Dear Elder Davidson No. 7

Dear Isaac,

Sunday morning. I’ve been up off and on since about 4 am when Dottie had a doggie dream and was muffled barking in her sleep enough to wake us all up including Daisy, who then decided it was time to get up to go potty. So I took them out and they did their thing and were then pretty restless for the rest of the morning because Daisy figured since she was up it was time to start the day and there’s no other way to start the day except BREAKFAST which I made her wait to get until 7 am. Now it’s almost 9 am, they’re both sleeping again and I’m bleary-eyed at the computer wondering why we ever wanted to get dogs in the first place.

This is a photo from a few weekends ago, when I took them out on the front porch because it was raining and Dottie was still quite upset that she had to go out in the rain to tinkle.

I’m trying not to be a crybaby about the whole thing, but I’m having a hard time ending that sentence. I may have to take a nap before church.

I do love how Dottie is sitting there looking like a frog.

Trying to remember what I did for fun this week, and I’m coming up blank. Friday morning was the dentist. Saturday morning was Scouting for Food. That was kinda fun to get to hang out with Lexi, but I’m not going to say it was the most exciting thing. I washed dishes. I tried fixing the ice maker in the fridge. I’m not trying to be a downer, just dealing with a little seasonal depression that kicks in this time of year. I get out and get some sun and that helps a lot, so don’t worry about me.

Good news is it’s Mom who is teaching Gospel Doctrine today. Last lesson on Isaiah. The Old Testament is challenging enough, and then we spend a month on Isaiah and it gets even harder.

Oh – here’s something fun. I put some stuff away in the garage so we can kind of walk though there a little better even if there are two cars in there. YES, I do get to do exciting things.

Here in a few weeks Mom and I are going to do IOLS training with the council – Introduction to Outdoor Leadership Skills, if I remember right. That’ll be a nice break from the regular stuff. Mom signed us up partly because she needs the training, and partly because it was in danger of being cancelled because they didn’t have enough participants signed up.

I just ordered a new ice maker for the fridge. We’ll see how it goes with installation. Maybe we’ll end up buying a new fridge after I’m done, you never know. They tell me this is an “easy” repair, and should take only 30 to 60 minutes. Somehow, I’m skeptical.

This is usually how my repairs go. I guess I should consider myself lucky this isn’t a gas-powered ice maker.

I should be more optimistic about it all, but it gets harder as the days get shorter. I may need to see if I can relocate to Arizona for the winter and work remotely. They let me work from home for five years before I guess people who couldn’t do that complained, so now I do the same work in the cubicle that I did at the office, right down to still using the phone and the email to communicate with customers.

I’ll stop ranting. It’s not a good look.

Maybe if the ice maker replacement goes well I’ll ship you the old one for Christmas. Would at least give you something to talk about.

Oh. Forgot to mention when we were doing Scouting for Food, we got free donuts. That was nice.

We had to do our year-end review self evaluations at work last week. I hate evaluation time. I always rank myself as exceeding expectations because to do otherwise seems foolish and, you know, I do actually do some good work from time to time. My immediate supervisor always wants to see what we’re saying before we submit, but I kinda think that’s an invasion of my privacy and really, in the end, won’t do much of anything because we all get the same tiny raises all the time anyway.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that when we did the alignment on the Red Herring some of the warning lights went away. Ha ha, that was only temporary. The lights come and go now, which I guess is an improvement over being on all the time. I know Kevin still has some work to do on the car and may not have cleared the codes yet, so we’ll see what happens. We’re putting the work off a little bit because we had some unexpected medical bills come up that we’re working on paying, so the tires and other work will have to wait. Life is fun when you’re broke.

OK. I’m going to go get showered up and ready for church. Maybe I’ll walk to church today to get some sun.

Hope you’re doing well. We look forward to your calls.

Love,

Dad