New News

New News #1

Last week Brian and I met with the bishopric to, well, meet with the bishopric. It was just a get-to-know you meeting...or so we thought. I was completely caught off guard when they extended a calling to me, especially when I heard what the calling was. They asked me to be the new Gospel Doctrine teacher now that Nicki's moved away. (Oh, how I miss Nicki!) No, it's not that bad - it's just going to be one of those callings that pull me out of my comfort zone and help me grow, and believe me, I've got a lot of growing to do. After preparing and giving today's lesson, I not only learned about things from the Old testament that I haven't studied since Seminary in high school, but I learned better ways to prepare the lesson for next time, and maybe better ways to conduct the lesson next time, and definitely that I need to slow down when I talk in front of people. See? I'm already growing.

New News #2

One of the things that made giving today's lesson more difficult is the fact that I've been having trouble speaking since, oh, about Christmas-time. Yeah, I know that "since Christmas-time" is not new news, but the reason behind the rough speaking is the new news. See, since December I've had a rough, scratchy voice, and when people have talked with me they've asked, "Do you have a cold? You sound terrible!" when I didn't have a cold. I haven't even had a sore throat! Just a raspy voice, and the worst part about all of it, is that I can't sing anymore. I can sing the lower range pretty well, getting up to about a low E, but if I go any higher I sound like something between a fourteen-year-old boy and a dying cat. It's so sad to sit in sacrament meeting and not be able to sing the hymns!

So it obviously took me a long time to do something about this. Some days I wouldn't notice it as much, because I wasn't talking as much, and I also tried to ignore it just because life is busy, but when we were in Utah and I was talking with Erin, she mentioned that I should see a doctor. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. I should have gone in a long time ago.

I called a couple of weeks ago, just after getting home from vacation, and I went in on Thursday to find out that I have a blood blister on my larynx, which is causing it to not close all the way when I talk and sing. Crazy, huh? Dr. Carl said that it wasn't going to go away on its own, so I'm headed to the hospital next Friday for an easy-peasy, extremely short surgery to get it removed, and he said that most likely I'll be talking normally right away. Yea!

New News #3

New News #3 is completely unrelated to the other news topics, and was brought about by me repeatedly ordering curtains from the JCPenney Outlet online (with a free shipping code!), then taking them back to the store if they didn't work out. The last time the kids and I were there, we stopped by the mens' section and found that the Stafford shirts were on sale for $15.20, and they actually had Brian's size. It's pretty hard to find shirts with sleeves long enough for him, and when I actually find them and find them for cheap, it's wonderful! They had some fun Spring colors, so I grabbed a green one, and an orange one (which was the color of cantaloupe, and made Brian's face look like a cantaloupe, too - that one's going back), and a purple one. I knew that he would be okay with the green and orange ones, but I was hesitant to buy the purple one, because, well, it was purple. I really didn't know if he would consent to wearing a purple shirt.

It turns out he was even more hesitant to try it on than I had been to buy it, but I finally got him to try all the shirts on so we could see how they looked. Green - looked good. Orange - cantaloupe, I already told you. And purple - wow! My husband looks good in purple! He put it on, joking that it looked great with his cargo shorts, and maybe he would wear them to work on Monday, and I told him how great he looked, then Alyssa came bounding down the stairs and rounded the corner at the bottom just as Brian was walking out of the bathroom. She stopped and yelled, "Wow, Dad! You look good!"

So that's the news. Brian has a purple shirt. And he will hopefully be wearing it to work sometime this week, minus the shorts, but plus a pair of slacks, and nobody better make fun of him, because I think he looks hot.