No Such Thing as Coincidences

I've had a series of interesting experiences the past few days that I chalk up to little miracles.  They need to be recorded, and now that the news around these events is public, I can share these miracles with you.

Thursday afternoon, my friend, Jennifer's, youngest daughter, called to see if I could pick up her older sister from dance class in half an hour.  She said her mom was not feeling well.  The dance studio is not too far from my home, and I've run this errand before when Jennifer was running errands herself, or when she hasn't felt well.

I became worried, though, after picking up the dancing daughter who told me Jennifer had suddenly felt very nauseated when driving to the dance class that afternoon.  She said her mom's vision was blacking out and she ran into the curb at the dance drop-off.  Jennifer's husband works in Salt Lake, too far from home to get back quickly; so I told her daughter to have Jennifer call me if she needed to get to a doctor or hospital.  I followed up with a text to Jennifer saying that I was worried about her symptoms and would drive her for medical attention if needed.  I also asked if she wanted me to come check on her.

I did not receive a response immediately, so I kept her and her family in my prayers and figured she was getting some needed rest.

Friday morning, I carried my cell phone in my pocket during school drop-off as usual.  When I was walking to my workout class a little later, I realized I had left my phone in my pocket.  I always leave my phone and wedding ring at home because I don't want them getting damaged or lost while I exercise.  I had remembered to take off my ring that morning, but had forgotten about the phone at that habitual moment.  When I discovered the phone in my pocket, I almost turned around to leave it at home, and then thought, "I guess I'll find somewhere safe to keep it out of the hands of the little kids that run around during aerobics."  In the gym, I found a ledge about seven feet off the ground and mentally noted that I would need to remember it was there before leaving.

After the first hour of weight training, the toning instructor turned off the music to swap microphones with the zumba instructor.  The rest of us were running laps around the gym during the transition to the second hour of our workout.  From across the gym, I could hear my cell phone ringing.  I jogged over and saw that it was Jennifer's number.  Her older daughter was calling to say that her dad was already at work and her mom was really sick and needed me to drive her to a doctor.  I quickly gathered my things, jogged home, and drove to their house.

I found Jennifer in her nightgown covered in sweat, wheezing, and looking very ashen.  As she got herself out of bed, she asked her daughter to find her wallet.  Her daughter looked everywhere, with no luck.  I helped the daughter on a second sweep of the house, with no results.  Then I had the thought that the wallet was in the car.  I told her daughter to go look there, and she found it.  We packed Jennifer's purse, got a robe on her, left her daughter with some instructions, and headed out.  Jennifer held a bowl on her lap, and a wad of tissues to catch any phlegm she might be able to cough up.  She explained that a cold had been going through their family that week, and she thought she simply had really bad congestion from that.  She had begun vomiting every hour and had a raging headache.  At that point, she was so weak that she couldn't even cough much.  She felt more sick than she had ever remembered being.  We decided she should go to the ER.

At the hospital, they discovered that Jennifer's oxygen saturation was 25 percent.  That's quite bad.  They began  treating for pneumonia with a variety of oxygen treatments until her skinned pinked up.  After a couple hours, her oxygen was in the 90s, her headache was mostly gone, and she was finally feeling hungry.  Her daughter called to find out what was happening, and I told her they thought it was pneumonia and the doctor and nurse were helping her feel much better.  I also called her husband to fill him in.  He decided to cut some appointments short and meet her at the hospital.

She and I visited for four hours in the hospital.  She told me she wasn't too concerned about her illness, figuring it was the flu, until she received my text saying how worried I was.  Her daughter asked her to call me several times, and was relieved when Jennifer finally said to go ahead.  Ironically, the symptom I was most concerned about was the vision blackouts accompanied by the sudden nausea.  Jennifer chuckled and said she had not had any problems with her vision.  She did bump into the curb at dance class, so her daughter must have concluded that her eyes were not working.  Coincidences?  No.

As it turned out, Jennifer did not have pneumonia.  She had a birth defect in her heart that was finally acting up and not putting oxygen into her bloodstream.  As a result, her lungs had filled with fluid, which caused the pneumonia-like symptoms.  She is still in the hospital, and just finished open heart surgery this evening.  She is in good hands and I know through this series of non-coincidence miracles that Jennifer has angels watching over her.  Let me list them one more time:

1. Her daughter mentioned non-existent vision loss, which raised a flag in my mind.
2. I sent a text that helped Jennfier realize the situation might be worse that she thought.
3. My cell phone stayed in my pocket when it normally shouldn't have been there.
4. When I would have taken the phone back home, the thought came to my mind to just keep it with me.
5. Jennifer's daughter called for help at the only time during the two-hour workout that I could have heard my phone.  The loud music was only turned off for a couple minutes while instructors traded the microphone.
6. I heard the phone from across the gym where a dozen ladies and at least a dozen more small children were running around and being noisy.
7. I knew where to find Jennifer's wallet so she could register easily at the ER.  This allowed the hospital to pull a list of her medications so they could treat her carefully.
8. We got Jennifer to the hospital in time.  With an oxygen level of 25, she probably shouldn't have made it.  When we left, the nurse told mentioned that he had never seen such a low oxygen saturation in someone who was still living.

God is watching over Jennifer and her family.  Please pray for them.

A Distracted Moment

Tip for moms who cut their kids' hair: don't look away from your work.

#5 has needed a haircut for about two weeks.  Despite the Sunday morning rush to get everyone ready for Church, dinner in the slow cooker, lunch in tummies, and a bit of cleaning before hosting the extended family this evening, I thought it would be a good time to take care of the hair.  I may have overestimated my delegation skills as a mom.

You see, my nieces and nephew were spending the weekend with us, and nine kids apparently put me over the top.  I had assigned out sandwich making, sweeping, and laundering Niece 3's peed-in skirt and shoes so they would be clean and mostly dry before heading to Church in 71 minutes.  I had done a pretty good job with the haircut to this point.  I set down the clippers to check my work.  As I ran my fingers through #5's hair, I noticed a chunk near the front that had eluded the cut.  As I reached for the clippers, I looked up to see who was crying or maybe to yell at someone.  I don't remember.  It's all a blur now.  While still dealing with said blur, I set the clippers to his head, and noticed they were tugging against my efforts.  Returning my attention to the work at hand, I discovered that the clipper length guide was no longer attached and I had shaved a two-inch-long rectangle down to the scalp.  My girls gasped.  #5 started crying.  The rest of the children came running when they heard #s 1 and 4 trying to reassure him that it didn't look that bad.  I considered buzzing the rest of his hair, and then remembered that his school uniform policy prohibits such a cut.  I accepted that he would just have to wear my mistake until it grows out.

So I gave up and just put away all the hair cutting tools.  As his sisters consoled my tearful boy, I realized he was crying from pain, as he had no idea yet what his hair looked like.  Those clippers had really tugged at his hair!  So I rubbed his scalp, blew the hairs off his face and neck, and sent him to the shower to rinse.  When he was done with his shower, he came to tell me that he actually likes this haircut.  "It's really unique!" he said.  I'm glad he likes it.  I'm also glad Nephew loaned #5 the Lego tie for Church, as it helped to distract from his bald patch--maybe.

How ironic that my only child to never cut his own hair had it ruined by the family hairstylist.  For the record, though, after taking #5's picture, I remembered that I had skipped the last part of the cut where I clean up the front.  So yes, I shortened those weird, long hairs on his forehead.

Panhandling in Provo

It seems the face of begging in our fair city has changed.

It is not unusual for me to see one or maybe two homeless people asking for help as I exit the grocery store or head downtown for a dinner out.  All my life I have seen beggars with dirty faces and grimy coats sitting dejectedly with a cardboard sign reading, "Homeless.  God bless."  The entirety of their belongings are usually piled in a shopping cart or tied to a sleeping bag nearby. 

As I drove around on a few errands yesterday though, I saw five different panhandlers.  That number alone was a little surprising.  What I found shocking enough to keep thinking about it today is that not one of those people fit the description above.

No one had piles of belongings, let alone a coat on the ground beside them.  Were these fair-weather beggars?  Did they wait for warm temperatures before leaving their house to try their luck on the street?  Three of the beggars fit the dirty description, wearing old T-shirts and ratty jeans.  I did notice a grocery sack and a Super Big Gulp resting beside one man.  (It's a good thing this isn't New York.  That man could have lost his last soda!)  >Sorry.  I couldn't resist one snide remark.<

The one thing all five beggars had in common was the cardboard sign.  But not one of their signs tweeted a story of an injured vet, a wandering traveler, or simple homelessness.

There was one young man who looked like a UVU student.  (I would have guessed BYU, except for his beard.)  He was clean cut and dressed like any of the other 65,000 students in our area.  The only thing to set him apart from his classmates was the cardboard sign he held asking for money.

Then there was the man who looked to be about my age and about my economic status.  With his ball cap, sunglasses, and ear buds, I would have guessed that he just walked out of a sporting event.  The only indication that he needed money was his sign.  It read, "Obama gave me this job!"  He saw me glance at his sign and then look away as I waited in my van at a stop light.  When his clever Obama tactic didn't work, he flipped the cardboard over and nonchalantly waved it to catch my attention.  The reverse side read, "Down on my luck.  Could use some green."  Cute.  A beggar using the holiday for his appeal.

Like I said, these people have been in my head ever since.

My initial reaction was that they all seemed to be able bodied.  Why couldn't they go out and beg for a job?  What happened to the signs that read "Will work for food"?  Maybe Elizabeth Smart's story ruined that tactic in Utah.  Still, I actually found myself getting angry when the driver of a car in front of me handed some bills to one of these guys, followed by a pedestrian who went out of his way to hand the same guy all his spare change before crossing back to the sidewalk he had been treading.  I had hoped that someone would direct that man and his colleagues to the Food and Care Coalition, which was an easy walk away.  I've toured their facility where they provide food to any who come in, free rooms, haircuts, and job leads to homeless people.

I remembered that my tour of their facility had also consisted of a bit of education about homelessness, including the fact that most homeless people struggle with drug addiction or mental illness.  I have no way of knowing if the able-bodied men and women I saw yesterday face those devils in their lives.

Surely, though, the man with the ear buds could have found a job.  His clever signs, citing the bane of most voters in this county, and referencing the current holiday for those who turned out to be Democrat, indicated some level of education.  I found myself wondering why he hadn't sold whatever device his ear buds were plugged into before humiliating himself with begging on the street.  Did he have a family and a house and had possibly run out of unemployment checks?  Why didn't he simply respond to one of the several Help Wanted signs I saw in my errands yesterday?  Was he hoping that someone would recognize his wit and offer him something better?

Joseph Smith, as quoted by Hugh Nibley in Approaching Zion, said, "It is better to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition."  I've long believed this as a true principle.  I can't judge others as I don't know their circumstance.  All I know is they want my help.  But I admit that last year when I offered the leftovers of a restaurant meal that I couldn't finish to a beggar in Salt Lake City, it really bugged me that he turned me down and said he didn't want my food.

So while it might be good to feed impostors, is there a better approach?  I appreciate Provo City's stance that panhandling is not a good answer, and that responding with spare change doesn't help the problem for the beggar in the long run.  I like the signs posted downtown by the Community Resource Officers (see above), and often wish that I had business cards with the address to the Food and Care Coalition and the phone number for the United Way.  That is one hand out I would actively give.

What's your answer?

Mourning the Present

It may seem like an exercise in ridiculousness, but this week I've found myself wishing the present weren't so fleeting.

In church last Sunday, I watched the teenagers that I had taught in Primary (youth Sunday School in the LDS Church) when they were turning ten.  They are now on the brink of graduation, serving missions, and going to college.  Later, at a youth fireside that evening I watched--and yes, intervened--as one of my former Bear Den Cub Scouts flirted openly with my almost-13-yr-old daughter.  "Wait!  When did he get taller than me?!" I thought.  "Can he really be in high school already?"

For almost a decade now, we've lived in a neighborhood that embraces the proverb that "it takes a village to raise a child."  As these kids grow up and move on, I feel a little bit like some of my own apron strings are being severed.  I felt sad thinking that these young adults that I've watched grow up will soon be starting adult lives of their own, marrying and raising children of their own.  They will no longer be a part of my immediate neighborhood family.

And so I've turned my attention to my own children's rapid growth.  Doing so has given me more joy in the little moments, while also wishing I could hang on to those moments a little longer.

Where I used to be annoyed each spring by the mud tracks and trails of sand brought in by my kids after an afternoon playing in the adjacent field, this week I just laugh and tell my son he has become the superhero known as Dirt Man.  (It helps that I've learned to shake out all his pockets before tossing them in the washer.)

Instead of getting annoyed that Jedi Dirt Man has once again left his crusty socks on the porch as a greeting to visitors, now I just stop and take a picture.

I do the same when I find my teenager draped on the couch for an afternoon nap with a pointless TV show still running on the cell phone.


























(I knew she was in a deep sleep when I lifted the phone and she didn't even stir.)

With yesterday's high pressure and warm temperatures, my kids thought summer had come.  I came home to find #3 and her friend running a lemonade stand, #5--aka Dirt Man--shirtless and digging a "swimming pool" in the field, and #s 2 and 4 running around in their swimsuits with friends.

Life is good, but as my new gray hairs will attest, it is running by on little feet way too quickly.

Master Bedroom Makeover: Almost Everything Else

Long long ago, I started a series of posts about my master bedroom makeover.  This is part 2 of that series, and I'm just going to throw most of the rest of the room up here as time has shown that I will probably never get back to this topic.  I will post pictures of the entire room sometime in the next 12 months, once it is free of the construction supplies I'm using on an adjoining room.  (There are just too many other fun projects in my house, and it turns out that I would rather work on them than write about them.)

Here is the "before" picture of the master bedroom:

Okay, fine.  Here is the predominant "before" picture, which will either make you feel good about yourself for being normal (don't tell me your room has never become the dumping ground of the house), or feel really good about yourself for never having such a mess:

First dramatic change:  Goodbye white walls and pink carpet.  Tip: It's always faster and way more fun to sucker your unwitting friends into helping you than to paint alone.

In an effort to be friendly to the environment, I decided to re-purpose as many elements of the room as possible.  Actually, that's not completely true.  My real motivation was to re-do this room "on the cheap".  I had given myself a $200-ish budget, which I blew pretty quickly on the carpet.  The original plan was to paint the sub-floor white and buy carpet down the road.  But once we tore up the carpet, the echo was awful,  so we bought new carpet and scrimped on other things for several months.  I also received an anonymous gift of cash, which gave me the courage to get this project under way.  (Thank you generous person!)  And just look at all the almost-free updates we made.

My meditation space:

We have a little alcove in the room that I've always wanted to use for morning scripture study, yoga, and meditation.  That's tricky when you're married to a non-early riser who doesn't enjoy the sunrise.  Here is what I started with:

And here are the improvements:

My neighbors might recognize that wood.  It came from a house kitty-corner from ours where they replaced their worn-out cedar fencing with a much more interesting fence.  I saved their old fencing from the dump and made it much more interesting, too.  After cleaning it with a stiff brush and spraying with bleach to kill any mold in the wood, I gave some of the pieces a blue color wash, sanded the peaks off the wood grain, finished with a clear coat of polycrylic, and voila...a new floor.

Please excuse the saw and paint cans.  Like I said, there are always other projects under way.

To meet my desires for natural morning light without infringing on Kent's sleep, I moved the curtains away from the window to the front of the alcove.  I replace the brown microfiber curtains with blue insulating curtains paired with Ikea's panel curtains, which are cut to the correct length.

Gotta' say, I think Ikea's curtain track system is brilliant!  The triple track lets me layer the curtains in multiple ways depending on my mood.

I wanted to bring in some natural elements, so I re-purposed this branch that I had pruned off my locust tree in the winter.  It is suspended about nine inches from the ceiling using clear nylon string anchored by white finishing nails.  I hung some sweet little wooden bird cut outs from the branches, and this easy piece of art was done.


The finished alcove:

Well, almost finished.  I'm still deciding if I want furniture in here, or just a yoga mat.  It would be nice to keep the bookcase for my gardening magazines.  I may put it on wheels so I can move it to the window and use the top surface to hold seed sprouting trays in the spring.  I'll probably add artwork to the wall too.

The dressers you've already seen on my Part 1 post, so I'll skip ahead to the real work: the bed.

We got rid of the bookcases that used to look like sentinels in the alcove, so I was looking for ways to bring storage space to the new room.  When I saw these kitchen cabinets on the curb near my kids' school with a sign advertising a good price--FREE--I knew just what to do.

All they needed was some cleaning, wood putty, sanding, priming, painting, new hardware, and they make a great headboard.  Oh yeah, throw on a recycled bi-fold closet door, a big piece of mdf covered in linen fabric (curtains from Ikea that I cut to fit), and moulding to trim the piece.  Sound simple enough?  It wasn't!

After glue sticks, staple guns are a girl's best friend.

It was so much cheaper to cut up curtains than to buy a bolt of fabric.

I needed a bed base, so I put my neighbor's old fence, and another neighbor's rotted porch post (more on that below) to use.

The bed frame is cedar fence posts stacked two high and braced with 2x4s.  We had to sink our 1/4 x 6" wood screws into the wood for a flat surface where the bed's foundation would rest, so we used a half-inch drill bit for the head of the screw and the 1/4" bit for the hole going through both posts.

   

You can see how rough/rotted the post ends were, but that unsightliness is easily hidden by craft wood used as trim.  We have a Select Comfort bed, which has a plastic foundation rather than a traditional box spring.  To get a clean look without a dust ruffle covering up the wooden bed frame, Kent and I ran more of the linen curtain fabric around the three sides of the bed foundation that show.  We used some highly specialized parts to attach the fabric to the plastic: adhesive Velcro with safety pins on the corners.  It's not perfect, but no one looks closely at the bed foundation anyway.

I really wanted curtains around the bed.  When the ceiling fan prevented me from building posts at the corners, I came up with something else.  I noticed that some other neighbors had replaced their porch posts, and better yet, I noticed their rotted porch posts leaning against their house.  They gave me six posts, and I went to work.

After much cleaning, sanding, cutting, puttying, and painting, I had some rails to hold the curtain tracks.  Here's how they turned out.

It took a few weeks of deliberating to figure out how to attach these posts to the ceiling.  I found these awesome drywall anchors at Lowe's.  They each can hold over 200 lbs.  We sunk holes in the posts in the same way we attached long screws in the bed base, adding a metal washer to catch the head of the anchor bolt.  Once the posts were up, I painted some stickers and just covered up the holes.

I bought craft boards and cut them to work as trim to hide the joints of the posts.

I attached a single track curtain system from Ikea.  (Again, I have to say I love this curtain system.)

I got the "curtains" from Ikea, too.  They are the $4 twin-size white sheets.  When I opened the package, serendipity revealed that Ikea hems the entire perimeter with a half-inch seam, so I didn't even have to pick out the top cuff that is usually on sheets.  I know...messy bed in the photo; but I couldn't reveal the made bed until I tell you about the bedding.  And this picture gives a feel for the "tent" that the kids like to play in by drawing curtain all around.  It's quite fun.

By this point of the project, I was pretty picky about what bed linens I wanted.  I bought white Egyptian sheets when they were on sale at ShopKo.  (By the way, every time I go into ShopKo, I am pleasantly surprised at their prices and the quality on most home goods, and I find myself wondering why I don't go there more often.  Last week I went in for some packing tape and left with over $100 of storage containers, baskets, and more to organize my home.)

I really wanted a white goose down comforter, but I wasn't willing to fork over half of my original budget just for that item.  Luckily, DI (the local thrift store) saved me:

Take a look at that price tag!!!  I nabbed the comforter right as another lady was headed toward it.  The ugly olive green-and-purple quilt hanging next to this goose-down comforter was marked at $75, so I wasn't sure I would actually get this for $12--but you can see that I did!  The comforter smelled a bit like a hospital, and it looked brand new, so I'm guessing some elderly patient may have died under it.  But with a $3 wash in the oversized machine at the local laundromat, it worked out to be a great deal.  (Yes, I read up on how to wash down.  Do a Google search before you throw your comforter in your own washing machine, because feathers get special treatment.)  I had found a furry white blanket at TJ Maxx, and a shower curtain (now) velvety throw at Bed Bath and Beyond, which both added textural interest to the bedding.

The final pieces were the pillows.  After finding a $7 body pillow at Target, I was convinced that I should just make my own cases.  Following instructions that I found on the internet for sewing French seams, I made two standard pillow cases and one large case for the body pillow.  I purchased most of the material, but was able to incorporate some grosgrain ribbon that had tied a pack of two throw pillows together.

I wanted one more decorative pillow and ended up making a button-up case for a $17 Ikea down pillow.  The pillow is reversible so my bedding can change with my mood: sweet with a bird, or more adult damask.  I was hoping to get a little bird embroidered on the throw pillow, but when I couldn't figure out how to do that inexpensively, I just painted a design on the off-white fabric using acrylic paints.

The bed came together quite nicely, if you ask me.

That's it for now.  Next time I'll show photos of all the free furniture I rescued from going to the thrift store and give an idea of how the eclectic pieces all work together.  Yes, I really was able to incorporate a tuba, a retro record player, a striped rug, a broken painting, a treasure chest, and dried allium all in one room.  So check back...I hope to have it posted by Halloween!