update overload

edith and i have been going on walks. more like i've been joining edith on her walks. mostly i have a bad attitude about going. this is partly because we usually go after work when i'm so tired that i need to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks. once i get out of the house i do feel better, invigorated even, and it's nice to be outside in october weather. october is one of my favourite months. i mostly love how beautiful it is. october proves that aging is beautiful. there's so much atmosphere in october. fog, vibrant colours, cripiness, darkness, wind blown leaves gusting across the roads.... ehneway. i like it. other favourite months are april (obviously a superior month), may, june, july, august and december. septembers can be nice too. i'm not a fan of november, january or february. well now that that's established i can move on.

our walks are down by the river at fraser view park. one thing i like about that park is all the dogs you get to see. another thing is that it smells good. to get to the park we take this path in the woods which leads past the tree under which a homeless man revealed himself to heather and i one early morning by calling a polite 'good morning' to us, so pass that tree and down to the stairs and on to the park. we made a stairs friend. we always see him at the stairs. he goes up and down them 20 times. i know because i asked. "we're only going to do it twice." i bragged to him. he urged us to do more but we didn't. he has an englishy accent at times. at other times it's an enigma.

last thursday i believe we went for a walk and then we were all "let's get fresh slice pizza!". "only one slice though", qualified edith. i looked at her and my look said "i don't think so." so she said "ok but not more than two." "fine." i agreed. fresh slice opened up right beside my donair place and i basically have to sneak in there every time i go so as not to hurt the donair boys feelings. edith just waltzes right by their window but i dodge past behind all the parked cars in a panicky way hoping no one will see me. we each got a pesto cheese slice. sometimes the pizza at fresh slice is just so fresh and soft! my second one was a pepperoni. i'm turning over a new leaf with pepperoni. i used to turn up my nose at it but now if the pepperoni looks crispy i know i'm going to like it. we were given water in little styrofoam cups. "my dad would call these sacrament cups" i said to eedit. i hate drinking out of the styrofoam. it makes my teeth feel weird. the tables were too low so that it was uncomfy to eat with my elbows on the table but perfect for eedit.

after pizza we bought pumpkins at safeway. on fondling a certain pumpkin, my finger sank into its flesh. that totally grosses me out. some people may like it, but i don't. once we chose our respective pumpkins we walked into the store with them on our hips like children to look for some treats to bring to shauna's. for some reason we had a super hard time finding the candy aisle and passed it 3 times before recognizing it for what it was and what it was, was humdrum. after some humming and hawing in front of the chocolate disply in front of the store we chose a box of cadbury's assorted mini chocolate bars. the sign said 7.99. edith handed me two loonies to pay for her portion. but we were wrong about the price and sent our clerk out in search of an appropriate box which he did. so when that was all said and done, i paid and then waited for edith to buy her carrot coloured pumpkin. "my pumpkin's cheaper than yours" i taunted from the end of the bagging area. this is the exact type of taunting that gets edith's goat. "what?! that's impossible!" she exploded but was pacified as soon as she realized the untruth of my statement.

we were half an hour late and randy and claudine and declan were already there. shauna's table was covered in garbage bags and there were treats everywhere. i forgot the chocolate in the car and didn't feel like going back to get it. i'm lame that way. this was our first time seeing randy since he got back from hawaii so we ate his chocolate covered macadamia nuts and listened to his hawaii stories while carving our pumpkins. well claudine and i were the only ones carving. she carved one for declan and one for herself and i carved mine and shauna's. edith wrote on hers. shauna sat beside me seperating the pumpkin seeds from the goo. it was a nice night. we ate too much chocolate and stayed up too late.

randy bought karen a pearl pendant on a white gold chain. we all super approved.

friday edith, shauna and i went to a haunted house on dunbar and 48th. it was the perfect night for a halloween outing. there was bite in the air and leaves skidded and whirled across the road. the haunted house was really well done. edith elected me to go first which isn't my favourite position because the first person get's all the people jumping at you and that's the kind of thing that totally makes me jump even though i'm expecting it. just before going through this black tunnel edith's hand suddenly juts out and grabs my sweater right at the ticklish rib spot and that's what scared me the most of the whole experience. which totally delights edith. after the haunted house we came back to our place to do natural hair masks. i got some recipes from my body and soul magazine. there were different ones for different hair colours, each to highten the colour. things like this sound so easy-peasy in the magazines but in real life it's a different story. edith and shauna are both red heads so they shared their mask of carrots, cranberries, yogurt and honey. mine was grated potato, camomile tea and lemon juice. let me interject here, that earlier that day, after work i gave the bathroom a lovely little cleaning and polishing and edith did the floors. silly of us because this was the messiest thing ever. there was carrot and potato everywhere. we had to gently massage it into our hair. well it's hard to massage grated potato into your hair. edith did her long locks in the kitchen, which looked like it had a bad case of the chicken pox after. me and shauna shrink wrapped our heads which was super flattering. so i had to blow dry mine through the plastic for 2-3 minutes but the red heads didn't have to. the hardest part was the rinsing it out and suffice it to say that i am still finding dried pieces of grated potato in my hair today. i can't tell if it made a difference to my hair. the red head one worked for shauna and edith. it's a nice subtle punch up. too much work though.

i drove shauna home and then edith and i watched survivor on youtube, thanks to dcdice for his quality recordings. he's our favourite survior poster. quite the dramatic episode.

saturday was our last ever stake temple trip. i went to it instead of the primary presentation practice. so i went to bed with my top layers of hair pinned up. i knew it was a foolhardy thing to do, but i thought it would be better than going to bed with even slightly damp hair. well in the morning i dealt with the consequences. it's hard to describe. once taking out the clips my unraveled hair stayed at the same level as when it was pinned up, hugging the part of my hair if you can picture it. indeed some wanted to sit directly on the part. so these curls sat high on my head with the bottom layer dry and some what frizzy hung long underneath. it looked very mullet like and caused me some concern. but they started to relax a little after i weighed some of them down with some clips and so that was that.

the man at the front desk told us our session was at 12:30. but randy had told us 1. "randy's a bad man." said edith as we hurried to get our stuff and get ready. sister toolson was at the clothing counter. she's cute. so we rush-rushed and lo and behold it was at 1 and so we sat for over half an hour fighting sleepiness. there was a really nice big group from our stake. president walker talked and then the temple presidency guy.

our session was so full some sisters had to sit on the other side and 2 people had to sit on folding chairs. it was neat though because it was all people from our stake officiating. the lady beside me commented first to me and then to the lady on the other side of her how it was like we had our own temple already because of how everyone officiating were people we knew. starting from the talks before our session i was fighting the sleepiness. i struggled greatly during the session. the inner sleep wars i go through during sessions sometimes frustrates me. i feel bad about it because i know i'm supposed to be alert and trying to get as much as i can out of it and i was feeling that way yesterday too. but i had a moment in the celestial room afterwards when i was praying that i realized that it's ok to struggle. life is all about the struggle. as long as i keep struggling it's ok. so anways edith was struggling too. she struggles more in the second half and i struggle more in the first half. at one point i wanted to say something to her and so i got her attention and i leaned towards her. most people know this as a sign to lean in as well so that a whispered conversation can take place. edith just looked at me. she obviously is not in the know with this unspoken custom, i thought, so i whispered to her "lean in!" which she very promptly did. props to her for her quick promptness at following my lean in cue, but we then bonked heads which sent us into peals of stifled laughter. "lean in!" --thwack!--muffled hilarity. i almost forgot what i wanted to tell her at that point and besides couldn't really get it out very well while trying not to laugh too loud.

edith is really looking forward to my rendition of this event and i hope it's not anti-climactical for her. she's waiting up for me to finish. "are you done yet?" she just called from down the hall. "not yet!" i called back. "how much longer? i have to go to bed!"

my time in the celestial room was soul nourishing and peaceful and i had some answer to prayer. its the main reason i go. it's my respite and renewal time.

so today was primary presentation day. last year i didn't enjoy it as much as i usually do when i am sitting in the congregation but this year it was wonderful. our theme was on eternal families and i just felt the spirit so powerfully throughout. i kept getting all misty eyed and weepy. it was such a great presentation. my favourite parts were the family talks and songs. seeing the families up there together really got me. the strength of family. i love it.

i was feeling discouraged about being a primary teacher too. i had faced the fact that i'm not a very good teacher. i thought i would be. i thought it would be easy and fun but it hasn't been easy and rarely fun. sometimes it's fun but most times when i'm looking forward to a great teaching experience i get half an hour of struggle and frustration. it would be nice to blame this on my kids, but i've seen other people teach them powerfully. the way i'd like to be able to teach them. but that was all kind of wiped away today. i just felt so in love with them that i didn't care as much if i was a good teacher or not. i don't know if that's a good thing, but it worked for me today.

edith and i just played a couple of rounds of crib. at first i was kind of irked because i haven't played crib in years and years and i mostly forgot how to play and edith was all brusque and "i can't tell you how, i don't have the words." but after playing for a bit i caught on and we had some good laughs. especially during the second round when i was more in the know and relaxed. every once in a while i would taunt archie who was trying to sleep on the his camouflage orange stool beside me. edith won the first game and the second game was a close one but i won. after every turn edith would point out that it was really neck and neck and quite the horse race. like those were her words after every turn. horse race. neck and neck. haha.

the last tid bit of update is going to be about bed bugs so get prepared. i'd like to say we are bed bug free but the fact is i don't know for sure yet. after the first spraying i was bitten 3 times--one time waking in the midst of killing a nymph (baby) in the act of biting my uper arm inner tenders/flubs putting an end to all doubt whether what was biting me was indeed bed bugs. so the night before our follow up spraying good ol' dad came with the trailer and we carted off the couch, the wing backed chair, my mattress and box spring and two dressers to the dump in two trips. i also threw away the living room mat and some other things. all the things that we took to the dump we shrink wrapped first. it was fun shrink wrapping the couch let me tell you. so our place is very bare bones now. since then i've been sleeping on my air mattress. mom and dad have a bed for me but i'm not bringing it here until i'm sure.

so after the second spraying i was bitten on the foot three days later as i sat editing photos one night at red betty. this really depressed and discouraged me for a day. i felt so exhausted. i've worked my butt off trying to get rid of this plague and fasted and prayed and did everything i could think of to do my part what more was there to do? after that initial debby downerness, two things happened in my prayers. #1 i felt prompted to go buy my own poison and poison my desk the the nth degree and #2, i felt reassurance that everything was going to be ok. so i did that and i haven't been bitten since, so far. but i still can't have bare feet in the house and have to sleep fully covered from my feet to my head, hands clenched inside the sleeves. so we'll see. i really hope it's over. i haven't slept in my room yet either. i need to do that. i just don't want to be bitten ever again. my tenders have had enough.

whew.