One use for the Hitchhiker

For the past lifetime – i.e. ever since I was born, there have been pins and needles in my life.  There was always something that needed sewn or pinned and I have always had a supply of both.  To prepare for this mission, I cut out a quilt to be made by the English Paper Piecing method.  All the pieces have been cut and my job, if I have time, is to sew it all together and go home with the major part of a quilt completed.  For the English Paper Piecing there is no need of pins because all you have to do is to tack the fabric to the paper and then sew the prepared pieces together in the design you have before you and hey presto – a quilt appears.  So I have all these little pieces of 1 inch hexagons, tacked to pieces of fabric and all I have to do is sew them together.  Last night Bill said that we needed some black paper to block out the light that shines from the parking lot next door.  He says that this light keeps him awake.  Well I question that because he keeps snoring quite healthily all night as well as taking all the blanket and quilt to his side of the bed.

To help him, I decided to use one of my scarves that I have.  When we came here I did not have a scarf to keep my neck warm – it was not cold at that time but it was cooler than Arizona so I bought a piece of fleece from WalMart to use for this temporary situation.  So last night I decided to hang this scarf in a place that would block out the bothersome light and for that I needed a pin.  I searched and searched among my stuff for a pin and remembered that Bill had found a pin on the floor of the car and had brought it in on the first day we were here.  I captured that lonely pin and used it to keep the scarf in place to make my husband’s sleeping arrangement more tenable for him.

I guess we can call the pin a hitchhiker because it was not invited to be among the sewing stuff I had with me and certainly it had strayed from the pin cushion at home.  I have no idea how that pin ended up on the floor of the car, but seeing as how I do quilting, transport unfinished items to and from quilt guild and classes, then it is easy to surmise that this errant pin had migrated from the work I was carrying around to the floor of the car.  I am glad that the pin decided of its own volition to hitchhike to Maine, and it has been put to good use.

One thing that keeps on changing and keeping us on our toes is the weather.  They told us that because we are close to the coast, that the weather in Augusta is mild.  Well, it has been all over the charts this past week with lovely warm weather the freezing cold weather then not so cold weather and today is was cold when we went to the Archives, but when we came out at 4pm, it had snowed about an inch.  The sidewalks were slippery and the roads were not too great.  As we passed over the overpass, on our way to the FedEx store to drop off the Shuttle, we could see that there was already a wreck on I-95 about ¼ mile past the on ramp leading from Augusta to points north.  It was somewhat slippy going over to Hallowell to the missionary meeting this evening, and when we got out of there, the snow had stopped and the roads were wet and we made it to Hannafords to do our shopping safely.   I found that they have opened a sushi counter at Hannafords and in that counter I found some Gyoza – so we had Gyoza, Rice and Stir Fry vegetables for dinner tonight.  Quite a change from the Weight Watchers boxed dinners or the Hungry Man meals.

Bill was asked to figure out about how long it would take us to do the digitizing here in Augusta and as near as we can tell, it will be about 14-16 weeks before we will be finished.  They will move us to some other place after this – whether we will be in the mission boundaries as we know them or not remains to be seen.  So that poses a problem, have we accumulated more stuff than we need and if we have, will what we have fit in the car for us to transport to the next place of labor?

When we came I brought some kitchen items with us, the sisters in the ward provided some others, we bought a blanket and a quilt (AARRGGHHH!    I sleep under a quilt made in China – may never be able to show my face at the quilt guild again).  By the time we have to move, it will be spring so my winter clothes that have been banged up in the Dryer here will have to be farmed out to a rag bag somewhere and when we get to the new place, will have to buy some spring clothes.  Did not bring light (warm weather) clothes with me because it is lots colder here than in Arizona so Fall and winter things came with us.

The only thing I did not bring was pins – but one hitch hiked with us and now is put to good use.

The houses here

There are some beautiful stately homes here and they look like the homes that Martha Stewart would feature in her home beautification magazine.  However, to get done  all the stuff that she shows in her magazine, one would certainly need more than 24 hours in one day and more than 7 days in a week just to achieve a small amount of the beautiful things she features.  I love the cape cod homes here and I also love the Victorian style homes that are here.  The Governors Mansion is spectacular but when I get down to it, there is no way I would ever be able to  do a Martha Stewart to any of them much less spend the time cleaning all the nooks and crannies that they appear to have.   I think I will just stick to my little home in Prescott.  If the dirt gets too bad I can do what my mother always threatened to do - open the front door and the back door and pray for a big wind and it will all blow out.................That was Easy!  (Staples button)
The newspaper this morning  offered a $30,000 reward for the return of the little baby girl who was taken just before Christmas.  I see that the squabble between the mother of the baby and the father of the baby (who are not married to each other by the way) has found its way onto the internet and on TV.  Anything for a news story I suppose.
We were sent our results of the last submission.  One re-work and we did that this afternoon.  I am surprised that we only had one because it was part of the single page capture of the 3inch thick books that are 16 1/2 inches tall and 12 inches wide.  These books are way too big to have in the Cradle.
I have noticed that most homes do not have curtains on the windows.  The end result is that as you drive by of a night, the house is like a fishbowl - we can see all the pictures on the walls, the lamps on the tables, the people wandering around  and the staircases.  I think the reason they do not have curtains on the windows is that there is little sunshine this time of year and all the light you can let in, the better.  That may not be the full reason, but it is one explanation.  In any case, they way the homes are decorated is very distinctive - quite different from Prescott and certainly vastly different from Japan, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and Australia.
I was contacted by a lady regarding Lockyer Genealogy and she has sent me loads of stuff.  So I went on new.familysearch.org and wrote emails to some of the people there.  I heard back from one of them today and it is a wonderful blessing to me.  I am making contact with family I do not know but I hope to be able to put together a book on the Lockyer family because it is so vast.

Middle of a short week

 The snow was falling lightly and it was too beautiful not to take this picture of it.  I just love this State House and it is made of Hallowell Granite.  Spectacular in the morning, noon or evening - no matter when it is seen it is beautiful.

 These are the large clips we have to use to hold the pages down so that we can capture the images.

 Our trusty spirit level that helps us know if the pages are level or not and if they are level, then the book is in focus.  Focus us the biggest problem of them all.

Bill hard at work - well! probably looking at the football scores because he is using my computer...............

The middle of the week is upon us and it does not seem to be real.  We had Monday off due to the Archives being closed for the day and so we have a 4 day week instead of a 5 day week and it also has put us out of sync.  I guess it just seems to make life appear  to be going at a faster pace than it really is.  While we were at the archives this morning, we had the computer connected to the internet and Sara joined us by Skype.  Lyla was very proud of herself at the doctors by not crying when they took out the staples in her head.  She is one tough little cookie that kid and she has to be because she is doing her best to keep up with her older brothers.

We had so much rain last night that all the snow is melted off the ground.  Now we can see where the snow removal people took liberties with the plow and they scraped up some of the grass.  Grass is such a commodity in Arizona that we think twice before we even walk on it but here they seem to not care about that – they just scrape it up and hope that next year it will grow back.  Art the archiver told us that the wind blew a lot last night but we were so tired, I guess we did not wake at all for the event.

We have finished up on the really big books for Knox County and it was a real job to do that.  We had to capture these large books on top of the cradle and we had to use bulldog clips etc. to hold down the pages so that we could be in focus.  We will not know if we were successful in this or not until we turn in the shuttle this week.  If they fail, it will be difficult to get the momentum to go through it one more time.  It really is a difficult job doing these very thick books.  They are around 3 inches thick, and they only have one side of the page printed on and to keep t hem from moving, we have to put these very large clips on them and even then I do not know how successful we have been.  We had to make the camera higher to accommodate the books which are 16 ½ inches tall and do not fit on the cradle.  We adopted the method of doing a spirit level check every 5 pages and a complete focus check every 50 pages.  I just hope that it is enough.  At least they cannot say we did not give it our best shot.

We took down the Christmas Tree – now the apartment really looks bare.  We cannot really put up pictures because this is not our own property and the real reason is that we don’t have any pictures to start with……….go figure. 

After a day off..............

Monday was a holiday and so we went back to work on Tuesday.  There are literally no distractions here in the Archives.  Only a couple of people work here anyway and so unless they come in to talk to us, no one comes in to distract us.  However, the digitizing moves slowly when we are doing one page at a time.  Moves at a glacial pace which is even slower than Molasses in Winter.

Lunch time was rather fun yesterday.  Rob and Peter came in to eat with us and Peter had his son with him who is a freshman at Halldale High School.  There was lots of laughter and laughter is surely the best medicine.  The weather was gloomy and snow was forecast (it never came, but loads of rain came) and we were not looking forward to the ride home.

We went to the YMCA after work at the archives and there were many people there doing hard things physically.  I assume that the weights they have put onto the lifting bars are actually heavy and not made of colored Styrofoam…….ha ha ha ha ; the ones who do the lifting grunt and groan with the weight and I am impressed.  Some of them even drop the weights to the floor with a resounding thump and the YMCA staff are not impressed with that.

We went home to eat and I went to Sr. Cyr for my reflexology session.  I am feeling a lot better since she has started working on me but my sciatic nerve still gives me problems – has done for years.

After the session on my feet we went to Best Buy.  Bill bought a year’s membership to the Geek Squad and some young kid – probably about 20 yrs old, just took to the problem in hand like a duck to water.  As a result, we have Angry Birds loaded onto the IPad 2.  Well, after a couple of turns at it, the question needs to be asked  - So what is it all about?  Well, It seems to be a complete waste of time, but the officaindos of the game insist that it  is all about physics and how to get the most points for the most accurate chucking of the little red bird at the green pig.  How high are their goals in life?

This morning the temperature is hovering around 50 degrees and it rained all night so the snow is all gone.  Beats having to use a snowplow!

The day after THE DAY

It is 16 degrees this morning – that’s quite a bit hotter than yesterday morning but still not bathing suit weather by any means.  The trees in front have just a dusting of snow on them and in the light breeze, these small amounts of snow fall off the branches and it looks like it is raining diamonds in the early morning sunshine.  The blanket of snow on the ground looks like someone scattered Swarovski crystals  on it and they shine in the sun.  Yes, we do have sunshine this morning – at least for a little while.

Because today is a holiday for state employees, we are totally off schedule – guess this is what they call “down time”.

In the paper this morning the headlines scream about a wreck on Rte. 3 at about 1.30pm that claimed the lives of 4 persons.  We were on Rte. 3 at about that time on our way to our friends’ house to eat Christmas Dinner.  A police car with sirens and lights passed us going very fast – almost too fast for the road conditions.  He was heading in the direction of the wreck, but we did not know that at the time.  All we know is that we had to get off the road into the snow and I worried that we would become a “slide-off” victim.  Under the snow on the roads right now is ice and ice is very treacherous to drive on and due to the light snow that was falling, conditions were dangerous at best.  This past week or so an 18month little girl was abducted from her home and still has not been found.  A man jumped from the bridge into the icy Kennebec River but when they fished him out, it was too late to save him.  On my mission in Japan, during the Christmas season in 1970, a person jumped into the path of the Kyuko (fast train that only stops at every 4^th or 5^th station and is a way of getting around faster than being on a train that stops at each station).  The train station worker was picking up the pieces with very long chop sticks.  The lady we visited on Friday told us she is at the verge of a divorce.  Others have said that some family members are not welcomed at this family gathering or that gathering and the list of sadness goes on and on and on.

Right next to these tragedies, is the joy and wonderment of Christmas.  Our grandchildren were really anxious to open their gifts from under the tree and their eyes were as sparkly as the lights on the tree.  What is Christmas without the joy of little children?  I am thankful to the engineers who devised the Skype program that allowed us to be online with Sara  and the children while we opened the gifts from them to us.

One highlight of the season was at the Lessons and Carol’s service.  The minister took a candle and lit it from a candle that represented the Christ child and the light that He has brought into the world.  He turned off the lights of the church and came down and from the chancel with his lit candle; he lit a candle at the end of each pew and we lit our candles from the person next to us.  We then all sang Silent Night and the moment was magical and awesome.  Just as these small candles lit the whole room and chased away the dark, so does the light of Christ teachings light peoples’ lives and chases away the dark and erroneous teachings.

At 4am this morning, the snow plough came into the neighboring parking lot and made a real racket.  I watched him yesterday as he plowed the lot and then took a shovel and spread the sand around the parking lot to help prevent people slipping on the ice and to give traction to the cars there.  It seemed to be a very hard way to spread the sand, doing it by hand, but I guess you have to be a much larger operation to be able to have one of those machines at the back of your truck that operates the sand spreader like they have on the highway trucks. 

Last week the Kennebec River was icy but it was flowing and wonderful.  Today it is frozen over and just as wonderful.  A flock of seagulls was resting on the surface yesterday and my hope is that they did not get frozen in place. 

Well, reality has settled in.  Laundry is waiting.  Doing laundry is less stressful than going to Walmart the day after Christmas when all the “takebacks” are being processed.    I really thought we would get a load of advertisements in today’s paper heralding even greater cuts in prices at an after Christmas Sale.  For the past 34 years I have not been able to attend these events (didn’t have a babysitter for the kids) and this year we don’t even have David with us, and still cannot go to the event.  Reason:  Well, we have to keep our possessions to a minimum because if it does not fit into the car for the journey home, at the end of this mission,  then it has to stay here.

Our assignment here was for 6months and we have already used 3 months.  I am filled with sadness at that possibility.  I love Maine and the people here.  Even the snow and the cold give further insights into the extraordinary creation that God had given us.  However, the wild turkey we saw wandering in a field along route 3, had better go into hiding or he will be the main guest at a New Years Eve party next weekend.

The other half of Christmas Day

Today started out with 3degrees  and rose as high as 10 degrees.  Time to go swimming in the warm weather…….ha ha ha ha

We were asked to go pick up an elderly member who lives quite a way out of Augusta and ended up doing 108 miles going to pick her up, take her to church and return her home etc.  Of course we took a little detour – Bill missed the turn and we almost ended up at Boothbay and Wiscasset before we turned around and found another road that led to her house.  She raises goats way out in the country.

 We returned to our apartment in time to reheat the turkey breast that we bought yesterday and cook the sweet potato to take to our friends’ home  for Christmas dinner.  We ate and then came home due to the snow.   We did not know how much snow had fallen while we ate but it was coming down the whole time.  We opened our gifts to each other after we got home. 

This Christmas has been really really different.  At home I usually make a gingerbread house that David takes home with him, and loads of cookies etc. but I do not have my electric mixer with me so that I cannot really do cooking very well.  We also do not have our Christmas decorations with us and do not have a CD player so that we can listen to Christmas songs so life has been quite different this year.

It can best be described as “Discontinuity”.  This is a term used by Bill’s nephew Geoffrey when he was 8 years old and we were visiting him and his family in Neenah, Wisconsin.  I asked him how he liked vacation and he told me that he was not on vacation but rather in discontinuity.  Continuity is when you do your regular life activities and discontinuity is when you are doing other things.   I guess having Christmas is out of the ordinary and we do not have to go to the Archives tomorrow because they are closed for the day so the next day we have to be there will be Tuesday and it will really seem strange.

Another thing that is different with this couples mission is that once we are done with the day’s work, the time is our own.  That may be so, but we are so tired from doing the digitizing, we are very tired and when we get home all we want to do is relax.  I guess I am not 26 years old any more…………….On my first mission we were gone from our apartment from 8.30am till 9pm.  I doubt if I still have that kind of stamina.

We opened our gifts from Sara and family over skype.  The children sent me art work that I treasure very much.  Sara made a small scrapbook book for pictures to be put in it and she sent us some storage bowls and some hand warmers like Jacob takes hunting.  These gifts are quite innovative and very useful.  I opened one of the hand warmer packs and it was quite comforting for my hands to hold it during church because the building was quite cold…..well it was only about 7 degrees when we got there anyway.

I notice that the trash container for the apartments is filled to overflowing.  I guess all the inhabitants in the area had a great Christmas mother lode of presents.