Of Rushed Mornings, and Small Miracles by Konnie Enos

A few days ago, I was sitting on my bed trying to get a few necessary things done, like dispensing pills for the week for both my husband and me. Knowing we had someplace to be at noon, checked the time.

11:02

Not good.

I’m still in my pajamas. I haven’t taken my blood sugar or eaten breakfast or taken my pills. Part of this is because I forgot about dispensing pills until my husband reminded me. It was after 10 when he did that.

I can get dressed in a matter of minutes, but taking my blood sugar and getting breakfast so I can take my pills is going to take far more time than we have. Not because of the meeting we have to get to, which is about a 15-minute drive away, but because we have to take a slight detour to pick up a friend which can add as much as 15 minutes to the drive. A good chunk of that waiting for him to get in the car.

To make sure traffic doesn’t overly delay us, we leave about a quarter after eleven. So obviously, I have less than 15-minutes to get about 45-minutes of stuff done.

The first thing I needed was a trip to the bathroom. It was while I was in there that I realized the fastest way to get out the door would be for me to get dressed immediately, take my blood sugar, then get a quick bite of something so I could swallow my pills while I threw some more snack/convenience food into my purse that I could eat while in the car (as a passenger).

Husband and I were flying out the door at precisely 11:15.

He is impressed with how fast I could get ready, and I’m reminded of a former roommate who could not get on with her day without doing ALL three hours of her daily routine. It didn’t matter if we slept in, It didn’t matter if we were missing an appointment because of her tardiness. All that mattered to her was all three hours to bath, dress, do her hair and make-up and read her scriptures. I told him I learned how to cut out the unnecessary stuff when I didn’t have enough time for it all.

Then we got to friends house. Dear hubby can’t find his phone so gets out to let friend know we are there. He finds his phone while he is getting back into he car. Then we wait for our friend to get in the car. Once he is buckled in, we are on our way again.

Somehow we hit all the lights just right that we are at our destination and parked almost exactly half an hour after we left the house. So, early by some miracle.

It does not bother me in the least.

While sitting and waiting for things to start, a friend comes up to me and asks if I would be willing to give a ride home to a lady who had to live closer to me than she did. (It would have been completely out of her way to take the lady home.)

We googled the address. This lady and I live near the exact same major cross streets. So, kind of around the corner from me. Even taking our other friend home, it would not be an imposition, or out of our even very far out of our way, to take her as well.

Our friend left halfway through, which he does quite often so, not the least bit surprising.

After the meeting, we drive this lady home, and I know the address and the general area, but assume it’s an apartment complex and that she’d have to give us some directions when we got to it.

I assume this nice lady is close to our age, but I start to reassess that assumption when she mentions her grandson, adult grandson, living with her. Said grandson is about the same age as my two boys.

Then we get to the last corner on the street where she lived. As hubby turned the corner, and before I could ask her for further directions, I discovered it was right there on the corner, including the building number in extra-large hard to miss numbers right on the front. It appears this nice lady is living in senior assisted living.

Okay, so older than I thought.

Then she freely tells us her age, which is about three years older than us. THREE!

My kids were absolutely not kidding when they said they had classmates with grandparents about our age. And yes, I did know it was completely possible because we’ve got cousins who are near our age who have adult grandkids.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

News on the Homefront by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

There isn’t much to write about this week. The most dramatic thing that has happened to me in the last month is needing to change my Wi-Fi carrier. I’d been having connection issues for quite some time, and at first my old carrier said it was my router. They insisted I needed to replace it.

I did, but that didn’t fix my issues.

Then things got worse and finally I had to call my old carrier to let them know I had no service at all.

This time, they diagnosed an issue they’d have to come out to fix. The only problem is that once their technician finished and insisted, they had fixed the issue – I still didn’t have coverage.

They suggested I go to a certain website to determine what the issue was.

How? I had no Wi-Fi service and due to data limitations on my cell phone, getting any website to open was impossible! And as hard as I tried, they just kept insisting I go to the website to fix my issues.

I wasn’t sure how I could fix the situation since money is tight for me.

Then I received word that I’d finally paid off one of my bills, giving me wiggle room in my budget. I arranged for a different service provider to install their equipment at my place and called my old provider to ask them to cancel my service.

Now typically, providers tend to try hard to retain customers, but the lady I spoke to didn’t even ask if there was anything they could do to fix the reason I was cancelling the service. I was surprised but it felt as if they were glad to get rid of me.

I could be imagining things. However, the deal I had with them to keep my costs down was only good for as long as I had the service. I get the feeling they no longer wanted to provide their service at that low cost.

It just seems weird that they didn’t even attempt to get me into a higher cost program.

But anyway, now I no longer have any wiggle room in my budget as my new carrier is more expensive, though I now have faster speeds than I remember having in a long time.

And, of course, Konnie is happy about this because I am now able to post without any issues.

I should point out that my last post went up simply because I went over to my sister-in-law’s place to use her Wi-Fi to get my post up. Which was a production in and of itself because my car is still not working, meaning I had to find a ride to go over to her place as well as ask her if I could visit for that purpose.

I guess I should be thankful one of cousins not too long ago returned to town, though at first, I didn’t ask him for rides because he is one family member who smokes, and I knew full well I wouldn’t be able to handle riding in his vehicle if he did.

Things changed when he let me know he never smokes inside his vehicle. He also shares my opinion that family helps family.

When I did have a working car, I was giving my sister-in-law rides to her appointments and for shopping, now my cousin is usually the one doing that for me.

I say usually because he does have a life. Just this week I had to ask my neighbor for a ride because he had a doctor’s appointment. Not a hard thing to do, my neighbor is always willing to give me rides too, it’s just for shopping, his vehicle is larger.

To say the least, getting that much shopping into her tiny car was interesting, especially since her entire passenger side is smashed in and inaccessible through that side and her trunk is so small it barely had room for my walker. That was oh so fun!

It was even more fun when her son called and requested, she not forget to stop by pharmacy to pick his prescription up.

Luckily, they use the pharmacy I use, and quick look at my text messages told me I had a prescription waiting too. We didn’t forget one.

Actually, I have been incredibly lucky on that front because my cousin uses the same pharmacy too and we’ve more than once picked up both our prescriptions at the same time.

I have also, finally, managed to save up hopefully enough to get the parts needed to fix my car and have arranged help between my retired mechanic cousin and a friend who is currently studying auto mechanics, to get my car fixed.

I might even have it fixed by my birthday!

Anyway, happy writing everyone.

Of Surprises and Other Pleasantries by Konnie Enos

Last Friday night my daughter came to me and told me she’d been discussing favorite candies with her siblings and wondered what mine was. Now discussing my husband’s favorite candy is easy because it’s one he always asks for. For me it isn’t quite that simple. I mentioned a considerably short list of candies I enjoy, starting with a candy bar that isn’t sold locally, though it is sold in Idaho so Bonnie can find it in her local grocery stores. We discussed a handful of other candies that I enjoy, and she was satisfied.

After she left I thought about all the candies I have enjoyed in my lifetime and simply cannot find anymore. One I know is discontinued. I can still find it for sale, but it is very expensive. But I thought my favorite candy bar had long since gone the way of many of the candies I remember from my youth because they are not sold in any local grocery stores. I even tried to find it on Amazon. Though I was more successful with a Google search. They are still made, just not widely distributed.

I didn’t give the conversation any further thought since Saturday was our day to serve in the temple, so I was busy.

Then Sunday, I found out she’d been lying to me.

I was sitting down to my breakfast Sunday morning and my oldest son walked in the front door, bearing candy. He not only has moved out of our home, but he is currently working in the Reno area, which means he is rarely in town and when he is, he doesn’t always come see us.

But he had a doctor’s appointment on Monday and knew Sunday was Mother’s Day, so he surprised me with a visit. And yes, he brought me one of my favorite candies. Which is when I found out the truth of why my daughter brought up the topic with me.

He’d asked her to find out because he was going to surprise me, but he and his brother were positive that I figured out what was up because she had talked to me.

That’s when my daughter explained that it hadn’t been a group conversation with all siblings, but a private one in which he specifically asked her to not tell me he was coming home on Mother’s Day. My boys thought she’d given me a clue that something was up just by asking me about my favorite candies.

But my dear daughter is wiser than that. She formed it as “just a discussion with my siblings” and that they were talking about the favorite candies of the whole family. So, until he mentioned that he thought his sister had spoiled his surprise, I’d had no clue he’d told anyone he was coming. My daughter is really good at keeping secrets. (No, that tidbit wasn’t a surprise. I already knew she was good at keeping secrets. She’s and excellent Santa’s helper.)

But that wasn’t the end of my surprises.

Later, after church, I was again sitting at the kitchen table and because I thought my daughters would call me, I actually had my phone with me rather than in my bedroom. I was right in the middle of doing something, requiring both hands when my phone started ringing.

I asked my daughter to answer it and said it was probably one of her sisters or my sister. I knew it was family from the ring tone. She looked at my phone and agreed it was family, but did not say which one. She did, however, say it wasn’t any of the people I’d mentioned.

Folks, it was my middle brother. I still see him as the little kid I changed diapers on, but he is nearly 50 years old. And yes, he called to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day.

It was later in the evening when I was able to talk to my oldest child and my grandbabies. Which again brought me the pleasant surprise of my youngest grandbaby actually talking to me, which isn’t something she does every often. She takes time to warm up to people and she has only seen me in person once in her short lifetime. The rest of the time it’s just been video chats.

Her sister is much more gregarious and started making efforts to talk to me before she could even form words, even if it was just video chats. In other words, like all kids, my grandbabies are completely different.

Then Monday, several days before I expected it to arrive, the sequel to a book I’ve loved since I was a teenager arrived. Yes, I have already read the entire thing.

So, I had several pleasant surprises this week, most of those on/for Mother’s Day.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Who's Who? by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

The other day I heard some interesting facts, one of the facts mentioned was that identical twins have most likely been mixed up and the parents didn’t realize it.

My response?

Tell me about it.

I know we have mentioned this before, but well, I was born Konnie.

We know this now, but that took decades to figure out, and both of us were already married and mothers before we were definite.

That isn’t to say the clues weren't there all along; it’s just that we didn’t put two and two together until after the summer of ’97. Why I am so specific about that date? That’s because I had given birth to twins that July.

You see, on our mother’s side of the family, the third born daughter had the twins. Our grandmother was third born, our mother was her third born, Konnie was third born. You get the picture.

Of course, in our case, we have a paternal aunt who spent years insisting we’d been mixed up. She insisted that Konnie had a slightly rounder face, was slightly bigger, and not as shy as Bonnie.

Guess what, I’m the one with a slightly rounder face and am just a bit taller than, well, Konnie today.

We also have medical records that show that Konnie is the one who got stitches on the bridge of her nose when we were about two years old. I have the scar; for decades we all assumed our mother told the emergency personnel the wrong name because it was Konnie (the one we know as Konnie today) who was bawling her head off, not me.

No, in reality, Konnie got the stitches; I have been going by Bonnie since I started school.

We know this now because a year or two before our mother died, she told me that when she enrolled us in school for the first time, she asked us which was which. She informed me that I told her I was Bonnie and Konnie (the today Konnie) agreed.

Though that does explain my clear memory from our early school years were I accidently said I was Konnie, for which Konnie was upset with me and reminded me she was Konnie.

In other words, we switched places when we entered school and went with our new positions for so long that when we realized we had been mixed up, neither of us wanted to go through the rigmarole of switching back. Of course, by that point we were both married with children.

We would have switched places in the fall of 1968. Meaning by the time we figured it out, we’d spent twenty-nine years using the wrong name, i.e. most of our lives. Just the idea of changing all those legal documents to the correct name was daunting because it wasn’t just our marriage licenses but the birth certificates of our children, and diplomas, and frankly our school records!

Let alone we’d have to go back and tell people they knew us by the wrong name.

And there was also the fact that we felt the name we were using (are using) is who we are. It just felt weird to have to learn to go by the other name after all those years.

Now that switch occurred well over fifty years ago; making it even harder to switch back.

And it's not the red tape that is the daunting part – it is absolutely having to change the name we each answer to. Way to hard at this stage of the game.

But do all identical twins get mixed up without the parents noticing? I have no idea. Maybe I’ll ask my cousins who are identical what their experience on the subject is.

Though, I know this is something I really should put into a story I write. That might be fun.

On another simi-related note, I keep running across memes about how the one Phelps twin who played George Weasley was living the scene were Fred died while Rupert Grint and the guy who played Percy were just acting in the picture shown.

Each time I see Phelps’s expression in that scene, I think, “Yeah, that’s how I’m going to feel.” And Konnie and I haven’t been together 24/7 for decades, the same can’t be said for the Phelps twins at the time of the scene. I mean, at least back then, they lived and worked together, they were always together.

I actually feel sorry for him going through something that traumatic in his life.

Konnie does have a set of identical twins as main characters in her epic science fiction series, but I don’t have any main character twins. I do have a few stories with twins in them, but they are not main characters.

Anyway, happy writing everyone.