Freakazoidal commute from Hell

The corp called for a 2hr departmental meeting in Boise @ St. Alphonsus hospital. (My dept=8 people) 8AM yesterday. Did I drive? Not on your life. I rode with 2 co-workers and nearly freaked out. We left in 7AM fog. Why are people driving bumper to bumper at 55 mph IN THE FOG?????

Brrrrring. Wendee's speaker phone goes off. (She's the driver). It's her mom, who works in Boise, calling to warn of an auto accident on the connector, precisely where we need to go. Thanks for the bad omen. Traffic stacks up immediately and now we crawl bumper to bumper at 5MPH. Brrrring again. It's Lorna, co-worker, several cars back. She knows a variety of curse words for the situation. She's from Caldwell, thus having extra miles to work up a fine string. Brrrrring again. It's Robert, our boss, miles behind us. Also an excellent curser. The two cups of water I drank for breakfast hit my bladder. We crawl for 1hr 10 min, to the crash site which is now nothing but flickering flares. For crying out loud, a commuter bus passes us. And a commuter van. What I wouldn't give for a restroom.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Wendee keeps up a line of patter. "Oh this is nothing. I used to live in Tacoma and do this everyday." Well, good. Keep your eyes on that bumper 2 inches in front of you. Lorna calls again and announces she's claustrophobic. She expects to get rear-ended any moment. Wendee and Nicole (in front seat) want to know if I'm OK? Frankly, FREAKING NOT!!!!

Yes, we finally get to the hospital at 8:10 and assault the restrooms. Facilitator Woman (from corporate Novi, Michigan) offers coffee and sympathy. I am so tense I could bite heads off. Boss Robert arrives 15 minutes later. We have our meeting. yada yada yada I ride with a different co-worker back to Nampa. The fog is twice as thick. We take a country road instead of freeway. Again, another car accident shuts down a 1-mile section of AMity.

Today I hear rumors that my boss's boss (Jill) will soon approach me for bus route info. Supposedly her commute yesterday, (though at a different time of day) put the fear in her too. I hear she wants an inservice on how to get from Nampa to Boise without death, fear, or tension.

Farewell to Cheetos, the gig is up.

So, so , so sad. New employer = new health insurance. New health insurance has new rules. i.e. all adults on the plan are required to get a general physical every year. (Skip it if you please, but your % of copay, coins and deduct go UP.) I'm all about saving $$, so I went to chubby Dr. Kunz after, I don't know, an 8 year absence. I had the blood tests, etc etc etc. (But NO pap smear) YAY for hysterectomies! Does any woman in the world love having a pelvic? NO

Results: High cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar. bad

So Dr Kunz looks me in the eye and says, "Here's what you're gonna do, Jana. "

1. Walk 30 minutes minimum/day forevermore.
2. Take the lowest dose blood pressure med (and don't be surprised if it takes a while to regulate and you end up taking 3 types a day like everybody else.
3. Have a little visit with the hospital nutritionist
4. Report in once a week for blood pressure check and weigh-in.

AND-----ABSOLUTELY WORST OF ALL-----
5. low salt diet

Sisters, do you remember back in the days when I used to suck on salt rocks? I believe one of you told me I would get "hardening of the arteries." I didn't care.

Well that dr's appt was 2 1/2 weeks ago and how have I done on each?

1. Yes, 6 days a week. During lunch, after work, in fog, wind, light rain, with a backache and without.
2. Yes, but not sure if I like the sensation it gives
3. Coming up next weekend
4. 8 lbs down the hatch
5. I'm aiming for 2300mg sodium, the recommended for ordinary mortals. I think Dr. meant I should go lower but I can't do it yet. Just giving up Cheetos and the usual lovely fried salty things is challenge enough.

Good things:

1. I'm not so bitter, really
2. Food journaling is educational
3. Mrs Dash is not too objectionable
4. Stir frys are easy to cook
5. I'm not feeling hungry, which totally surprises me.
6. I've got a good mental game going. "Jana, don't give a rip about the total weight loss needed. Just stick to today. You can be good today and sin tomorrow." Thusfar, have not sinned tomorrow. Wait, that's a lie. I sinned @ the Ison chick yakfest.
7 . chicken breast and George Foreman grill--my 2 new best friends
8. My other best friend--IPOD Mozart, Billy Joel, etc keep me moving.
9. Kevin wanted to take me out to dinner and I turned him down. In 34 years, that's NEVER HAPPENED!


Well, that's the deal and I'm not going to write anymore about it.

Resurrection

So--I have decided to kick the old blog back to life.

As my daughter-in-law mentioned on her blog, 2010 was the pits and consequently for me, the writing well was dry. But I will do a little catch-up now.

My work: I now do my same job for Trinity Health instead or Catholic Health. Over the course of 2010 sixty people dwindled down to 45 as my co-workers saw the handwriting on the wall. At that point, Trinity announced it would re-hire 25 of us to help staff a new billing office in Boise. I pro and conned myself for several weeks. Should I take the severance package and unemployment and do some goofing off before job-hunting in Nampa? Or should I go for security and commuting to Boise? In the end, I chickened out for security and commuting. The transition to new employer was formal on Jan1, but here's the good news. The new building isn't ready and won't be for several more months. YAHOO. (Corner of Emerald and Steelhead
Way for any of you Boise-ites interested) So I'm still here in Nampa, a .07 mile drive from home.

When the time comes, I still won't drive. Snow, ice, darkness, rain, traffic, old car, gas expense, freeway driving in general--none of this works for me. I'm taking the bus. Get this: only $36.00 a month, a bonafide steal if a person can tolerate the 1 hr commute from Karcher Mall to office. With the help of Ipod, scriptures, books, and journal, I plan to tolerate it for one year and then evaluate.

The rest of my life: It feels like an ongoing fog. Years ago we had a neighbor lady come over and describe how she spent the year after her son's fatal car wreck with her head stuck in a gin bottle. At the time she said it (years after the accident), she looked none too recovered still. I totally get what she was saying now. When you grieve you look for comfort and hunker down. Enough said.

Kevin: still a Bishop and I still love having him be one.
Arielle: happily back at BYUI, starting her Sophmore year.
Chanel: a walking party, the best person to hang with overnight or anytime, for that matter
The cat: 16 years old, arthritic, takes a daily dozen naps and I am so jealous
Grandma Ison: thankful to be living in her home and so gracious about any help given her. Her kitchen floor is ruined and buckled from recent water problems. I never know how to deal with house repairs. Dean---help!?!?!
Morgan & Lydia: I never get enough of seeing and enjoying them. Having them closer is the silver lining of 2010's black cloud.

Improvement

So--I returned to daily walking at the Rec Center track 3 weeks ago. Today I passed a lady on crutches, a man with a cane, and a mom carrying a toddler on her shoulders. I believe this puts me up in the rankings, right?

Kevin earns a point!

I woke him up at 5:30 this morning. "Kevin, do you want a point?" There's a honking huge spider in the shower." Yes he did--YAHOO!!! I am categorically against spiders in the shower. He sent it for a swim down the toilet.

Hey--I can be generous with points. I bestowed 4 more at breakfast when he fixed my four favorite "flavors" together.

Fried egg, 2 slices of toast, crispy bacon, and orange juice. Yum

The Continuing story.....

Silly joke just passed to me from Kevin: How does a doctor know what to do for swine flu versus bird flu? If you have swine flu, he gives you an oinkment. If you have bird flu, he gives you tweetment. GRRRROAN!

Ok, back to the May family.

Both lost their spouses in the month of March 1964.

At the time, Paul was 31 and on the high council. After considering his options, he told his Stake Pres (on a Sunday)he would be moving back to Burley, where his mom was caring for the new baby. That same night friends called him to attend a "fireside" just to get out of the house. It turned out to not be a fireside at all, but a set-up to meet Sharon, who was similarly conned by the same friends. Though not a bit interested romantically, they did find their common grief as a talking point. On Monday evening they talked until 1:30AM. On Tuesday evening they talked until 5AM. In retrospect, both say it was a relief to find someone who understood so clearly their devastation. On Wednesday night they went to a movie and he kissed her. On Thursday night he proposed and she said yes. By the end of the week, they considered themselves engaged.

Family reactions were not positive. His mother (who had bonded with the newborn and did not want to give her up): "You two are too dumb to care for this baby, let alone 7 children." Her mother: "You are being impulsive and stupid." Her former father-in-law, who turned out to be the beneficiary on his son's $10000.00 life insurance policy and who had hoped to step in as a father figure to Sharon'children, refused to share even a dime of the insurance.

Paul and Sharon married anyway, mid-summer 1964 and proceeded to move their 7 children into his 2-bedroom home. She got pregnant immediately, had six more children plus numerous miscarriages up until age 48. She continued her nursing career. He was an engineer and all-around fix-it guy. Together they raised their kids + whoever else needed raising. They've been married 45 years now. Twelve years ago, as a retirement project, they bought the ranch, with it's old farmhouse and a collection of rickety log out-buildings. Slowly they have repaired, built, added on, and improvised until now they are booked solid from June 15-Aug 15 with massive reunion groups. Their own descendants can come home and all the g-kids have room to run and beds to sleep in.

One note of sadness. On the 14th anniversary of the earthquake, Sharon's oldest daugher was killed in a car wreck.

So I had to ask, "Weren't there any adjustments with a courtship so brief?" "Heck Yes!" Sharon replied. "I used to wake up in Paul's arms crying because I missed Richard. When that happened we would get out of bed, get out the movie projector, and watch the 2 reels of 8mm film I salvaged from my home." (which contained brief snippets showing Richard)

I could go on and on. These are people you have to meet. He reminds me of a white-haired apostle Holland.

Grandma Ison says we should have the next reunion in 2011. Whadya think? The May Family Ranch would bankrupt our reunion fund. On the other hand, we sisters could have an affordable writer's retreat and probably not write even a sentence. You come too, Melanie.

Stay tuned for Part C. I'm not done with anniversary stories.

Lightning, earthquake, true love & a chef!

Congrats to Angela on your new blog. New to me anyway.

I have skipped FHE on the lofty pretense of not spreading my cold about--a cold which I didn't have yesterday. Grrr. Anyway I took down the Halloween decorations and am supposed to be in bed, but Angela's blog distracted me.

How much anniversary can I write about in less than 30 minutes? Hang on......

Look up the May Family Ranch (Clayton, ID) on the net. Read every page and then save your dollars. What a grand Ison reunion we could have there! They can sleep 85 people and handle 200 (with tents or trailers). That's where we went.

We stayed in the big house/B&B, guests of Paul & Sharon May and "their" chef. Get this--Robert, the chef, was a nonpaying friend of the family, just moved down from Alaska. Robert is Japanese and has cooked under or with every big name chef you can think of. He's been on Iron Chef teams, taken classes from Julia Child, competed all over the world. Normally Sharon May does the cooking for her guests, but he was there and itching to be in the kitchen. The only restriction she put on him was "don't buy more food. Just use what's in the pantry." He cooked not only breakfast for us, but dinners too. What the man could do with a can of green beans and the spices in her cupboard!! HE said the seasonings must never overwhelm or disguise the flavor. "How do you know which and what and how much to use?" He couldn't explain. He just knew.

On the night he cooked trout, I begged to watch since I love fish and always ruin it. All four burners were occupied. Three vegetable dishes going, plus a pan to carmelize onions, truckloads of butter, great splashes of extra virgin olive oil. Do you dip fish in a pan of mere milk and dredge in mere flour? NO. There must be curry, oregano, garlic, parmesan, a variety of pepper powders and green bits of this and that--each step in the process narrated with, "Is this not nice? This is lovely. This is beautiful. This will be perfect." He literally worshipped the food with his hands and words and eyes. He had no sense of humor whatsoever. I don't mean he was mean. I mean he was reverent and this was no place to crack jokes about too many zucchinis in the world. He regretted he was serving family style as opposed to plating the food. And you felt as you ate (with him eating right next to you) a lack of adequate adjectives to describe the pleasure. shoot me, but it was impressive.

Now, back to the Mays, Paul & Sharon. Between them, they had 13 children, 3 Indian Placement students, exchange students every year, plus a 6-member Vietnamese family for several weeks. They've never let the beds get cold, so they don't treat you as a paying guest. You're family. Thus we learned their unbelievable life stories.

At age 15, Sharon May was at a girls camp outside of Driggs when a thunder storm came up. Lightning struck the tree under which she and several girls were eating lunch. Four girls and one adult woman leader died. She herself suffered burns on the bottom of her feet, at every rivet point on her jeans, and on her right hip where a flashlight was stuffed in her pocket. The two girls on sitting on either side of her were some of those who died. What she remembers is waking on her stomach, with face in the dirt, feeling overwhelmingly sleepy. The lone Priesthood leader, who was knocked unconscious himself for a time, had to virtually perform triage on the mountain--sending some girls down for help, building a fire to keep the living/injured (8 or 9 girls) from further shock, and staying until men rode horses up to carry out the dead. Boy scouts climbed the mountain and improvised stretchers from logs and blankets. Sharon remembers being carried down and feeling scared because the climb up was so rocky steep, she wondered how they would get her safely down in the mud and rain.

At age 27, she was living in Valdez Alaska with her first husband and 3 little children. He made a living operating a tourist fishing boat, but supplemented with occasional longshoreman duties when cargo ships docked. On Good Friday, March 1964 he was on the dock unloading when the 9.0 earthquake hit. The dock, everyone on it, and a fish cannery disappeared into the bay forever. She was at work--a nurse--when the hospital walls split open and black sludge sewage spilled through. Her children, in the care of a babysitter, survived being thrown across a developing fissure when escaping their home, but the babysitter broke ribs and a leg attempting to jump it.
The quake lasted 5 minutes and the contents of her home were destroyed in the 4 ensuing tsunami waves that hit over the next 24 hours. Four days post-quake, as a shell-shocked new widow, still wearing the same clothes, the church flew she & her children home to her mother in SLC. Thirty three people died in Valdez, only 2 bodies recovered. That was the end of Alaska for her.

But the story gets better.

In the same month, Paul May, living in Granger, UT lost his wife to heart problems one month after she gave birth to their 4th child, a premature 2lb baby. The baby went to live with his mother while he regrouped with his children.

Whoa.....I've got to go to bed. Stay tuned for Part B.