Okay, okay, I'll post something

I've been shamed into posting something on my blog. Becca gave me the "It's high time you posted something" lecture in an email today, so here is this gorgeous picture of me sporting my brand new "MOO-MOO" as Alan calls it. I'm holding a bottle of A & W, two packages of Girl Scout Cookies and a fly swatter that I look like I just got hid in the head with. All these things and a lot more were in the last shipment of goods we received just last week. It was great! (A shout out to Lucy Dahl for the use of her old burgundy suitcases she was going to take to DI. They have been to Brazil twice, loaded full of great stuff, since she gave them to the cause.)

I think the moo-moo is great even though Alan pretty much hates it. I know it is not the most stylish or flattering, but it is cool and that is what counts. Becca picked it up at Wal-Mart for me in case anyone is wondering where you can get one. She said they have plenty left.

We used one bottle of root beer for our FHE treat this week and made delicious root beer floats. We're saving this one for later. You have to ration these things, you know.

Russell sent us enough Girl Scout cookies that we have even shared a few. I don't know how many cases he bought this year, but we were glad he did his part to support the Girl Scouts of America again and share with us.

The fly swatter is great too. I've used it every day since we got it and many flies have rubbed their legs together for the last time. They probably have fly swatters here, but I had looked in 4 or 5 stores and couldn't find one so I just put it on "the list."

So thanks for the stuff. We're pretty well stocked again except for peanut butter M & M's. I had requested the Easter egg shaped ones because I swear, they are better than the normal ones. They were everything I remembered them to be. I was rationing them to myself, 1/4 cup a day. That was the serving size listed on the package. (I thought it was a little measly, but since I was rationing, decided to go with it.) There should have been 7 servings, but I don't know if the information was wrong, or if I got a package that was shorted, or if they meant there would be seven 1/4 cup servings if you didn't sneak in the package and eat a couple extra 2 or 3 times a day. All I know is they are gone.

Is There a Nurse in the House?

One of my main jobs here is that of being the mission "nurse." So far I've dealt with quite a wide range of problems...sprains, headaches, flu, kidney stones, ear aches, head lice, appendicitis, cuts, acne, live bugs in feet and dead bugs in ears, not to mention heinous rashes and some of the more unmentionalble things that come up in a foreign country. Now that I think about it, a lot of medical problems are slightly unmentionable. It has surprised me that I have actually been able to talk with missionaries about some of these things and still have them look me in the eye the next time I saw them. (I, also, try to maintain eye contact.)

At first I felt totally lost when the missionaries would call. I really didn't know much about health and medicine to begin with and I really didn't know the Portuguese names for such things. But then the first mission secretary put together a sweet little binder for me with answers to common problems that he got from the web md website. He thought he was so funny when he titled it, "How to Save a Missionary's Life." A few weeks later I got a really good information packet from the Church doctors in Sao Paulo that had even more info and the names of things in Portuguese. I use it all the time.

Now we have two doctors, instead of just one, that work out of Sao Paulo and help with health problems in all the missions in Brazil. One of them even speaks Portuguese and will call the Brazilian elders if I need him too. They are great. Their reports back to me even supply us with quite a bit of confusion and a little humor.

We have received quite a few reports addressed to our mission, but about missionaries that are serving in some other mission. Or we get reports with one of our missionary's names on it with a diagnosis for a problem he doesn't have. Last week I had to call one of our missionaries to see if he really had cut his finger and had stitches and needed pain medication. I hadn't heard a word about it before the email report came and I figured it was for an elder in another mission with the same last name. But the fact that the elder's first, middle, and last name were exactly the same as our elder's, I decided I'd better check. Our elder was fine. He hadn't been cut, or had stitches or need pain medication and didn't have a clue how his name got mixed up in it. I don't know what happened either. I didn't want to call the doctor and embarrass him.

We got one today that was ours though. All the information on it was even right. It was the "doctor talk" that made us laugh. Poor Elder X.....He has a small bean shaped lesion on the upper portion of his leg near the buttock...... We must be easily entertained or just a little sick, but the word buttock, gets us everytime.

Street Shopping: A Thing of the Past

Is this not the sorriest rose you ever saw? I was so bugged last week when I bought 3 from a guy on the street and this was the good one. There were people on corners of every major intersection selling flowers, mostly red roses, wrapped really nicely with some greenery. They even had little stretchy webs over the blossoms to keep them nice. (Sunday was a day to celebrate women and that's why the flowers. ) We were having guests for dinner on Sunday, and thought a flower might be nice, so I rolled down the window when the man selling them came by. I asked how much they were. He tossed one in on the seat and tells me it's $5. Apparently it wasn't his first day selling on a street corner. He knew how it was done. Five reais was a little high, but it did have cellophane around it and the stretchy thing. I started rummaging in my purse. I could not find a $R5. A $R10 surfaced and I think he practically grabbed it. He told me if I had 2 more reais I could have 3 for $R12 and he tosses two more roses on the seat. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that but you really don't have time to consider purchases or barter when you are at a stop light with a car or two behind you....especially when people use the horn so readily. When I got them home and unwrapped them, two went straight to the garbage can. The third one was almost holding it's head up, so I gave it a chance. By lunch time the next day, this is how it looked.
I have bought things from street vendors 4 times and been disappointed every time. I don't like getting "taken." I have learned my lesson. I'm officially through buying things in the street....unless something really good comes by.

Been there, Done that

Bold the items you have done:

1. Started your own blog (Becca had to help me)

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band (only a rhythm band and I got the sticks instead of the tambourine and I'm still a little bitter about it)

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity (Maybe just more than I thought we could afford)

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain(if Table Rock counts and I think it should if Lucy is counting the Rexburg butte)

9. Held a Praying Mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child (No, but considered putting some up for adoption, back in the day.)

16. Had food poisoning

17. Been to the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre

20. Slept on a train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.....back in high school. (Yes, but only once. Haaaaaa)

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping (see Lucy's blog for details)

27. Ran a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language(Working on it)

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Cooked over a open fire

47. Had your portrait painted....sketched actually

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (We were too cheap)

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China (truly amazing, I thought)

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (No, but have eaten more than my share.)

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Tied a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a Bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person (only from an airplane, but it was a clear day)

80. Published a book(I'm not sure Parties from Scratch counts)

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club (and vowed never to do it again at least twice.)

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Visited Italy

101. Fed chickens (I think Lucy added this one.)

102. Attended a sheep show (my addition)

I tag Myrna and Mardi and Merlene and Nancy ( I went with 4 because I don't know if Merlene and Nancy are still on the planet. It has been a while since they posted and the world wants to hear from them.)

Patience is a Virtue

Just a little update on my last post. I had told myself that as soon as I posted my rantings about being on hold forever that I would hang up the phone and try again another day, but I didn't.

I just started doing something else and after a while I finally heard a voice, a real human voice. It did have an Indian accent, but I could deal with that. I grabbed the phone and said hello, hello, but apparently the agent couldn't hear me. I kept trying... hello!....HELLO! He also kept saying hello and then he said, "I will hang up now. Apparently you are no longer on the line."

Alan could hear this because the phone was still on speaker. He said he wished he'd had a camera to capture the look on my face. I'm sure it was one of panic and despair. At that moment there must have been a divine intervention because I hit the TALK button. I didn't know why, I was just trying anything. That turned the speaker phone off, finally, and best of all the agent could hear me now.

Raul was great. He fixed everything. In the course of our conversation he asked me how long I had been on hold. I promise I didn't bring it up, he asked. By then it had been really close to 2 hours, but I said an hour and 45 minutes, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. He politely apologized and then said that he was going to see that I got an extra 30 days of virus protection for the inconvenience. Woot! Woot! I love free stuff.

Later I worked it out and I probably made a whopping 2.50 an hour by being patient. Oh well. At least I got the dishes done, some filing of pictures and had something to blog about. I guess it was worth the 2 hours.

P. S. I was going to try to find a picture on Google images to go along with this post, but when I went there it said that "using this site could damage your computer." It said the same thing on Yahoo image search and others in the list. Is that warning always there and I had just never seen it before? Has anyone else ever seen that? Do I have to call Raul again?

Freaking Dang it!

Freaking Dang it! is a missionary curse word combination I have heard one of the Brazilian elders here use. He is trying to learn English and this is what he uses to express his frustration. It makes me laugh every time I hear him say it.

But today I'm using it and I am not laughing because I have been waiting on the telephone for over an hour. It might be an hour and a half by now. I just had a simple question for someone about why Norton Internet Protection keeps sending me pop up things that say my subscription protection has expired and it doesn't expire until June 2009.

I really hate being on hold. This has gone on so long I feel like they put me on "mold." The "music" they have for you to enjoy while you pass the time is really getting on my nerves. It just isn't that enjoyable. The really sad part is that I decided to do the dishes and a few other things while waiting so I pushed the speakerphone button so I could hear it as I was working. I didn't want to miss it when the agent came on the line. Now I can't get the darn thing off speakerphone and the music is starting to bug Alan too.

So why don't I just hang up? Everytime I think I can't stand it anymore and I am going to hang up, a voice interupts the music to say, "We appreciate your patience. Please don't hang up. If you hang up now, it will increase your wait time as all calls are answered in the order they were placed."

Yes, I have it memorized, word for word.

I don't want to start over with this thing. I had already spoken to an agent in India who asked me all the initial questions before giving me this customer service number. Even though I had to ask her to repeat a lot of things I tried to be patient and nice because I understand a little about trying to be understood while speaking a different language and how frustrating it is when people don't really even try to understand.

Well, my patience is exhausted. The music track is cycling again and I just heard a really horrible instrumental rendition of "A Time for Us" for at least the 3rd time. I am through waiting. If a virus gets me, it gets me. I just can't take it anymore, freaking dang it!

The Party is Over...Way Over

We knew our way fun Christmas was over when, just a few days ago, Alan was eating the last cherry chocolate the kids brought down. Is that a sad look or what? But we had a great time with our whole family down here for the holidays. Here are a few pictures of how it went.

We were absolutely spoiled this year, not just because all of our family was here together, but they brought us 10 suitcases , full to the max, of mostly food items, that we had been missing.

The trip wore everybody out so the first day, I saw a lot of this.

The tables were turned this year. We were opening all the gifts......

The kids were looking on with hardly a thing to open. Sorry, kids.

Thanks for all the nice things you sent us. Dale and Angela sent Alan this sheep ornament and that put him in a festive mood.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas dinner with most of the things we usually have back at home and a few new things too.

As is usual during the holidays, we ate a lot. Our waiter took a picture of us after we finished a meal at the churrascaria. It is one of those places where they keep bringing you different meats to eat and you keep eating it until you are sick.

We all posed for a picture after a lunch we had with one of our elders that was leaving the mission a little ahead of his group. I was glad the kids got to meet him because he was a really great elder.

Of course we went to the beach. This beach has some pretty interesting colors of sand. I liked the contrast of the blue sea and the terra cotta colored sand in this picture.

We rode dune buggies along the shore and up into some sand dunes.

We had to stay out of the sun for a day or so after all day at the beach. Let's just say most of us got a little pink. So we played games, mostly a variation of Clue that Lee and Kim brought.
It probably doesn't look all that exciting to anyone else, but we had a really great time. I'm pretty sure it will be a Christmas we will all remember.