Random Memories and News

I asked Mother & Dad if they had any special Christmas traditions growing up and they said not really. I think it's probably more likely that what their families did just seemed so natural to them that they didn't even think of it as anything as formal as tradition. Mother remembers one year a family in their ward telling Grandma Wilson that they wouldn't have a Christmas if it weren't for her, because of her nursing care for a particular member of their family. Dad remembers stringing popcorn to decorate the tree and having 4 clips to attach candles to the tree. Yes actual lit candles!
I didn't have any notion growing up that anything we did could be categorized as tradition. I can see now that we had patterns if nothing else. We (the 'kids') were not supposed to go into the living room on Christmas morning until Dad got home. He worked nights and so it was probably around 8:30 or 9:00 before we started the gift opening part of things. We usually got into our stockings first which always had an orange, an apple, a banana, nuts (in the shell), and hard ribbon candy. Dad would sit near the tree and pass out the gifts to the rest of us. I don't remember any set order to things and it seems from that point it was just sort of general mayhem.
Now the tradition is definitely for Christmas Candy. Mother doesn't have the energy for the actual candy making anymore so Dad has taken over that task. For the past 2 weeks he has spent a chunk of time almost every day sitting at the counter by the stove mixing and stirring up batches of fudge and caramels. He made 9 separate pans of fudge and caramels (that's 4 of the caramels & 5 of the fudge). Everyone gets a pan of each and we've got one of the fudge for us here.
Other than that things are going along pretty much as normal with a few small exceptions.
Until this past week Mother had not been out to the temple for several months. Ever since the temple opened here in Billings Mother and Dad have been working two regular shifts on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Mother had to take some time off after her heart attack last year and when she went back it was just one day a week. Then she had a bad day - in about April I think. Dad suggested that she use a wheel chair and it kind of upset her. She stopped going at all because of the drain on her energy. Then last week she decided that if she needed to use a wheel chair out there then that's how it'd be. They when through a regular session and then did several sealings. Mother did fine, but Dad passed out for a few seconds when he stood up too fast to go back to the altar to do proxy for a set sealing sons to the family.
I am currently in employment limbo. My employer (who shall remain nameless for several reasons) decided that they were overstaffed for the workload they anticipate having in the near and distant future. So on November 1st a group of us were called into a meeting room and informed that we were being 'displaced'. Officially at the present time I am a non-working employee with regular pay and benefits until Jan. 8th. Then I will have a month of severance pay and continuing benefits until Feb 3rd. I have been putting out a lot of application mostly online. So far I've only had two calls for interviews. The first was back at my old company and I wasn't broken hearted to learn that I didn't get it. From what I understand of the atmosphere out there things are still more than a little tense and I don't trust that another position there would be very secure. The other is coming up this week at the Billings Clinic. I had been a little concerned that I wasn't getting any calls but decided that it was all for the best as I am still recuperating from surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff in my left shoulder. This is a picture of the inside of my shoulder.
In the bottom photo the pinkish bit on the right side is the bone that the rotator cuff is supposed to be attached to. The white thing above is the rotator cuff that's supposed to be attached there. The thing in the middle is what they anchored to the bone to put it all back together, and the top photo is everything after they where done. Not the prettiest picture you'll ever see - sorry.