JESSIE'S VEGAS

       I have not "blogged" in awhile. I have been busy working, worrying, then working again. Like a washer stuck on the "bulky bedding" selection, sometimes my actions and efforts have chugged along at best. I am seemingly stuck on the toughest washer selection...besides the half-day sanitary one that wipes out germs and material combined! OK, I've used that setting PLENTY during these scary times too! At least I am still moving along, but in the middle of this terribly confusing year,   I have perhaps tightened the screws on the things I can control a little too much. Since there is so much I cannot control during a worldwide pandemic, I have been a little on edge.  I had a very tough lesson to learn about encroaching too much on someone's freedom when my youngest child confided to me just how crushing my authoritarian type approach on her school work had become.  I immediately backed off and took a couple months' break from "breathing dow...

When I was 12 years old my father took me to Disneyland. It was a grand adventure of castles, jungles and steamboats. I am not including space capsules in the mix because I did not happen to enjoy the space ride he took me on. Since that time, I have learned that if a ride has a sign outside of it with those stick people illustrations that says"WARNING to pregnant women, people with heart conditions, or recent surgery, it is kinda  like the black diamond on the ski slope hill for degree of difficulty in the world of amusement park rides. While they are at it they should include WARNING to people who barf easily, people who poop their pants on a whim, AND people who sometimes hate to cry in public.  My dad  told me it was one of those 3D theater type rides with lots of movement. Looking back, why did I believe him? It's not like he had a great track record.  He had tricked me into walking the  crevice around Crater Lake in Oregon in the rain , tricked me into...

t's really amazing! This past few weeks, I have felt I need to study what does it mean to me that   I am a Child Of God!? We literally say we are Children of God all the time! I wonder what do I need to   be doing as a Child of God!? I would pray and I wasn't really getting anything!Then, I Started studying it way more! It was crazy because once I started studying it more we had, a missionary institute class last Wednesday, we read Moses 1 and we talk about the power of being a Child of God! As I kept studying one of my answers came to me that its important to serve others because seeing others as God does is a gift! As children of God it is important to help one another! Satan will try to beat upon our knowledge of being a child of God because there is so much worth being a Child of God! There is so much power in having the knowledge of being a child of God! The answer I received wasnt all at once, but it came through different means! It was really cool because it not only ...

Today I woke up in pain.  My post-op drains did not only have to stay in my body longer than I hoped, but they are draining out more fluid. So the drains are uncomfortable but I do not want to take my good friend VICODIN as while it helps a little with my pain,  it also makes me notice the dust bunnies in the corners and the toothpaste left in the sink.  Georgia's slobber on the couch makes me want to vomit and I do not even want to step inside my teenager's bathroom to find the devastating mess there! After taking two Vicodin in one day last week, I blocked Dave from my phone for forgetting to buy me MIRALAX. I did not even need it, I just wanted it in case.  In fact, my time on the Vicodin has brought back every trespass, every wrong that has ever crossed my threshold.  Vicodin makes my cup not just half empty, but really just leaves speckles of precipitation in the bottom of that glass AND makes me worry embedded in those small molecules is probably poison....

You know that game we played at kindergarten bday parties  where we were blindfolded,  spun around, and then had to try to pin a tail on some donkey? I was never a fan and felt my belly go in knots and nausea in my throat when the spinning stopped. "Which way is the donkey?"  "What if I pin the tail on the face?"  "Why am I so wobbly? " "Why are people laughing?" " What if I trip and fall down and get hurt?" " What if I cry?" " What if I hurt someone else?" "  Hey, I just came for cake and opening presents anyways! Do I really have to play???" The last few months we have ALL been playing a version of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey", except the name of this game is:  "Wear this mask, lock yourself in your panic room, stop working,  quit socializing, AND take some Imodium so you don't have to wipe your butt so much with a leaf". " Who do I pin this tail on(blame)?...

Several years ago our teenage daughter was in the hospital.   She developed some form of adolescent dementia and did not recognize us for many weeks. The visiting hours were only for a couple of hours a day and I thought I was going to lose my own mind.  Here when she was at her sickest I could not be there to comfort her, sit by her, even hold her hand.  I did not care if she didn't recognize me, I just wanted to be there.  The pain in my heart was palpable and I paced and paced and cried and cried. Another child had experienced a similar episode years earlier(the autism and neurological bug had bitten our family AND hard)! People had offered advice from exorcisms to alkaline water so I had turned into a semi-hermit to avoid odd suggestions.  My mind would not accept that this would happen again to another child so I had been in denial for months.  My mom had called and told me she had noticed some signs and I got mad.  My husband was worrie...