It’s not as smoky as last week, but the fires are still burning. You can see one up by Bald Mountain, glowing at night, and a pillar of smoke by day. (Sounds biblical!) Planes and helicopters have been dropping fire retardant. Yesterday afternoon I was raking rocks in the back yard, and I stopped to watch a helicopter go over. It was the kind that has blades at both ends, and it was trailing a long cable with a bucket. Then it occurred to me that I could actually SEE the details of the helicopter! When I had my cataract surgery three weeks ago, they put a distance lens in my left eye, but I didn’t think much about it. But now that my eye has healed, it amazes me what I can see at a distance. And I have a close up lens in my right eye, from the surgery I had twelve years ago. So I’m good to go, right? Well, not exactly. In between is a problem. When I play the piano, I can barely see my music, and I have to really squint. So I’ll have to get new piano glasses from John. And organ glasses, for Sunday.
Yesterday morning Dad and I drove to Centerville to help Nora’s family haul rocks. There’s a strip at the back of their property, just before it drops down to the new house behind them, where it’s been built up to keep it from washing away. It needed to be covered with cobble. Donna had ordered the cobble from Staker Parsons (because she could get a discount) and it was sitting in a pile on Nora’s driveway. We used four wheelbarrows, and Nora’s entire family helped. Ben shoveled the cobble into the wheelbarrows, and blew his trumpet in between to entertain us. Everybody else pushed wheelbarrows and helped put down the rock. Some of the rocks got away from us and flew down below, so we had to station a kid down there to carry them back up. It all turned out really well! We were done in no time, and we sat in the shade and admired our work. Then James went off to do his on-line class at the library.
Dad and I talked to Kristen Danielson while she was working with her crew at the Heber Library on Thursday morning. She says she’s OK to talk to people now. Her sentence is up in a couple of months, I think she said, but she looked very happy where she was. Nancy said she’s made a lot of progress, and I’m sure she’ll make a good life for herself when she gets out.
Conference is in two weeks! I’ll be contacting everybody personally about the soup party Saturday night. Ladies rule! We’ll all be going off to the session while the men babysit. Tom said that sounded good to him! We’ll see if we want to have a dinner on Sunday, too. I’ll be asking about that, too.
Hope you’re all doing great! Love, Mom
