Glo! Oh my gosh, I realize that I have sent you basically no emails or messages this week. It's not because I haven't wanted to, but it's because I really have had nothing to send. Here's my very boring, very lame week in review:
The thing that has kept me the busiest this week is taking care of the animals by myself (see? I told you it was mundane). I picked up Maize on Wednesday because Beth and her family went on a Disney cruise. By the way, have you heard about the Coronavirus? It's in China at the moment, and several people have died from it. Someone on a cruise ship was diagnosed, and the entire population of the cruise ship has been quarantined on the cruise ship for over two weeks now. Only those people without windows in their rooms are being allowed up on deck. Otherwise, people have been sitting in their cabins for two weeks, being handed food through the doors three times a day. Can you even IMAGINE? Yeah, I have no desire to do a cruise for a l-o-n-g while....
Anyway, I picked up Maize. I knew that taking out the three dogs 4-5 times a day would be a pain in the BE-hind, especially since Daddy left for PA the day after, but I HAD NO IDEA! Oh my gosh, taking care of the animals has been a full-time job. I can't take out the three dogs together because we aren't supposed to have three dogs in an apartment (hence the reason we had to get rid of Maize in the first place), and it doesn't help that we've had snow everyday this week. So I put on my coat and mittens and walk down the stairs (did you know we live on the top floor?) where the dogs crowd around my feet in a 2' by 2' space, waiting to go out. I have to get my boots on, attach the leashes to Cherry and Maize, and get the poop bags ready and open in my pocket. Of course, I put the harness on Maize because she's so crazy and uncontrollable if she sees another dog outside, but Cherry's harness barely fits her. In fact, I can't actually buckle it, but I can use the leash's clip to fasten two rings together that keep it on her. Of course, she's dancing around and doing her stupid barking, and when I open the door, it's all I can do to only let two of them out the door.
Then, I have to try and get out into the yard as quickly as possible so that our poor neighbors don't see pools and pools of yellow snow right outside our/their doors. And Dash--he just wanders around. He doesn't need a leash, but he's walking up to every tree and post, peeing on everything. At least he THINKS he is. I'm not sure anything actually comes out.
Yes, this 4-5 times a day. Why so often, you might ask?
Because Cherry has taken to pooping in our apartment daily. No joke, however many times I take her out, and no matter how many times she poops outside, she likes to dump loads in our dining room ON THE CARPET. I can't even tell you how much poop I have picked up, and she knows she does it too because as soon as I yell "Noooooooo!!!!" once again, she leaves the comfort of her dog bed (which she gives up for NO ONE) and goes running down the stairs. I can't leave her in the apartment anymore, but now must set up a baby gate at the top of the stairs and leave her on the stairs when I go out, when I go to sleep, when I'm watching TV eating chocolate. She's completely untrustable.
And Maize. I kind of thought that we should bring her back to live with us when I saw the other dogs happy to see her (and to know that she's taking care of Dash's eye and ear maintenance again and that I don't need to wash his face with a washcloth) and when I saw how much weight she has gained at Beth's, but after leaving her alone for one afternoon in the apartment, and seeing that the cats wouldn't come out from underneath the bed afterwards, I knew she had been on a rampage. She seriously terrorizes the cats. She charges them, and chases them, and makes their life a living hell. In fact, if I'm in my room (I have to close the door or Hootie sleeps on my bed and leaves daily urine leaks/stains on it), KitTen will wait outside my door, waiting to rush in whenever I open it even an inch. Yeah, the cats' happiness isn't worth Maize's.
And no joke, the first day, I put dry food in the three bowls for them for the day. An hour later, it was all gone, and I realized that SHE HAD EATEN ALL THREE BOWLS OF FOOD! Yeah, it's no wonder she is so fat. I guess Cherry guarding all the food when Maize lived with us served a purpose, because now, with no guarding, she has proven herself a GLUTTON!
So imagine me, with Daddy gone, and all of this insanity. Of course, Jake begging for canned food four times a day doesn't help, although the COVERED litter box that Daddy just bought sure does. I'm only sweeping the litter in FRONT of the box now and there's no urine on the outside of it. But I also have to take the litter bags out to the dumpster as well as walking/dumping all the poop bags into the dumpster. Sometimes, after walking the dogs around in the snow, I just don't have the energy to walk to the dumpster to dump the bags, so I just leave them by our front door until I go out to the car. Yeah, I'm sure our neighbor loves me....
Are you tired yet, because I certainly am. I do take them out around 1 or 2 a.m. just so they can run around without a leash, but even then I'm nervous that some rando person will be out walking their dog, and if that happens, I'll just walk myself to the jail because I will no doubt be sued for the death of some five pound Yorkie.
Yeah, I can't even imagine living in a regular house WITH A YARD again someday. And don't you know that I have a whole new reason for living a good life, because I can imagine what kind of hell would be created for me if I don't choose the right....
In addition to all of this fun, I worked three temple shifts this week: Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Friday, I was subbing, but the other two shifts are my regulars. I had some lovely moments, but on both Friday and Saturday, I was assigned the task of being Initiatory Director (I've only been officially called on my Saturday morning shift) which was a huge surprise. Being Initiatory Director is like working a puzzle with live human components for three straight hours. Patrons coming and going (and having different needs like "There's only ten minutes before the endowment session starts, and I want to do the initiatories for this name AND get the name recorded AND go through the name issue booth before the session starts" and we already have three patrons in the booth, and I need to SMILE and be as Christlike as possible) and workers coming and going, being only assigned to be there for 30 minutes. And as Initiatory Director, in order to keep the chaos to a minimum, workers should only be rotated out from the clothing booth, but getting the worker into the clothing booth who needs to leave first without disrupting the experience for the patrons? And then to do it TWO MORE TIMES? And this happens every 30 minutes for 2 1/2 - 3 hours? And sometimes (actually MOST times), we don't have enough workers, so not only am I keeping track of everyone, but I need to pop into the clothing booth to function as the worker there. But remember the person who needs their name recorded within seconds to make the session? Yeah, I get one person through the clothing booth, grab the card, "run" as much as humanly possible through the temple to the office, beg my friends to put aside everything else and record the name, run back to the initiatory area, give the name to the patron, and hop back in the clothing booth, hoping that the worker in the anointing booth was talking REALLY slow..... It's been so bad a couple of times that I'm trying to walk in like nothing has happened and all peaceful but because I'm asthmatic and overweight, I can hardly catch my breath!
But wait! There's more!
Remember how I once said being a worker in initiatories is like standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance for hours on end? Well, being the director requires standing the entire time which means by the end, I can hardly bend over because the degenerating discs in my back can't support what I'm doing.
So imagine how I felt when I got home Saturday night...and had to clean up more poop (I thought I had cleaned out Cherry) and take the dogs out and feed the cats and change my clothes and make my dinner. Oh wait, I had actually picked up a burger from Culver's after going shopping at Meijer. I seriously thought I was going to die.
But you know what? It's all worth it (the temple work--not the dogs). I had a sweet woman on Friday who stopped me during the washing and said, "I admire you so much, and I don't even know you. You have a light that I wish I had." And yet she was so beautiful. Or when I walked into the Saturday afternoon preparation meeting and told my coordinator, Sister Brown, that I was there (mostly so I could get my schedule), and she turned and looked at me, and said, "Oh good. You're the only sunshine I have today." Or Saturday afternoon, when I thought I was done, I felt inspired to check in the office (where I work on the odd weeks). Turns out, there was only one sister there, and she was overwhelmed. I sat down in the chair, and spent an extra 45 minutes taking care of everything that she didn't have time to do. There was no praise of me at the end, but I knew that I had lifted someone's burden.
One of the reasons though that I feel like I can keep going is because Daddy and I now have HOPE. We aren't living on credit cards anymore. We will hopefully get the house at the end of this month. We have survived what was the most difficult trial of our lives. I was thinking the other day what a blessing the temple was for us for the past 15 months--how it was always there to help us when nothing else was--and I'm so happy that I can give back to it now. It would be easy for us to use the excuse that Daddy is working and we can't work as much at the temple, but what kind of slap in the face would that be to Heavenly Father? The temple is a gift to us, and we owe it to Him to give back.
One final thought. Yesterday, we had fifteen minutes left in initiatories, and we had no patrons. We were all tired, and I know the workers were hoping that I would just close the booth for the night. However, I didn't have permission to do that, and I was wondering what would happen if someone came last minute and we didn't have the staff. So, I grabbed a sheet of three initiatory names (I have completed all of my family names) and acted as the patron while the two workers did a "round robin" in the booth. I don't know who those women are on that paper, but I had this overwhelming feeling which brought tears to my eyes: somebody submitted their names to the temple to be done in the temple instead of keeping the names to do themselves. As you know, I feel very strongly about doing the work for our family, because I want those people to know that I care about them and appreciate them. Looking at that list of three names, I wondered if those women feel uncared about, so in my mind, I said to them, "You can be part of my family. I love you, and I care about you," and I knew in that moment, that I had made the right decision to keep the booth open for 15 more minutes even though I could hardly walk or bend over to change back into my street clothes.
I'm so thankful for the covenants we can make in the temple. That Law of Consecration covenant always gets me. Am I doing all I can to support the work of the church? If I have more to give, I have no excuse to not give it considering all that I have been given.
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