Our latest crazes

So, Richard has his little 'kicks' of new, innovating technology...and recently he has decided that ignoring the innovations of running shoes is the best idea, based off the book "born to run"; it answers the question :

"Why does my foot hurt when I run?" Basically, the answer is because everything we have been taught about running is wrong. The thing that causes the MOST injury to athletes is the fact we are even wearing shoes in the first place. Our bodies were made to run, barefoot.

A runner that is famous for running barefoot, Barefoot Ted, has a blog here. As we all know, with our dirty roads and the fact that our culture isn't accustomed to running barefoot, there has been an innovative running shoe invented called Vibram five fingers. These are basically gloves for your feet, so you can run in the cold, outside, wear them in water...basically wherever. Richard and I tried some on the other day, they were pretty awesome. The only downside is that they are $80 on average, so we are waiting for newer versions of the shoe to come out before we actually purchase some.

The author of this book was really first interested in this barefoot thing when he discovered this tribe in Mexico called the Tarahumara. Here is what he says:

"Then I meet the Tarahumara, and they’re having a blast. They remember what it’s like to love running, and it lets them blaze through the canyons like dolphins rocketing through waves. For them, running isn’t work. It isn’t a punishment for eating. It’s fine art, like it was for our ancestors. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle—behold, the Running Man."

Anyway, this tribe will run up to 70 miles a day. With no injuries. It's insane. It's because their stride is great due to the fact they wear very thin-soled sandals that they make from leather. They don't need these dumb cushion-y running shoes that make you land harder on your heel, and therefore ruin your bones. No, they run with shorter, lighter strides. Rich and I went to a running shoe store this past friday, and the worker had read this book as well. He loved the theory so much, that he even had a friend who could take your running shoes and shave off all the cushioning to help correct your stride, while still wearing a running-type shoe. Of course, I can't tell what store this was because they could get sued for telling their customers to alter their running shoes in such a way. But I was really glad to see that someone else knew of this important concept of running with as little cushioning as possible.

Another one of our 'latest crazes' is the book series "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.
Basically, it takes place in the future US, but now it's become this corrupted country called "Panem". It is divided into 13 districts, and 12 of them have to fight over food. The way they do this 'fairly' is the Capitol randomly picks two children (ages 12-18) from each of the districts to fight to the death in a hugely televised arena. Whichever child wins, their district gets food for a year.



It's pretty sick, but awesome. And the sequel just came out, so Richard and I rushed to the book store to use our precious gift-certificate this weekend. We LOVED them both. :-)

My Cookbook

So! I just compiled alot of my favorite recipes I've learned this summer (before they all slip away from remembrance). All of these recipes I've either executed or tasted, and liked. As my sister-in-law Natalie puts it, "Has a taste level of 7 or above". Since this summer I cooked alot at the Beehive home with their recipes, and I also took a cooking class on campus, I have learned so much.

Darn, I was going to put a link on here for a google-doc with all of them on it, but I can't seem to manage it yet. To be updated!!!

Anyway, Richard & I have kept ourselves busy these past few days of our 'break' before school starts again this fall. We went to a raspberry farm and sorted raspberries, and as a reward came home with 6 lbs worth of berries and a kit to make them all into freezer jam. Church can be busy for me because I was just called as the choir director, so I'm desperately trying to get people to actually join the choir in the first place. It's hard when you don't have alot of male singers around that know how to sing in parts. We also recently bought a new computer for Richard's job on the side, and have been selling text books for ridiculously high prices, to our advantage. They are still cheaper than the bookstore, so we are giving people a deal nonetheless.

A lady broke her hip today, and we were so sad to see her leave to the hospital. We are not sure if she is coming back. We are actually quite close with her too, so we are worried. Another lady has a broken shoulder & a UTI, and another lady cracked her spine. When it rains, it pours! Let me tell ya. Our work is cut our for us, but at the same time the ladies seem to be healing quite fine and not really needing too much assistance.

Our new runaway

Hey! So back we are from Canada. We had fun hiking with all the Low's in Waterton National Park, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park. There were deer walking around the whole town we stayed in, they were not afraid of humans at all! One even licked Rich's hand (scandalous!)


Anyway, after a long drive and a trip to BYU-Idaho to see how it's doing, we are home. A couple nights ago, one of the ladies who's new (the one who would stare at her wall), was having a rough time. She is known to take all her clothes out of the closet and put them on her bed, and then we usually just hang them all back up. But this day, she was taking all her clothes outside. "Hey Jean, where are you going? Let's help you put these back inside." We put them all away, but when we were done, I couldn't find her! So I look down the road and I see her about a block away, struggling to walk through some sprinklers. "Jean! Where are you going? Did you want to play in the sprinklers?" It was kind of a cute site, she was wearing this adorable blue house-dress that looked hawain along with purple slippers. She was very timid, and wouldn't really respond. Once I tried to put my arm around her to help lead her back home, but she swung her arm around and tried to slug me! But I ducked just in time. She ended up tripping over a little cement wall and got herself back up on the grass.

"You keep pushin' and pushin' me!" She said. She continued to walk briskly away, down and away on the street. Meanwhile, richard finally made it outside and decided to just follow her to make sure she's safe. I ran inside and called her family to ask for some help. Anyway, about an hour and a mile later, she made it home safe. It was quite dramatic for her to snap this way. Amid her Alzheimer's she made it all the way to her own home! She remembered where it was. That was quite impressive. Anyway, the next day during another person's shift, she did the exact same thing. Jean can't be reasoned with, due to her disease. So it turns out that she cannot stay at our facility due to her running-away. Her family has agreed to put her to bed in the evenings, since she tends to get funny at that time of day. I feel so bad for Jean, she can't help what's going on in her head. Nothing will make her happy, and depression medicine just makes her act very, very strange. So it is with Alzheimers, you can just never predict what will happen!

And that's our latest adventure!

IKEA

Well, thankfully things have calmed down since that last post...the lady "Mildred" is healing just great after some major doses of antibiotics. We are so glad she's doing better and her foot is healing great. I was joking with Dani about how we don't have a child yet to write about in our blog, but I guess our old ladies somewhat count! I should write more of the funny things that we experience here more often. I promise we have more hilarious experiences than bad.

Rich and I decided to cure our July 'blahness' by re-arranging our room (which we are kind of confined to on the weekends while other people work our shift)...and have managed to make it cleaner, more organized, and so much more functional! And this is all thanks to wonderful IKEA. :-)

Rich and I have been considering moving out of our nursing home after we've been here a year (which is what we promised them), but we do like this job when it's not so crazy, and the benefits are truly great. After going to Sam's Club this afternoon (where I worked for 4 summers), I was reminded about the fact that any job has his downfalls, and our job seems to have so little compared to it's benefits.

So we figured, maybe we can cure our feelings of being 'cooped up' on the weekends in our room by making our room a better place to be. So today we ventured to IKEA and bought a really cute loveseat so we could have somewhere to actually sit comfortably in our room to watch a movie or read a book. We used to drag the Beehive home's lazy-boy chairs from the living room all the way into our room on the weekends, and they were bulky and took up so much space. Our new loveseat is the perfect size for us to both sit on and cuddle, without taking up the entire room. It makes our room feel less like a bedroom but more like a modern-styled living space, which juxtaposes our very old-fashioned nursing home. This makes it a true escape, and so far it doesn't feel like we are always at work. Even though we don't technically have our own place to call 'home' quite yet, I am reminded of what Richard's mission president told him:

"Live the first ten years of your marriage like nobody would like to live, and you'll be able to live the rest of your marriage like nobody can afford to live."

This gives me hope. It's true, I've seen this manifest itself in so many other people's lives. So here we come, Beehive home, ready to stick it out another 6 months and continue to think long and hard whether we want to remain here another year after that or not. It's worth the effort, I think. We'll hope for the best.

OH, PS...I will post a pic of our new room once we get the right cover for our loveseat. We accidently bought the wrong size...that store can be so confusing!

drained

Phew. I love our job here at the nursing home, but lately it's been very draining.
Here's my chance to moan out my frustrations!

One of our lesser anxieties is the new lady who doesn't really do much except sit in her room and stare at the wall. She worries over the fact there is too much light in her room. It's somewhat depressing to see her so blank and desolate, and have this constant worried look in her eyes. She refuses to watch TV, read, or any other activity we try to have her do. I really feel bad for her, I can't comprehend what makes someone so out of it. Alzheimer's is a very real and scary thing.
Our biggest anxiety is a lady (let's call her Milda) who is so shaky most of the time she will drop whatever she holds. For days she could not walk at all, and was going undiagnosed with whatever condition she had. Diarrhea, vomiting. It wasn't the prettiest picture (or smell). I really did feel bad for her. It was especially frustrating when this happened over the holiday weekend when all the doctor's offices were closed. Even on our one day off the worker woke us up twice in the middle of the night to help her pick up Milda after she had fallen like dead weight on the ground.

Meanwhile, we haven't gotten a stress-less night of sleep for the past week due to this, and she's not showing any improvement. They've finally diagnosed her with a bladder infection (which I suspected from the start) and she is on antibiotics. She still cannot walk, and she will fall involuntarily out of her bed in her sleep. Every morning I find her on the floor.

I guess you have to be there to see it. I just get upset because her family is kind of oblivious to how bad she is sometimes. I can't stand to see someone suffer, so I spend alot of time in her room just fixing things up and organizing things because she can't do it herself.

random thoughts

Yay! So my bread turned out great, I was happy about that. And it doesn't even crumble when you slice it thinly, that's what made me most excited. Spring finals are coming up, and then I'm off to Indiana to see my family! I miss them alot, it's hard being out here without any parents or relatives, I'm used to spending weekends with a grandparent at least once or twice a month. I also wish I could see my brother and sister grow up, Phil is apparently quite the talented guy. I secretly hope he doesn't study music when he goes to school, because I think he has alot of potential in other careers. It's so hard to stop developing a musical talent that you've invested so much time in and that you could potentially become a professional in.

I still mourn over 'giving up' flute, but at the same time I feel secure knowing that I chose a career that I have a passion for and is still very practical. I wasn't passionate enough about flute to carry it out through college professionally, that drive just wasn't there. I think its great that other musicians have a drive because they need that so much. But science really attracts me, I love how there are so many areas of study that directly apply to your every day life, and there is an endless frontier of discovery and information to learn. Not only does it apply to our every day life, it is crucial for our health and the environment.

Music seems to have a sort of finite existence to me, although you can always become better at your talent and find new and better music, I simply find it to have some sort of an end. With flute, for example, I would simply become good enough to maybe get accepted into an orchestrea, and then teach flute to highschool students. Maybe teach at a college level if I was really good. But again, I am not much for teaching it, because most students don't even practice near enough and don't care enough past getting the 'chair' they want or the grade in the class. Or to not look like a fool at a recital. It's just a frustrating thing, I think.

Then again, I have to remind myself that music is important. It brings joy to you and others, it brings confidence to those who master it, and it is a very good skill to develop one's creativity, motor skills, and makes you cultured. So it all depends on if that's your driving factor to teach.

Home-made bread

I am so excited, Richard's mom spoiled us by giving us a wheat grinder and a bosch for our wedding! We have finally decided to start making homemade bread together once a week. During the school year we were pretty busy and had alot on our hands, but now that it's the sumer we are looking for projects and healthy things to do, and I am just way excited to learn how to do this. At first I was intimidated when Richard told me he wanted me to make home-made bread every week like the way he was raised, but now that I appreciate the healthy-benefits and cost-benefits of making your own bread, I am ready to get started. I heard whole-wheat bread is the hardest to make, but I'm willing to keep trying until I get it right. When we went to the bosch store to pick up the nutramill, I saw there was a bread-making class so I dragged Richard there after his root-canal surgery and we watched a lady quickly prepare some bread. It seemed simple, but we also noted there are many things that could possibly go wrong if you are not careful. Bread is a tricky thing.



Other than this, we have been doing pretty good. Richard and I are taking classes this spring and recently Richard had to fix a failed-root canal. He went to an endodontist who actually took out some bone to get to the infected area and remove more of his failed root-canal stuff. I still don't really understand all that happened, but I do know it costed an arm and a leg! I'm so grateful it didn't affect us too bad, we are lucky to have the jobs we do.

Richard is basically shadowing dentists for hours and hours as well as taking a physiology class, and I have been taking a jogging class, a field botany class, and a genetics class. In fact, I'm going to take a 4 hour genetics test in about half an hour, but I think I'm pretty ready so i thought I'd write in here. Jogging is my least favorite, it's hard to run in the morning because I have early classes, and running at night in spanish fork really isnt very safe (nobody has flood lights! It's incredibly dark!). I refuse to run in the middle of the day because I always feel soo sick afterwards. I am going to Indiana in a couple weeks, which I'm really looking forward to. I have to leave Rich behind because he needs to watch the old ladies and finding a replacement for us is very expensive, we'd have to pay them $80 a night when we are gone. Add to that a plane ticket and it's just to much. We will go to Indy for Christmas so that will be nice, we are willing to suck up the cost for such a special holiday & to keep our job :-) The only thing stopping us from living there is if I get pregnant, which we dont plan on letting that happen for awhile....