Sunday December 8, 2024
Dear Diary,
Good morning God,
- Thank you for this day.
- Thank you for snow.
- Thank you for Christmas lights.
- Thank you for beautiful songs.
- Thank you for dogs.
- Thank you for people.
- Thank you for each breath.
I love you!
I woke up at 5:15 AM. I wrote my blog and finished it a little after 8 AM. I edited and posted it. Then I played wordle and connections and practiced the song I’m singing at church, It Is Well With My Soul. I had it sort of memorized and kept singing it over and over until I sang it without messing up once.
Angel woke up at 8:30 AM and wanted grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast. I made myself tea and a smoothie. I was looking forward my smoothie because I had a small amount inflammation in my body from not eating all raw yesterday. After Angel ate she said she was feeling tired. I told her it’s from eating so many grilled cheese sandwiches. I’ve been wanting to get her off cheese. My husband Christopher in Texas is the one that got her started on cheese. I’ve noticed she feels really sluggish and tired after eating it.
Angel slowly got ready for church and we walked there in the snow. It had snowed a little last night. On the walk I kept repeating the lyrics to the verses of the song I am singing. When we arrived, I was told that there were technical issues and that I would have to sing a cappella. I didn’t like that idea and it was suggested that I wait and sing next week. I didn’t like that idea either. Then a lady at church found a speaker I could Bluetooth my phone to. Perfect.
Sunday school started and the message was about “asking and receiving” which is a message I practice often. During the break in between Sunday school and church, I visited with people and kept an eye on Angel. When the church service started I was feeling really nervous about singing. I was scheduled to sing right before the sermon and I didn’t do a very good job. I didn’t have the music loud enough to hear my cues and my voice was shaking from nerves. Oh well, it happens.
After church, I chatted with a few people and then walked home with Angel. My sister was in the kitchen making fudge and I talked to her a few minutes. Then I went upstairs to lay down a while before I had to leave again to go to a couple of events in Cambridge. I was going to watch the Upper Country Singers and write about them. Then watch the lighting of the town water tower and write about that event. The editor of paper wants the articles done before tomorrow at noon. I will do my best!
When I laid down, I wrote today’s blog up to the current moment so I will be caught up since I will be spending time writing the articles for the newspapers during my blog writing time. By the time I finished writing my blog notes it was time to get up to go to Cambridge. Angel stayed home with my sister and they were watching a Christmas movie together when I left. I had plenty of time to get to the concert. I wanted to get there early to get a feel for things.
Halfway to Cambridge there’s a store along the highway that I’ve been wanting to stop at and see inside. Since I had some extra time I pulled over and went in. I introduced myself to the lady working there and we had a great conversation. She displayed some of my business cards on the counter and said in the future she will hire me to help her clean the hard to reach places in her house that she can’t get to. Yay!
When I left the store I realized that I had talking too long and now I was going to arrive at the concert late. So much for being efficient and on time to my first paid writing opportunity 😂. I arrived at the concert 5 minutes late and the parking lot was overflowing with cars. I found a spot to park and hurried inside. The concert was at the Cambridge exhibit building at the fairgrounds.
The choir was singing Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas when I walked through the door. The building was packed full of people and there was nowhere left to sit. I thoroughly enjoyed the concert. It was extremely well done. There were dancers, a children’s choir, solos and musicians. I loved every minute of it. During intermission, the choir members served cookies to the audience. I interviewed the choir director and asked her questions about the choirs history. I was really nervous about writing an article about this event for the newspaper. Really really nervous. I ate a couple of cookies to calm my nerves but all that did was give me a slight stomach ache. I talked to a few choir members to find out what motivated them to join and as always, I had fun interacting with people and hearing their stories. I saw a few people I had met at the craft fair yesterday and was warmly greeted by them with a hug. It felt good to be so welcomed into the local community.
The community here is much smaller than the community I was in, in Texas. It was still a small community in Texas but here in idaho it is even smaller. Council has 879 people, Cambridge has 353 people, and Midvale has 216 people. McCall has 4,000 people but it’s on the other side of the mountain and is a separate community that includes New Meadows (population 636), Donnelly (population 256) and Cascade (population 1,000). Plus McCall is a resort town and has a lot of temporary residents and tourists. Here’s a map of the area I live in.
Ok, so I got off on a tangent about populations and towns. I like that sort of stuff and I like looking at maps.
Back to the concert: A lady named Bobbie Givens was gifted flowers by the choir for volunteering to help out with their concert every year and she was recognized for being always cheerful. Bobbie chatted with me during the breaks in the 2nd half of the show, giving me a lot of useful information to use in my article. I loved her energy and told her for much I appreciate her help.
When the concert was over, I drove to a little Chinese restaurant in town. There’s a lot of local gossip about this restaurant but I’m not going to get into that. I wanted a warm place to hang out where I could start writing. The owner of the restaurant served grapes as an appetizer which was wonderful. I ordered plain steamed rice to eat, which I nibbled on but didn’t eat much of while I wrote the first few lines of the newspaper article.
When I realized it was a little after 6 pm, I got ready to leave to go see the lighting of the Cambridge water tower that I thought started at 6:30 pm. I went to pay for the rice and the owner, Li, said it was free. I insisted on paying something but he refused to take my money and wouldn’t even let me leave a tip. I was too much in a hurry to argue the point. I didn’t want to be late for the next event and I wanted to talk to people before hand. I thanked Li and hurried out to my truck. It was dark out and I couldn’t see where the water tower was located, so I asked some people that were getting out of their car where it was located. They gave me the look that locals give “out of town” people and a man sarcastically pointed it out to me. I couldn’t barely make it out in the dark sky. Despite the man’s attitude toward me, I thanked him and drove the few blocks to the water tower.
When I pulled up, there were only a few people gathered around the tower but there were a lot of people at the Baptist church across the street. I went into the church to see what was going on. I talked to a couple of teenage girls sitting at a table in the entry way. There was a fundraiser going on for the Cambridge and Midvale high school wrestling team. They were selling bowls of soup for $10 each and they had sold 93 bowls so far.
Leaving the church, I walked across the street to the water tower. I talked to the few people standing near the stage and it happened to be some of the people who had started the event 5 years ago. I got a lot of great information from them. Then I wandered around looking at things and waiting for the Christmas light parade to start. After the parade, the water tower lights would be turned on and there would be a few people performing on stage.
It was 27 degrees Fahrenheit and I was dressed appropriately for the weather other than my shoes. For some reason I had worn my tennis shoes rather than my snow boots. Even though I had wool socks on, my toes were aching from the cold. The Christmas lights parade ended at the water tower so it took a while for it to get there. When it finally arrived there were only 6 floats. I took pictures of them but they all turned out blurry. I noticed that people watching the parade made sure that the candy thrown from the floats was all picked up, even the broken ones. I heard someone mention that they liked to make sure their town was kept clean. Idaho is noticeably a really clean state.
I watched the water tower lighting and wanted to go home after that but I needed to stay to watch the entire event to have accurate information for the newspaper article. Thankfully there were only a couple of songs performed and then the event was over. I got in my truck and cranked on the heater. My toes were half frozen and didn’t feel fully thawed out until I reached home a half hour later.
When I came inside, Angel was playing video games. I told Angel it was time to get ready for bed and to turn off the game. I talked to my sister a few minutes and Angel was still playing her game. I asked her a second time to please turn it off and I got ready for bed. I heard my sister ask Angel to turn off the game and when I checked on an Angel a few minutes later she was still playing. I threatened to turn the TV off and Angel finally did as she was asked. She got ready for bed and read out-loud to me for a half hour. Then she got in her bed and I turned on a sleep meditation. I worked on writing my articles for a while but decided I was too tired and it would be better to write them after I had some sleep. I needed to turn them in before noon tomorrow, so I was feeling pressured to get them done in a short amount of time.
At 9:30 PM, I turned out the light and fell asleep immediately.
Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you.
Love, Victoria
P. S. This blog post was inspired by the Holy Spirit.