October 15, 2006

Hey everyone,
Thanks for those who replied about finding that violin piece. I did end up finding an arrangement which, with a bit of rearranging on my part, turned out to be really nice.
The funeral was really hard, not surprisingly. It was beautiful and horrible at the same time. It was so hard to see Margie and her family, they (and especially she) looked absolutely shell-shocked. You can tell that her life has completely and fundamentally changed, she even looks different. I can't begin to imagine what she is going through. At the end of the service, they played a slideshow set to music, of a whole bunch of pictures of Ramel, from the time he was an infant, and all growing up (he was 30, only 2 months older than me). His dad was killed when he was just a baby, so it was him and Margie for more than 10 years before she remarried, and then 5 more years before she had her second son. So he was her only child for 15 years. It was just impossible not to see my own sons' faces in those pictures, especially the ones when he was little, and that was when I really just fell apart. Thank goodness I had already played my piece. They chose really nice hymns, but of course I couldn't sing any of those either, my throat just closed up with tears. The first was "I am a Child of God," which under those circumstances was pretty wrenching anyway, and then of course I'm just remembering when that song was sung at Jacob's funeral. The second was "Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee," and the closing hymn was "God Be With You Till We Meet Again," which I can't even think about now without choking up.
Anyway, afterwards I went out to eat with the Curtises who were there as well, to try to get our minds off of everything. I was really just emotionally wrung out, though. I came home, went to Lowes to pick up some things, and then just came back and went to bed.
Today was the Primary program at church, and Brigham and Joseph have been practicing their parts for a few weeks now. Joseph was given 3 different parts, one quite lengthy, quoting the famous "If any of you lack wisdom" scripture. Brigham had 2 parts of his own, and they both did just great! They had the parts memorized, but just in case, I sent them up with their little "cheat sheets" (wrote down their parts and then drew some little pictures to help them with some of the harder words). I don't think they needed them, though, they said all their parts clearly and perfectly! I could tell they were both really proud of themselves. They were the only ones in their class with their parts totally memorized, and even some of the kids in the class older than them needed help, so I think it did them good to see that they really could do it!
We spent the rest of our Sunday afternoon making and eating dinner, playing our word "game cube" (the cubes I made with their sight words), and then picking up the house a little bit. I had cleaned the house thoroughly last Thursday and Friday, but still in basically 1 day, it got quite messy again! Oh well, at least they are getting better at picking up.
I am resolving to start getting in shape again. I'm having such a hard time jogging with my left leg being the way it is, so my jogging at night has been sporadic at best. But I am either going to have to just figure it out, or start riding my bike. I don't really want to ride my bike at night, I'm not sure how safe it is, and in general riding bikes around here isn't the most efficient cardiovascular workout, because it is so flat. But at least I won't be tripping or tipping over. In any case, my iPod is malfunctioning again, so I think I'll probably stick with the treadmill in front of the TV for a while. My iPod I am afraid is on it's last legs. Every 2 weeks or so it freaks out and it won't reset or restore or anything until it's completely run out of batteries. Then I have to restore it, effectively formatting the harddrive in it, and then reload it with everything. Big pain. But iPod has pretty lousy customer service ($40 just to TALK with someone on the phone!! and more than $300 to send it in to be serviced!! Can you believe that??), so I think I'll just have to keep doing this until it finally dies. I'm pretty dependent on my iPod when it comes to cleaning the house or exercising, so if I want to keep up with either of these two activities, I really need a functioning iPod. I love the one I have now, but it is one of the more expensive models (40 GB of storage), and replacing it is not exactly in our budget. So eventually I may go out and get one of the smaller ones. We'll see.
And I'm also getting control of my eating again. Starting today actually, I have started keeping track and writing things down. It is so easy to put weight on again, isn't that depressing? I know it is primarily due to my not exercising as regularly, but if I'm not able to do that, then I just have to be even more careful with what I eat. My clothes are getting too tight and I refuse, just REFUSE to go out and buy bigger sizes. So my goal is to get back down to my goal weight by Christmas, and this is my public declaration of that goal. I will be accountable to all of you.
Well I have no good stories to tell in this boring email. Sorry about that. I'll try to come up with some for tomorrow.
Have a great Monday!