Little me be tired. 😴
Lovely day today. 😊 More comfortable blessings. And t’was my happy half birthday. 🙃
Nice to spend it in the temple–at least part of it.
I woke up relatively early, and for whatever reason, I was exhausted. Maybe it’s too many days in a row of heavy physical labor and not enough sleep, followed by another night without enough sleep. I think maybe I got 6 hours last night?
Definitely not enough for this little body and mind.
I was foggy and groggy, and I just wanted to take a nap, but I got up, did some good morning routine stuff, some good gospel study stuff don’t think I broke any records in my Elevate app, as tired as I was.
The temple was lovely. Started out participating in an endowment session, my first one in a good handful of years. There were some differences, some that I liked, and some that I didn’t. The changes in format aren’t very conducive to my learning style and my ability to pay attention, but there are also positives. I think my favorite changes are to the sealing ordinance.
Anyway, after my endowment, I got dressed and headed over to the baptistry. I think baptisms and confirmations are my favorite part of the temple. I’m a very tactile person. I love to be hands-on, and baptisms is the most Hands-On of any of the ordinances in the temple. Others used to be more so, and I miss the way they used to be; but I also understand the changes.
Also, when I’m participating in baptisms and confirmations, I get to officiate the ordinances as well as be on the receiving end, and that’s one of my favorite things to do is officiate ordinances.
I absolutely loved being a temple worker.
Anyway, there were a lot of people doing baptisms today, so my hope for getting out of the baptistry and over to the initiatory in time to do both completely didn’t work out. I ended up having to leave in the middle of the confirmations session and was only able to do the initiatory ordinance for three people instead of the normal five.
Oh well. It was still really nice.
I really really really love the baptistry. 🥰
I skipped going to the gym after the temple. I was just tired and didn’t even want to think about going to the gym. 🙃
Chatted with my mom for about an hour.
Did some grocery shopping at walmart, buying lots of Frozen fruits and vegetables, as well as some apples, salsa, jalapenos, and I can’t remember what else.
Sent a couple of the doggy goggles back to Amazon, the ones that were clearly not going to work at all.
We still have two of them, and as Heather said, perhaps we can Frankenstein one good one out of the two. 🤞
Got gas and began the drive back to South dakota. It’s about 420 mi round trip which is basically one really full tank of gas and about a hundred bucks.
My sister offered to let me take her little Volkswagen because it gets more than twice the gas mileage that Rover gets, but I just feel more comfortable in my own vehicle, knowing I’ve got pretty much my whole life with me inside that van, if I need something or whatever.
The drive back was uneventful other than seeing a snake in the middle of the road on one of the last legs, the gravel Road between Provo-ish and the road the Cascade Falls place is on.
I hopped out of the van hoping that the snake was a rattlesnake, because I’m only seeing a rattlesnake in the wild twice, so it would have been fun to see another one.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a rattlesnake, but it was still a beautiful, fairly large snake. Either a bull snake or a gopher snake or maybe that’s the same thing.
Took my customary plunge in Cascade Falls. Can’t drive by without jumping in. 🙃
🥰
Love that place.
Made it back to my sister and brother-in-law’s place, unloaded the quite thawed out frozen fruit into the trailer and chatted with Hans about the progress he made on the septic excavation. He’s got a good chunk of it down to the level that he wants it to be at, so just the end facing the house needs to be brought down to that same level, and then the ramp that I built down into the pit needs to be a excavated about halfway up to the same level as the rest of the pit.
That’ll be my job for tomorrow while they are at work.
Maybe four or five questions answered for just answer today. Not a lot, but almost enough to pay for my gas for the trip.
I’m falling asleep writing this… Or at least zoning out.
Time to wrap up.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have been able to be safe in my travels.
- I’m grateful going to check out the snake got it off the road and out of harm’s way.
- Ungrateful to be able to take the plunge into Cascade falls.
- I’m grateful for the thunder and the pitter-pat of the raindrops on Rover’s roof as I write this.
- I’m grateful for how wonderful and understanding people of the Temple are. It’s just such a wonderful place to be.
- I’m grateful that I’m about to fall asleep and it’s 10:30. So I’m over an hour late to bed. Basically an hour and a half late to bed, but that’s better than it’s been the last few days.
- I’m grateful I can sleep in until whenever I want to, though I’m likely going to get up early and start working. 🙃 At least I have the choice. Not lost on me how much of a privilege that is.
- I’m grateful for uplifting music.
- I’m grateful that I was able to make some progress in my “creating things spiritually” efforts.
Success:
- I’ve been focusing more and more effectively on facing challenges and how I’m going to approach them.
Improvement:
- Caught myself pushing some boundaries with using my phone while driving today. I was still pretty good, but pushed some boundaries.
Had the Lord warn me last night that something that’s been difficult for me for decades is likely going to happen again soon. So I need to be better prepared, which means I need to ponder and pray and figure out how I’m going to prepare for that occurrence. I’m going to be pondering that as I melt away into dreamland. I must be on the lookout. I must be actively preparing.
No I’m writing with my eyes closed 🙃, so I’m going to call it a night.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 