element brackets. There was no way to get that kind of gunk out of a 25-year-old stove, so we allowed ourselves consider it might be time for a new one. Gas ranges often last 25 years, but I don’t think electric ones are even meant to.

We went down to the Scratch & Dent and found a $2000 stove for under $400!!! Yep, and there’s not even a scratch or a dent on it. It’s a flattop, and had been returned, probably by people who realized they didn’t want a flattop after all. It works great and NO MORE SHOCKS! Now there’s a bonus. :)

I am at my first Writers’ Retreat. It’s at least 20 degrees cooler here than at my house in the Valley of the Hot, Hot Sun. About 30 people being so quiet my ears hurt from all the quietness. It’s like naptime around here. It’s quieter than the library. Other than stopping for a few minutes to fool around on 43T, however, I am getting tons of work done and that’s very fulfilling!

Today, the Salt River Project (our electric company) transformer exploded in a giant fire ball and left 140,000 homes and businesses without power, some for up to ten hours. I lost power for about six hours.

I worried for those who need oxygen or air conditioning and prayed that they would be all right. The convention center was opened and a few churches that still had power let people hang out inside. The movie theatre went dark, though, so all the people who thought that seeing a movie would be a good respite from the 111° heat were sadly mistaken.

Lots of people got off work early, but came home and couldn’t do anything. People spent the afternoon in the pool or at the mall. There was much whining from those who don’t know how to live in the desert.

I, however, am a 4th generation native. I have been well trained by parents, grandparents and great-grandparents on what to do to keep cool and keep my cool in dangerous heat. Rule #1 = WATER: BE IN IT and KEEP IT IN YOU. Water IS Life on the desert floor.

When the power went out between noon and one, I turned off everything in the house that didn’t need to be running, closed the west-facing door, opened the east-facing door, and went outside to sit under my new gazebo. My Dearest just built it for my birthday. It has misters. I used them. It was probably 84° under there and I was relaxed and happy. I got a lot of reading done and wrote in my journal. When my daughter got home from her shift at the movie theatre, I turned the hose on the both of us and we sat out there, soaking wet and enjoying life.

I cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill and called some people to join us, but they weren’t home. When the cooler finally came back on, I had mixed emotions. It was a wonderful day with no electricity and no electricity bill.

I went with my Dearest, our 3 daughters and my mom, up to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving. That’s a 3 hour drive each way, so 6 hours in the truck together. We had wonderful conversations. The middle daughter had a chance to tell us all about her recent “field trip” to New York City to study Art at some of the greatest museums, galleries, and grad schools in the world. My mom got to have Thanksgiving in the forest (a dream of hers throughout recent years), all 3 of my sweet girls got to catch up on sleep, since they will be up all night in preparation for Black Friday. It was great. We have always spent a lot of vacation time in our car, and have for the most part, always enjoyed it. The girls don’t fuss about whose feet are touching them or who is breathing their air anymore, and it has become a simple pleasure of life to spend captive hours in their company.

At my sister’s house, all her kids and their little cousins were running pell mell through the house, screaming and romping up a racket, which some found irritating, but I found joyful. They were also devouring the veggie platter by double dipping their celery, carrots, olives and broccoli into every dip available (including Cool Whip!), which was admittedly disgusting and caused everyone else to stop eating the hors d’oeuvres altogether, but even that I found rather unfortunately amusing. Hey, I wasn’t there to fill up on the crudité, so I didn’t really care.

After dinner, my mom, my sister and I went for a walk up to some state land behind her house and found a bunch of really pretty rocks. I will have to look them up. Some of them are bright red and naturally smooth.

Only drawback was that it was FREAKEN FREEZING all day and there was even some black ice on the road on the way up, so we wanted to get back down out of rim country before darkness brought any danger to us. We made it fine and in fact, the snow was welcome and wonderful to see in Arizona.

OH! The Snow!!! I found out today that my mother had never seen fresh powder before. Can you believe it? I couldn’t. She has seen mounds of snow in Northern Arizona, but only the kind the snowplows have already been through that’s hard and dirty. She was like a little kid in it this afternoon. It was hilarious! She was making handprints and footprints and snowballs for the dog to chase. She kicked it and reveled in the fluff. She blew some off a truck and got a face – and a mouth – full of frost. She loved it and I loved being part of her introduction to it. That was truly something to be thankful for! ♥