Too big to be a comment

 That is an excellent simile, Mike, and a beautiful idea with the rainbows. That has always been one of my favorite songs, too, and the most pleasurable rendition of it ever, I have thought.  We know you hurt terribly, and though we also hurt for you and with you, we cannot, I am sure, comprehend how great and deep the wound is to your heart.  I do understand, with my frequent joints and back pain, the idea of living with the pain and suffering, and trying not to complain about it.  And I understand the small reminders, sharp nearly debilitating stabs of pain from time to time, and other periods of hours and sometimes days of constant aches that no matter what I do, persisting like they will never end. Then, suddenly they are gone, and I am fine, but I know they will return again.  And sometimes I worry that I act too well, and I want to know that others (mostly your mother) know that I do hurt in spite of my good acting.  I share your loss as well as I can, one long step removed from your closeness to beautiful Laila, having missed meeting her in person by less than a full day because I returned home from visiting you the morning of the day she was born.  Shortly after we returned from our last visit with you, I picked up the book A Disciple’s Life, about Neal A. Maxwell (a book I had purchased for $3.00 or so some time ago, at Ollie’s, our local reject store) and began reading it.  It is Elder Maxwell’s biography, written by a good friend, at his request, started after he had developed leukemia. He had always talked to the members of the church, followers of Christ, about suffering and how we should bare it well, from the time he was ordained an apostle in 1981.  He mused that he should have seen his suffering test coming because he always preached about how true disciples could and should accept trials, tribulations, and sorrows – and felt that perhaps he had brought his suffering in himself to see if the preacher could follow his own counsel. In the first few pages I was impressed with something he wrote that I told you I would send you and, until now, have not, but I think now is a good time.  Quoting now from the book,

“Neal titled the last book before his illness, If Thou Endure It Well, which, he said later, was almost an invitation to his own experience with adversity.  That theme had even earlier roots. Nearly twenty years before his book, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, described three sources of suffering: Our own mistakes, life’s adversities, and afflictions that ‘come to us because an omniscient Lord deliberately chooses to school us.’  Of the third category, he wrote:

“ The very act of choosing to be a disciple…can bring us to a certain special suffering…[such] suffering and chastening…is the…dimension that comes with deep discipleship…

 “It appears to be important that all who will, can come to know ‘the fellowship of His sufferings.’ (Philipians 3:10.) At times we are taken to the very edge of our faith; we teeter at the edge of our trust…[in] a form of learning as it is administered at the hands of a loving Father (Helaman12:3).

… “He was realizing that his ordeal could admit him into ‘the fellowship of [the Savior’s] sufferings. He’d found that if a person’s heart is receptive enough, those who taste this peculiar fellowship begin to appreciate not only Christ’s suffering but also His ‘character’ – which helps them not only adore but emulate him…Jesus knows how to succor us in the midst of our griefs and sicknesses precisely because Jesus has already borne our griefs and sicknesses. He knows them firsthand; thus His empathy is earned.”

At Laila’s service, Uncle David said that you and Adrianne had somehow “qualified” to share the brief and beautiful moments of her life, and upon reading this I felt impressed that you also must have qualified for this special, unique, difficult, yet ultimately exalting learning experience.  I know it is difficult, but I think you are enduring it well, and as the Lord told Joseph Smith, “…thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;  And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high.”   You remember that mom and I visited all of our children and grandchildren in the weeks before Laila died, and we presented them all a family home evening in which we made chains out of the family members’ names, signifying that we are all bound together for time and all eternity.  I believe your mother was inspired that we needed to reinforce to our kids and to tell our grandchildren that we know that it is true, and I believe that her anxiousness to deliver the message was inspiration to get it done because Laila needed all of us to know and remember that.

I don’t know how it all works, but you might consider too, that Laila may see all the beautiful rainbows too, and share the happy times you have as well.  I have no doubt that she is aware of your love, and if she is aware of your circumstances,  your comings and goings, your feelings, then she wants you to be happy all the time, looking towards the joyous reunion that you know will happen.  If she senses your thoughts and feelings, you know she does not want you to be sad because that makes her sad, too.  So if you are happy she is happy.

Please accept these words as they are; with the hope that they help, yet just the ramblings of a now old and getting older father who loves you and your family more than you can know, and who prays for your happiness and that you will be comforted even as often as his joints, back, and heart ache, and, understanding only a little of what you are going through, wishes he could lift the daunting burden of your beautiful daughter’s absence.  I know the Lord loves you and that you are a unique son with a special family, and that when you are reunited all together you will wonder why it was so difficult to be separated for such a short time.  Such are our lives as we continue from day to day seeing through a glass, darkly…

Damaged

I hurt my back while I was on my mission. We had been helping a family move for three days (they were not very well prepared for the move). I put a washer in the trailer with a dolly and then, after my companion had taken the dolly to get some other things, I realized that the washer needed to be a few inches further in. I bent over and tried to pick it up, but couldn't. I also couldn't stand up. I spent the next few days laying on the couch or my bed or hobbling between the two. I went to a doctor, but he was Arabic and the only language that he spoke that I could kind of understand was Swedish. I think he said I had inflamed something in my back and he gave me a prescription for some kind of arthritis medicine.

I took the medicine like he said, and eventually the pain in my back went away. Even after the pain was gone, though, I could still tell I was damaged. I have felt that way ever since. Even when I have been in very good health (I did well on my PT test on Thursday, for example), I have always known that my back could just decide to give out at any time. Occasionally I'll get small reminders--minor spasm when I take a funny step or sit down the wrong way. Other times I get major reminders, and I'm not able to stand up straight for days at a time. I've learned to live with it and I try not to complain much about it. It's part of my life.

Losing Laila has felt very similar, except that, instead of my body being damaged, it's my heart. Even after the pain had largely gone, I still knew I was damaged. When I feel happy, there's always a little darkness overshadowing. Sometimes I get minor reminders that I'm damaged--little jolts of sadness that momentarily shoot through me--other times, I get major reminders--when I feel like I won't ever be happy again.

Tonight brought one of those major reminders. Since Laila died, we've notice a lot of rainbows. They seem to be all over the place. We point them out to the boys and suggest that perhaps they're from Laila--that she's saying, "hi," through the colors. Tonight Adrianne and I watched a movie, and at the end of the movie a song (click here to hear it) started playing that was familiar, but I didn't quite recognize it. I knew it was song that Adrianne liked, and I said, "Hey, it's your song." To which she replied, "I haven't heard this song since we had our Luau." Her response brought to my mind memories of dancing around to the song with Laila in my arms, as the boys tried to go under a limbo stick. Then the words of the song came, "Some where, over the rainbow..."

I'm learning to live with this damage just as I did with my back. I try not to complain about it, and I don't want to talk about it, but sometimes I just want everyone to know that I still hurt.

Buckshot's Modern Trapper's Guide

I just finished this book. It was interesting. I don't think it was as good as it could have been, but I enjoyed it. The biggest problem was that it lacked picture or illustrations. I had to go on line to figure out what he was talking about with each of the different kinds of traps, and most of the "sets" he described are still not clear to me.

Basically, the book discusses the different kinds of traps, how to trap (and snare) different animals, how to skin and eat the various animals you trap.

I did learn a lot. I think it would be valuable to have a set of traps and snaring equipment. I also think it would be good to practice trapping before the skill is needed for survival. There are laws that regulate trapping animals and seasons for each kind. Here in Colorado, for example, it appears to be illegal to use snares that strangle animals. A "survival" set of traps and snares starts around $200. I won't buy one until I have a good place to trap animals and someone who's actually done it before to show me how. In the mean time, I'll add it to my list of skills to develop.

Get together...

Are you people thinking of getting together next summer for reunion time? Mike mentioned the idea of Colorado Springs, but I'm not sure we have agreed on anything? Anyone have suggestions, ideas, or confirmations?

For my family: We would like to get together!!! We have no preference on place, June, July or early August would work best for us.

Anyone, Anyone, Bueler, Bueler...

Time Management

I was talking with Adrianne this evening and expressed some frustration that I feel about myself--that I don't feel like I excel at anything. As we talked about it, I discovered that my frustration is not so much that I'm not super good at anything (I'm not, but that doesn't really bother me), but rather I'm frustrated that I don't get the things done that I think I should. I feel like I finally encapsulated the idea with this analogy:

I feel like each day can be represented as a jar full of sand. I take that sand and dump it into a machine that produces widgets. Every morning I dump my sand into the machine, and every evening I'm disappointed with the number and kind of widgets produced. I think my machine must has too many leaks in it and I'm losing a lot of the sand to small wastes throughout the day. At work, for example, I get everything done that I need to. I'm a good employee, but I don't excel at work. If I know I can get everything done that I need to get done that day, I'll read a new article, or go shoot the breeze with someone else. I know these aren't bad things necessarily, but if I cut the amount of time I spent doing these things in half, and instead spent that time improving my lessons or doing my professional development stuff or even doing my own research, I think I'd feel much more productive and valuable at the end of my day.

I've known this for a long time, and I've wanted to change, but even with the knowledge and desire, I continue to do the same things. Why do you suppose that is? Have any of you been able to change something similar about yourself? I feel the same way about my time at home. Why am I writing the post, for example?

More frequent, not so long reviews...

Since my last post was so long, I think I'll post every week about what I read during the past week (presuming, of course, that I read enough in a week to justify posting about it).

I continued reading Back to Basics this week. I covered about 75 pages (I skipped a number of those pages because they were recipes that I didn't feel like reading). The first section was about "preserving the harvest". It discussed different methods that can be used to preserve produce, including live storage, canning, freezing, drying, jamming (can you say that?--making jams and jellies), pickling, and salt curing. She also has a good little chart that lists the different kinds of produce you're likely to have and recommendations on how to preserve it.

Using covered basement window wells as a root cellar was a recommendation that caught my attention. Burying your vegetables seems like a funny way to preserve things, though in Norway, the worst dish I ever had was traditionally prepared by burying the fish you caught in the spring and summer along with some ashes from the stove/fireplace and digging back up in the winter. You boiled the fish to get out as much of the lye produced by the ashes and moisture in the ground, and then put some bacon grease on it to make it tolerable. Perhaps that's why the thought of burying vegetables is not a preservation method that appeals to me.

I'm still very interested in pickling (if I didn't mention that with my mini-farming review, I've been interested in it since I read about it there). Joining my interest in pickling is making jams and jellies. I think preserving fruits and vegetables in glass jars is more appealing to me than actually eating them--especially if they're buried. Outdoor dehydrating seems like a good skill to have if you've got no power for a real dehydrator. Did you know they used to "sulfur" food to dry? They'd burn sulfur while dehydrating their food. Imagine food that tastes like gunpowder--gross.

The next section really surprised me. Preserving meat has to be at least as interesting, if not more interesting, than preserving produce. I was most surprised to read this, "Smithfields [a smoked ham] have reputedly been stored for as long as 25 years--from a girl's christening until her wedding."

How many of you knew that goat's milk is naturally homogenized and if you want the cream, you need a centrifuge? I didn't. However, I think I would have known this without reading it: "Even a minute quantity of dry goat manure ... will damage the milk's flavor if it should fall into the milk bucket." Uh...yeah. Imagine that--poop doesn't taste good.

I learned that you can get 15-20 gallons of sap from a mature maple tree and that that sap will boil down to 2 quarts of maple syrup. So, with just a few trees, you'll have all your pancake and waffle needs satisfied. Of course, you have to boil the crud out of it, and, apparently, if smoke gets in the syrup, it tastes nasty. Also you don't boil the stuff indoors because it will leave your home coated with a light layer of maple syrup...

Apple cider is made by smashing apples and then squeezing the juice out of them. If you let the juice sit around too long, it will become alcoholic, and if you let it sit even longer after that, apparently, it will become apple cider vinegar. This process doesn't fit with what I understood about vinegar production, but I'm certainly not an expert. I thought vinegar and alcohol production were competing processes and you favored one over the other by controlling certain variables--do any of you know any more about this? I'll add it to my list of stuff to figure out someday.

I also read about fireplace cooking, including the use of spits and dutch ovens. A dutch oven might be something worth owning, though I'm really interested in owning a wood burning kitchen stove. I haven't looked yet, but I'll bet they cost a lot--I just looked, they seem to start around $2k and go up from there. Anyway, they are supposed to be difficult to become accustomed to, but they're not bad once you know what you're doing.

I just started a new section on home crafts and have read about dyeing fabrics (yarn mostly) using natural materials for the dyes. It was interesting to consider that if you didn't dye your clothes that you made for yourself, you'd just be colored like a sheep all the time...

Again, if this stuff is interesting, you should get this book and read it.