cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. and Diane Cluff.
"When I was young I hated yard work. We had the biggest lawn in Cedar City (except the city park and the college) and certainly the biggest lawn in Cedar Valley. It took forever to mow. I still have the old push mower I used to use in the garage. And I remember when a car would come down the Lane (Minersville Road) I would run and hide until it went by, so that no one I knew would see me doing yard work.
Then one day one of the girls at school told me she had seen me mowing the lawn when they drove out to Matheson`s (a wholesale dairy about a mile and a half north of the Lower Plant) to buy milk. I was devastated. I don't remember why I was devastated, just that I had been seen doing something embarrassing. And I have no clue why I had built up in my mind that yard work was embarrassing. It just was.
As I look back from an age of almost a half a century, it seems very foolish to have looked at yard work like I did. I really enjoy yard work now. And yet I can understand that we build funny things up in our minds. Especially when we have a big ego and we think the world revolves around us and we think no one has anything better to do than to think about us and worry about what we are doing. I guess I fit those kind of catagories when I was a youth (and maybe still do).
Yesterday was the first day I have done any signifigant yard work in about three years. Due to time constraints, and due to the fact I wanted to hide out and not let anyone see me (because of being such a failure), I hired the yard work done. When things got really bad, I would hire a group of Mexicans to come in and spend a couple of days cleaning everything out. Because we have more outflow than inflow in our budget these days, we stopped the the $240 per month expense to hire folks to do yard work when Andrea, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt moved to Houston. Now Matt gets paid $10 per week, and Andrea and I are going to make up the difference. Yesterday was my first day to do my part. I came in after 4 hours with two blisters on my hands (one quite large) and very tired. And I felt really good after a morning of sweating and streatching and getting sunburned. It really felt good, and if there was anyone who noticed me outside, so what?
Mondays have been the day Matt has been mowing and edging the lawns, and Andrea has spent doing yard work. From what I heard when I got home for Family Home Evening, last Monday was hard, and I think Matt felt like I used to. I'm glad he finished the work. I remember once I started to put sealer on the shingle roof at the house, and I didn't finish, didn't ever get back to it, and for 5 years you could see a line across the roof where I had stopped doing yard work on a Saturday. Sometimes it is hard to finish. Last Monday was mostly a catch-up day for me at work, and I often compare the piles in my offices to that unsealed roof on the farm. I went to my first Sales Staff meeting. Continuum is really exciting, and the customer interest is great, and if we don't get faster cash flow, we will all be out of work. Roger Anderson had a conference call about the work the previous Thursday and Friday. John Wearing and I took Dave Agarwaal of Interactive Interpretation & Training (II&T) to lunch and talked about joint marketing, particularly using their customer base to do stratal-slice processing for. I spent the afternoon working on a talk for Tuesday night.
Tuesday morning there was a meeting with a vocational teacher in the Aldine Independent School District's science magnet school. It was interesting, and her goals mirror some of the things I have been working on for several years. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from this. Most of Tuesday was spent finishing up the presentation for the Hydrographic Society. I stayed at the office until 6:20 PM and got down to The Ale House at Kirby and Alabama at about 6:45. My talk was from 7-8:00, and I stayed and answered questions and talked to potential clients until about 9:00 PM. It was a good day and I was tired, almost as if I had been doing yard work.
Wednesday morning I was asked to get my Landmark license from II&T to Continuum's London office. So Andrea and I went down and talked to Dave Agarwaal. Since she is running the Walden 3-D office, she needed to meet him and see the facilities they have in The Park. We also stopped and saw Wulf Massell. We got back to the office just in time to take Dennis McMullin to lunch. His Knowledge Management consulting work ties directly into some of the projects I see Walden 3-D doing over the next few months. We went to `Taste of Texas' and had a good discussion. Wednesday afternoon was spent answering e-mail and doing office yard work. Wednesday evening I didn't really do anything except watch Star Trek.
Thursday was another day of office yard work. Melanie called to talk about her car insurance. Melanie, during the conversation when you asked me how much I make, I almost hesitated. It is instinctive in our society to not talk about salary and expenses. As I think about it, this is sort of like not wanting anyone driving down the Minersville Road to see me doing yard work. So here is the rest of the story relative to our budget:
Pretty sad story isn't it. The positive side of the story includes the facts I am owed enough money to pay off the credit cards (which removes $1,000 per month), child support is dropping $300 when Sara goes to school, we are going to be payed back on a few hundred dollars of charged phone bills, Melanie is going to pay her portion of the car insurance, and Andrea is bringing in some income through her work for Walden 3-D and as a subsitute teacher for KISD. The further negative side of the story is we need to replace the roof ($10,000, if we don't get it covered by insurance), replace the upstairs heating / air conditioning unit ($3,000 expense), and Andrea needs a car if we are going to send her car back to Utah so Audrey has a way to get to work and back home. The futher good news is Walden 3-D has a couple of contracts which should bring in enough to make ends meet. Isn't it interesting how almost all of life can be viewed like I used to view yard work, if you let it.
Friday I went to my first developer's staff meeting in several months. Definitely in the trees working on details. Not a good place for me. I need to see the view. After lunch there was a demo by a guy who has a small personal 3-D visualization environment. I participated in a demonstration for PGS and Haliburton. It went well. Lot's of office yard work the rest of the day. Picked up the Lexus after work. We stayed home and watched the video `Waking Ned Devine' in the evening.
After the Saturday morning yard work, Matt and Andrea and I went swimming for a while. Then we all went to see The Phantom Menace because Audrey had never seen it. The engine light on the Lexus went off on the way to the movie. Instructions are to take the car to the dealer. Oh well! Automobile yard work on the way to work tomorrow. Paul called last night, stressing he didn't want anything and hadn't had a car wreck. I wrote a song for Audrey. It was a very nice day.
This morning I took Corey Grua's place at Priesthood Executive Committee. Andrea and I gave the opening and closing prayers in Sacrament meeting. Steve Hunt, Rob, and Sara joined us for lunch. Home Teachers came this evening. Matt and I went swimming for a while. Matt leaves at 5:30 in the morning for scout camp at Horseshoe Bend at El Rancho Cima. Roice, Ben, Paul, and Rob, do you remember our death marches? And all in all it seems to me like the seeds in the garden of my life are growing and doing just fine. I'm pleased most of you are able to come to the Hafen Reunion at Labor Day. I am really starting to treasure the times we spend together. It's pretty obvious these times are spreading out in time and shortening in length. Oh well! Guess that is part of the yard work in a mature garden. I do hope each of you will learn to enjoy getting your hands dirty, seeing the fruit and flowers from the seeds you plant, and feeling good about the weeds you remove. Have a great week and do some yard work."