Don't Cry for Me...I'm Crying Enough for Everyone

Big development in our lives today - Emerson lost his job. As tough as this is for anyone to handle, it is made even more awkward by the fact that we both work for the same company and I have to try to continue on with my job as if nothing has happened. Add to that the annual play at Heritage and my huge list of responsibilities with it. It's hard to imagine moving on after Emerson having worked there for 17 years, but that is exactly what we must do. Things will work out.....everything happens for a reason....it's probably for the best....I know, I know...I've heard it all now. It sure doesn't feel any better when you hear it. We're circling the wagons and applying for everything we can find. This may lead to a job change for me as well if Emerson can't find anything locally. I think we saw this coming with the budget cutbacks and other problems at Heritage, but it still was fairly surprising. If you know of any teaching jobs, please let Emerson know ASAP.

September Stress

For those who aren't aware, Heritage (where I work) puts on a musical each year involving our clients.We have found that theater has a great impact on our students and helps them in their treatment at Heritage. My first year at Heritage, my involvement was trying to drum up publicity and selling tickets. Over the years, I was recruited to be more involved and I became the Box Office Manager and a Production Assistant. I still handled publicity, but I spent at least one night a week assisting with the rehearsal.  One year, my boss asked me to type up the rehearsal schedule and get it out to everyone. I wish I had known then what stress that little assignment would lead to.

I have become known on campus as "the Play lady" since I seem to be a central point of knowledge for the play each year. Shortly after last year's play, the production assistant who designed the posters and playbills was laid off and those jobs wandered my way. So....I find myself trying to manage and sell tickets, manage the rehearsal schedule, work one or more rehearsals a week, sell advertising, generate publicity, design the poster, and design the playbill.  To say that my plate is full is an understatement!

To top this madness off, the director of our plays for the past 10 years has now retired from her calling to direct the LDS church productions in Nauvoo, Illinois, and her 79 years on this earth seem to be making her quite cranky. My boss, the CEO, is not as involved in the production as he usually is since he's trying to figure out what to do about the upcoming $1 million budget cut due to California wanting to cut what they pay us to treat their kids (keep in mind that we're a nonprofit). I find myself in the miserable position of basically being a production manager (unofficially) - battling the production people as well as our own staff to find rehearsal schedules that minimize the chaos, coordinating production needs with a boss who I can barely get in to meet with anymore, and panicking because I had only 2 ads for our fancy playbill with only 2 weeks to go before taking it to the printer. When kids are late to rehearsal, the director takes it out on me. When the director feels like we need extra rehearsals to get where we need to be, the rest of campus takes it out on me. Not to mention my own guilt about the lack of ads for the playbill.

I did manage to come up with a solution that has now covered the costs of printing our playbill. Just when I was feeling pretty good about that, our campus was hit with widespread illness, including 3 confirmed swine flu cases. ALL campus activities were called off this last weekend to give everyone a chance to rest and hopefully get past the illnesses. That meant losing 3 rehearsals with our choreographer who comes in from Los Angeles to help us. Coming back to rehearsal today, I was greeted by the grumpy director who was doubting we could be ready for opening night. When group therapy went long and the kids were late to rehearsal, I got chewed on for that too. The director threatened to quit and things pretty much stayed crazy the whole night. I ducked out to avoid crying in front of her. Most of the night I just tried to stay out of her way. I really believe in what we're doing with our performing arts program, but I'm beginning to lose faith in this director. I used to like her so much and now I practically have panic attacks when I think about having to face her. If I survive this year, who knows what the next year will bring.... (picture taken accidentally when scrambling to answer phone during rehearsal)

Clean pups

When I heard that a local career college was having their veterinary techs put on a free dog wash, I jumped at the chance to have someone else wash our doggies. Scout and Shadow don't like going in water and bathing them is a battle.

They got their nails clipped and then got washed and dried. Their reward was the little bandana they got to wear afterwards. When we got home, they were pretty tired from all that wiggling and wrestling with the vet techs. They took a nice nap before going back outside to get dirty again.

My new haircut

With all the stress going on in my life, I decided it was time for a new hairdo. I regularly go to Jordan at MasterCuts and she always tries to give me a "sassy" look. I hadn't had my hair cut for a few months in a half-hearted effort to grow my hair longer. Emerson usually says he likes my hair longer, but this time he made the mistake of telling me that he's happy with whatever makes me happy....

While Emerson and the boys went to see a movie, I paid a visit to Jordan and told her to go crazy and "do whatever" as long as I could still look professional for work. I had no idea the kind of joy this brings to a stylist...
The first snip was in the back and it was significant. "No going back now!" say Jordan with an evil grin. I admit I was a little scared about what I'd gotten myself into.

The end result made my face look longer and slimmer and I loved it! Emerson even told me how much he liked it when he saw me (and he never says anything after I get a hair cut). The cut is a disconnected a-line, so it is longer in the front and shorter in the back. The layers allow me to give it a fun messy look when I want to go a little crazy with it.
I've gotten lots of compliments on the new style and I actually feel pretty again...

A Great Friend and the First Ever Female LDS Chaplain

LDS Living

The link above will take you to an article for LDS Living Magazine. My boss asked me to write an article about Heritage Schools' chaplain to submit to the magazine (nice publicity for us if it gets published). The magazine has some pretty strict word limit guidelines for submitting articles and I struggled like crazy to keep it within the limit they had for stories about "making a difference." The first draft I came up with just didn't have enough information about Tami's qualifications and experiences, so I tackled it again and hoped they wouldn't tear it apart. Tami has been our chaplain at Heritage most of the years I have worked there. Her dad was a military chaplain and she wanted to be like him in so many ways. She wanted to be a full time seminary teacher, but they didn't let women do that back when she finished high school (women can do it now if they are done raising their children). A series of very miraculous events lead to her taking over for her dad as chaplain at another treatment center and then coming to work at Heritage even though we never had a full time, let alone paid, chaplain until she came along. The details of the story had me in tears. Tami has become one of my best and dearest friends over the years as well as my chaplain when I am in need. She is the sweetest person you will ever meet - a true angel on this earth. The story pretty much wrote itself.

With the help of a local PR agency, we got the article submitted to LDS Living Magazine, hoping they would be interested in hearing about the first ever (and only) female chaplain who is LDS. It was wonderful to find out today that they published it online. I'm waiting to see if it will be in the magazine as well. The only negative to the whole thing is that they managed to misspell my last name.... My friends are teasing that I should have that as my official pen name.

I won!

A friend of mine showed me this site called GiveAwayToday where they have prizes you can win each day. The businesses who give away the prizes benefit from the extra publicity since lots of people like to try to win free stuff. I actually won something the other day. It wasn't as cool as other prizes I had hoped for, but better than not winning... I won a blog makeover. Once they send me all the details of what I need to do, my blog should be looking extra spiffy in no time.

Don't Freak Out...

Ok....So Dexter spent the past week at Timberline Scout Camp as one of the staff there. It's a leadership training camp for Boy Scouts to develop their leadership skills. Dwayne and Dexter have both attended this camp in past years. They were quite happy to have Dexter join their staff and help teach classes, run things, etc. Emerson went up there on Monday to deliver some supplies and to see the camp. Dexter managed to wear a kilt pretty much the whole week (their Young Men's/Scout leader always wears a kilt and Dexter discovered he likes to wear them too). Although Dexter is quite good at magic, I believe he is juggling the can in the picture, not levitating it...
One of the exercises they did at camp was to have a mock serious injury occur and have the boys figure out how to handle the situation, get help, etc. Dexter was quite proud of the job he did constructing his "wound" and acting out his injury. He came in with a can lid "stuck" in his leg, screaming and dripping "blood." Even those who were in on the exercise had trouble handling the very graphic look of it.

Very proud of his work, Dexter couldn't wait to post the lovely picture on Facebook for all the world to see. His friends reacted and Dexter kept the act going by dancing around their questions and giving true answers that didn't really answer their questions. What he didn't anticipate was reaction of adults who saw the pictures and freaked out. He doesn't feel bad that he fooled his peers, but he does feel bad that he upset some of the grownups in his life as well as some tenderhearted close friends. He's proud of his work in creating the fake injury. Only a few people managed to nice the bottle of fake blood he is holding in his hand in that picture. Don't be too surprised if he pulls something like this again. My advice - don't be afraid to call us directly to find out what's going on. The only damage from this incident was to the shorts Dex was wearing.

Dwayne is Back

Dwayne's job in Chicago took a weird twist and he had to choose between moving to Tampa to finish the summer selling security systems or just go home. He drove back from Chicago and arrived at our house on Friday afternoon, just in time to go on the annual ward campout with us. I decided to bring the dogs camping. Scout went camping with Emerson and Dexter last month, but this was Shadow's first campout. Since I haven't been camping in some time, I was excited to go.

Dexter performed the Elvis classic "Jailhouse Rock" during the talent show. I brought frybread to share for dinner. The dogs seemed to enjoy being out, but my lack of a CPAP machine caused me to keep everyone awake with my snoring.

Dexter is staffing the Timberline Scout camp this week and Dwayne just headed out to Ft. Defiance to visit his grandma. We will have the house to ourselves this week.

In addition to gardening and playing Scrabble against each other online, Emerson and I have been finding other fun things to do. We wander the stores more to find some cool air now that it's so hot. Emerson has been teaching me to ride a scooter and we've had fun riding around and sightseeing.

Once Dwayne gets back to Provo again, he will be looking for work and preparing himself to serve a mission.

Stuff

I don't want to let too much time go by without posting something. I can never remember who knows what is going on with us, so this is usually a good way to catch everyone up. We are keeping fairly busy working on things around the house. Dexter got in trouble for taking a scooter without permission and driving it to the mall (and other places). Since he has no driver's license of any kind, this bit of rebellion is even scarier for us. He is spending the month of July without cell phone and computer access to friends and is limited to activities with family or for church. He has been working on a summertime list of extra projects around the house and yard. Still no job for him. Even the fast food jobs are snatched up fast this summer.

Emerson and I are working on our own relationship. August 20 will be our 21st anniversary and we are realizing how much work marriage can be. You can't stop talking and trying to work things out. This summer has been kind of fun getting to know each other again. Trying to keep the lawn green and our garden growing has been one of biggest focuses.

Dwayne's job in Chicago is coming to an early end. Cheating on the part of a few has ended it for everyone. He could transfer to Tampa and continue working, but Dwayne says he realizes that he doesn't have the personality to make that kind of shift and get to know the personality of that region with so little time left. He's trying to figure out what his next move is. He still has some work to do to repair his relationship with his dad and fix the turmoil that created, so he has ruled out living with us for the time being.

We've had some fun visits with family this month. Emerson's family was up for the Independence Day weekend. We barbecued, watched movies, played games, watched the parade, and roasted in the heat. The guys played golf a couple of times. I participated in the Freedom Run 5K by walking and found myself having to walk home from the finish line because the police had so many roads blocked for the parade that Emerson couldn't get through to pick me up. Rick and Holly stopped by for dinner and to bring me some stuff from Dad's apartment. I finally got some of my record albums back that Dad took off with in the divorce. Bill, Tina, Billy, Eliza, Buddy, and Jack stopped by yesterday morning on their way back home. Short visit, but glad we got to see them. We're hoping we get more opportunities to see family this year.

Garden

I love gardening! I'm not terribly good at it, but I love the peace it brings. There is something really wonderful about growing things. It's so cool to see plants grow and develop and sometimes amazing growth seems to happen overnight. We don't have much room for our garden and I tend to forget how much the plants spread out. It didn't look this crowded when I planted it...
We have some anaheim peppers in smaller pots on a shelf next to the garden. Emerson really loves cooking with those anaheims.
Last year I barely got one tiny bell pepper out of the garden. I've already picked a few now and more are on the way. They're not big like the ones in the store, but they taste good.
We got our first zucchini of the summer much earlier than I expected. Next to it is a gypsy pepper. They're very sweet and this is the second one we've picked. The corn is growing well behind the dog pen. It's already looking better than last year. The tomatoes are looking good, we have tiny little cucumbers starting up, and it looks like in a week or two we will have lots of squash to eat. The onions are leftovers from last year that started on their own. The tough part is keeping the dogs from attacking the veggies as I take them from the garden to the house. They always think it's all for them...cute. I started some plants from seed and others we bought starts of, but it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. All the rain we had got things going and the blazing sun we have right now is boosting the growth. As long as I have my garden to play in, I'm good!