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These past two weeks have provided me with 14 days at home with no distractions.  What a gift of time!  I can't help feeling a bit heady about it.  I'm making all sorts of plans for getting projects on their way to being done.  My mind is exploding with ideas.  The trouble is, I get started on one idea and then get another, and so it goes.  When I actually finish something it is a joy.  So I'm hoping that I can do more of it.

Layne gave his second blessing a week ago.  This time he began praying about the person way ahead of time and got lots of inspiration during the preceding week.  What a help it was.  I think he is beginning to get the Patriarch thing into a more comfortable place.  He spent lots of time rigging up a contraption to hold the recording microphone in just the right place when he gives blessings.  I'm amazed at how he can maneuver things to serve his needs.  In this case he took a desk lamp with a moveable arm, cut off the light, adapted a part from something else that would hold his microphone and  put it all together in just the right way.  The moveable arm can place the microphone just where he wants it, leaving his hands free.  He has such a knack!  I love that about him.  Perhaps all those boxes of extra parts from various things he has saved are worth the space they take.  It seems so!

Sometimes, among all the friends one collects over a lifetime, a few emerge that become "kindred spirits".  These friends have a direct road into my thoughts and my feelings.  They do because their roads are so very much like mine.  I have several friends like that.  One of them is Trudy Ostler.  She and her husband have been on a mission in Fiji for three years.  So I was excited when she said they were coming here for a visit.  Their plan was to come this past Friday.  As serendipity would have it, another of my kindred spirits called and visited on that same day.  Jody Jensen and her husband Jerry had lunch with us.  Bill and Trudy Ostler came for dinner and an overnight.  What a feast of intimacy that day became!  It has been sad for me to see all of those special friends come in and then out of my life, as they move away and settle in other, far away, places.  But on Friday, my plate was full.

Layne took me on a date last week.  It is worth a blog mention because it rarely happens.  We have become quite the stay-at-homers.  But BYU's Ballroom Dance Team came to town last weekend.  I talked Layne into taking me.  He will usually bend to my dancing wishes as he knows it is such a passion for me.  He's great that way.  So we went.  We were both dazzled by their performance!  Even my non-dancing Layne loved it.  It just goes to show that there are a number of things well worth coming out of the house for.  But first we have to get out the front door.  That seems to be the hardest part of all.

Jody and me

Our front view early in the morning

Speaking of Layne, he got sick today.  This is also worth mentioning because it rarely happens.  But it seemed to have passed quickly.  He is now sleeping peacefully with high hopes of feeling pretty normal by tomorrow.  There is nothing like feeling miserable to remind us of how great it is to feel good.  I'm grateful that good is how we feel almost all of the time.