Feb 6-7 08

February 6-7, 2008

The sun came out on Wednesday and the weather started warming up. We needed groceries so headed to Show Low about 10:00. It was a beautiful drive. The snow was on the trees, reminiscent of our drive to Jackson Hole in the wintertime. When we got to Show Low the plows were still clearing snow off the streets. They haven’t quite mastered the skill of piling snow in the middle of the street and then hauling it off, so the streets were still quite a mess. We went clear up to Pinetop as Robert had some checks he needed to deposit. For once we didn’t think the residents exaggerated. This was a good healthy snowstorm, with Pinetop receiving probably 18 new inches of snow. We also stopped at Pueblo Southwest and bought our last souvenir.

When we got back to Cibecue we did a little more packing. Bro Wilcock called and cancelled Scouts. They live out in the country and he can’t get his car out yet. So we got some unexpected free time tonight.

Lately for some reason the negative things on the mission seemed to be always our focus. The last few days we’ve been very frustrated. So when we walked Wednesday morning we gave ourselves a major attitude adjustment. We decided that focusing on the negative is unproductive and it will drive us crazy. We even decided we might have to put the bands on our wrists and flip them when we start complaining. No matter where we are in life or what we do there’s good stuff and bad stuff. We each choose which to focus on. When we set our brains to see the negative that’s all we see. So we stopped talking about what makes us crazy here and had a much better day. We still reserve the right to record that which amuses us here, be it negative or positive. There’s just too much rich material to pass up.

Thursday, while not the last homemaking, at least it is the last big one I’ll do. On February 21 Pat Madsen, the public health nurse, is doing the meeting. I wanted to do something nice for Valentine’s Day, so I made sugar cookies, 350 of them. I baked the cookies and then had frosting, food coloring and sprinkles so the ladies could frost and decorate. We also made a yarn octopus, a suggestion from Sharon’s friend Susan in Tucson. This yarn octopus was something people made back in the 60’s, so it’s an old idea, but none of the ladies here had ever made one. They were still living in wikiups and had no paved roads or indoor plumbing back then. Thursday morning I cooked the last batch of cookies, then Robert went to the church and helped me set up. We put two tables together and covered them with plastic cloths and put all the stuff for the cookies on those tables. I put 10 cookies for each lady into Ziploc bags, and made 30 bags. The rest of the cookies I kept so we can frost and decorate Valentine cookies in Primary this Sunday. Then we put up 4 more tables and put all the stuff for the yarn octopus on those tables. For the octopus we had white yarn, all different colors of ribbon, eyes and glue for the eyes. We also bought a little felt so they add more decorations if they wanted. Refreshments were the cookies (they could eat them or take them home) and hot chocolate.

It was a great night. We had at least 20 ladies come, and the Elders wandered over for a while. They loved making the cookies and the craft. It was so fun to watch them leave with their plates of cookies and their little octopus and see how proud they looked as they took these to their families. Verbena came and her father has recently had a stroke and a heart attack. When I took her home she asked me to stop by her parents’ house and she ran in and gave the octopus to her father. Robert gave a little presentation on relationships. They were so involved with their projects it was hard to get them to listen, so he just spoke for a few minutes, but it was perfect. For only having a short time, he got some great thoughts across. He talked about his acronym for L.O.V.E. that he likes, that it stands for listen, overlook, voice and effort. After his talk Naysha recited back all the letters and what they stand for. She is going to be in the same spelling bee that Amber is going to next week in Holbrook, so Robert and Elder Lefler gave her a blessing tonight.

I wish I could describe why it was so much fun. These women have so little, and it has been a neat experience to do these things that make them happy for a little while. This particular one was a lot of work and I was about ready to give up. I still don’t feel really good and it was hard to keep pushing myself to get everything done, but is so worthwhile when it finally all comes together. At the end of the evening I told them about the next meeting, and invited them all to come because I told them it would be the last time I would be here with them. When I said that, about 5 or 6 of the ladies just put their heads down a little and shook their heads like they were saying “no.” It was very sweet.

Finally I started taking women home and didn’t get the last ones delivered until 10:30. Meanwhile Robert and the Elders cleaned up. I took Manuelita Early and Doris Pena home together. I dropped Manuelita off first and Doris then told me that her daughter has been dating one of Manuelita’s sons. She said one night her daughter came home with her hair all messed up. When Doris asked what happened she said Manuelita got mad at her, grabbed her by the hair and shook her and then threw her down on the ground. And Veda and Andi and Randy think they have a difficult mother-in-law! The stories then continued. Yesterday was Primary elections here on the rez. Doris asked me if I knew that and I said yes. She asked if I knew who won, and I did. Then she asked if I knew that “that one guy” cheated. No, I didn’t know that. So she proceeded to tell me how he cheated. She said he made a whole bunch of homemade beer and then went out and rounded up all the alcoholics and winos in town, brought them to the Community Center and promised free beer if they voted for him. After they voted he took them to a “party”, where according to Doris there were girls who took their pants off and danced naked. Then she said, “You know, that’s just not nice, what those girls were doing. That’s naughty. I don’t want that man to represent me!” I heartily agreed and even managed to keep a straight face. Mitt Romney could have saved millions and would probably still be in the race if he had just taken a few lessons on campaigning out here on the rez. Doris is not a member but obviously has a highly developed sense of moral values. She also told me that she tells the people in the church she attends (and I don’t know which one that is) that they should have nice things for the women like the Mormon church has. She loves to come to our Ladies’ Night and I love to have her. Doris is a great lady.

Our lack of posts lately on the Blog has not been our fault. Ever since the storm Monday our phone line has been on and off, more off than on. We kept thinking it would get better after the storm ended, but it was off all night Wednesday and still off Thursday morning. Robert finally called Frontier. They had the technician call us, and he said he couldn’t come today to fix it. Robert was quite assertive and said we have to have a phone line and besides on Friday we would not be home, and that meant we’d have to go all weekend without our phone. He finally agreed to come over from Whiteriver, and arrived about 3:00. The fact that he actually showed up should indicate to our readers that he is not Apache. He was quite chatty, and as he worked on our phone line in the trailer he said he had a story that would “make the hair on your neck stand up.” We couldn’t resist that lead-in, so we asked him to tell us. He said, “Are you sure? It might scare you.” We still had to bite. So he proceeds to tell us that another workman was out here fixing some lines and in a field he saw a dead body with no head on it. Just then some men came riding up on their horses. The worker said, “hey, there’s a body here without a head,” at which point one of the Apaches reached in his saddlebag and pulled out the guy’s head. Apparently this man had relations with one of the women and had abused a child, so the family took their retribution. They told the worker he should get out of there, and he happily obliged. So when the guy finished this story Robert and I just sort of looked at him. When he left we both said, “That’s it? That’s his big scary story? We’ve heard way worse than that. If we got scared that easily we’d have been back home about a year ago!” The happy ending to this story is that he not only got our phone working, but called and upgraded our Internet connection so it will be much faster than it has been. He said it was so slow because we didn’t have the right connection. Now maybe we can do I-chats and send our pictures out to get developed. He also said this Modem isn’t the best, and left his card so we can call him next week and he’ll bring us a new Modem.