New Job!

Whoopee! no more holidays, nights or weekends! I can work from home after a year! I actually get bathroom breaks and I get to sit undisturbed for an entire half hour for my lunch! I guess you have to be a nurse to really understand the impact of why I am so excited about these things, but every other newly hired nurse on my team is also in awe. We are pinching ourselves to see if we are dreaming. I am a nurse consultant with Aetna, and I will be working in disease management. I will have my own patients, and I will call them every month or so to check on them.
Now that I actually have more free time at home, I am playing with crafts and making Christmas presents. It is just too much fun. Overload! I hit WalMart's fabric and craft section and Michael's yesterday. Today I'm heading to Robert's Crafts. I'm setting up my easy chair with all my crafty projects surrounding me and getting ready for a winter of fun. Hand knit hat, anyone?

cat-face spiders

I have a cat-face spider in my garden. Charlie (the Bonnie Prince of Scotland) and I found her a few weeks ago. She has spun her perfectly symmetrical web on my pot of basil (thank you, Laurel for the pot). While 4-wheeling in North Willow Canyon, west of Grantsville the other day, I found her cousin on a rock in the middle of a brooklet. I am not like Ron Weasley - I like spiders. I prefer them to nasty, irritating flying insects. (though I will kill a black widow or a brown recluse if I find her near my house.) I didn't have my camera at the ready, but when I was painting my steps I found a 3 inch long gray wolf spider. She had pretty brown stripes on her furry back. I shooed her into the grass. I especially like jumping spiders. They are welcome in my kitchen window's potted garden anytime.

The road less traveled by...

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no feet had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

an unusual rainshower

This has happened at my house twice this year - it rains up the street but not down the street. Check out the video.

This little rainstorm and the one before lasted for about 10 minutes. We are having a nice Indian Summer, don't need the heater and don't need the cooler. Papa has gotten our new heater up in the attic and we are hoping for another week or two of not needing the heater. Papa turns 54 next Monday (6 Oct) and we are going 4-wheeling somewhere. Tomorrow we head out again. Life is good.

American Fork Canyon and my favorite companion

Butterfield Canyon and the North Face of Timpanogos

Fall Jewels

Gold and silver, amber, topaz, rubies, emeralds, peridot, diamonds, turquoise and sapphires.
We went 4-wheeling up American Fork Canyon yesterday - up past Timpanogos Cave and left toward Tibble Fork Reservoir. The afternoon sun shining through the leaves made them glow like jewels. Like a thousand little neon Christmas lights. The little lakes seen from high above on a trail were unbelievably vivid. I tried taking pictures, but they simply do not do justice to the memory. Timpanogos Peak seen from the north side still has glacial packs of snow on the rugged granite sides of the basin. The aspen trees below it were a carpet of Fall. It brings to mind the poem we used at my daddy's funeral services on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona in mid-September, 1992:

The wonder of the world
The beauty and the power
The shape of things
Their colors, lights and shades
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.
(from an old gravestone)

magic berries

Grammie has learned not to hand to a grandchild any wild berries found growing along the trail. Even if I know what they are. However, I can take as many pictures as I please - nothing potentially poisonous there! Here are bright red rose hips, and something else that is a lovely fall orange. Finally, there is Laurel's future hometown of Monroe as seen from Monroe Mountain on the Piute Trail.

Painting the front porch steps

Paint the color of terra cotta milk chocolate. It looked like chocolate syrup druzzeling on the cement. I fixed the crumbling cement of the steps last week, so it was time to finish the job. There will soon be snow on my front porch steps. The weather is cooling down, the fall leaves grace the mountain sides, and I'd rather be 4-wheeling up Butterfield Canyon road. I am NOT looking forward to another winter like last year, when the snow drifts became so high that driving to town almost felt like a trip down an icy canal. Like drifting along a levee with ice sides instead of mud.