First week of school and trip to the cabin

The first week of school has passed and we are now moving forward to the second week. Erika and I work in entirely different parts of the school, I’m in the Counseling Center and in the main building, Erika is in one of the twelve portables that we have mounted in the parking lots outside of the building-six on the north side of the building and six on the south side of the building. We will have to work hard to ever see one another. We won’t be bumping into one another by accident, that is pretty certain. I talked to Erika today and she has had a good start. She likes her students and feels good about her situation. She is adjusting to the things that are really differ between South Jordan Middle School and Corner Canyon High School. We operate on an A day B day schedule with 90 minute class periods. She used to have eight class periods a day, now she has four class periods per day, so she sees her students only every other day. Interesting and different. In the Counseling Center we have just finished our last and second day of schedule changes. We think it will be our last day, but if my experience holds true we will be changing schedules for another four days, until Friday. But we are starting to get back to a regular stream of activity I hope. Paul is continuing to improve, albeit slowly. He had his first doctor’s visit since the surgery. The doctor showed him the photography taken during the surgery. (I had seen these same pictures on the day of the surgery, but Paul was too groggy to appreciate them on that day and so he has seen everything that I had previously seen. He is making good progress, but he still has to stay in the sling, and still can take prescription strength pain killers for another two weeks. He has some controlled physical therapy, but he can’t use or move his shoulder for another month. He went to work for a couple of hours today, but he still isn't up to full days of work yet. We drove up to the cabin this past weekend. Our primary reason for the visit was to see that the horses were doing okay. I am happy to report that they are doing just fine. We got there at about 10:00 p.m. on Friday night and it was very dark when we got to the pasture. But the horses were really excited to see us, galloping around in the dark in happy dashes. They did calm down to eat the grain that Paul gave them. We had talked a lot about this trip. I suggested that we take the Jetta and I do the driving. But if we arrived to find the horses in need of transport for any reason, we couldn't pull the trailer with the car, we would need the truck. I don’t drive the truck, but Paul felt by Friday that he was well enough to take on driving the five hours it takes to get there and he successfully achieved that, though he was quite uncomfortable by the time that we arrived. He wasn't able to take his normal pain killers, because you aren't supposed to use heavy equipment or drive while under their influence, though from my point of view he seems entirely in control of himself even when he is under their influence. Nevertheless, he didn’t take any of his prescription and so he was ready for some when we got to the cabin. Everything at the cabin was in good order as well. On Saturday morning the two of us headed to the pasture to see the horses in the daylight and to check on the fences. I’m afraid I turned out to be a rather poor fence repairer in terms of hammering skill. Paul is unable to hammer at this time, so we walked the fence together and Paul pointed out the problems and showed me what to do and I was supposed to nail in the missing staples as my primary function. We did have to replace a couple of posts and I probably hammered in about 25 or 30 staples, fortunately the fence was in pretty good shape. It has been very rainy in Island Park this summer and August has been rainy, too. Everything is still really green. It rained hard on Friday night during the night and was raining when we got up in the morning. But lucky for us the rain broke after we had eaten breakfast and we were able to walk and repair the fence before it started up again. The horses were happy to see us again in the morning and followed us for a while when we were repairing the fence, but lost interest in following us when we got to the third side. The pond is full to capacity and there is plenty for the horses to eat. He are lucky that they are such good self-care animals, because this time would have been stressful and difficult if we had had to feed them twice a day in Midvale. We plan on visiting them again in two weeks and taking them home in a month, so we will go up there twice more in the next month. It was cool at night and we hope that we can go until the end of September without snow or at least not too much snow. We were able to have a visit with Connie, but we didn't see Ralph. He was in Rexburg moving his furniture and stuff out of their old house. Connie told us the new house isn’t ready yet, so she may be staying in Island Park for a few weeks. We didn't see or talk to Ralph, but had a nice visit with Connie. Emily and her children we also at the cabin this weekend and we had a nice chat with her as well. The swing set has been set up in the yard, and already shows signs of use. It is behind the west side of Ralph’s cabin so Connie can watch the children swinging from her bedroom window. She said it is fun to watch them. You saw that the fire pit has been moved from the south side of Sara and Jay’s cabin to between their cabin and Ralph’s cabin. Jay did a really great job of sinking and finishing it. They also set a lovely walking path between Sara and Jay’s cabin and Ralph and Connie’s cabin. It has some rocks, but it is mostly disks of wood counter sunk flush into the ground. And it looks terrific. Emily told us that Sara had worked really hard on it, with wood in the earth the discs may rot out in time, but for the moment it certainly looks nice. We are looking ahead to beginning our barn next summer and so we are now looking at barns that we run across to see what architectural features we might want to incorporate in our future building. As we were driving home from Island Park we admired a number of barns from the road, but also stopped and looked at a couple as well. We had one kind of silly experience. We stopped at one barn, turned off the truck and got out to walk around the barn and Paul commented on a buzzing/humming noise. I didn't know what he was talking about. Paul thought it might be a pump of some kind there at the site—we got in the truck and drove to Petersboro where we walked around the property. We are making some tentative decisions about where we want to put the house and the barn. Even though it is a long time until we build a house, where we build the barn will affect where we will be able to build the house later, so we are trying to think it all through now. It is still a process. Anyway, we arrived turned off the truck and I got out and went to the bed of the truck to get my boots and I could hear the buzzing/humming noise that Paul had talked about. I said to Paul, “Listen to this noise, do you hear it?” He could and it was the same sound he had heard when we were stopped before. Was it a pump in the truck that was operating even when the truck was stopped? Would could it be? Paul walked around the truck trying to determine the exact location. It didn’t seem to be coming from the underside of the truck anywhere but in the bed---Paul lifted out his own bag, which was a soft, gym style bag and it was obvious that the sound was coming from his bag. He opened it and discovered that it was his electric toothbrush that apparently was bumped on in the back and was humming away in his bag. We were very glad that it was nothing serious and there is nothing wrong with the truck.

School starting this week, WICKED and Heber Creeper

School starts this week at Corner Canyon. It doesn't change my schedule since I have been back at work for almost a month now, but the level of craziness goes way up the last couple of days before school. Everyone wants an appointment, but I am not authorized to make appointments during the first week of school. I forward questions to the counselors by phone and if they want to see a student they set it up themselves. My phone is ringing off the hook. We've been registering new students every day and generally speaking this place is a madhouse and will continue like this for about the first week and a half and then will slow down a little bit. In addition to all the work stuff we have had a few other consuming activities going on this last week. I took Tuesday off work for Paul’s rotator cuff surgery. The surgery was long, but successful and we anticipate a full recovery. In the meantime however he is in the process of recovery. In the last six days he has made progress and during the day he feels like recovery is possible. Nights are still more difficult than days. He isn't lying down yet, sort of sleeping sitting up and leaning over, but not exactly prone. He was originally on a four hour space for his pain medication, but he is adding hours to each time and slowly weaning himself off of them too. He is being very good about keeping his shoulder immobilized, though. The dressings are off and he is healing. He has been reading a lot and has raced through a 1000 pages, but he is finding that he is rather bored, not being able to do anything and just sitting around and especially when I’m not home to entertain him or at least converse with him. We are very optimistic, though. This will be a process, but Paul will fully recover and we are happy about that. There were a number of activities this week that had been planned long before Paul was injured which I got to take part in but which Paul was forced to miss. We had planned a fun activity for Erika’s birthday which included taking Erika and Jono out to dinner and then going to the Capitol theatre to see WICKED. In a long and involved explanation: Erika had given me a gift certificate last November for my birthday for the two of us to go to WICKED when it came to Salt Lake this summer. Tickets weren't even available at that time, and we were going to get the tickets when they became available which was in early May. When it came time to get them we decided that it would be fun to go on Erika’s exact birthday so I suggested that I buy tickets for Paul and Jono and Erika buy tickets for her and me, then Paul and I would take us all to dinner that evening before the performance and it would be a happy birthday celebration for all of us. We bought the four tickets and looked forward to the event with great anticipation. Then Paul was scheduled for surgery on the 12th. We all felt really bad about that, but we had the tickets already by this time---Erika invited a friend of hers to go instead of Paul and we went to dinner and to the theatre and left Paul at home. That part was sad, but the dinner was really nice—we ate at The Olive Garden which is just across the street from the Capitol Theater and WICKED was a great experience. I was already familiar with the music but really enjoyed the show, wonderful production values, costumes, scenery, lights, terrific performances, lovely evening. We had a fantastic evening, in spite of the fact that Paul was not with us. He would have enjoyed the evening with us, too. Paul missed another activity as well. On Saturday, we had reservations to take an old fashioned narrow gauge railroad ride on the Heber Creeper. This was also a gift; I had arranged to take my parents on the 3 hour round trip Provo Canyon Limited Ride. It was the Mother’s Day gift but a busy summer had made it difficult to get a reservation before this weekend—what with trips to Boston, time at the cabin, grandchildren visiting and other activities. I picked them up on Saturday afternoon, we stopped and got a to-go dinner from Jimmy Johns and then went to the train station in Heber. The train travels through the outskirts of Heber and then a lovely tour around Deer Creek Reservoir and then down part of the Provo Canyon to Vivian Park. We had a layover there where they reversed the engine and put it on the end of the train and then we went back the same way we came. It began at 6:00p.m. and we arrived at the station at the end at about 9:00 p.m. so we got to see the sunset over the reservoir. There was a very amusing moment when we crossed the Soldier Hollow station. There was a platform there and as we slowed there a costumed actor dressed in a duster and slouch hat and carrying a rifle shot off a few blanks and then boarded the train, coming up and down the aisles yelling and demanding the cash box (he also gave all the children foil wrapped chocolate pieces) as he was walking back down the aisle in our car he stopped in front of our seats and looked my mother right in the face and said, “Why Janie Sue, I haven’t seen you in ages. You still look just as sweet as I remember—dancing on that table in that saloon in Texas. So good to see you again!” Then he looked over at Dad and said to Mom, “oh, dearie, you could have done much better.” We all had a good laugh.