Tracie's World

Nephew #2 up and ruptured his appendix last weekend, poor kid, and ended up undergoing emergency surgery at Primary Children's Medical Center. I had occasion several times when I was a kid to spend time at Primary Children's for various tests and Doctor appointments, and I don't remember it with pleasure. My childhood memory is full of white walls, sterile hallways, and the smell of alcohol and ether. If there was anything fun or comfortable about the experience for either myself or my Mom and Dad, I certainly do not remember it. But they must have learned something over the past many years, because my nephew and his family's experience this past week, at least from my perspective, was night and day different. Today, I'd like to give a shoutout to Primary Children's Medical Center, Intermountain, Ronald McDonald, Steve Young, eBay, and a host of other organizations for making a difficult and unnerving situation so comfortable, and almost pleasant. From in-room...

Mother's Day can be a weird day for single women. Some of that probably comes with how we celebrate it as a culture, and especially a Mormon culture. Today, I will go to my sacrament meeting, and hear talks and primary songs about wonderful mothers, and about how important mothers are to eternal families. After that, the men of the ward will stand at the back of the chapel and pass out little gifts to all the Moms and older single women - usually some sort of sweet treat, or a plant. This is how it has been celebrated my entire life in the church.  Now, what I've just described is not something I have any real problem or concern with. But I know a lot of women who do. I have many friends that will choose not to attend church today, or if they do attend, will leave right after partaking of the sacrament. While I can see why they feel this way, I am concerned that they come from a perspective of lack, rather than a perspective of abundance. I use that term because I believe t...

After arriving home from the plant sale, I spent the afternoon getting my containers ready. I had already hauled up my bags of soil before I left for the sale, so then it was just a matter of getting it in the pots. Getting the soil ready is definitely the hard and heavy part. I only buy Miracle-Gro brand garden soil, which I dumped in the pots, and then broke all up and mixed with some ground coconut fiber (for moisture control). Despite the heavy labor, it felt kind of fun to have my hands in the soil again. After that was all prepped, I got the plants in and watered. Later on I ran to Walmart and picked out some basil plants - I plan on making a lot of pesto this year - and, with a little help from the Home Depot and my friend Robin, got my hanging planters up.  It ended up being great gardening weather - not too cold or hot. Unfortunately, it seems we've got some rain and snow and cold temperatures expected later this week, so hopefully I didn't jump the gun...

Now that my work schedule is a little more relaxed, I decided I could get back to gardening again this year. For one reason and another, I wasn't able to garden the last couple of years, and I've really missed it. Yesterday was the Wasatch Community Garden annual plant sale. Wasatch Community Garden is a terrific organization that spreads the love of gardening around town. Among other things, they support small gardens in different neighborhoods that don't get a lot of fresh, quality food, and they do cooking classes. Their big event every year is the plant sale, which specializes in heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables, as well as offering trees and flowers. It's a huge event that thousands of people come out to, bringing their kids, and wagons for hauling their plants home in. It's one of my favorite events of the year, so I made my way downtown really early to get in line for my plants.  I came home with 5 different tomato plants - cherry and globe varie...

Last year I became more acquainted with the Jordan River Trail as my friends and I would go walking. The Jordan River is a river that runs north and south through the middle of Salt Lake County. The river itself has some issues (pollution), but the county is slowly working to beautify it, and has provided a paved trail to run alongside it. All total, the trail is roughly 45 miles long, running from North Salt Lake to Lehi.  This year I thought it would be a fun physical challenge to walk the length of the trail - over the course of several weekends - and I was able to convince my pal Cyndee to do it along with me. Last Saturday was our first leg, which was roughly 13 miles, and took us around 5 hours. Despite some sunburns and blisters (the blisters slowed our pace quite a bit the last couple hours), we managed to walk from the trailhead in North Salt Lake to the park by Cyndee's house in West Valley. It's a beautiful walk, through parks and tree-lined neighborhoods on the we...