Between Guatemala and Other Stuff

I missed a week writing a blog. It was just one of those weeks. Ginger, our twenty-three year old daughter got home from a four-month stint in Central America late last Sunday. She had done some humanitarian work teaching English in a school in a Guatemalan village and spent a couple of months traveling. She was lucky to find a young woman, who like herself had an adventurous spirit. Contrary to everything I’ve ever warned her about, I found out that they have been hitchhiking while traveling. She said that the “chicken buses,” her name for the public transportation were just too slow and crowded. Basically it sounds like we ship all of our broken down yellow school buses down there and they use them until they die. She calls them chicken buses because people always seem to be carrying chickens in them, and she said they sit three to four people on those tiny seats built for children. Well she made it home, and nothing bad happened, but still it’s a little disconcerting. I told her she should have at least carried some mace and she said she’d told me to send her some—hmm, I guess I forgot.
On our way home from the airport, friends were already calling on the cell phone she hadn’t used for four months. The Internet keeps people connected these days. After a nice meal and about an hour's visit, she was off to see friends in nearby Logan. She only drove for ten minutes and was pulled over for speeding. Ginger who is pretty, young, and charismatic has never been able to talk herself out of ticket, so much for the theory that pretty girls get away with anything.
Anyway Ginger was here for two and a half days and on Wednesday of last week we raced her back down to the airport to head over to Europe. The friend she met in Guatemala is going to meet her over there and they will travel again. There are no chicken buses there, so I’m pretty sure she won’t be hitchhiking again. We had to race her to the airport because she had misread her itinerary, plus we left late anyway. We dropped her off at the curb five minutes before boarding time. And she made it!
On Thursday evening, I went over to my friend Josi Kilpack’s party in Brigham City to celebrate her newest book, Sheep’s Clothing. It was fun to see friends there and to be there to welcome her latest arrival. It’s hard though not to be jealous because this is the third book she’s had come out since my last book. However Josi is one of those people that you can’t help but love and be happy for. She’s very generous in sharing her talents and encouragement with her friends. Also she really does deserve all the attention her books are getting. On my way home from the party I passed by our little church in Paradise and noticed a bunch of cars around it, not unusual, but then I saw a woman carrying a gift sack in and I remembered that I was supposed to be at a bridal shower for two sisters getting married within a month of each other. I taught the two in church for years and felt like I needed to be there. Fortunately since I was already well over an hour late, I’m a potter and have gifts lying around most of the time. This time I found two similar mixing bowls fresh out of the kiln. I tossed in a brownie mix to each bowl and zipped down to the church to celebrate with lots of my friends.
On Friday our nephew got married in the Bountiful LDS temple. And for that we had to leave in the morning—between the ceremony, wedding dinner, and reception, we didn’t get back home again until late, and besides all that my husband’s uncles funeral was the same day. Even though he loved his uncle very much, he made the choice to support his nephew launch into an exciting phase of his life, rather than to be with his uncle’s family at the end of his.
This week is bound to be less hectic. I finally managed to get back to a manuscript that I’m re-working again for the umpteenth time!